My May Adventures!

Its hard to believe that we’ve already finished 5 months of 2021. Its been a pretty wild beginning of the year in all aspects. Things definitely feel like its slowly getting back to some form of normalcy. I’m hoping that I didn’t jinx anything especially in terms of work. This month has been quite the slow month in terms of post and one where I needed to just remind myself that I needed to be okay with slowing down blogging to get the real life stuff done. With that said, I’m slowly getting back into the groove of things and yet again, playing a little bit of catch up again by the end of the May. Not a whole lot happened since the last weekend (the past Friday) just allowed to travel inter-regions so hiking has started yet so its been very focused around the home. Either way, lets check it out!

Workout

May 2: Walk 1.17km/14 mins
May 8: Walk 3.79km/42 mins
May 9: Walk 2.17km/25 mins
May 14: Walk 3.97km/43mins
May 16: Walk 1.11km/14mins
May 21: Walk 3.13km/34mins
May 22: Walk 1.09km/15mins
May 23: Walk 2.12km/26mins
May 24: Walk 2.33km/28mins
May 28: Walk 2.10km/25mins
May 29: Walk 1.59kkm/20mins

Nothing much to say this time. I’ve been having slight sleeping issues. Not exactly insomnia but just maybe a little stress and anxiety so affecting sleep so energy level is a bit low making the running not going right away. Plus, we’ve had a pretty hot May in general so as I dig out all my running gear. I decided to maintain walking at the minimum whenever I could (within curfew hours). Curfew was lifted this past weekend also meaning that I can now go for more walks as daylight is a little longer and eventually get back to running as well as hiking.

Garden Centre Haul

We went to the garden center earlier this year to hopefully get a few more plants. Things are definitely back to normal this year as there is a wild assortment of different vegetables and herbs. With a slight expansion of the garden, we’re hoping to plant more although some of these are going into containers and being planted indoors since the zonage doesn’t work either. With that said, I’m fairly certain it won’t be the only trip to the garden center as the front yard didn’t seem to enjoy the abnormal weather fluctuations and a few plants haven’t popped up yet so its a perfect chance to rearrange it and hopefully do a little change to make it look better. Also, I’m seeing what I can do to add borders so that the plants don’t get accidentally mowed when they aren’t in blooming season.

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A post shared by Kim (@tranquildreams)

1st Dose of COVID-19 Vaccination

After a few months of the vaccination campaign, my age group finally was opened in May and the fastest that I could get on a weekend and not affecting work too much was on May 29th for the 1st dose. Overall, it was a decent reaction as I only had arm pain but it wasn’t anything too intense. It probably hurt the most at night but gradually subsided over the next day. I had talked to some others and they talks about staying hydrated being a big part of it and keeping the arm moving. Nothing too intense in terms of movement but just keep blood circulation going and whatnot. Not sure if that contributed it to not having a bigger reaction but a little of my own experience in case you haven’t gotten the first dose yet. My second dose is in mid-September so its a little way away. Still, its a first step.

Optometrist Check-Up

Its been a tad overdue for all kinds of check-up in general due to the pandemic so I’m slowly getting everything back on track. After a year of way too much time in front of the PC for everything including an immense amount of time doing overtime, I decided that I needed to get an eye check-up since my eyes have been not feeling too great so wondering whether I needed new glasses plus, there’s some weird scratches on the glasses and the frames are losing color so I figured I should get some new frames. Good news is that my eyes didn’t get any worse and overall pretty healthy just astigmatism went up a tiny bit. The second which is good and bad is that I got some new glasses even though I haven’t paid so much for glasses as I would get them out of province but seeing as traveling restrictions, I had no choice. However, I did find glasses that I really like. It’ll be a little while until I get them so next month’s adventures will probably be when I give an update on it.

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for this month’s Adventures!
What have you been up to?
Has the pandemic situation wherever you are doing better overall?

My April 2021 Adventures!

Welcome to the April 2021 Adventures! Its a tad later than usual. I have a pretty good reason is that: nothing really happened in April except work and a lot of work and then overtime and….a whole lot of nothing else. So I was debating whether to release the post. But you know what, I did get back on track with something and whatnot so I’m going to just do quick one and share some updates.

Workout

Apr.9: Run 4.35km
Apr.10: Walk 15mins.
Apr. 11: Abs Workout
Apr. 14: 34 mins/3.09km walk
Apr. 17: 30 mins/2.41km walk
Apr. 18: 53 mins/4.39 km walk
Apr. 24: 28 mins/2.58km walk
Apr. 25: 13 mins/1.22 km walk

The biggest change in April was that, despite the busy work schedule, I tried really hard to get more active. I only did one run and workout but overall, I tried to force myself to go out deliberately on walks outside of the normal routine. I put on a lot of weight in the last few months due to work and stress and the whole nine yards so its been making me feel a little unhappy about the whole thing so the best way to get active again. It was pretty good since it not only was getting me more active but also the walks helped me de-stress and refresh between work and overtime and actually made everything a little more efficient.

