Thursday, March 22, 2007

It's My Birthday



I had a cake!

My parent's and Quentin's parents took the entire family to a cute local White Rock Italian Restaurant called Escopazzo Trattoria. My Mom was totally in love with the singer and I kept calling her a groupie. Here she is trying to take a picture of her singer and I'm laughing at her.


After our Italian dinner the whole family went bowling. I've always wanted to do this for someones birthday, I think it's a great family activity.

... Jon was a bit worried because he's become and expert bowler on the nintendo wii system we have at our house and he wasn't quite sure if he'd be as successful with real bowling, but he did pretty well.

My long legged friends stretching up to bowl!


Michelle and I with our pretty bowling shoes.



Hadley found the bowling balls. :)


My favorite video of the night, my Mom's dancing at the table to the restaurant singer they loved!
I'm calling this my Mother Daughter birthday because since I'm 29 and she's turning 58 this year, I'm now half her age, neat!

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Very Funny!

Quentin sent this to me at work today and I couldn't stop giggling in the office. I reminds me how paranoid I get when learning something new on the computer. My poor IT guys.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Christina Aguilera Concert



On Monday night Quentin told me we were meeting Steve and Jessica downtown for dinner at 5:30pm. I thought it seemed like and odd time and place, but he said they were driving down from Whistler and had some important news to tell us. I thought I'd better go with the flow. After dinner I thought, "Okay we ate dinner and it's pretty early, no news, why the rush." About then, a promotional guy just happen to float by our table with a flyer saying 'Come see the Pussy Cat Dolls after the Christina Aguilera concert'. Jessica and I started talking to one another about the concert and how it was tonight and then making fun of the young hoochie girls who were walking outside past our restaurant window to GM place. As our discussion ended, Steve somehow pulled out an envelope with 4 Christina Aguilera tickets, and of coarse mine. Jessica's eyes got really big!

It was a great concert Christina is an incredible performer, and both Steve and Quentin were in excellent moods high fiving each other every 10 minutes because they we're so pleased that they fooled us...


We tried to take video clips at the show, unfortunately we were kinda far back even at row 21 and when the volume was too loud it distorted. You can see her amazing sets, the costumes, choreography and she's pretty clear in her ballads. I was really impressed with her show, and we had a lot of fun. Thanks Quentin and Steve for the wonderful surprise.





Another note, after watching the video clips I remembered how during the show I thought, wow I'm so glad I'm a girl and have the opportunity to dress up. Christina looked like the gorgeous diva up there on stage and the effect was contagious, I'm feeling the urge to dress up and be glamorous too.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Best Picture of the night!



It's very hard to surprise Hadley, but Quentin did just that when he planted a big wet one on her just as she took the picture. This is one of those funny moments that won't be forgotten.



Here I am trying to get Hadley to take a romantic picture with Quentin and I, but it just wasn't going to happen.



My favorite look of the night, Niki's back with the bright yellow and her blond ponytail, very nice and spring.



Dianne and I, and oh look the background might actually look like something besides the Roxy.



Niki's birthday, so she poured the jagermeister.

Note: If your spending the night on Granville street you absolutely must visit the Roxy Burger for your after bar treat. They have a ranch, bacon, cheddar, chives, and french fries dish that's about 5 dollars after tax and they sever it to you piping hot. You eat it with a fork since it's so gooey with the ranch and bacon and cheddar and bacon again mmmmmm, to die for!!! Be warned this is definitely not diet food and you're only likely to order and enjoy this after having a few to many vodkas and not giving damn.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

What my head's doing today!

Migraine...

Had a terrible migraine attack today at my office, it was so bad I had to get my brother to drive me home.
I had some really crazy symptoms major aura's and my entire right arm had pins and needles, kinda scary. Also when I go through a certain stage of Aura I lose the ability to read it's the oddest thing ever, makes me appreciate my health so much more once I'm normal again. I had called Quentin to help me with a computer issue early afternoon and I couldn't read the text in the different windows. I could see the letters, but it just looked like a foregin language. I could only read about one or two words after concentrating for several seconds, very weird!
So tonight as I'm starting to feel better and I'm googling away to try and figure out what I experienced.

Migraine with Aura

Link about not being able to read or write.

Link about losing speech ability.

(Just found the link above. I experienced this the last time I had a headache, I was at my brothers house trying to have a conversation with his girlfriend Michelle and I could hear my own words sounding very clumsy and very laborious. Again it only lasted an hour or so right before the headache started. At least now when it's happening I have an idea what's happening and why my brain is acting so odd.)

Well hopefully it will be a long time before I experience another one of these, it's such a waste of time and boring to be home sick.

and I must think very positive according to my last post, focus on being a person who simply never gets a headache???

Monday, March 05, 2007

The Secret

Quentin and I watched the video last night, I must admit I was a little lazy about watching a self help video, for some reason I think I know it already. I remembered my post from a few weeks back however, and how excited I was after seeing the book featured on Oprah, so figured I could at least watch the movie.

I was surprised I really was, the DVD really presented it's theories with good practical examples that I could immediately relate to, it's very well done. The thesis of, "The Secret", what you think becomes your reality. If you worry or think of things that have gone wrong or are bad in your life you will attract those things more. If you focus your thoughts on things you want, your goals your dreams, you'll turn those thoughts into your reality.

