My Weekly Adventures: DreamHack and Family Time!

Its been a fairly quiet two weeks. Not a ton has happened. Well, one big event happened as you will see unless you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, I did do a quick share over there and here since I was working on Game Warp coverage mostly and vanished last weekend except for Game Warp Instagram and Facebook. Either way, its been fairly uneventful in some ways but that isn’t a bad thing since we’ll be heading into some gardening stuff soon and will be busy with that once the weather cools down.

Let’s go ahead!

 15K Marathon Boucherville (as a spectator)

Labor Day weekend, also was the Boucherville 15km marathon. Last year, my friend also participated in it and lets just say, I spent most of the time sitting back at the car reading because it was pouring rain. Its good for the whole cooling down during running but not so good for admiring the area it is held in, which is what I do as my friend’s running support. This year was very different. They started the morning okay and it got fairly hot by the end of the 15km. The marathon starts at the side of a river so its quite scenic as well. If you all don’t know, I love being around water so after the run started, I actually walked a little along the waterway before heading back to do some reading in the park. Nice relaxing morning 🙂

Childhood Memories

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The things we find when we help #declutter the #childhood #home. I even found my chewed up #sippycup. #memories #kidthings #cute #bowls #disney #lionking #childhoodmemories

A post shared by Kim (@tranquildreams) on Sep 3, 2018 at 3:38pm PDT

You know I’m digging for material when I’m using Instagram posts. BUT…my mom has been renovating her kitchen and because of that we had to empty out all of her cupboards and well, we aren’t particularly tall ladies so there was some little nostalgic treasures that I never knew that my mom kept. Not sure why, since we both have a hoarder mentality at times. I’m working hard to not do that anymore but then I don’t throw things out, I just don’t buy new stuff as much. Either way, those things in the photo were all stuff I used when I was a kid. Maybe up to 10 years old or something I still used the Lion King cup. I think the surprising find was my sippy cup.

DreamHack Montreal 2018

The big event of this Weekly Adventures has to go to DreamHack Montreal. I was swamped at work and swamped with Game Warp work. You can guess which I enjoyed and had more fun doing even if it was a pretty tiring event since it is also set in a further venue and well, Montreal is like roadwork galore phase right now so its hard to commute anywhere without taking more time than usual. I managed to get there in the Day 1 Friday evening with my husband and his nephew.

Day 2 and 3 was solo coverage for myself. It was pretty much a 9 hour day or something where I went to finish up the indie game zone coverage by playing some more games there. Also went to watch some e-sports and caught the cosplay competition. There was also a gaming triathlon and all that good stuff. I’m putting together a post and a video for it soon. Its late but I actually took a lot of footage so I’m sorting it out. Almost done 🙂

In-Laws Anniversary Dinner

My in-laws just celebrated (a week or so ago) their 45th wedding anniversary. A big deal for sure! My sister-in-law suggested and organized to have us all go downtown for a night out at Les Enfants Terribles on the top of the Place Ville Marie complex. It its just one floor (I think) under the observatory level so there is an outdoor terrace to see the Montreal night view. We had a fairly later dinner time so I had to eat before since I have stomach issues frequently, I don’t mess with eating time too much. So my mom and me ended up sharing a main meal together and we all had a cocktails. I’ll be doing a restaurant post here in a few days as well. So we’ll only touch on it briefly here.

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for this Adventures recap!
Its been a pretty quiet time. Family, gaming and calmer days..it feels good 🙂

What have you been up to? 

Dinner: Restaurant Le Sanglier (Boucherville, Quebec)

Its time for another restaurant outing! 🙂

Yet another Tuango coupon approaching its expiration and because of overlooking the details, it turned out to be a huge debate on when to go. Week nights are harder to manage around. Luckily, I ended up inviting my mom and she came along with me. Its not her normal type of food but spending time with her and chatting outside of both of places is a good change of scenery. This coupon was for a rather new restaurant established in 2015 called Restaurant Le Sanglier. For those who don’t know French, Sanglier means wild boar. Surprisingly, you will see that we didn’t order any boar and I’ll tell you why in just a little bit.