April is over so I’ll probably be doing more runs than walks in May as the weather steadies and I hopefully will have more time.

Tranquil Dreams Podcast

As of the last episode, Tranquil Dreams Podcast has gotten back to a weekly format covering one week of What’s Up. You can check out the last episode HERE.

In terms of schedule, I’m still posting a few days later than I would like but I’m hoping to slowly move it back to a fixed release day of the week. Plus, I have some ideas for other content lately so I’m going to see how to structure those in. Still, one step at a time and things will get back on track by the summer.

New Buys and Bubble Tea

I have some shopping therapy issue that I thought I had gotten rid of but apparently not. Although I’m not doing big buys but I was pretty interested in these Ooly stationary. I got these pastel liners and waiting for the pens to be delivered. I’m organizing stuff lately with a big notebook so its rather useful.

Other than that, we’ve been looking for a new controller for our PC since the husband and I have both gotten into streaming so its good to not have to move the controller between out two computers. Luckily, Costco sells these wireless Xbox controllers which are compatible with Steam. I’ve tested it out a few times on some games so far and really liking it. I haven’t had time to stream in April but planning to get back to it in May to play some of the games released on Xbox Game Pass in the past while. I have no set schedule yet but probably will have one set in the next month. If you watch Twitch, you can head over and give me a follow and get notifications to know when I go live HERE.

I feel like I haven’t talked about the new PresoTea opened over the last month or 2. I can’t remember but the Mango Green Tea with Mango Bubbles with less ice and lite sugar. The blend of that drink is awesome! Not sure if you all have PresoTea but if you do and like mango or iced tea, this one is so good. I don’t drink it a lot but I like to get one as a reward.

Streaming with Friend Update: Resident Evil Village on launch day

On the note of streaming and somewhat of an announcement!

For some of you who don’t know, I stream on Friday evenings with my friend playing horror games. The coming week is release of Resident Evil Village on May 7th (this coming Friday) and we’ll be playing that on release day! Its super rare that it happens and we’re going in completely blind (other than knowing that there’s the tall vampire lady) as we both haven’t played the demos or watched any videos of it or the trailer either.

If you want to come check it out, the stream starts at 8pm EST so you can head over to my friend Brandel Savage’s Twitch channel HERE.

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for the April Adventures!
I really stretched this one out and its not exactly exciting but pandemic protocols also doesn’t allow for a lot of variety.
At least, we can sign up for the first vaccine appointment soon so that’s progress, right?

My March Adventures!

Welcome to the next Adventures! On a real life level, March is usually a temporary break month where there’s less deadlines but a lot of catch-up happens left over from the previous 2 months of craziness. Much like the trend of the past year, this month was much busier than expected. I’m going to say right now that not much happened so this should be a fairly short post.

The pandemic in Montreal seemingly seems to be better as a lot of stuff is opening up but yet, while the daily case increase was on a downward trend in the beginning month, its starting to go up again so I’m still not sure about this rather aggressive reopening plan. I feel like the impatience sometimes is what makes this even harder to overcome.

Plus, its my 35th birthday today! Let’s go!

Bathing Our Cat

Probably one of the most adventurous things for the month was giving my cat a bath. She’s been having some skin problems and we’ve been going through different home methods to try to figure out what’s the problem. We ended up giving her a bath with some cat shampoo to moisturize dry skin which definitely helped. We say its adventurous but actually it turned out to be a rather calm experience since she actually didn’t mind it too much except for the rinsing part when she didn’t really like more water on her. Overall, it ended up being much more pleasant than how we anticipated it would turn out. My cat is an odd one to say the least. She doesn’t like accidental water drops but apparently, wetting her completely is fine.

Streaming!!

I believe that I had mentioned in the beginning of 2021 that one of my plans is to start streaming! After a lot of thinking and trying to find time, I finally did one stream to kick things off. Currently, as this post goes up, I’m streaming Sea of Solitude. You can check out my Twitch channel here.

Plus, some good news on two other streamers. The first being my husband, who got Twitch Affiliate recently. You can check out his channel if you are interested HERE.

As for my friend and streamer who I do horror streams with, he also got Twitch Affiliate recently. It used to be on Mondays that we streamed together but its going to be moved to Friday for horror streams soon. You can check it out HERE.

Birthday Month

Its been a birthday month in our family, not just the husband and I but for the family. Its the second year for us March babies that we’ve been living through the pandemic. Still, we’ve found our ways to make things happen. My husband reached a birthday milestone (at least the family did feel that way). We didn’t really do much but he did get a few gifts this year that he wanted. As for myself, I got a plant delivered to me, which was quite cool. The plant above is apparently is rather pricey (according to my husband) called Monstera (aka Swiss Cheese Plant). I joked that its more suitable for my husband considering I’m lactose intolerant and can’t have cheese. This plant is temporarily set there for now as I look for a plant stand so that it can stay out of the reach of my cat as its toxic for dogs and cats. I do say that its a cool- looking plant overall. Any tips for Monstera if any of you have this plant?

