Tag Archives: Gardening

Adventures & What’s Up – May 2023

Posted in My Weekly Adventures, What's Up by

ADVENTURES

Baby Update

As we approach Triple V’s first birthday next month, its truly amazing how fast time flies considering as I write this, I’m monetarily done with my maternity leave even though I did take an extra month to sort out some 12 month appointments next month. Triple V’s been growing height-wise quite a bit but not so much weight wise, something that we will probably need to mention at the next follow-up. With weather being better, we’ve been outside a little more and he’s touched the curious green stuff on the ground that he seems to like. He is crawling around like a champ and using everything to climb to standing position to touch whatever he can (including a few orchid tumbles which I wasn’t particularly a huge fan of cleaning) reminding us everyday of something else to babyproof that has slipped out minds. He loves crawling after me wherever I go and we’ve been starting to play around with fluctuating his routine a little here and there and seeing how much we can push the times for certain things. He can eat all by himself except when its something that requires a spoon. Its pretty great to think about how it was just last year we were waiting for him to arrive and in a blink of an eye, he’s already almost walking.

First Mother’s Day

Triple V was born right in time for Father’s Day and this month was his first Mother’s Day or well, my first Mother’s Day. I can’t say I feel very different from usual since my daily routine didn’t change much so we went and made a big deal by buying flowers for the grandmothers instead. We had a big feast with my mom, marking a little lobster tasting for Triple V and we ordered in food with my in-laws.

Gardening Update

Much like the past years, the week of Victoria Day means a greenhouse visit and gardening. We decided to pick the hottest week to work on the garden. We’ve swapped things around quite a bit this year with the vegetable patch moving the green peppers, cucumbers changing places but two assortment of tomatoes going in ground instead of in containers. The containers now have eggplants, 4 other peppers (orange, red, sweet red, yellow) and all the zucchinis. We’re still working through the flowers as I’m still finding little time here and there to clean up the flower patch.

WHAT’S UP

Books

  • The BFG
  • The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me
  • Esio Trot
  • The Magic Finger
  • Fantastic Mr. Fox
  • Billy and the Minpins
  • The Twits

Full steam ahead with bedtime reading of Roald Dahl book collection. So far, there’s a few that actually feel pretty familiar, some of them feel like tongue twisters and some are just a fun ride. I will be putting up some kind of review for them eventually. I’m not sure why but The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me was probably one of the most fun to read.

Movies

  • Nightmare Alley (2019 rewatch)
  • Veronica Mars (2014 rewatch, Review)
  • Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)
  • Black Widow (2021)
  • Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)
  • Love and Leashes (2022 rewatch, Review)
  • Too Cool To Kill (2022)
  • On The Rocks (2020)
  • Herstory (2018)

There was a nice selection. A few for Movies and Tea production, some are rewatches, some Disney Plus and then some screeners which you will be seeing the reviews pop up very soon. If there are some definite recommendations, it would probably be surprisingly the Marvel films since both films were pretty fun but Black Widow was a great back story. The screeners also delivered some great stories, Too Cool to Kill was a good comedy for the most part and Herstory was an eye-opening look at comfort women from Korean in Japan in WWII who are fighting for compensation and apology from the Japanese government.

TV

  • Sex/Life (Season 2, 2023)
  • Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story (Mini-Series, 2023 Review)
  • Veronica Mars (2019)
  • Queer Eye (Season 7, 2023)
  • Business Proposal (2022 Review)
  • XO, Kitty (Season 1, 2023)
  • Beef (Season 1, 2023)
  • How To Build A Sex Room (Season 1, 2022)
  • Black Knight (Season 1, 2023)

Currently binging: Who’s The Murderer S8, Light the Wild, 1899, Youth Pi Plan, Barbecue Showdown S2, Wonderland S3

As I look back at this year, I have so many TV binges in the works right now. Netflix came back pretty strong this month and released a bunch of stuff that I was interested in. If you noticed that the Reality TV roundup was missing last month, the main reason is that it will be grouped into this month’s since that will have a lot more to talk about. I actually had fun with a lot of these series, making Sex/Life Season 2 the one that I wasn’t a huge fan of, which isn’t shocking considering I didn’t really like the first season a lot either. XO, Kitty was not horrible but it was disappointing since it didn’t seem to do the character of Kitty justice or the promise of the whole South Korean exploration. As for 1899, we started it up on the dub version which affected my interest but I later realized there is an original audio version which I will probably restart in this version.

