Tag Archives: Kitty

What’s Up & Adventures – April 2022

Posted in My Weekly Adventures, What's Up by

Welcome to this month’s wrap up for What’s Up & Adventures for April 2022.

April is always a crazy month work-wise and adding in a lot of the current situation, its been a lot more bonkers as well. Hence the later than usual recap post. While adventures is a little lacking, we have been getting things together in general. Lets take a quick look at some fast updates before we jump into the much more interesting Wha’ts Up portion.

New Season – Movies and Tea Podcast

While I am still working through the reblogs for the previous season, Movies and Tea blog and our podcast platform everywhere is already updating the new season of the podcast as we go through our Quentin Tarantino season. For myself, its a whole new adventure since its almost three quarters first time watches.

You can check it out over at the blog HERE or on most podcast platforms.

Baby Things and Preparation

I have really held off on talking a whole lot about the pregnancy since my little not so hidden announcement at the beginning of the year or last month’s office move/nursery setup. As the nursery starts shaping up and my due date is a little over a month away and the last stretch of preparation shows up, its fine time to talk about something probably not so important but something I always thought was a somewhat memorable moment if and when I had a baby and its buying the first pair of shoes.

Not to mention, one of April’s highlights was going for the second ultrasound as the first one had a minor little abnormality which was all normal in this one. All around good news so far plus seeing the much bigger baby then was a pretty touching moment.

What’s Up – April 2022

Books

  • The Girl On The Train (Review)

Currently reading: Nevernight

Still relatively on track with reading as I try to use the commute to the office to read as much as I can. The Girl on the Train is a pretty decent read. I do hope to watch the adaptations at some point.

As for the currently reading selection, Nevernight has a world building which is pretty extensive but there are some elements that I am finding a little annoying. I am still fairly early in the book so I don’t want to make any judgments quite yet especially since beginning of books are my usual hurdle.

Movies

  • Virus (1999)
  • You vs. Wild: Out Cold (2021)
  • Ronny Chieng: Speakeasy (2022)
  • The Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021, Review)
  • Desperado (1995)
  • Knives Out (2019, Review)
  • Rebecca (2020)
  • The Invisible Man (2020, Review)
  • The Sadness (2021, Review)
  • The Crazies (2010, Review)

Movies are still going relatively strong this month. Even the writing is pretty on track as well. The movie reviewing writing slump is slowly going away. With that said, this month was full of fun film discoveries from all genres. Nothing really disappointed too much except one or two. The interactive film You Vs The Wild: Out Cold was kind of a snoozefest but these things are never too long so it helps fill up some time when I couldn’t decide what to watch next. As for recommendations for this month, Knives Out, The Mitchells vs. The Machines and The Invisible. If you don’t mind a massive trigger warning and gut-wrenching gorefest, The Sadness is a decent choice as well.

TV

  • Another Me (2019)
  • Archive 81 (2022, Review)
  • Falling Into Your Smile (2021)
  • Bullsh*t The Game Show (2022)

Currently watching: Yes I Do (Season 3), Who’s The Murderer (Season 7), Gypsy, Falling in Love With a Scientist, Infinity and Beyond

Looking at the TV list, it sure feels like eons ago that I finished Another Me at the first half of the month. Probably because the TV series had a lot of issues for the most part and hit a whole new level of melodrama that started bothering me. The ending did kind of redeem itself a little though. The film version which I have yet to see did get lots of praise so I will hopefully watch it at some point.

With that said, Archive 81 is a cliffhanger ending and cancelled Netflix series which is somewhat of a pity since it is pretty good. Netflix did add Falling Into Your Smile which is a Chinese drama that I had my eye on last year but its from a channel which geo-locked the series when I wanted to watch it. Highly recommend. This might just be the series for me to get back into some form of TV binge for the Chinese dramas since I am so behind on it.

Games

  • Erica
  • Football Game

A light gaming month to say the least. Both of these games were fairly short in content. Erica is an FMV game which is basically an interactive film with 4 endings running at around 2 hours per run. Considering that I didn’t do the run again and did some research and think the ending I got was the good one, I just left it at that. The second game, Football Game is a short point and click game which is a little bit laborous with little favors and tasks which all comes down to a deeper story for the thriller as it came to a rather vague but depressing ending. I will try to get a review up for these two over at Game Warp but its a daunting since game reviews have fallen into the abyss for myself.