Tranquil Dreams Podcast

Aside from that, Tranquil Dreams Podcast is moving along in a rather changed format as I try to catch up with the weeks that I missed. While its on some funky release schedule as I can’t seem to find time to record and edit on time however I am slowly feeling like I’m getting back in the groove. However, each time that I say that my work suddenly goes nuts and then I don’t have time again so picture me, knocking on wood right after I write that so that I don’t jinx myself. 😉

You can check out the latest podcast episode HERE.

That’s it for this March adventures!
No cute kitty as already have a fluffy cute cat pic above 😉

What have you been up to?

My July Adventures!

These might be some unusual times but July has been right on cue with the hot and humid weather along with some random downpours. There’s a few changes as things get back to some form of normal since Montreal is pretty much in their last phases of deconfinement as offices has the okay for up to 25% of staff to get back to work and masks are mandatory on public transit and indoor public places. I’ll talk about all those things below as well as some updates of July.

Hiking: La Boucle du mont des Trois-Lacs

After some rainy weather, we finally found a day to go out for a hike to hit the other trail in the same spot where we went in the previous hike. You can see the recap of this hike HERE.

Movies and Tea Podcast

Movies and Tea Podcast is still going pretty strong. We’ve been wrapping up Season 4 for Ang Lee and After Hours this month and will be starting up Season 5 for David Fincher shortly.

On Youtube, we’ve been posting up on a weekly basis and we’re pretty much updated almost the entire first season. As we step into Season 5 for Movies and Tea, it will be updated on Youtube while still catching up on the older episodes in between. Above you can find the latest episode updated on Youtube.

Back to the Office

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As #workfromhome ends for me, I've been preparing by checking out different #facecoverings as it becomes mandatory to wear #masks on public transit. In the last few weeks, I ordered from @sofsdesigns @hoplagogosses which both are pretty good. For both, I had to make slight adjustments to the ear loops to fit more snug. #sofsdesigns has a space to put a 3rd layer for filter and nose band. It has its pros especially in high heat to choose whether to add that extra layer. #hoplagogosses has a nose band and is 3 layers fitted which is good as already all done so very convenient and the nose band is good quality. The black cherry one is a free trial from my friend @surprisesdephoebe who has been trying to make her version of the best mask suitable for her family and kindly made me one to try which turned out really well. Its not for sale but I had to share it since it fit the best. #buylocal #madeinquebec #quebecproducts #handmade #covid19life

A post shared by Kim (@tranquildreams) on Jul 12, 2020 at 3:38pm PDT

Back to the office doesn’t really have much to talk about. I wasn’t exactly excited about it since the whole public transit thing is rather stressful mentally. It was okay for the first week or so until the buses started getting more people, probably because of 25% capacity of office able to open. I’m trying to keep a relaxed mindset about it all and just make sure to stay on high alert. Of course, with masks mandatory not only on public transit but expanded to indoor public places, its all about amassing face masks since the government has said that its something that will likely remain mandatory for the foreseeable future.

Gardening Update

All the garden vegetables are doing fairly good. Everything’s have some kind of vegetable growing. We have an abundance of cucumbers and Hungarian Wax peppers. I’m hoping that at some point we’ll get more than the one or two squashes. The downpours will hopefully  help.

Quick Road Trip to Ottawa

I didn’t take any pictures but I went to Ottawa for quick Chinese grocery store run since I had some things that I needed but some Chinese grocery stores here don’t have a lot of. At the same time, it was mostly also a chance to take care of a wrong delivery item from an online order for Eddie Bauer that I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of calling and getting a Fedex pickup and whatnot. Its just nice to take a road trip since there’s no other form of travelling that seems reasonable in the current times. I got a chance to pick up a hiking bag on discount at Eddie Bauer, half a dozen of donuts from Maverick Donuts, ciders from LCBO as well as the above-mentioned grocery run. At least one less thing to deal with for the whole Eddie Bauer wrong item situation that got sorted out fairly easily.

Workout Update

• Run: 8.19km/ 1hr1min
• Pool Workouts

With only one hike and one long run this month due to the extreme heat, I’ve been moving every week’s workout into a few pool workouts. Its been mostly about endurance and resistance workouts as well as swimming. Going back to the office also means that I can get back to the normal everyday walking. Point is, I’ve been trying to get more active and lose some weight and stay fit.

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for this July Adventures!

My May Adventures

Its hard to think that May is over with and at this point, its been more than 2 months in lockdown mode. Montreal is getting into reopening phase so we’ll see how all that goes probably in the June recap as it hasn’t completely started yet, really just starting up. With that said, I still worked from home in May. Things have slightly slowed down but there’s a shift in my own responsibilities and whatnot. Its been a bit crazy, not just the general situation but the weather went from some light snow in the beginning of the month until this last week of May hitting the 30+ degrees Celsius mark so its insane. Not a whole lot to talk about in these adventures but I’m mostly following up from last month’s Adventures post with podcasts and gardening, etc.

