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 67: The Start of “Summer” Events

Welcome to an evening edition of My Weekly Adventures!

This will be a fairly quick one! Like when I ended up my last Weekly Adventures, we overlapped a weekend and week of E3 activities so really, not that much ended up happening. However, there were some little fun bits that I didn’t blog extensively about either!

Let’s go!

Mont-Ham Hike

The second hike of the year goes to Parc regional du Mont-Ham. You can see the full post here.

It was a challenging and crazy hike but the weather was perfect and the scenery was absolutely worth every single hard moment. It was incredible. We are working on where to go for the next hike. Keep your eyes peeled, it should be happening in a week or so, well for the long weekend if we can manage to fit it in  one of those days.

We are heading into July and it might turn out to be hard to get a hike in but we’ll try 😉

F1 Grand Prix Weekend

Honestly, what is there to say? I usually do a separate post for Grand Prix but, its been fairly underwhelming. Porsche is always the heavy hitter and I’ve seen a lot of Lamborghinis around town. They are all pretty cars but you know, the variety is lacking from say, what the event had years ago. The event has expanded to a few locations now so that leads to the festivities over in the park where it had some electronic music going from Piknik Electronique and some food stalls…

Charlie’s Shack & Lobster Rolls

One of the things I love about Montreal events in the last few years is the food. This time, I had a lobster roll at Charlie’s Shack and boy, was it ever so delicious!

A Little Shopping

View this post on Instagram

My latest #book #haul from @chaptersindigo from their sale! @archiecomics #Nevernight @natgeo #quebec

A post shared by Kim (@tranquildreams) on Jun 9, 2018 at 12:03pm PDT

I love Buy 3 Get 4th Free sale at Indigo. Its very irresistible! 🙂 At least now I can catch up with my Archie graphic novels and also managed to get the Quebec National Geographic book for sale. We are already getting some long-term travel plans set and looking to see if there are some locations for day trips to hike or sightsee. Maybe some hidden gems.

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for this quick round of My Weekly Adventures!
Its been definitely less productive here than usual, but I’m trying to get a ton of stuff done.

What have you been up to?

My Weekly Adventures #45!

And we’re back!

It feels like I’ve been giving a lot of updates lately so it feels a like that there isn’t a whole lot to talk about. However, it also feels like these 15 days had like 30 days of stuff that I had worked on. I’m sure as with others doing this, everyone wishes there were more hours in the day to do everything. On one hand, I’d love that Tranquil Dreams could get all the love but I also love the Game Warp Podcast so much. Either way, regardless of it all, I’m finding a way to get back to a more healthy lifestyle (workouts and eating better) while still maintaining the garden and keeping the house clean and getting all the blogging duties done while making time for my mom. Its a little crazy at times but I’ll find a balance for it all. A new season just means more tasks than the stagnant winter months.

What’s been going on?  Yet again, a lot behind the scenes or mundane stuff so those didn’t make the list however, these did!

Back to a Workout Schedule

I kind of go on this on and off workout regiment. It isn’t intentional that I fall off it. Usually something happens to hinder it. Being super motivated, I ended up doing three workouts: one arm/abs weight and a 40 minutes of Zumba (that I put together) and then finally, went out for a jog/run for 5km. My time wasn’t great but you know, its a start to getting back. Of course, my luck would have it in this fantastic “unhealthy” year of issues all the time, I had to run up the (luckily) short flights of steps and fell, making my Sunday a day spent with the ice pack watching E3 conferences and drafting posts and watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Obviously, that meant that the following days was in the rest zone as my knees feel better. Which they are now! So, back to weights and a run for the remaining days of this week somewhere. I’m getting a little self-conscious of my weight and health so I’m hoping this healthier lifestyle will help, or at least make me feel mentally more positive.