If I had to choose highlights of the month, It would probably be Queer Eye and Black Knight.

Games

Currently playing: G30, Coffee Talk Episode 2: Butterfly and Hibiscus

I’m about halfway through Coffee Talk Episode 2 right now and its still such a joy to play and an incredibly relaxing experience. I finally decided that I’d go with an annual plan for Google Play Pass since I do enjoy gaming on the phone a little here and there and there’s still some game that I wanted to check out. With that said, it brings us to G30 which is a puzzle game which is pretty entertaining so far. I’m not sure how many levels there are to the game but it does feel like it will end at some point

That’s it for this Adventures and What’s Up for May 2023!
What have you been up to?

What’s Up & Adventures – May 2022

Posted in My Weekly Adventures, What's Up by

Welcome everyone to the May 2022 recap for the What’s Up & Adventures! Honestly, there’s no adventures at this point. My life is very much just getting ready for the new arrival to our family. Of course, there was 2 little things that did happen which was rather fun but most of it was just trying to do a lot of restructure to our home (which I won’t be showing here) including a lot of deep cleaning throughout the weekends. So, as usual, we will start with some little “adventures” and then hop into the What’s Up portion which should be a lot more entertaining, I suppose.

Annual Garden Haul

While we struggled in our decision between whether to have a garden or not this year since we have no idea what to expect in the coming summer months, we eventually decided that we would do a little container garden! Its a step down from the normal which would be to raised garden patches but we figured this would at least be in our face and easy to maintain plus when things get hard, we can add self-watering systems to it. Plus, we chose pepper, patio cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, romaine lettuce and leaf lettuce which are all fairly low maintenance from past experience. We did also pick up a rose that has yet to go into the garden. If we do have time though, we are shifting around the berries, notably the blueberries were are getting murdered by these rogue vines that we just can’t seem to get rid of.

Baby Shower

I’m not going to bore everyone with the details of the gifts since we had a little family gathering for the baby shower. The highlight of the day did go to my sister-in-law who made us this beautiful cake from scratch and it took her a whole 4 days to put it together from the cake to the fondant decorations. Its pretty impressive and a lot of appreciation for what she did for us.

WHAT’S UP – MAY 2022

*Highlighted titles are my recommendations*

Books

Currently reading: Nevernight

Not going to lie that reading isn’t on my top priority as I shift back to working from home a little bit more. Plus the wonderful fatigue is back to visit me so its been a little hard to focus. It doesn’t help that I was having a hard time getting into Nevernight so the game plan right now is to put it down and start something else since I wasn’t supposed to but still ended up picking up 2 books as a little treat for myself. I will probably start one of those shortly.

Movies

  • Uncharted (2022, Review)
  • Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979, rewatch)
  • Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020, Review)
  • Only (2019)
  • Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind (1984 rewatch)
  • SPF-18 (2017)
  • Last Moment of Clarity (2010)
  • The Outcasts (2017)
  • Basic Instinct (1992)
  • Kate (2021)
  • A Perfect Pairing (2022)
  • Agatha Christie’s Crooked House (2017)
  • Lie With Me (2005 rewatch, Review)
  • Deep Blue Sea 3 (2020)

May has been a decent movie watching month as I got through some of more unknown titles on the list as I continue trying to work through some non-Netflix films in case they happen to leave. Unfortunately, nothing too exciting for the most part although The Outcasts was a pretty fun discovery for a teen coming of age film whereas Last Moment of Clarity was a real disappointment. I did catch up with 2 films that I’ve been meaning to watch for a while: Basic Instinct and Kate and they were pretty good as well. Much like Deep Blue Sea 3 actually was a silly but still rather entertaining sequel compared to the second film (which isn’t that hard to beat since that one was pretty bad).