Movies and Tea Update: We’re on YouTube FINALLY!

Last month’s adventures, I had talked about working on moving the audio podcasts to Youtube as a new platform to see if we can get some more audience there. After an entire month of trying to do it but never quite getting it done, I gave myself a kick in the pants and did it. The first episode of Season 1 of our archives is finally on. The plan right now is that archives once a week until our current season ends and then I will upload Season 5 in between of putting up archives in between. That way, the old stuff is going up and the new episodes as well.

I’m debating on whether to do some more content after all the main business is done! All up for discussion with my awesome co-host, of course…because as we always say, we hate free time. 😉

Garden Update

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#gardencentre #haul from last weekend at @jean_francois_dauphinais is all transplanted into the #garden and #container. #flowers #fuchsia #bacopa #marigolds #basil #lemongrass #cucumber #squash #butternutsquash #delicatasquash #peppers #hungarianwaxpeppers #snapdragons #lemonthyme #dianthus #containergardening #gardening #annuals #perennials #veggies #vegetablegarden

A post shared by Kim (@tranquildreams) on May 30, 2020 at 11:45am PDT

There’s probably more to update here. There are a few more containers as I also did try to grow almost all the seeds that I had in the house. Some came out and some didn’t but its still somewhat of a waiting game other than the butterfly garden flowers, which seem to be doing fairly well in both of the containers. I will probably share a picture of it once it has more progress than baby leaves.

The trip to the garden center was also decent. Its more that, probably because of COVID-19 and the later season and unstable weather, there was a very limited assortment of vegetables or plants or whatnot. For example, the zucchini was not even grown from seeds and I wasn’t going to take the risk so skipped it. All of this year’s vegetables are new trials: Butternut Squash, Squash, Delicata Squash, Hungarian Wax Peppers and Marina Cucumbers (which we’ve had before but never grown..my mom has though). It’ll be interesting to see what comes of it all. More updates next month.

The whole staying at home as given a whole new motivation to weeding though so hoping to take advantage of the nice weather and the extra time from working at home whenever I can to get the garden back up to how I’d like it to be.

Game Warp Podcast – New Episode

If the lockdown did anything for us, its getting us back into our Game Warp groove. I’ve definitely been gaming more even if its not for actual podcast recordings but its built up some backlog for game reviews and mobile game roundups to potentially go up as its all in the works right now. Above is our latest episode that you can give a listen!

Online Battle of Ingredients Group Hangout

No pictures here since I like to respect everyone’s privacy and online names and whatnot. We didn’t forget Battle of Ingredients and are waiting for this whole social distancing to go at some point to resume normal operations. We have thought about doing some online edition but its my fault mostly that work and changing seasons has added a lot to the to-do list so not a ton of time to think about it. However, the crew did get together for an online dinner together and then a Jackbox party together so it was a lot of fun. New times calls for new measures to still hang out with our friends and stay in touch.

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for this May Adventures!
Its mostly little updates on the different projects right now!

What have you been up to during this lockdown period?
Is your city reopening gradually?

My Weekly Adventures: Fantasia Festival Begins!!!

Welcome to the next Adventures post! The last two weeks has been hectic to say the least. Oh boy, its hard to imagine we’re only a few days into the big festival here so its going to be quite a while before things get back to normal. Right now is still the transition phase or something in my mind. Either way, there’s some little updates and some changes in projects to talk about here.

Canada Day Tarts

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Made some #strawberry #rhubarb #tarts last night. Completely freestyle with #norecipe . #homegrown rhubarb and #quebec strawberries … #food #baking #desserts #homemade

A post shared by Kim (@tranquildreams) on Jul 3, 2019 at 6:03pm PDT

I debated on putting up the recipe by memory but there’s no way that I can replicate this since I did it by trial and error and just my instincts with one taste in the middle to adjust. The ingredients I used here were the basic except I did add a drizzle of honey on the top before popping it in the oven on each tart. I think it helped balance the tartness a little. Overall success 🙂

Montreal Comiccon 2019

Montreal Comiccon has come and gone. It was a hectic weekend and one that felt like I finally found my rhythm and everything was done efficiently. Things became more flexible to work with and it just felt more prepared in general. You can check out all the posts below:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Gaming Recap
Shopping Haul

Fantasia Film Festival 2019

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#Fantasia2019 is here! Day 3 today and #movie #reviews are already showing up on the #blog . First up was #LittleMonsters and next is #Vivarium . Its going to be a fun 3 weeks! #mtl #mtlevents #films #indie #filmfest #FantasiaFest

A post shared by Kim (@tranquildreams) on Jul 13, 2019 at 11:11am PDT

After a bit of a media pass delay, since it wasn’t ready on Day 1, I ended up skipping my first movie and started the festival on Day 2. However, things did have a nice turn in the end so the movies so far watched are the following:

Little Monsters
Vivarium
Extreme Job
The Wonderland
Paradise Hills
1BR (Press screening…review up after world premiere)

I’ve never had the chance to make it to any press screenings in the past few years covering the festival so it was super awesome to do it, even if it was an early start to a Sunday morning but then I also got to check out the screening room and catch up on movies I didn’t get to see in their showings. Its definitely convenient especially since it opens up options to add some more movies to the already too long list.