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for this Adventures and What’s Up for April 2022.
Hope you enjoyed! Let me know if you’ve been up to some exciting stuff.

My June Adventures!

Posted in My Weekly Adventures by

Half of 2021 has gone by! I honestly can’t believe it! I don’t really know what happened other than a lot of work…like my real job. Nothing else seemed too eventful. But then, its inevitable when a good few months of 2021 was still under pandemic restrictions and as we end June, we are now moved to the green zone which means a minimum set of restrictions or as everyone likes to call it deconfinement. Deconfinement for us just means being able to go hiking more and being more active as the warm weather hit. I mean, downright heat wave right now but overall, we did have some mild weather before this week.

Either way, let’s see what happened in June!

Workout

June 5th Walk 4.70km 49mins
June 6th Walk 4.88km 50mins
June 12th Walk 3.43km 37mins
June 13th Hike 6.38km 1hr29mins
June 19th Walk 4.06km 44mins
June 20th Walk 1.61 km 20 mins
June 24th Walk 4.87km 58 mins
June 26th Hike 3.04km 52mins
June 27th Walk 1.38km 16mins

Tallying up the deliberate walking and hiking (excluding all my work errands and to and from bus terminals and workplace), I had a notch higher than May, which is already pretty good. I’m overall going for longer walks whenever I can and mostly in the morning on the weekends to just relax. Its definitely been pretty good although I’m thinking of planning out a longer route than what I’ve been doing the past month. I think that all the walking did prepare me for the 2 hikes that we did throughout the month. I do plan to get back to running and biking at some point this summer..hopefully soon!

Hiking: Mont Hereford

As Quebec and Montreal starts deconfining, the restrictions lifted on crossing regions and then we got our first dose of vaccinations so finally managed to go to hiking again. The first hike of the year was a relatively light one but it still was considered an intermediate trail. It had a decent amount of viewpoints (7 maybe) although some of them were a little obstructed by the wilderness. We did have a hilarious encounter with some bird that looked like a smaller turkey that came bursting through the brush in fury. It was definitely a memory.

New Glasses

Picked up my new glasses this month as well! I’m a little too self-conscious lately to do selfies so this will do. My normal frames are bigger than my last ones so it took a little time to get used to. However, I’m liking them quite a bit and going to use the sunglasses for hiking as it has anti-slip on the nose part which I’m hoping will be helpful during hiking.

Hiking: Mount Scotch Cap

The second hike was to probably one of the furthest points in terms of day trips in the Eastern Townships near Mont- Megantic (which we have gone before). Yet, it was a little further from there in Piopolis. This one is an easy one which was pretty good as it wasn’t hot but the humidity was making the air very heavy. The hike is a constant upward climb. Its definitely a popular one in the area also as we went across a good few groups of people. The views are pretty good though.

Sunday Outing: Uniqlo, Yinji Rice Noodle Rolls & Chef Lee

I went out for a Sunday morning downtown run to pick up some clothes from Uniqlo and then go some lunch takeout at some new restaurants. Uniqlo in Montreal opened during the pandemic so I never bothered to go until now. The control is done well though as someone monitors that you disinfect hands, checks our temperature and keeps up with the counter so that the capacity is respected. I don’t have a whole lot to share about what I bought there as it was more undergarments, discount hoodie and some lounge shorts and a sports bra. Their new line of sports bra are awesome so check it out if you ever are looking, I’m actually thinking of going back to get 2 more.

The original plan was to get takeout from Yin Ji Chang Fen which are all about the rice noodle rolls, basically Chinese breakfast/lunch food. On the way, we saw across the street had Chef Lee, which is also relatively new and they sell pan-fried pork buns (which I love). We got an order of that as well. Both of these restaurants are pretty good. At Yin Ji, it was mostly for the dough stick rice noodle rolls which were pretty good and probably would have been best eating on location but still, it still tasted good after the trip home. I would want to check out other stuff from of them. I also got the veggie rice noodle rolls which was good that it was pretty plain overall as its supposed to be eaten with soy sauce so that balances it out.

For Chef Lee, it was a taste testing buy if anything which was pretty good. I think the pricing is a little expensive for the amount you get but the flavors are there so I probably will still go back to get some more at one point or another.

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for this June Adventures!
What have you been up to?

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 June Adventures!