TV

  • Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes (2022)
  • Who’s The Murderer (Season 7)
  • Love Death + Robots (Season 3, Review)
  • Who Rules The World (2022)
  • The Circle (Season 4)
  • Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Part 1, Review)
  • Stranger Things (Season 4 Volume 1)
  • Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Part 2)

Currently binging: Yes I Do (Season 3), Infinity and Beyond, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Part 3)

This past month’s TV adventures has been pretty decent. For the most part everything was very entertaining. With the release of Love Death + Robots Season 3, which was a fun ride and over at Movies and Tea, we’ve already released our latest After Hours episode for it HERE, and then the month ending with Stranger Things Season 4 Volume 1 (2 more episodes to follow on July 1st), its been one heck of a trip. The Circle USA Season 4 was a real trip as well with some fun little twists added in much like Netflix acquiring a really good Chinese drama Who Rules The World that is very much worth the watch. As for a end of month little binge, I started up Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and working through all the seasons. Who knows, it might be a first step before going back to continuing Riverdale next…

Games

  • Unpacking

Gaming was fairly tame. While not listed here, I’ve been playing Crazy Diner on mobile which reminded me of the nostalgic days when I used to play Diner Dash on PC. At the same time, I’m working through the Xbox Game Pass catalogue and finally got around to playing Unpacking. I am trying to get a review up for that on Game Warp’s blog but I really just wanted to see how an unpacking game got all these nominations especially in terms of narrative. While I can see where a lot of it comes from and the deeper meaning to it and it is surprisingly easily to get sucked into it where I finished it in one sitting as its 3-4 hours long, the experience is really not for everyone and probably some people might find it rather pointless perhaps.

That’s it for this month’s Adventures & What’s Up!
What have you been up to?

My July Adventures!

Posted in My Weekly Adventures by

In the blink of an eye we’re past the halfway point of 2021! It’s wild how quickly this year has been flying by. I can’t say that there’s been exactly any particular adventures as it seems for myself to be a month that didn’t technically go so well on one side but still there’s some pretty fun stuff to share. Let’s just jump right in!

Staying Active Update

July 1st Walk 4.63km 50mins
July 1st Evening Walk 1.43km 18mins
July 3rd Walk 4.39km 48mins
July 10th Walk 1.42km 18mins
July 11th Walk 1.41km 18 mins
July 17th Pool Workout
July 18th Walk 1.45km 18mins
July 25th Pool Workout
July 31st Walk 4.75km 51mins

Not a whole lot to report back on staying active. I got plagued with pains and all sorts of fatigue during the month so as much as I tried to keep up with walking and staying active, I fell apart a little as the walks went a little shorter. I still tried to stay active but more doing pool workouts, which to be fair was one of my goals in last month’s staying active update for this month. Can’t say its a complete fail, right?

Gardening Update

The abundant rain season in July has really done favors for the garden. Sure, we had a few really hot days but the good amount of rain meant everything’s growing pretty nice and harvests are coming in. Its been a few years since zucchini harvest has been any good but this year is looking nice. The new raised garden is doing great as well for the eggplants and we’ve harvested a few as well as the little cherry tomatoes which we have a rather sweet variety. Even the cucumbers are starting to do okay. We got one but there’s some more that are almost close to harvest as this post goes up.

The other big project was getting the front yard looking good as I’ve truly neglected it a lot. My mom had given me some plants from her garden and hoping to find the spot for it after I tidied up the front, we got to work and planted in the new plants (both front and back but didn’t take a closer picture of it) but also added in the mulch and bought a new hydrangea plant to create some symmetry in the front yard. The picture above only shows one portion of the front yard. The garden is doing really well. The next part is to get rid of the pesky vines at the back and added some more mulch to my bee garden and finally figuring out a bee bath probably. In time, it should be done.

2nd Dose of COVID-19 Vaccine

I got my 2nd dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at the tail end of July. While the first dose basically had no side effects other than arm pain, the second dose was pretty intense. Headache for 3 days and muscle pain for 2 days really hit after the first 24 hours passed. I affected productivity and life in general so I resorted to calming teas whenever I wasn’t at work and sleeping earlier since I try to stay away from painkillers in general.