Game Warp – Changes

Lots of changes these days. After some That Moment In change, Game Warp is only running on WordPress now. We have also decided to go to an audio format on Anchor. You can find us HERE.

We uploaded the last episode to go up for E3 Conference Recap. More episodes to come as we work out our schedule. Youtube will now be more of a supporting platform when gameplay is something we want to do or whatnot. While it won’t be as plentiful especially due to the festival season, I do still want to do some videos when I have time.

Gardening Update

After this picture, I’ve been working on getting rid of some of the grass and weeds growing around the plants. However, the vegetable garden is doing pretty well.

As is the flower garden, which was taken last week so the campanulas are now in bloom and things are really filling in the spaces, making it look full.

Cute Kitty Pic

Thats it for this Adventures recap!
Are there any cool festivals going on near where you are?

My Weekly Adventures: Hiking, Grand Prix and Food!

Its mid-June now! Summer is just around the corner although the weather probably doesn’t really feel like it much. Its been feeling very spring lately, which is normal but its been a while spring has lasted so long. Either way, enough about the weather. With the season well underway, we’ve been keeping ourselves eventful while different events have been showing up as well. I’ll wrap up with a little gardening update.

Hiking: Parc de la Yamaska

June kicked off with our walk in Yamaska National Park. Its a casual walk along a fairly flat walk also set for cyclists as well. Its one thats great to kick off the beginning of the season. You can see the full recap HERE.

Grand Prix in Downtown Montreal

As usual, Grand Prix landed in Downtown Montreal last weekend. Its always a busy weekend. I ended going with my mom for dinner at Noodle Factory in Chinatown and then heading to see the stuff going on on Peel and Crescent Street. This year was pretty disappointing. It felt not very special with not a lot of cars in general being showcased. It was kind of boring..although the music performed on the Crescent stage was probably the best show I’ve seen so I believe the line-up might be the highlight.

Hiking: Mont Chapman

Being the hiking crazy people that we are trying to be and working hard to keep up with it as much as we can before any potential things with events all pan out in July, plus the weather being cooler works well for those long hikes. After some long debate, we ended up going to the Eastern Townships in the middle of nowhere on a mountain hiking trail that we found called Mont Chapman. I have a few good things to say about this, mostly how challenging it was and how I somewhat disagree on the difficulty level they put it as and well, some complaints as well about this location and warnings/suggestions I’d give on this hiking track. That is coming up very soon in the hiking recap for this one. 😉

E3 2019

As usual, we had our E3 2019 off site coverage over at Game Warp. I talked about it over at the What’s Up segment this past week. It did set the course off over here a tad bit but other than some late posts, most of what I wanted to do still stayed relatively on track. You can find all the written recap coverage on Game Warp blog HERE.

Shopping Haul: Prep for Bridesmaid Duty

Its a week until my best friend gets married. I decided to take care of my hair and make-up so I had to go hunt down some stuff since I don’t normally put on make-up or do my hair in any particular way.  I did also get a curling iron which was on sale. I have a general concept of how do it and its going to simple but still match with the dress. Anyways, lots of new things that I’m trying out here so I’ll have to do a test-run at some point before since its a fairly early morning.

Gardening Update

First part of the gardening update is planting in the flowers that I didn’t get around to plant the last time. Its not too obvious but I ended up putting the Hibiscus into the patch because I lost my chrysanthemums. And then in the other patch, I pulled up some of the other plants that was there that wasn’t looking too healthy and put in some foliage and the Monarda (Bee Balm).

Cabbage, Marigolds & Lettuce/Kale

Vegetable Garden

Kale, Tomatoes, etc

The vegetables are all in. The garden is now all planted. The cabbage/marigold containers are growing very well. At the same time, the kale and the lettuce containers are also growing incredibly fast and pretty much ready for the first harvest. As for the poor tomato plant that was supposed to be hanging, it looks so miserable even through the last few rainy days.

Restaurants

The restaurant that my mom and I went to was Noodle Factory in Chinatown. We got some pan-fried dumplings and then some fried handmade noodles. They were pretty decent.

Labothery

A new bubble tea concept place opened up in Quartier Dix30 called Labothery. I will do a more elaborate post for it soon. Its a neat concept but as with any customizable ideas, the price increases accordingly.