In my own life I think this is so incredible true and obvious I'm surprised I didn't consciously, “just get it” before. I have this real negative side to my brain that good old Dad gave me the program for. It's called worry about the worst case scenario and play it over and over in your head until you do nothing and you’re miserable. To be fair to my Dad however his philosophy comes in very handy when something does in fact go wrong as he's usually pretty prepared, and everyone in the family a has tendency to rely on him to deal with the big problems. Still I can see how you need to able to turn off your worse case scenario program and remember to focus on the things that create some good in your life.

In, "The Secret" they give a really cute example with pets. Then they show a cat running around with a paper bag on its head and everyone is laughing because it’s so cute. They then explain that the love and happiness that you feel when you have a pet brings out feelings of love, and when you feel love you'll attract it. It's true too, I have no idea why but when Quentin and I are sitting on the couch and our cat Muffin comes up and does whatever she can to gain our attention it puts us both in a good mood and we're nicer to each other. I've always thought that pets are very important to a family but now I can just put my figure on it a little better.

The DVD has about a 10,000 quotes of people throughout history with wise things to say and I can barely remember any of them. However when I was reading the quotes I remembered thinking to myself you know it's true successful people do have the tendency to think of the best case scenario more so than the worst, you have too, it propels you forward! After the video once Quentin and I were just saying those couple of last things before falling asleep I said, "you know which one of our friends I kept think about throughout the video... Chris Puleo." Quentin “that's funny I thought of him too.” Chris is our friend who has a lot charisma and charm, and he's great to have around because he's constantly thinking of fun and exciting things to do. Chris has many times surprised me with the things he's accomplished, and the biggest reason he succeeds is because he wants it so bad, it's all he can think about. Sometimes things don't work out the way he might have expected but he's exceptionally quick at recharging and finding a new focus to propel him forward again. So thank you Chris for being an inspirational example!

I always thought new goals were important, I mean yah yah I'll write it down later, but after I watched the show I thought to myself do I even know what I really want. I sometimes dream about things, like it would be so nice one day.... then I forget about it. I strongly believe now that you have to seek what makes you passionate, find your goals and believe in them firmly.

They talked about bad things happening in your life, a guy receiving a parking ticket was an example. The explanation is that you’re responsible, your negative energy and thoughts actually bring about the negative action. I've always gravitated towards this type of philosophy because really except for fluke things most bad things happen because of poor choices or mostly negligence, and I like the idea that I can be in control, I have the power to make it better.

Emotions and moods were given special meaning in your life too, they act as your guide. They break down emotions into very simple terms, good or bad, which is quite the truth. Everything you do ultimately, it's either yes that made me feel good or no I didn't like that, and I really appreciate that simplicity. If facing depression it's usually an indicator that your actions are not following what you truly want, it means you need to change. Depression seems like such a negative thing, but really it's your brains way of shutting everything down so you can take some time to maybe uninstall some bad programs you're running and maybe try something totally new.

According to the Secret philosophy the way to avoid depression is to be alert and sensitive to your true needs and wants before you body goes into shut down/depression mode. I recently read the Alchemist the other night and it had a very similar theme. Follow your heart, if you don't you'll spend your days feeling mediocre and never happy in your own skin. I watched Hero's the other night however and a statement Quentin and I both said yes that's true , "A man who lives his life in the present will be happy, but a man who thinks about the future and past will have a meaningful life and you can't have both. " I'm trying to think of how to tie this into, "The Secret" in a positive way but it's not coming to me. Ummm maybe what's the difference between meaning and happiness is that possible?

Well I like brain puzzles to ponder, I suppose I found another, but I'm feeling inspired after all this and I want to try this whole positive thinking with a focus on what my heart really wants. So wish me luck, and I hope I inspired you all to spend a little bit of time thinking about what is that you really love to do!

p.s Thanks Jarred for the copy of , “The Secret” that was really nice of you.

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Visiting Farshie



My favorite picture of the night, 2 silly girls being clowns.





Suddenly this weekend we found out a couple of our friends have moved right downtown, Farsh and Peter. I took this picture in Farsh's apartment with the city lights 24 floors below, I think everything is nicely blurred in this photo.


Imagine this is your bedroom...

Highrise living, apparently a great hobby for all these city folks is watching other city folks in their apartments with all the big windows. Farsh's next purchase, a telescope! I'm not shy but watching the people tonight walk around in their little units with the blinds wide open, I was a bit surprised.

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Why do I Cry

Today I came home and just had a little breakdown, a nice cry. I don't know what came over me I try not to be that emotional but I realize that when life pushes stress at me from all different directions at some point I can only hold so much water and the damn just bursts.
So I'm mid cry and Quentin is desperately trying to understand my problems. He keeps telling me that instead of saying just the facts I'm explaining all these side stories and now he really doesn't know what I'm talking about. After due process and I've drained my tears everything just doesn't seem that bad anymore and for some reason I feel refreshed.
Then I ask Quentin why he doesn't just cry sometimes, I mean it's something he doesn't do. I know it seems like such a simple thing men and women being different on average, but I want to know why sometimes. Why is it that we deal with the same stress of the world differently. I guess I'm stubborn and want to believe that it's just our bodies that are different not the way we think. I suppose growing up with a very Greek emotional father I always thought I was pretty in control of my emotions in comparison, but now I'm not so sure. O well after it's all said and done I'm very fortunate to have a husband who will take the time to listen to me pour out all my troubles, it's such a great stress relief and I'm kinda glad men and women are different.