Grand Prix Montreal

This was supposed to be a post on its own but I just can’t and plus there isn’t a whole lot going on that I need to put more content in this one. Either way, lots of fancy and pretty cars. Mercedes Benz, Porsche, Acura and more made their appearance. The event was spread out further and expanded over an extra block where it was more events and food truck vendors. We obviously did the food truck route. Before that, let me highlight that the showstopper was in fact the Cars life size replica. As Pixar and Disney fans, it was something to be excited about.

Now for the food!

Lucille’s Lobster Roll and Taco

Le Smoking BBQ: Pulled Pork Sandwich with Fries

Jerry Ferrer: Pulled Pork Sandwich with fries

We like pulled pork, what can I say? All very delicious. However, if you are to try food truck, my must-have every single year is Lucille’s Lobster Roll. They are to die for! But Le Smoking BBQ is fantastic as well.

We ended the night with a trip to the Casino of Montreal. I don’t gamble but my friend likes to go once in a while to try his luck. Luck was not great until we saw the OMG! Kittens slot machine by the exit and gave that a go. Suffice to say, he doubled what he brought that night. From now on, he believes me that cats are awesome.

E3 Conference Live Streaming Craze

Those are my favorite conferences of this year! We have a ton of recaps for all the shows. You can find them over at That Moment In. I know that I had talked about this before. However this did take up all of my last weekend and we’ve been working hard on doing impressions and lists to come out in the next week or so while working on the featured game as well which I’ll be streaming over the next few nights. I’m trying to boost up some stream time and learn to be better at it.

Vacation SOON!

Finally, I guess the fun thing is that we have our vacation time booked in. My husband and I had conflicts in schedule so we only have a few days overlapping but it’ll be fun to just hang out and do some home projects. We might go away but since I’ll be on vacation, you won’t (or you might) notice that I’m away.  And when we get back, things will jump into vacation recap phase.

Upcoming:

• Battle of Ingredients (if we could figure out the topic)
• And a lot more of the normal: movies, TV series and books

Cute Kitty Pic

What have you been up to?

My Weekly Adventures: Hangouts, Adventures & New Projects!

We’re a little behind schedule for this time’s Weekly Adventures! Summer is here. Events and outings are being more plentiful. Some are still tentative or being planned. This summer is already pretty busy but a happy busy since its all fun stuff!

This time’s Weekly Adventures will have a ton of stuff from event recaps to outings with friends and some gardening update. I’m probably forgetting something.

Let’s start! 🙂

Our First Winery Visit

I’m a huge fan of wine especially as I’m getting older. I’m far from connoisseur and this is not exactly wine. Its ice cider, very specific to the Quebec region because there are rules in Quebec apparently that specify whether it can be considered that. Neige from La Face Cachee de la Pomme is one of my favorite brands and when they had this tasting I bought the deal on Groupon right away. It did take us a few months to actually book a time to do the tour and tasting but it was a lot of fun.

The full post is right HERE if you’d like to check that out!

Movie Night

I actually don’t talk about this a lot but I am a patron for two Youtubers that I love a lot! One of them is Mr. Kravin and one of the perks of the lower tiers that I’m in (because that’s all I can afford) is that we got a movie night with him. I never knew that was a thing. Usually its anime night and I tend to skip out on those a little but then he went on this site called Rabb.it and put on Halloween to watch together. I own Halloween and I mean like the entire franchise because I had to the Halloween marathon three years ago, I think. Its a pretty neat idea to actually have someone watching a movie together while being in different places.

It makes me wonder if the movie bloggers of our community should try to do something like that since it has voice and facecam so it would be like instant discussion. Haha! It was a ton of fun. I don’t really care much about the perks since when I contribute to be a patron on Patreon, its because I really want to support the content creator. Being a recent content creator myself (kind of?) on Youtube for Game Warp Podcast, it definitely puts into perspective how important it all is.

Grand Prix

Last weekend was the Grand Prix weekend in Montreal. Like the past few years, I went out with friends to hang out and look at some awesome cars and join into the festivities. There really isn’t much to say that I haven’t said in my post HERE.