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for this Weekly Adventures!
Its been a fun two weeks even though a bit busy as I was working out some press pass application also! 
Events are coming up in Montreal so I’m hoping to get ahead with some posts.

My Weekly Adventures: Hangouts, Gaming & Podcast Guest

Welcome to the next Adventures! Its been a bit quiet on my end to be honest. Well, kind of. To be fair, the weather’s been pretty weird and then work’s been in its crazy phase. Still, we managed to get some time to hang out with friends, check out an event and pretty much wrapped up some stuff over here while to try relatively calm about everything. At least my few days staycation is just around the corner so I’m ecstatic for it. Can’t wait!

Dinner: Korean BBQ at Mon Ami

Steam Dumplings

Fried Dumplings

Korean BBQ

Korean BBQ

As a replacement for the monthly Battle of Ingredients and to compromise for a busy schedule (and my incredibly messy house that I didn’t have time to deep clean for guests), we decided to head out for a dinner out. The final decision came down to Mon Ami Brossard for All You Can Eat. Its a pretty good deal as it includes a great deal more than just Korean BBQ. It was pretty good but as I was on the verge of getting sick again, I stayed a little further from BBQ food and loved that I could get Bibimbap and a ton of dumplings. Its pretty fun and we had nice chats. Time with friends is always such a great way to stay sane and get in a ton of laughs and good times in general.

Montreal Joue 2019

The 7th annual Montreal Joue Festival is happening right now. It has a variety of game-themed events on its program. For myself, the one that interests me most is their video games festival which was held at Marche Bonsecours. Its been a go-to spot for gaming events lately. Overall, there was a lot of rinse and repeat games that I had seen in last year’s various events (but then, I go to almost 90% of gaming events in Montreal so its inevitable). However, it was nice to catch up with some games that have been on radar especially those in development for a while and finally see that they are all getting a release date. The game above is an upcoming mobile game called Feathers of Time which have had my attention for a while. I’ll be doing a recap on it in a few days over on the Game Warp blog (and That Moment In).

Valentine’s Marathon Officially Done

I know that technically there are like 4 movies that I need to post and they will go up soon by the end of the weekend (hopefully). I need to power through some more of the films to get them watched. However, after watching two great films, the remaining ones are looking a like lackluster. Haha! I’m just kidding…I’ll get to it. However, Valentine’s Marathon dragging further than February is not something I’d like to do. So I’m cutting it off. You will see this format again probably for next year. Its one that I’m enjoying and plan on doing on various months of the year just with more creative themes and maybe not a specific genre.

However, Valentine’s Marathon was pretty great. I achieved the goal of taking movies off My List on Netflix and also managed to discover some pretty fantastic movies. There was a lot of average movies but great films are made everyday so the idea that some showed up is already great. The entire Valentine’s Marathon reviews is updated HERE! Check it out if you think you may have missed any of the reviews.

Asian Cinema Film Club Podcast

I joined Elwood and Stephen over at Asian Cinema Film Club on their podcast to talk about 2012 Hong Kong film, The Bullet Vanishes. They were gracious enough to let me choose and it was a nice discussion we had about it. I never get enough chance to talk about Asian Cinema especially Hong Kong films that I always accept their invite. Plus, any chance to talk about my favorite celebrity Nicholas Tse is one that I won’t turn down. It was super fun as always. Give it a listen and hope you enjoy! Remember to follow them HERE if you haven’t already.

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for this Weekly Adventures!
I promise the next one will be a bit more colorful 😉
What adventures have you had?

My Weekly Adventures: A Little Bit of Everything…

Welcome to the next Adventures post!

First of all, if you do drop by here frequently, I’m sorry for the sparseness of the posts, I’ll have a general explanation of what went down and kind of took over my life. I feel like I’ve said that a lot in 2018. While there were a lot of things that have been fairly cool in 2018, overall on a personal sense, 8 months in and I’m sure my husband and I are quite over it and ready for something incredibly great to balance things out. Anyways, we gotta stay positive to hopefully attract some more positive things..at least thats the concept in my mind.

Let’s see how the second half of August went!

The next Battle of Ingredients

We skipped a month of Battle of Ingredients in July because well, its busy in July for myself. However, we got things set for mid-August and had it all ready to go for our Take 2 of BBQ. This time, we each made some nice twists and there were a lot of success. Some recipes are ideas for other cooking methods in later challenges for non-BBQ and others, we learned from its not so perfect execution. Overall, it was a fun little time together to hang out and catch up and explore some new recipes. Its hard to imagine we just did the 9th Battle of Ingredients and the next is the 10th!

You can check out the full post HERE.

