IT’S MONDAY! I’M ALIVE!

Ok the weekend wasn’t that crazy, and I’m actually not as tired as I thought I was going to be, which is very, very, good!

The apartment is literally a disaster and it is driving me nuts just thinking about it. I need to obsessively clean it.

There are pictures to come, but things need to be organized first, so they will arrive sporadically throughout the week.

Pat is already back in the ‘berta which is LAME, but there’s nothing we can do about that right now.

Chad is home from work today and took my car in to get fixed. It was keyed on Friday night. Not just ‘they ran the key across the door”, but more like ‘they severely dug the key into several spots on the car and grinded out the metal’. Yea, thanks Ass Hats. I love spending $300 to get a my car fixed just for fun.

As for me, I woke up to the bright hot sun, thinking it was Mid-July, and decided to wear flats, no socks, no sweater, and a Spring jacket. Guess what door knob, its 4 DEGREES OUTSIDE! Le sigh. The clouds are now rolling in and I am going to become an ice block. At least Claudia did the same thing.

I just want to be a home body this week.

omg. It is sunny and snowing outside my window now. WTH.

Chad has a cold.

This is what he said to me today…

Chad: I have no staying power
  I think maybe I’m going to die
  I hope I have a will
  you get everything
  except my scotch collection
  I want to be buried with it
  you can have the bedroom set
  you’re welcome

Danielle: …

I went for my first blood test of the year. After months of living with out thinking about Thyroid Cancer, it looks like it’s time to face it again.

I went for a routine blood test today and then in two weeks will have a follow up appointment at the Cancer Clinic. If all goes well I won’t have to do anything more other then blood tests four time a year. If all doesn’t go well I get stuck in a hospital room with some more radioactive iodine again. I’m really, really hoping that doesn’t happen.

The rest of my life will be me not thinking about Thyroid Cancer for months on end, until it’s time for a blood test, then I will stress out about it for a week until I get the results. WOOHOO!

I didn’t iron anything last night because Chad started to watch Silence of the Lambs and I couldn’t not watch it. I’ve never seen it before and it was about half over by the time I started paying attention. I was half glued to the TV half glued to the back side of a pillow. I thought it was going to be more scary then it actually was.

I experimented with Panko breading again yesterday. We made popcorn chicken and home made french fries. Sooo tasty, other then slightly over cooking the fries. I love Panko breading. Chad wants to make this a weekly tradition because he is now obsessed with it. He tells me it takes like restaurant quality. I guess that’s a pretty big compliment!

Speaking of food, I have a lot of planning to do this week. Darios Housewarming and Patz Birthday Dinner &  Hoopla are both taking place this weekend. Hello stress, insanity, and fun!!! Dario,I am going to go to Costco tomorrow and pick up some appys that have MEAT in them as per Chads request, and I will probably also bring the Bacon Spinach Dip. Patz, I’m still figuring out the Bacon, Pork, Onion theme of your Birthday Dinner. I’m pretty close to having it finalized. SEE HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU BOTH!

Those two are spoiled rotten!

Well, it’s over, and my tired soul can’t help but be relieved. Nothing disastrous happened. We won our Gold. The city and the country came together like never before, and despite all the naysayers, it was a huge success.

This giant event that occurred for two weeks straight, was probably the most stressful event I’ve ever not had control over. As a resident of this great city, I wanted everything to go off with out a hitch. I can not tell you how many frantic discussions I had with Chad about snow on Cypress, or not doing well on the podium, or protesters making us look like fools on the world stage. I wanted us to suceed so badly that I couldn’t even watch any of the gold medal events because I was so nervous. But now, I can smile with pride, because these truly were Canada’s games.

Here are the last few pictures and stories from this amazing once in a lifetime experience.

Last week Alicia, Claudia, and I went for dinner down on Robson street while the Canada vs. Germany game was going on.

Claudia wore her Sock Monkey hat. Cutest thing ever!

There were guys playing drums in the middle of the street.

We went to Earls and got a table right away, which was pretty sweet.

Out on the Patio under a heat lamp watching the 3rd period.

We walked around Robson and Granville and were lucky enough to catch Joannie Rouchette skate her short program which they where projecting on the big screen.

The laser show was also really neat. It was pouring rain at this point and I was soaked.

—

Saturday was spend quietly.