For those that recently dropped by, Weekly Adventures aren’t usually like this post. Summer means I do more event coverage around Montreal (and vicinities) so those are my adventures and all I can do is recap them here in case between summer blockbusters and your fun summer that you miss some cool posts. 😉

Dinner with Friends

Fruit Platter at Allo Mon Coco

Two Eggs with Sausages and Bacon, Allo Mon Coco

Tropical Sangria at Barbie’s

Nachos

Soup of the day: Tomato and Vegetables Soup

Garlic Shrimps with Rice

More fun time with friends! I had nice brunch at Allo Mon Coco.  My friend is preparing for his next marathon so he took the healthy route with a fruit platter and of course, I’m not, so I took my normal with eggs, sausages and bacon. Its awesome! Breakfast food is my absolutely fave.

At night, I had a nice hangout with my girl friends. Its been forever since we’ve got together.  We’ve been busy with home or work stuff but now, we finally got together for dinner then afterwards went to Starbucks to have a nice chat and catch up some more. And, we might even be planning a little outing soon plus, a movie together is coming up soon as well! The summer is filling up and I’m super excited! 🙂

Game Warp: June News Blast!

If you saw this post the past week, you can skip ahead unless you know, you didn’t check out the episode then consider this a reminder. Our News Blast is a rather short one but with some good content. Game Warp is a part of my life now and Elwood and I are working hard to build it so excuse our shameless self promotion. The gaming world is well-established right now and we are trying everything possible but the only people that can help are the lovely people we already know from our lives and our blogs. That is you, my friends! If you have friends that like gaming, share our Facebook page with them or the video or whatnot. Everything little bit helps us out. I promise you that we work super hard and to make it better, we were supposed to be once a month and now we are getting three shows in a month, starting this week with the June News Blast. Each one has a bit of different content talking about new releases and then our featured review will appear as well. There is a video to go with it as visual aids or gameplay. Give it a look and help us spread the word!

By the way, if you ever need to retrace videos, you can head to either That Moment In or I’ll also have the posts for Game Warp on the menu set up some time this coming week.

Hope you enjoy the episode and the next one is coming up soon! 🙂

E3 Press Conference Coverage

Game Warp is my life now. I just mentioned that. It would be hard to pass up on the biggest event in the year for gaming. That’s right! E3 happened and ended yesterday! However, we’ve been checking out the live press conferences and put together some recap highlights in case you want to get a quick look at whats coming up for whichever console or gaming company. Here are the links. Its been super busy but just so much fun! Check it out! 🙂

EA Press Conference
Bethesda Press Conference
Microsoft Xbox Press Conference
Ubisoft Press Conference
Playstation Press Conference
Nintendo Treehouse

Gardening Hurdles and Updates

This a quick update on the garden. For one, I am officially feeding two rabbits in my garden. They started, as captioned above, with eating my lettuce. Starting this week, they’ve been having a tasting of all my kales and a few days later, they went to test out the broccoli as well. Operation Rabbit Prevention is now on! I am going to put up a fence of some sort this weekend to make sure that rabbits will not access the garden before its too late.

On a happier note, I think the few strands of catmint are attracting cats to the strawberries and raspberries area to sit once in a while so rabbits haven’t eaten my strawberries and we even managed to get one harvest which I need to bake something soon.

And also, the best thing in the garden is zucchini. They are strong and looking great. No picture of the eggplant but as of this morning, it had one blossom, meaning at least one eggplant. Awesome!

That’s really it for now. I’m getting materials later today and then getting to work on the garden for Operation Rabbit Prevention. I love rabbits and maybe I’ll grow a lettuce garden just for them in some corner but I also like seeing harvests so consider me selfish for now as I work on this gardening project. I’ll have an update next Weekly Adventures!