Posted in My Weekly Adventures by

In a blink of an eye, we’re at the end of June and summer is here. Weather’s been a bit nuts here with a crazy heat wave/drought and then the last few days has been raining and much more comfortable. A little update on the Montreal confinement situation or well, we’re pretty much deconfined at this point although still get cases everyday so you can decide how you feel about that situation. Of course, with this ease of situation, my work situation is getting back to pre-COVID normal soon, which I’m not too sure how I feel about it but I don’t make the call so I just have to follow through with it. Although, today’s announcement (I’m writing this the day before posting so I don’t know yet if its going to happen) is supposed to make wearing face masks mandatory on public transit so that’s definitely rather reassuring.

COVID-19 is part of our lives now for over 3 months now so it has to be addressed before we head into other things that has gone on this past month! Let’s check it out!

Nike Training Club – 4 Week Program

I’ve slacked off during the entire lockdown phase and really struggled to get back on track with working out. The weather is warming up and hiking is starting back up (as you will see later on) which also requires a little bit of outside training to make sure my muscles are strengthened and build a bit of endurance to do the harder trails so I’m getting back on track with another 4 week program on Nike Training Club to kick things off. This time is different from before as I’ve added in the running option.

wp-1593519857716.jpg

As the month ends, I should be getting back. Thing is, the weather turned so nice that I ended up being the most motivated to go running as you can see above so I didn’t stick to the program a whole lot but at least it made me want to be more active in other ways like pool workouts and hiking and running while still adding one of the workouts from the program to get some weights or body weight exercises in. At this point, its more of a guideline than following the program and its in the final week.

Movies and Tea Podcast

As I’m getting a rhythm of getting our archive on Youtube for Movies and Tea on a weekly basis, if you  haven’t caught up with the first season of Movies and Tea, you can start catching the episodes every Monday. The general idea now is that while we get through Season 4, I’ll be updating the archive of Season 1 every week until we start up Season 5 and that will be uploaded when it goes live so that we’re not always behind. Currently updated to Season 1, Episode 5 with our big Resident Evil Franchise episode.

With that said, I’m not going to go share all the episodes of Movies and Tea posted on Youtube but here’s the latest one above so that you can go check it out and subscribe to our channel if you enjoy it!

Hiking: Mont Cathedrale (Carre) & Marais du Kingsbury

Brompton - Mont Cathedrale

First hike done and the recap of the hike is already posted so you can check it out HERE.

Summer Game Fest

summer game fest

We might have lost E3 this year but Summer Game Fest is the next best thing with a bunch of conferences spanning over May to August. We’re a bit late to the party so missed out most of the May events but June included the Playstation 5 reveal and conference (Recap), EA Play Live (Recap) as well as PC Gaming Show 2020 and a new show called Future Games Show (Recap). We didn’t get around to doing the recap for PC Gaming Show and now its already weeks later so a bit late to do it however, you can check out our thoughts on the other shows. There was a bunch of other things like developer showcases which present the new Crash Bandicoot game titled Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time.

Cute Kitty Pic

wp-1593494000797.jpg

That’s it for this June update!
I’ll share some garden updates next time. I just forgot to get all my pictures taken.

What have you been up to?

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 December Adventures!

Posted in My Weekly Adventures by

Its the last day of December. Isn’t that crazy? I’m doing this on the last day instead of tomorrow since we have 2020 business to take care of then so shifting things up a little. We’re going through the very busy December and all kinds of recap and seemingly a bunch of shopping and gifts and fairs and outings, etc.

Fingers crossed that all will go as planned as writing in December has been a bit all over the place… (it hasn’t because this is going up much later than expected)

CRHS Annual Craft Fair (December 1)

DIY Christmas

You can see the post on it HERE.

Marbled Ornaments

Next up, I went along and tried out some Marbled Ornaments as well! Which was mostly a failed attempt in general but did decide that its a project to further pursue and figure out. Plus, its some nice way to use up old nail polish so that its not just thrown out without some form of recycling/repurposing. You can check my post on that HERE.

Marché Casse-Noisette & Mini-Comiccon

Marche Casse -Noisette took place from November 28 to December 8 at Palais des Congres which happened to overlap with Mini Montreal Comiccon held December 7 and 8 also at Palais des Congres just one was in the main hall and the other was upstairs. With that said, it made sense to go and check out both at the same time. While the haul wasn’t particularly a lot, it was a first time visit for both place for myself. Some nice discoveries to be found. I will definitely go check the Marché Casse-Noisette again but probably not the Mini Comiccon as its rather lackluster.