Lachine Half Marathon – Spectator

No pictures for this event. I’ve grown so accustom to doing half marathon support for my friend that I just kind of chill out a lot. It was a super hot day and I got a mini sunburn. Honestly, my bad for choosing to sit on a bench under the blazing sun catching up on reading. It was a super nice and honestly, I kind of miss it because the weather’s slightly cooled down and after that race and going home for a pool session, our pool motor is dying but as its the end of the season, we are only replacing everything next year and closing the pool early for the year. However, in terms of the Lachine Marathon, it was a tough one because the heat came in fairly quick. My friend did finish it within the time he wanted but so close. This season has been a tough one for him. A few more races to go for the season and with the heat ramping down a little, I’m hoping that its gets a positive turn for him. However if you haven’t been to the Lachine Half, its set in a pretty cool pier/park area with some stuff set up to look at and nice little sitting areas and all that fun stuff.

The 15 Hour ER Adventure

Life takes us for some crazy time. Don’t freak out! I didn’t go to the ER personally however, my husband did have some pain that he was enduring and we had chalked up to maybe indigestion or stomach flu until he had pains on his side which because just very unbearable by the time we hit the end of the work week. For those who don’t know about Canada’s free healthcare, it just means that there is an incredible wait time more so because in Quebec, medical professionals and the whole system is fairly messed up so we ended up doing a 12 hour wait time in the ER then got sent to the room to wait for the doctor another hour before he saw him, took tests and proceeded to round out another 2 hours or more waiting for test analysis, results and diagnosis. It turns out it was something of the beginning of a stomach ulcer and its time for meds to stop it before it gets more serious and well, the pain still showed up every once in a while so further test is in the horizon at the moment. Quite the stressful time and honestly, after my 5:30am arrival to home after the ER adventure and staying awake to make sure the husband was okay and being over 30, the all nighter and sleeping 2.5 hours just kind of murdered my entire week that followed and with it, any energy or motivation to process thoughts on movies and reviews. I spent most of the time after work sitting in my chair just resting and relaxing this week.

Either way, with that little scare…we are officially enforcing…

A Transition to Change in Eating Habits and having more Balanced Meals

Not sure why that’s a section in itself! But I’m totally grasping for straws for something to talk about. Anyways, I’ve been getting back to working out as you can see. As I’m typing this up, we just literally finished binging Ultimate Beastmaster Season 3 and boy, am I excited to talk about it in the next TV Binge! Yes, its moved forward in priority because I’m so hyped by it. However, that is good because Ultimate Beastmaster usually gets us super motivated to train again. We are already working on the eating healthier thing and for that reason, I’m decreasing Goodfood boxes to help get into a groove of making food from scratch on our own and not always relying on boxes because the reality is that the boxes were meant to help support the crazy weeks and not so that we could get lazy and that is what we’ve been doing a lot, which results to some bad eating habits whenever we don’t get boxes. Either way, transition going on already and I’m probably not going to share that except perhaps on Instagram or if I try out any cool new recipes.

We did make this recipe today as a little throwback: Basil Avocado Bacon Pasta. The post is HERE. We found this recipe 5 years ago and we still make it a few times a year. Its actually the first time we made it this year so like I said, we’re off our game a little.

If you have any healthy and tasty recipes, do share it in the comments below. We’re always down for suggestions!

New Dairy-Free Food Discovery

View this post on Instagram

So happy to see @breyers joining into the #dairyfree #icecream alternative with this #cookiesandcream #flavor. #sweettooth #desserts #food #tryingnewthings

A post shared by Kim (@tranquildreams) on Sep 1, 2018 at 9:22pm PDT

Upcoming:

• TV Binges
• Book Reviews & Blog Tour
• Restaurant Review/Recap

Kitty Cute Pic

If you are following me on Avenue of Daydreams, you already saw this pic!
A silly kitty cat moment as she pulls down our towels that was hanging to dry on the railing to the ground to improvise a bed.

Thats it for this Weekly Adventures!
Its a little short but its just what happens when life gets taken over by more serious things!
On a side note, I am more avid on Instagram when I’m not posting or adding random posts on Facebook, so be sure to follow me there.

What adventures have you been up to?

My Weekly Adventures #65: The Endless To-Do List

Well…it seems after crazy time comes a lot of not free time but calmer times. I had a debate about whether to post for this Weekly Adventures but I figured I should at least do a short one. I mean, what do I do? Talk to you every time about weeding? You know when things get halted in conversation, the fall back is weather so…let’s do that.

Montreal has had some fantastic weather. Honestly, its been two awesome weekends. I’ve gotten a lot of prep work in the garden done and it still feels like a long way before I’m anywhere near ready to start planting next week. Its gotten me motivated to get back into my own groove and get back into this positive mood that I actually haven’t felt in a little while. I’m having my own mental struggles over a ton of stuff and sometimes, its hard to explain to others how I just enjoy my own little space to do my stuff efficiently and connect with my own thoughts, because some people don’t function that way. A topic for another day to dive into.

The last two weeks was a lot of housekeeping for the blog and my house and my life. I’m trying to get things back on track, find back my own positive thoughts and just think a little about improving. One of the latest things I did was finally update my  About Tranquil Dreams page in the menu which I realized wasn’t updated in 2017. Oops~ You can check that out as well, especially if you are new here and want a snapshot of the versatile amount of topics. You can find it HERE.