Fantasia International Film Festival 2021

Like previous years, around this time is coverage for Fantasia Film Festival. This year is no different. You can expect reviews for Fantasia going up as soon as today. This year is the 25th edition and the film rundown is looking fantastic. I have a pretty ambitious schedule so fingers crossed that I can get the coverage done. I believe the virtual platform is geo-locked to Canada but if you are in Canada, you should give its extensive film schedule a look.

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for the July adventures!
Not a whole lot of adventuring in general but things are getting done!

My May Adventures!

Posted in My Weekly Adventures by

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.

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 July Adventures!

Posted in My Weekly Adventures by

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

wp-1594264535451.jpg

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

View this post on Instagram

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

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

wp-1596198825885.jpg

That’s it for this July Adventures!

My May Adventures

Posted in My Weekly Adventures by

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

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

Kitty Cat

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 April Adventures!

Posted in My Weekly Adventures by

As we step into April, the world is in a surreal state with COVID-19 running out lives back to the safety of our homes for those who aren’t essential services and/or can’t work from home. I don’t want to talk too much about it on the other posts but as Adventures is more of a personal offering, its hard to not touch on it. I’ve been saying whenever I mention this that its important to stay positive and with that said, we look at the pros of the situation (despite all the bad) and that is we learn to appreciate and be grateful that we still have this blogging community to hide away from the surreal reality surrounding us.

Working From Home

There’s not much to say about working from home other than the fact that April was a crazy month. March was just adjusting to working at home and then April hit so hard because staff decrease and I had to work a 2 person workload. Luckily, I had some help as I slowly got the office set up with the printer and getting new cartridge and stuff that took longer than usual to arrive because of the current situation. I’m starting to realize how hard it is to work non-stop for such a long time. Luckily, April is over and my staff will go back up to almost normal so I can work through May, hopefully more peacefully!

Game Warp Podcast
(& Learning About Headliner)

Game Warp is slowly coming back to life as we settle through our direction and how the shows that we’d like to do in the coming while. Our latest podcast is a review discussion on Life Is Strange 2 which recently won the BAFTA Games Award for Best Performer in a Leading Role with its character of Sean Diaz. We did record this before the whole awards thing so its just a coincidence that we released it at the same time.

As I struggled through how to structure the audio podcasts to be more appealing, my wonderful co-host told me Headliner which is how I made this video. Learning about new things is one of the fun things about blogging and podcasting. Hopefully you like the podcast! Of course, you prefer the audio version, you can find us on Anchor and a ton of other platforms.

Right before this post went live, we released another episode for Game Warp as a list/discussion piece on Greatest Female Characters as well as listing our favorites.

Garden Coming Alive

I do have a bunch of pictures for another Instagram post but then I never go around to posting it up. The garden is indeed coming alive and much more vibrant than the beginning of April. Blueberry is starting to show signs of life along with raspberry and strawberry. The trees are coming back as well. Then we have the perennials especially the new ones last year in the bee garden are mostly all coming back! I promise to share pictures soon on Instagram!

Movies and Tea Podcast

Nothing like blogging more and recording more for podcasts during this time. Movies and Tea is releasing on a good schedule now as we are having a decent backlog! Its all thanks to my awesome co-host Elwood who gets all these shows edited and released, of course! Ang Lee season is almost over. Above is the penultimate episode of Ang Lee for Lust, Caution.

On other news, which I hoped to share with you all this time around, Movies and Tea Podcast will be on Youtube soon. Its a new avenue and will be done with Headliner in the audio format as well. The channel is set up but its mostly putting up all the archive episodes gradually. I’ll give an update in May for sure!

New Objectives

wp-1588218152834.jpg

Everyone is trying to make the best of staying at home as something that they are tackling. I’m sure when you flip through your feed that you see a ton of your own friends tackling baking, cooking, entertaining others through music, streaming, etc. For myself, I’m more of an introvert and while I did say that I would stream if I got to work at home during this ordeal, things didn’t quite turn out that way, as explained in my “Working at Home” section above. However, I did set myself a new goal and that’s to pick one song to play on the piano really well (maybe not perfectly since I’m far from that) but be able to play it and sing at the same time. I’m mostly doing separate practicing right now: piano and singing done separately but soon, I might be able to start putting it together. The song that I picked is Encounter by Stefanie Sun, which is one of my favorite songs and I used to sing it well enough but singing is a tad rusty nowadays. Call it practice or whatever but its been really fun doing this.