Salon des Metiers d’Art 2019

Salon des metiers d'art 2019

  • Coach House Shortbread Company: Dark Chocolate & Salt; Almond & Rose; Ginger
  • La Nougaterie: Salt Flower Caramel; Dark Chocolate; Christmas
  • Nutra Fruit: Chocolate Covered Cranberry; Dark Chocolate- Cranberry Spread
  • Cidrerie du Minot: Des Glaces
  •  Choco Chocolat: Dark Chocolate; Dark Hazelnut

A lot of the SMAQ 2019 sales is about the same as previous years, the exception being that I bought the spread from Nutra Fruit and the chocolate from Choco Chocolat, which I believe is a new booth this year at the Salon. Most of this stuff is for festival party time and gifts and whatnot.

Ottawa Day Trip

Mavericks Donut

We took a quick trip with a friend to go to Ottawa to do some quick errands. We had a nice lunch at Fatboys (post about our first time HERE) and then finally found time to go grab some donuts at Mavericks Donut, which they had 4 dairy-free flavors and the husband and the friend each chose 4 to get a dozen. After that, I finally brought home Pumbaa from Disney Store to join Timon at our place and then picks up some wine at LCBO and some food in preparation for NYE dinner plans at T&T Supermarket.

Holiday Festivities: Christmas Dinners & NYE Hotpot

wp-1577509177253.jpg

Christmas Eve dinner was a ton of fun with a lot of people at the in-laws. It was a fun little event with some surprise gifts for ourselves which we didn’t expect to get anything in the first place. My mom wanted to have a turkey feast (as shown above) so she held a dinner and invited us and some of her own friends for dinner and here we have the overzealous food galore. Everything was delicious as usual. NYE is a hotpot meal and part of the Battle of Ingredients festivities so a separate post will be done for that.

Boxing Day Shopping Haul

Boxing Day this year has been a little less exciting. It has to do a lot with the fact that we’ve been trying to decrease expenses and its truly changed the spending habits into being very cautious with our expenses. Its not going to seem it since we’ve done a lot of shopping this past month…seemingly..but then its all useful things or food. Either way, without further ado (as this is the last part before this post ends)..the shopping haul from Boxing Day.

  • Adidas outlet: Running Shoes
  • Dynamite: Sweater and 3-pack scrunchies
  • Steam Sale: Life is Strange 2: Complete Edition, Detention, Gris, The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, Glass Masquerade
  • Playstation Holiday Sale: Overcooked 2, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
  • Amazon: Playstation 4 Controller Charging Dock
  • Walmart: John Wick 2

Cute Kitty Pic

wp-1577825830308.jpg

That’s it for this December Adventures!
How was your holidays? Had a lot of fun with family? Did you do some Boxing Day shopping?

My November Adventures!

Posted in My Weekly Adventures by

November is here and gone! Compared to the crazy October, its much calmer, especially since this year I didn’t even think about NaNoWriMo at all. Its the first year in a long time that I haven’t done it (although last year I didn’t finish it). Either way, there are a few plans scheduled in and a remote coverage for a film festival and well, just preparing for December and other little tidbits.

Let’s check it out!

MTL a Table: Rose Ross

20191102_183601.jpg

Coregone, carrot mousseline, beluga lentilles, fennel and basil

First to kick off November is our first spot to check out for MTL a Table. This time was a more half the gang deal as it only appealed to ourselves and Phoebe and her family. Rose Ross is located in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and Rosemont in the Promenade Masson and serves French cuisine but with a lot of the local ingredients available to them. It also has some vegetarian options and even had lactose-free dessert which always wins my heart over. The menu also had an Aeroplan privilege exclusive which was fun. The full recap of the meal is HERE.

MTL a Table: La Classe

La Classe

The second restaurant that the group (except my husband who had to work) went to was La Classe, a restaurant in College Lasalle with their students taking up the various tasks from host to servers to kitchen. Its one that we’ve been to before however they had changed their name this year to La Classe. The food here is always pretty good and its pricing is incredibly worth it for its quality and for French fine dining. You can check out the recap of the meal HERE.

MTL a Table: Taboo Cuisine Rebelle

20191109_185257.jpg

Salmon gravlax marinated in lemongrass and ginger oil, Asian sauce, wasabi, pomegrenate, fried capers, shoots

The last restaurant in the MTL a Table this year is a new find for the majority of us which turned out to be fairly disappointing. Its pretty much North American food in a lounge setting with a very prominent small finger foods and drinks. Its price point outside of the MTL a table was pretty high as we looked at their menus so MTL a Table gives a general experience of it. There was a lot left to be desired. You can check out the recap HERE.