Before we begin, the last few Weekly Adventures have been about a lot of behind the scenes stuff going on and segment revival and recaps. I promise you that after this Victoria Day weekend, things absolutely get busier with Montreal events and such.

Gardening 2018 has Begun!

The first Gardening 2018 post has gone up. Lots of plans and lots of things to accomplish to get to the final goal. The last two weekends (and some weekday evenings) was all about getting ready for our Victoria Day long weekend to get things in ground and in pots. You can find that post here.

To be honest, this week has no update because 75% of my gardening stuff this weekend was making sure the vegetable patch was grass-free, finding new perennials that came out in the sea of grass so that my husband knows to not mow over my plants and a ton of weeding. So much weeding and so much more left to do. The only update are the blooms and no worries, an update is coming very soon! 😉

Avenue of Daydreams – Changing its Look

For some of you who are new here, I used to do a ton of photography and writing when Tranquil Dreams first started. However, that faded in the background. However, in the spirit to channel a more creative outlet rather the reviews and lifestyle stuff I do here, I opened up another blog called Avenue of Daydreams. Its really sporadic content but the previous theme had issues of not being a mostly photography blog so it wasn’t showing up stuff as I wanted so in the last two weeks, I stopped my procrastinating and got around to changing it up. I might change it again but so far, I like it better already.  Its clean and nice. So in case, you want to see a lot of more artsy pictures that I take with my phone and my DSLR and the sporadic writing piece, Fifty or maybe edited Nanowrimo past novel, that is where you will find it all. I might revive the Out of This World Travels segment but just working on the time allocation first.

You can check out (and follow if you enjoy) right here.

Getting Into Shape – Segment Revival

I didn’t write about resolutions this year but I wanted to get back into working out so much. Feeling fit and strong and healthy makes me feel good. Working out is painful but also challenging and rewarding. The positive vibes that comes with focusing on getting a workout routine done or pushing to go that extra kilometer in the run is honestly irreplaceable. As I fit working out back into my schedule, things are shifting around a little bit more. You may notice the sporadic posting schedules and that is just a preliminary side effects. Things will settle down once it becomes a part of my routine.

With that said, its the revival of the Weekly Workout Roundups. They go up every Sunday afternoon (or whenever I finish the Sunday workout). You can find the first one from last week HERE.

Overdue Dentist Appointment

Its been at least 3 years since I’ve been to the dentist. To make a long story short, my dentist basically retired 3 years ago and between getting married, his retirement and our procrastination and then red tape of acquiring dental insurance from my husband’s insurance from work, its been way overdue and boy, do I know it? My friend referred me to a new dentist. The technology now is astounding when I first went in for exams and teeth cleaning. I came out of that with 6 cavities, meaning two visits back to the dentist. The first visit was more urgent and done as this post goes up. Definitely a good experience since funnily enough, I’m more nervous of the pain from the anesthesia needle than the actual cavity filling process. Man, am I happy that I have insurance now! The grown-up moments in life, right? One more visit to go and more frequent cleaning sessions to make up for the last few years to hopefully get my teeth and gums healthy again. Yet another stage to taking care of my own well-being.

South Burlington, Vermont – Day Trip

Hello Vermont (for a day). Recently, I learned about something called Cookie Butter that is sold at Trader Joe’s. To my knowledge, we don’t have Trader Joe’s in Canada and my friend told me about his trip to South Burlington, which happens to be where the nearest Trader Joe’s to us is, so I tagged along for a quick trip across the border to the US. We went to three places and well, I’ll tell you all about it in this afternoon’s post (because this one seems to be getting a little too lengthy).

Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day kind of was a bust for us. My in-laws were supposed to drop by to celebrate but only my father in law made it since my mother in law wasn’t feel too good so wanted to rest. We understood that. However, we still got some family time as my husband helped his dad get his car ready for the season. We had gotten groceries to get a little barbecue going. Honestly, we only barbecue when we have ample time put out since as my husband puts it, “we don’t have a proper BBQ”. Either way, we had three people so we made 6 foil packets. 3 foil packets included sausages, zucchini, bell peppers, garlic and Portobello mushrooms) and the other ones were garlic butter sliced potatoes. We got our sausages at Charcuterie Frick. They were two different flavors, so we used one of each. The first was Quebecoise, which is ham and maple syrup and possibly one of my faves from this place. The second was my husband’s choice and it was basil chicken with sundried tomatoes. Both were really delicious and the foil packets, which was a little oversized were pretty decent. We enjoyed the lovely weekend together and that is what matters. We did give our father in law a basket of flowers and Mother’s Day card to take back with him.

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for these adventures!
A lot of segment revivals and updates and housekeeping in general!
Its been really busy with little things and adding healthy habits into my life.
Hopefully in a few weeks, it will be a part of my routine. We will see, won’t we?

What have you been up to?