Cute Kitty Pic

wp-1588335454133.jpg

That’s it for this April Adventures!
What adventures, right? Shameless self-promotion is what this mostly consists of!
I’ll try my best to get a better routine down in May once I have more time!

My August 2019 Adventures

Posted in My Weekly Adventures by

Its been bothering me a while on how to change up these adventure posts because they are no longer weekly and I have no intention of making them weekly especially because biweekly collides a lot with the What’s Up already and there is some overlap there. So, the solution to it all is to just make it a monthly segments. It gives me time to get some of the recap posts together and also gives it a little more content to work with. This will be set for the last day of each month starting with this month’s recap of August!

Let’s get things started!

Fantasia Festival 2019 Wraps – Up (Aug 2)

Every year’s Fantasia Festival is a more and more ambitious feat as I try to pile in as much as I can and work with as much of the stuff as I can. This year was a bit different. It was a lot more time at the festival as less screeners offered off site but there was the screening room that I took advantage of to get conflicting films watched and round out the schedule better. Other than some hiccups on Day 1 for myself getting the pass, things actually panned out pretty well. Tallying 24 films (as shown in Instagram post above) and 6 short films.

My Top 5 films of Fantasia would  probably go to :

  • White Snake
  • Daniel Isn’t Real
  • Riot Girls
  • Paradise Hills
  • The Fable

Honorable Mentions: 1BR, Harpoon, Aquaslash

If you may have missed any of the reviews, you can find it all HERE.

Hiking: Parc National de Plaisance

20190810_120117.jpg

Festival season is done so its time to get back to some hiking and taking advantage of the outdoors before winter hits us in a little while. Weather is already starting to cool down a smidge, at least in the mornings. We went for an easy hike to Parc National de Plaisance and to explore their boardwalk (which seems super new or just newly redone) over the marshlands. We totaled around 6.5 to 7 kilometres of walking.

You can check out the recap of it HERE.

Girls Day Out

Sugar Marmalade

Its been a busy summer for everyone so after a few months, me and my girl friends finally found time to meet up for an overdue get together to catch up on everything. We had brunch at Petino’s in La Prairie area and then went to do some cake shopping for a bride to be in our group then went to have a beautiful afternoon snack at Sugar Marmalade. I had the herbal jelly above which I’ve been craving for a while.

Finding More Non-Dairy Choices

20190817_204550.jpg

I don’t always post about these new things I find at the grocery store usually but I think that some of these brands do deserve a nice little mention for going the non-dairy selections. The next to join the selection which I found is Magnum which has a very cool texture especially the ice cream is not as hard as the normal ice cream bars but feels like soft ice cream covered by rich Belgian chocolate. I liked these ones a lot. Its a bit more expensive than the Haagen Daz ones even on sale.

Toronto Weekend Getaway: Fan Expo Canada 2019

20190824_142848.jpg

Fan Expo Canada was a 4 day event where we met up with my awesome blogathon co-host for our annual Toronto meet-up to check out this event for its 25th anniversary for Saturday and Sunday. Went to a ton of panels and didn’t have enough time to check out every thing and it was definitely an adventure. You can check out the recap HERE and the general trip shopping haul HERE.

Gardening Update

20190830_185107.jpg

20190830_184810.jpg

It feels like its been a while since I last talked about it (because I realized that I decided to do the format change at the beginning of August. Either way, I lost some plants (zucchini) and then some are doing quite well. We had some harvests. My mom who is the gardening expert came by while I was away at Fan Expo and told me that my garden needed to level up on the soil which has me thinking to raise up the sides of the garden a little and fill it with soil. Its something that has to be done since the wood around it are starting to rot and break apart. Lots of projects to deal with. Yet again, I have to reiterate the importance to not buying your house in the winter where there is heavy snow and you can’t see the condition of both the garden and the roof which the latter is 80% solved with the gutters still needing to be changed while the garden is a constant nuisance of crap to deal with. Either way, one step at a time and soon, we will get this house stuff settled once and for all.