The 3 Brewers Beer Launch Rhubiscus

I’m not beer connoisseur and in no way will I ever be. In fact, I can’t even drink that much beer. However, my darling friends thought about me when they saw a beer launch which they had an invitation for a beer sample for at this restaurant called The 3 Brewers called Rhubiscus. I love rhubarb desserts and hibiscus drinks so this is right up my alley.

Now, thats a sample, right? Look at the size of that drink. I only took a few sips for my own health reasons. While I can’t say that I love the beer, it isn’t bitter which is a good start. I couldn’t figure out what the aftertaste was but I guess it had a little bit of hibiscus flavors. Hibiscus is a tough flavor to master. The one place I’ve been completed pleased with was in Egypt and then recently was last year at Aux Vivres during Just for Laughs for their Hisbiscus lemonade. Not a huge fan. One of my friends likes it more. I’m guessing her husband was okay with it and not excited. Its a new experience, right? Plus, we had great company for dinner. Fun times! 🙂

Cute Kitty Pic

Upcoming:

• Netflix A-Z: C & D Selection
• Baking & Cooking
• Game Warp: next  two episodes for June
• and more…

Grand Prix Weekend!

This past weekend was tough. Lots of sad and tragic news.  In Montreal, it was also Grand Prix weekend. Much like usual tradition, I went out to walk around the events in downtown after work on Friday evening with some friends. There are usually cars on display, free tasting, loud music and lots of people.

People with fancy cars bring them out and same goes for some nice motorcycles.

Grand Prix on Crescent (and Peel)

As we were waiting to cross the street to the festivities, this motorcycle caught my eye. I have to say, its unique.

Heading into the festivities is always a surprise even if we always know its going to be packed with people.  What was nice was that the sun decided to show up despite it raining almost the entire week. It was definitely cooler than usual and the weekend only got chillier.

This year, the cars were sparse but here are the ones that caught my eye between the two streets and the cars parked in front of Ritz-Carlton Hotel for what I assume is a function. This year the star was McLaren.

Fiat 124 Spider

Dodge SRT 10

Dodge Charger

McLaren

McLaren

Alfa Romeo

Palm Bay Free Sample

I usually don’t try a whole lot of stuff but apparently I could try Palm Bay which is a sparkling alcoholic beverage. The one I got was the Cherry Lime flavor. It felt a little like drinking Smirnoff but with a bit more zest because of the lime flavor in it. Its not too bad. Probably not my choice beverage based on personal preference but if I was back in my university days, this would be totally what I’d go for.

Music

No idea who the band was on stage but they were definitely rocking it out. Usually, I’m not a huge fan of the artists they choose but this year was alright. I enjoyed it! Although, we only walked by and didn’t really stop to listen or anything.

That was Grand Prix! We took a short walk and the other street was mostly Porsche’s and its there almost every year so nothing special. There was lot more VR gaming booths this year for racing stuff.

Its always a fun little event to go to just to get in on the action a little even if we don’t go see the actual race. Its also a good reason to hang out with friends since everyone has work and/or school, and whatever other obligation that just limits the time we have to see friends more frequently.

My Weekly Adventures: Grand Prix, Flowers and Running Update!

Welcome to another My Weekly Adventures! I promised you fun among other things that I haven’t gotten done yet but lots of great stuff on the way, all in time (when I find time…)

Lets start with the little things which make up a good part of my spring life! Spring is ending and summer is around the corner, lets hope Montreal weather got the memo. Its a little bit more random this week but still, ENJOY!!

1) Flowers & Gardening

A few new blossoms in the garden.  Rain has been increasingly abundant and the weather’s warming up gradually so it really helps.

Columbine/Crimson Star

It actually helps a lot.  Its raining right now as I type this up but my lettuce from last week is about double the size or triple just because of 3 days of rain so we’ll be harvesting it this weekend to eat 🙂

Next mission, after getting eaten alive and the last project for container gardening this year: Mosquite repellant container.  That helped a lot last year so I’m hopefully going to get that done soon if I find the plants I need.  Aside from that, I’m still debating if its too late to start my zucchini plants.  I probably should but I don’t know.  I’ll give myself till the weekend to figure that out.