The First Snowstorm of the season

20191112_080316.jpg

Coinciding with our week off from work, a lovely little staycation, much overdue for myself was the first snowstorm of this winter, well, late autumn to be accurate which brought in about 15cm of snow. Some neighbors told us about how most snow removal service contracts only started on November 15th, which this storm hit November 12th so some companies didn’t come around to remove snow, causing quite a few headaches. Luckily, while the storm did knock some of our road trip plans out, it did let us take our time with shovelling the snow, although we still did it in relatively one go in the morning.

Staycation Day Trip: Ottawa & Shopping Haul

Disney Store Ottawa

Disney: Christmas Eeyore

LCBO Rideau Center

LCBO

T&T Supermarket Ottawa

T&T Supermarket (without hot/cooked food)

Other than the shopping haul and just taking a moment out of town, we went to eat at Fatboys Southern Smokehouse. You can find the recap HERE.

An Afternoon with My Battle of Ingredient Co-Host

Kumamoto

PresoTea

The week of staycation is almost at an end and what vacation would it be without running an errand to the dentist to pick up (very expensive and makes me thankful for benefits) Night Guard and the much more exciting hangout for my good friend and Battle of Ingredients co-host for a lunch at Kumamoto and an afternoon tea at Presotea after she helped me out a great deal with something I’ve been meaning to do for a while (but needed a kick in the pants to do).

MEGA Expo

MEGA MIGS Festival 2019

Finally, to wrap up the staycation week once and for all was heading out to check out MEGA Expo which was held at Le Grand Quai, which is so new that I have never been in before. The venue was nice and we saw some nice games. The recap should be over at Game Warp..but it isn’t because I’ve just been hitting a writing slump and busy with work…Its still happening because there’s so many games that I really want to talk about.

Blood in the Snow Festival 2019

Blood in the Snow Festival took place on November 21 to 26 in Toronto. Of course, I didn’t have time to go but I was lucky enough to get remote coverage and it had almost all the movies available to review. Its a short festival but one that highlights a lot of Canadian genre films and while it had some meh films, there was still a lot to love and some really great stories and premise. The reviews should all be up on the BITS 2019 tab HERE. But as usual, I will do a top 3 (since there was only 8 full feature films).

  • Majic
  • Hunter’s Moon
  • Z

Marche Ephemere EtsyMTL

Black Friday – Shopping Haul

20191130_082941.jpg

I actually didn’t think about Black Friday until it was literally the week of as the flyers started coming in. Its been a goal to spend less so I’ve decreased a lot of expenses. With that said, I did take a look at the sales and got a little something here and there. Not a whole lot of physical shopping as I was stuck at work rushing a deadline but here’s the general list.

Amazon

  • Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
  • Crawl
  • Greenies Dental Treats (for cats)
  • Car phone holder

Steam

  • Blackwood Crossing
  • Batman: The Enemy Within
  • Yoku’s Island Express

Playstation Store

  • Spider-Man
  • Days Gone
  • God of War

Michael’s (shown above): Wreath and Wreath supplies

Decathlon: Water Pouch (for backpack)

Cute Kitty Pic

20191110_223236.jpg

That’s it for this November adventures!
A lot more packed than I expected but it had to do with the last minute vacation.

My October Adventures!

Posted in My Weekly Adventures by

Weekly Adventures (2)

Welcome to the October Adventures! Its been a crazy month full of lots of things going on. Suffice to say other than cooler weather and some really windy and rainy days where we got some of the closing gardens and other preparing the house for winter thing going on (which I won’t talk about because I’m not sure anyone wants to know about it), it was a clash for festivals. Let’s look back and see what happened!

Hiking: CIME Haut-Richelieu at Mont St-Gregoire

20191006_134457.jpg

I’m not sure how many more hikes we can get in before the season is too cold to go, but we’re taking them as we can between festivals and other commitments and getting the house ready for the winter season and whatnot. After a much debated weekend with bad weather looming over our heads, the weather finally changed and we decided to go for a hike a little closer to us and went to the nearby tourism area and found CIME Haut-Richelieu at Mont St-Gregoire which had a very reasonable 4km hike. It was steep and rather quick elevation with lots of steps and stairs and rocks to walk over. We took the panoramic trail and got a pretty nice view of the area around.