Restaurant Le Sanglier

Located in the suburbs of Boucherville and embedded in a restaurant or lounge area near a lake that I’ve talked about when we make the ice cream outings with friends, its not a huge restaurant but the decor is very delicate. It reflects the food that you should get.  The inside eating area doesn’t seat a lot of people but somehow it still remains cozy to be there. However, oing in the summer, most customers prefer to sit outside on the terrace. The evening we went was beautiful and the terrace was packed, so we had our meal inside.

Cocktail

Limonade a Charlotte: lemonade, vodka, maple, basil

Normally when I’m out with my mom, I wouldn’t order a cocktail (with the exception of when we went on a cruise last year). This is a different situation mostly because I did buy a coupon that was paying $20 for the value of $40 so I try to be a little bit more generous with my spending and really giving everything a try. I ended up choosing the Limonade a Charlotte because it had some refreshing qualities from lemonade itself to basil and I personally like vodka based cocktails. Let me tell you: it did not disappoint. I liked it quite a bit actually, enough for me to think that the other choices on the menu deserve a shot as well when I come back next time.

Starter: Bread

I usually don’t talk about bread. Restaurant Le Sanglier serves their bread in a rather unique way. I don’t know a lot of people that still use those pins that we punch paper through to keep track of loose paper, but they used that for the bread. The brown paper bag also has more bread in it. Its definitely a cute way to serve it. Not to mention, the bread was delicious. It could’ve been warmed up a little but I thought it was a good start to the meal.

Main Meals

Onto the main meal, the coupon covered the main meals dishes while they also serve little sharing platters which had quite a bit of choice as well. The main dishes menu had about six choices. Three of those change around as they are the catch of the day. Is that what you call it? There’s the Dish of the Day, I guess and the other is maybe the chef’s special or something like that. Regardless, the catch of the day was Salmon Fillet. The dish of the day was paella with risotto and finally the chef’s special was…something else that I don’t remember right now.

Here’s what we got:

Catch of the Day (My mom’s choice)

My mom enjoyed her meal. The salmon was done well. Underneath was a squash puree which she also liked.

Surf ‘n Turf (My choice)

I’m not much of a Surf ‘N Turf girl usually but this time when I ordered, I tried a new strategy to ask the waitress to suggest. She suggested the catch of the day, which my  mom already took. Then she suggested the Paella, which has risotto so I couldn’t eat it. After that, it was throwdown between the Beef Bavette (is that even the world in English?) and Surf ‘N Turf and honestly, I’d go for something that I can’t make so much at home. This dish is really great. The scallops are done perfectly and the little pieces of beef are are well cooked. There’s a decent bit of veggies. They take good care in having veggies, especially asparagus that are not mushy but have a little crunchy texture to it. I think the beef was a little salty but other than that, there was a clear thought of how to balance the flavors in the dish here and I liked it a lot.

Why we didn’t order boar…

Its time for the curiously funny story. So, you know, I asked the waitress for suggestion. The weird part is that she suggested  most of the menu except for the Wild Boar Flank with Sweet and Sour Sauce. Honestly, I was curious for it since the name of the restaurant is literally wild boar. Since she didn’t suggest it, I figured I’d skip over it. Its just incredibly curious to me.

Overall…

Restaurant Le Sanglier is in a nice location and cozy decor. The cocktails are good and the food is delicious. The service took a little longer because we were inside and sometimes it does feel that when we use these online deals that we’re less taken care of but then there was only two waitresses and our waitress was very nice. Its definitely a place to check out if you are in the area. I’m definitely going to head back with my husband and some friends to give it another go and try something new. 🙂

My Weekly Adventures: Work Work and more Work (and a bit of fun)

Welcome to My Weekly Adventures! You can’t physically see me but I’m breathing a sigh of relief.  This later than usual post goes up after I came home from work for some the final day of overtime of this week long craziness.  Along with that, this morning right after I took the car out, I realized that my car’s tire was punctured and totally deflated so after a ton of messing with it and Murphy’s Law 100% in effect, I think everything is generally okay, except you know, having to get a new tire since my husband couldn’t patch it.  I was going to give you all a meh post with just some random stuff to fill up space but decided that I needed some writing time to inject some positivity and get ready for the next week.

Enough of rambling, lets go!

Meow Box Unboxing and Subscription Update!