Are you gardening? Any blossoms or harvests yet?

2) Week 2 of Training for 10K Marathon

Running distance is getting longer.  I have a perfect route that I found after getting lost and making a wrong turn that actually gave me a perfect 5 mile run. Believe me, walking is the hard part but then I walk a lot already so I just walk more briskly than usual. And cross training last week was this workout.

Its not exactly the 45-60 minutes they ask for in the program but I try to push myself a little harder. Fitsugar/Popsugar Fitness workouts are never easy, not even the beginner ones.  Those are just a little less intense but they are still quite demanding but thats also why its really effective and I love them so much! 🙂

Have you ran a marathon? Are you training?

3) Grand Prix Formula 1 Weekend

Last year, I left for Hong Kong the week before Formula 1 weekend which also marked the first year in whatever years that I hadn’t gone to at least walk through the events in downtown.  This year I went back with some friends.  There were some nice cars and tons of people. Its was a little drizzly and humid but overall, it was fun because of good company.  I’m only showing a few of the more “rare” cars or the ones I like at least.

Oculus Rift and Racing Games

Tesla

Lamborghini

Maserati

There were a few things I wanted to point out.  For one, that Maserati is super sexy and that green one up there.  I don’t remember the make of that one. Second, they had a racing game with Oculus Rift and since I’ve been all about gaming videos, it made me super excited to see it.  I can see this as something I’d want to have.  But then, its crazy expensive so it won’t be something in the near future. Third, we had a chat with one of the car owners of the Tesla and he was super nice.  One of those cars actually has another set of seats in the “trunk” facing behind and he did that for his kids, turning his 5 seat sedan to a 7 seat.  Goes to show that if you have the money for it, you can have a family car and not have to drive a minivan 😉

4) Baby visit!

On the first day that I left for Alaska, that night at 2 am, one of my childhood friends water broke and had her baby like 17 hours later.  Her little daughter dodged being a Jedi but props to the doctor for having one day off on the delivery date.  Anyways, after getting everything done, we found time to hang out the past weekend.

My cat’s thoughts, “What is this?”

But this little one just stole my heart and that little bundle was smaller than my cat but managed to scare my cat away.  Haha!  That was as close as she got before running away.

Did I ever tell you that I’m super nervous around babies? So after a good bit of the night, I finally picked up my courage and held this little girl and she is a sweetheart.

Just look at her posing for the camera? Isn’t that just the cutest?

5) Discover: An awesome trailer for an indie film I want to see

Anyone here follows Wong Fu Productions on YouTube? I sporadically share their videos but the crew there along with some bigger name stars just put together a film called Everything Before Us and had their premiere last week some time I think.  Either way, that trailer looks fantastic.  Not to mention that I’m a fan of Aaron Yoo and one of the younger main characters played by Brandon Soo Hoo who is also in From Dusk Till Dawn series which I just saw.  And the guy from The Maze Runner, Ki Hong Lee is in it also.

Anyways, it looks awesome and I’m going to buy it soon and give it a watch 🙂

6) Things on my mind

• Next post for Music Obsessions & Baking Through Disney (and actually baking).
• What movie to see next in theatres (probably Jurassic World) since I missed a ton of good ones that you all will hate me for…
• How to continue my fifty over at my other blog Days Nights and Daydreams.  Plus, I need to actually start writing that story I’ve been thinking. I came back from vacation with 3 stories running around my mind.
• Should I do a blogathon? I’ve been blogging for over 4 years and I’ve wanted to do this but just no truly original ideas yet. I’ll figure it out this summer…hopefully.
• Still..how to structure the vacation posts.  I might just work on it and hope for the best. Its been hanging around for too long.

That’s it for this week! Its a little late but hope you enjoyed! 🙂