Festival Du Nouveau Cinema (October 9 to 20)

Fantasia 2019 (1)

Festival du Nouveau Cinema kicked off on October 9th with the program mostly starting the next day (since press doesn’t access to opening and closing films). With that said, this is the first day doing media to cover this festival so a little of the jitters as this festival has some rather deeper films and a lot of the films themselves are all about taking chances with the synopsis provided as well as having very limited evening timeslots to fit them all in making the scheduling very time-consuming and constantly going through changes during the festival. However, that is behind us now and things went fairly smoothly. I had wanted to do on average one review per day and overall, I managed to achieve it.

Here’s the full list of films if you missed any of them:

  • Little Joe
  • Color Out of Space
  • Family Romance LLC
  • Diner
  • Adoration
  • Sole
  • J’ai Perdu Mon Corps
  • Mickey and the Bear
  • A White, White Day
  • Dirty God
  • Carte Blanches Shorts : Aujourd’hui ou je meurs; Pluie sui tole volée

Highlighted are my top 5 in no specific order. If you want to know my top movie, its Diner. Hands down, no competition because while the other films were great, this one has rewatchability in its favor.

Sherbrooke Met La Table & Parc de la Gorge de Coaticook

Like previous years, we take a day out to the Eastern Townships to go check out a restaurant part of Sherbrooke Met la Table. This time, we decided to go back to one of the first ones we tried called OMG Resto which is actually located in a what used to be a church. We went for the lunch menu but ended up getting the normal.

After that, we headed for a little hike at Parc de la Gorge de Coaticook. We had previously gone at night for Foresta Lumina. Its a nice little family trail although has a lot of steep stairs and slopes.

Toronto After Dark Film Festival (October 17 to 25)

Toronto After Dark Film Festival

Overlapping the last few days of Festival du Nouveau Cinema was receiving the approval for remote coverage for Toronto After Dark Film Festival for its short films, which was a lot of them. About 95% of the films were available and I managed to review almost all of those available. All the movies are above and I’m not going to list them all separately but just in how I batched them in the posts and then share my top 5 (which will be hard).

I don’t review a lot of short films over here but this festival’s shorts definitely opened my eyes to some very creative premises and some outstanding stories. With that said, these are my top picks:

  • Turbo Killer
  • Hearth
  • Barbara-Anne
  • La Noria
  • Moment
  • The Haunted Swordsman

Lambcast: Evil Dead Franchise

Nothing like a little last minute podcast call-up to add into festival season. However, it did help binge watch the Evil Dead Franchise to prepare for the Evil Dead discussion over at The Lambcast with a bunch of people with rather interesting opinions about this one. Its always a fun time at Lambcast recording so head over to check out the episode HERE.

Battle of Ingredients

20191026_192608.jpg

With the summer and warm weather going away and festivals slowly fading in the background with events and such, we’re back on track with Battle of Ingredients. October Battle of Ingredients is the Fall BBQ. The post is a bit delayed but its currently in the works. Expect it up next week some time.

Other than that, November Battle of Ingredients is always hiatus due to our checking out the MTL a Table event. We will be checking out three restaurants this year if all goes to plan so I’ll be talking about it as it happens!

Game Warp Podcast is Back!

We’ve been on a huge podcast hiatus for Game Warp. While we have been getting back on the blogging side of things, which is always a great start and will continue to be focused on the blog. The podcast is back in our recording schedule. After some changes a few months ago and the festival coverages and such, we have moved ourselves onto Anchor and be an audio podcast from now on. I’m sure I mentioned it before. The episodes will be audio format only available on Youtube as well.

To kick things back into action, and to show our diversity on this whole rebranding thing we’re doing, we start off with something a little different and that is a discussion on Essential Horror Games!

You can check out the episode over on Game Warp HERE.

Halloween Marathon Wrap-up

With all the crazy stuff going on in the final 2 weeks of October, suffice to say that the marathon somewhat didn’t quite happen although Toronto After Dark did work in my favor on that level. I still have one double feature to come out for the marathon and it will be done ASAP. However, in general, things are wrapped up here! Its been a fun month and I actually got quite a bit done in the first half of the month.

Upcoming November Events: MTL a Table, MEGA MTL, Blood in the Snow Festival

Cute Kitty Pic

20191019_202540.jpg

That’s it for the October Adventures!
What have you been up to?

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!