20190830_185335.jpg

Ending on a positive note, if there’s anything I’m proud of, its my flower garden which has really grown well. I just need to get some more mulch to cover it up properly and tend to some weeds but overall, it looks really nice and has a nice group of flowers and alternate in blooming season so the whole summer has been colorful.

Cute Kitty Pic

20190713_005703.jpg

That’s it for this August adventures!
Its a new frequency but same format!
Hopefully you will enjoy it!

My Weekly Adventures: Fantasia Festival Begins!!!

Posted in My Weekly Adventures by

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

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 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

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

cat

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

My Weekly Adventures: Fun Times & Long Weekends + Upcoming July Plans

Posted in My Weekly Adventures by

Half of 2019 is officially done! Can you believe how fast time has flown by? How is your year shaping up to so far? Our last two weeks was properly busy with work, home, seasonal things, catching up with the blog and life stuff in general just all coming at us in all directions. Something had to give and unfortunately, there were some gaps in the blog that was just inevitable. I’ve moved past the having to post daily to fulfill a quota and refuse to put something that I’m not happy with in terms of formatting and content so there were a day or two here and there with nothing but I think overall, it held up quite well when I went back to look at it just now.

Weather is looking up now and July is always my busy month so I’ll talk a bit about it to keep everyone updated as there are some changes in July. All that is at the end. For now, let’s start from  what happened over the last 2 weeks!

Pointe Claire run & New Discoveries

As usual, my friend went out for a run in the Pointe Claire races at the Pointe Claire village. Its been a tough season so despite a shorter race, I went along to make sure everything went alright. Sadly, the shop that I like at Pointe Claire village was gone but I did end up visiting a little store called Epicerie Prette which had a lot of different beers and more importantly, a good selection of kombucha. Definitely something to go check out again if I’m ever in the area.

My Best Friend’s Wedding

I did a little bit of hauls and talks about preparing for my best friend’s wedding as one of her bridesmaids. It was a great time there. A lot of our college friends were there as well and she had arranged a lot of fun stuff and hired a very fun host plus an award-winning magician. The ceremony was memorable and the weather was perfect especially for all of the bridal party to go out for pictures at the park and then the meal was very good and before we knew it, she got the speeches going and gone so I could enjoy my meal and get drinks without worrying about too much. It was a beautiful evening. I have some photo booth pictures but not sharing those here.

Hiking: Parc National de Frontenac

Parc national de frontenac

It was the long weekend for us as Monday the 24th was our provincial holiday St-Jean and had a day off. We headed out for a hike and decided to go to Parc National de Frontenac, which we had looked at before but it wasn’t opened completely yet before but was all good now. We ended up deciding on the Le Massif de Winslow trail. The recap for this one is coming up very soon!

Gardening Update

The garden is doing pretty good. We’ve managed to harvest some lettuce and cherry tomatoes so far. The cabbage has now settled and is growing really well (at least the ones in the pots are) especially since maybe the marigolds are really helping in the companion gardening concept. Peppers, zucchinis, strawberries and raspberries are all starting to bear harvest but not completely ready just not. The cucumbers are doing well and the bee garden is also growing quite well now also. The flower bed in the front is starting to have a nice cycle of flowers blooming giving the front yard some bursts of color here and there.

July Events

fantasia montreal comiccon

July starts tomorrow and I have a few days to get everything in order before things start up. If you have been following since last year, things are pretty much the same hectic craziness this year as I’ve gotten confirmation on all my press passes that I applied for. The first event to roll around is Montreal Comiccon on July 5th to 7th with coverage going up for both Game Warp as well as Panel recaps, Cosplay and Artist Alley highlights over here.

Starting the week after on Thursday is Fantasia Film Festival. I usually try to get about one post a day up for that one. Its a 21 day festival so its going to be a game of endurance. The schedule was just released a few days ago so I’m still working out the schedule.

All reviews will go up on both here and That Moment In. Fantasia runs all the way through to August 1st. However, no worries if movie reviews aren’t quite your thing because I should have some other posts going up (at least I’ll try).

Cute Kitty Pic  Shameless Selfie Time

That’s it for this Weekly Adventures!
How did June go for you? Lots of summer plans?
Any festivals happening around your area?