I realized on Friday night that I am much happier when I am not on the Internet and attached to Twitter and Facebook at the hip. There are just too many stupid people on both networking sites and there are too many things that I read that piss me off. I realized that most of my anger stems from crap I’ve read on Twitter or Facebook. I know too much about people and their thoughts. More then I want to know.

Saturday I turned off the the Internet and the TV and worked away oblivious to the world while listening to Radiohead. It was very nice and peaceful.

Once Chad came home from work we decided to check out the Olympic Torch at night, since Chad hadn’t had the opportunity to see it yet. We headed down there around 9ish and braved the crowds to see the torch. Chad stood there in awe for quite a while. After all the work he has done for the Olympics, all the time and effort hes put in, I could see how proud he was.

We checked out the rest of the sights in and around the torch. The gold rings were amazing, though my camera would not get a good picture of them.

We decided to go for a drink in Gastown. In no way did I want to brave the disaster that was the downtown core. I’m not a party person at the best of times, and after my relaxing quiet Saturday I really wanted to continue down that path. In reality, it was pretty stupid to go downtown at all. None the less, Chad had to see the torch.

So, we walked down Cordova.

Every place was packed. Every place we thought wouldn’t be packed was packed. Not really all that shocking.

Then we came across this little pub. This was the pub we went to once during the Summer that Chad and I started to date where a homeless man walked by us as we sat on the patio and told Chad he had to marry me. Chad listened. Deightons Well is the name and from the outside it is tiny, and sketchy, but there was a table for two open and they served beer.

We sat down and I instantly became annoying with the chicks behind us. I did not have my party hat or my patients hat on at all during the courseof the evening. The chicks were so annoying I begged Chad to find us somewhere else to sit. Luckily we discovered the bar expanded to the back. The best we could get was a couch, but trust me, it was better then sitting at a broken table with a bunch of drunk air heads.

The rest of the evening was a bust. I’ve never been surrounded by a more annoying clientele. I’ve become a snob in my old age and I just don’t care to hang around overly drunk, super annoying 20 year olds. I want a nice spot in the corner with some dark lightening and good drinks where I can have a conversation. I was in the mood for class and I got white trash.

The waitress for our section was also clueless. I watched her bring the wrong food to 4 different tables, and even when she brought the right food it was wrong and sent back. She totally ignored us and it literally took an hour of waiting for her before we could go home. She tried to charge us for beers she forgot to bring us and was impossible to get a hold of. Not to metion she looked like she was a 15 year old and homeless. I’m sorry, but it was the worst bar I have ever been to. Everything was dirty, the atmosphere was bad and the lighting was horrendous.

Snob Alert. I was just not in the right mood for the evening and was totally turned off by everything.

—

I did not watch the hockey game yesterday, I would have thrown up if I did. Instead I locked myself in the bedroom and watched TV while refolding all my t-shirts and cleaning out the closets. I flicked back every now and then but I couldn’t watch it.

With about one minute to go I decided I was going to watch so that I could see us winning GOLD live. Yea, that was a bust. I’ve never sworn so loudly in my life. Chad thought I had broken things in the bedroom because I started to throw my boots on the ground. Over reaction much? No, I think the perfect amount of reaction.

I ran out to ask Chad what was going to happen next. He said there would be a break and then overtime. I asked him if he was going to watch it, but he didn’t know if he could handle the stress, so I asked him, if I wasn’t going to watch it, and he wasn’t going to watch it, how would we know who wins? He said, ‘You will just know, listen for it outside’.

I flicked back at around the 12 minute mark. Soon after that I heard little kids outside cheering. I kind of ignored it because I didn’t think it could possibly mean anything. Then there was more little kids. I turned the channel and there it was, GOLD.

Talk about relief.

I watched the closing ceremonies at my parents house. I enjoyed them making fun of how our torch didn’t work at the opening ceremonies and how Catriona Le May Doan got to finally light it. That was cute. I liked the way it poked fun at who we are. I was expecting more of a crowd reaction when Shatner, and the Mom from Home Alone, and MJF came out and did their thing. I enjoyed the dancing mounties and beavers and moose. I’m a sucker for Canadiana.

The musical acts where a whole nother story. I assume they chose who they chose because they wanted it to be up beat and fun, but they clearly have no clue which Canadian Bands people ACTUALLY want to see.

 But now it is all over. Now, I can have my husband back. Now I can stop worrying about Spring showing up in the middle of Winter. Now I can get back to all those things I started but didn’t finish two weeks ago. I will miss the Olympics, but all good things have to come to an end. 