In case you missed it, in the last two weeks, I did a little Meowbox unboxing.  It was a one month subscription for April for Flea’s 5th birthday.  She loved it as you can see and the toys are occupying her time and energy quite a bit. You can see that post HERE.  While the unboxing isn’t very entertaining, I was super excited to have playtime on camera with Flea and despite the camera having to move around, she was quite cooperative. I had decided to cancel my subscription but the lovely folks at Meowbox managed to help me out a little but long story short, expect another Meowbox unboxing in the next few months. 😉

Garden Planning

The weather here in Montreal is being difficult with nights still hitting rather below average weather so the plants are growing slowly but there are signs of life in the garden.  The one place I would have enjoyed slow growth was my “vegetable garden” in the making.  May’s big project is to get rid of all the grass and turn it into a vegetable garden I want.  Its going to be a labor intensive job but one I’m really looking forward to.  I’ve already planned out how the container gardening to decorate the patio will be already so its just that last bit.  Meanwhile, I have gotten in some time to trim and prune and clean up the garden. Things are looking good. 🙂

Saturday Two-Part Outings with Friends

Its been a while I’ve hung out with my girl friends so when we decided to go check out the L’Oreale sale, I was all for it.  Sure, it meant waking up early on a Saturday and probably getting lost (since that’s just expected when I drive to a new place), it was still tons of fun.  There was a lot of people there but the stock wasn’t particularly great.  I bought some sun protection lotion and Garnier shampoo and bought a Biotherm Men Urban Survival kit for my husband. Then, we headed for a spontaneous brunch to Le Cartet,.  I recently did a restaurant post on that one HERE.  Then we headed to get some ice cream/sorbet at Le Bilboquet.

4 mini degustations at Le Bilboquet

They had this special called 4 mini degustation which is 4 mini tasting portions for $5 (tax included). I chose raspberry, mango-coconut, strawberry-pear and passion fruit. The mix was so delicious! We sat around in the square with these lovely little decorations below.

The weather was perfect and the sun was so warm as we sat and chatted.  It was great.  After I went home to relax and do a few chores, it was time to head out with the husband to hang out with his friends for a little tradition started last year of Poutineville and Chocolat Favoris.  I skipped getting something at Chocolat Favoris since I had my sorbet fix already. However, here is my poutine and the husband’s.

Mine had hot dog, lactose-free cheese and shoestring fries with poutine sauce. My husband’s was with sweet potato fries, curd cheese, and some meats that I can’t remember.

Before we headed to Chocolat Favoris, the whole group went for a walk since we all had eaten so much to just help digest.

It was a super nice walk that started off a little chilly but it was really fun. It was great time during the day with good company and delicious food.  A perfect day to relax and have fun and just take a break from work.

Product That I Love: Frends Earphones

I’m not sure who watched the unboxing of the FabFitFun Winter box a while back but I got these Frends Earphones which I haven’t used because my earphones were (and are) still doing great.  I brought to work today to listen to music while working and OMG! I love them! The sound quality is fantastic. I think possibly one of the best ones I’ve ever tried on.  That is really all I wanted to mention. It seems that they only have the headphones now. But man, this is the FabFitFun page on that right HERE! Mine are white but I’m in love!

Updates and Collabs, ETC

Its been month that I’ve talked about changing the domain.  I’m still working on it.  Don’t worry about it.  I don’t talk about it because this month has been a massive crazy mess.  May still looks really busy with a lot of events and dinner dates and all that stuff.  Plus, I’ve been busy with some projects and of course, gaming posts over at That Moment In.

In case you didn’t know, I’ve been doing Game Breaks and Game Reviews over at That Moment In.  We’re also working on something else for the gaming section and if all goes well, I’ll be posting about it soon! 🙂 On that note, if you have any interesting games that you think I’ll like playing, please suggest! I’ve been checking out a lot of mobile games and there has been some surprising finds.  I also work on gameplay so I’ve been editing videos a lot more.  Its both time consuming and a lot of fun! The last review post that went up was a collab post with Jordan of Epileptic Moondancer for an indie game called Layers of Fear.  You can check that out HERE!

Cute Kitty Time

Upcoming:

• Netflix A-Z: U-X
• TV Binge
• Music Obsessions
• Recipe and Book Reviews

Hope you’ve all had a fantastic weekend! 🙂
What have you been up to? Are there any games you’ve been playing? Are you preparing for spring and gardening?