It’s raining out there today. On the drive to work this morning, the clouds parted just enough so I could see Grouse Mountain again. It use to be brown, now it’s white. And here we thought Spring was around the corner.

Chad is working extra shifts, which is hard to imagine considering the amount of shifts he is already working. I’ve gotten use to him not being around. That probably sounds negative, but its true. We talk all day online, but  as far as physically being in the same place as each other, it’s been a while, or one of us has been asleep. But it will all come to an end soon. The Paralympics won’t be as stressful as the regular Olympics, which is good.

Today is Friday. This office just hasn’t seemed normal this year. Theres a lot more negativity floating around. I can’t really explain it, you just have to be here to feel it. I have a feeling things are going to come to a head this year.

On the good news front, Chad finally hooked up my Uncle with a police pup in training. Apparently, female dogs usually don’t make it through as they aren’t aggressive enough, so they usually sell them to good homes. It’s hard to get one as they go fast (as we’ve learned) and they need to check you out before they give you a pup. Clearly they don’t want bad folk getting their hands on these prized German Shepard’s. Her name is Barra and my Uncle is driving up to Innisfail on Sunday to pick her up. I can’t wait to meet her! Chad says he kind of feels like an adoption agency or a foster parent since he had a hand in getting the dog.

Tonight will be a quiet night. I’m kind of tired of all the downtown hupla. I much prefer sitting at home and watching all the events on TV. That said, I think we are going to try and head downtown Saturday night for one last Gong Show attempt. Sunday, Chad will be working, so I will spend the day at the parentals watching all the closing stuff.

As exciting as all of this is, I’m getting tired. I will miss it when it’s gone, but right now, I just want things to go back to normal.

Valentines Day!

Yes! An excuse for cookies and chocolates and dinner out!

That is the best part of Valentines Day, all the food.

This is this years stash.

We got each other the exact same things.

Chocolates and Cookies.

I guess Chad loves me more since my Choclates and Cookies were bigger.

And here I was trying to SAVE money!

Just another thing to prove we are meant for each other.

We got each other the exact same kind of Valentines Day card that talks about all the goofy things we do and how we can make each other mad but in the end we love each other kind of thing. Then we went through the card and personalized each situation with something that has really happened to us. Both cards included situations revolving around the recycling.

We are way too similar.

We walked up to Earls for dinner. Sat close to the bar so we could watch all the Olympic stuff that was going on.

We has Chicken Tacos for an appy and then I had Prawn and Scallop Pasta. Both were soooo friggin good. Not to mention the Raspberry Martini and glass of Red Wine. Yum yum yum!

We came back home where I severed the Chocolate Covered Marshmallows that I had slaved over all day. I friggin burnt the chocolate in the microwave trying to melt it, so badly that smoke was coming out of it and filled the whole apartemnt. Don’t ask. It was a total disasted. Second time around was much better though!

Chad then realized it was 10:00 and he was way passed his bed time (for having to get up at 5:30 the next morning for work) so he went to bed and passed out. Ha.

Yay for Valentines Day during his Olympic Rotation!!!

Well, I think it’s pretty obvious that the one word I have to describe the dress rehearsal for the Opening Ceremonys is Amazing. Even if I were to described to you what happened, it would be pointless because you need to see it to understand. It was one of the most visual shows I have ever seen and I loved it. Claudia got very emotional during it, but thankfully I had some Kleenex. We were so close to the stage too. It was just awesome.

Unlike the dress rehearsal on Monday, we got to see all of the performers live. They were absolutely amazing, especially the song for Peace, Claudia and I lost it. There is also a lot of audience participation that we were told about, but didn’t get to see, since we weren’t the real audience, so that will be very interesting to see on Friday. They had volunteer stand ins for all the dignitaries and for the athletes. The stand ins were pretty funny as they had to pretend they were the real person giving their speech, or doing whatever it is they were suppose to do, but obviously couldn’t so instead they just took up the allotted time and read us a bunch of random Vancouver trivia. It was very amusing. We didn’t get to see the torch or anything related to that either, as they are keeping all of that a secret.

I can’t wait to see if on TV tomorrow with all the athletes, and the torch.  We are heading over to my Moms to watch it on the big screen in HD tomorrow night. It should be very entertaining. I also need to figure out which events are on TV and when so that I don’t miss out on the action.

After all these years of preparation and all these months of Chad going crazy with his job, it’s finally here. It’s so weird to think about.