Thursday, July 21, 2011

Exploring the New City and Getting Hit by a Bird

The past two weeks I have been flying solo in the big city. Mike went home to Halifax to surprise his family, and I was left with Moseby and a new apartment/city. Mike got back on Monday, and I got to tell him all about my exploring.

Adventure #1
Two weekends ago (wow time flies) I went to the St. Lawerence Market. I had a photo shoot along the way!
Here is my back yard...
oooo statue
Super cool statue thinger, made of steel beams..how appropriate for a civil engineer (in training) such as myself.

Here is my neighbour...
Oh Hai!
I totally meant to take pictures at the market, but I forgot. It is similar to Halifax's seaport Market on the north side, but way more crazy on the south side. Asparagus were 50 cents for a bunch so I bought a whole lot and then ate them all week.

Adventure #2
My Dad was in town for work two weeks ago, and we went out to dinner with my Aunt who lives downtown (we are almost neighbours..well kind of). And we ended up going to this restaurant, Madeline's, that is run by Susur Lee (a famous chef, he is a judge on top chef sometimes). The food was served family style so we all ordered stuff and shared it around. It was sooo good. I can't remember exactly what we ate, but the wait staff came over and presented our food and listed off a ton of stuff that was in each dish! It is a little bit pricey for a normal night out, but I would definitely go back for a special occasion!

Another food for thought..I went to the Irish Pub Fynn's of Temple Bar with some friends a few weeks back and it was really good too! It had traditional pub food, but it also had stuff like a quinoa and grilled chicken salad. I got the turkey BLT and it was delish and for a good price!

Adventure #3
Last Thursday I went for a crazy long walk/run (as mentioned here) and explored the Toronto waterfront. It was a gorgeous day out (think 25 degrees, breezy, sunny) and it was just so nice to go look at water. There is a paved path that goes forever along the waterfront, so it inspired me to buy roller blades so Mike and I can go roller blading when the weather is slightly cooler than this week!

Adventure #4
Last Friday I had the day off and I had to drive around and get my license and registration and my health card and all that fun stuff. I took the street car up to one Service ON place only to find out I was at the wrong one, and I needed a safety inspection done. So I brought my car to get an inspection (even though the NS one was just done!!!) and then had to make it across a few blocks to get to the Service ON place before it closed. Downtown...in rush hour...Most. Stressful. Driving. Ever. But I made it! I was quite impressed with my driving skillz!

Adventure #5
Just this past Sunday I went to yoga, and on my way there I was walking on the path near my apartment and suddenly I felt something hit my head. I turned around and there was a BIRD swooping in to hit me in the head again!! I was a little thrown off by this. I figured it was either me walking too close to a nest, or perhaps my bobby pins were reflecting the light. Anyway when I was coming back from yoga I saw the same bird (Smaller than a pigeon, bigger than a sparrow, maybe a female blue jay) and kept my eye on it just in case...and sure enough it tried to attack me again. And on Monday I saw the same bird hit a guy walking on that path in the head too. Crazy city birds.

Those have been some of my adventures so far! Hopefully this oppressive heat (to quote cbc.ca) will let up and I can continue exploring :).

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Kaylee and the Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Does anyone know where my blog post name comes from??...(Check this out if you don't)

Anyway today wasn't that bad, but it certainly had a ring to it.
I woke up late, my work is flexible about start time but I had wanted to go in early. Anyway, then I went to the kitchen to open the slow cooker to get my lunch that was cooking over night (CBC's Easy Curry Chicken..featured in this blog post)...and it was cold. I hadn't turned on the slow cooker. Ooopsy. So I quickly made a substitute lunch, and got ready for work. While I was getting ready I kept opening the wrong drawers for stuff, and the wrong cupboards..etc.

Work was challenging today, but that is totally a good thing just hard on the brain! The computer program I was using froze as I was saving 2 hours of work, and I spilled stuff on myself like 3 times, AND I got stuck in traffic both ways (ok that last one is a normal occurance).

HOWEVER, I came home and had a delicious dinner thanks to the turned on slow cooker, cleaned the apartment, chatted with a friend, and then made a pasta salad for a potluck at work tomorrow. I have also started to cook with out measuring cups...Canada's Top Chef, here I come! And I have a long weekend so tomorrow is Friday for me! Yippee.

So even after my horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day I am going to bed pretty happy!

Friday, July 8, 2011

Best Appliance ever...

So.. I have this thing for appliances. I walk into futureshop and Mike goes straight to tvs and computers, and I go to look at all the pretty fridges and stoves and laundry machines. Super housewify of me I know. Anyway, by moving into this apartment meant a significant upgrade from my Halifax appliances. Lets just say that we had significant issues with the appliances mostly because they were old. So we arrived to this place with tape still on the oven door...never been used! Huzzah! We also found this guy...

It is a front load..wait for it..washer and dryer in one. WHOOAA. So that means that it makes life oh so easy if you put a load of laundry in, and just leave it in there to dry. Huge improvement over the 3 cycles needed to dry a load in Halifax....so we thought.

Turns out this washer/dryer is super small, and takes FOREVER to do one load of laundry. When I really grow up I am going to have a super deluxe washer and dryer..in a snazzy color it has been decided.

So as you probably figured out that is not the best appliance ever...
This is:

It is a toaster, that cooks an egg in the round thing and can warm up meat. When we bought it (from amazon.ca) I thought it would only poach eggs, but oh no...it hard boils them too. I simply add water from a specially marked cup to cook the egg to my favorite level of done (level of done.. that sounds like something from a video game!).  So for the past 3 days I have been eating a variety of eggs, and it amazes me how quickly it cooks it, how perfectly it cooks, and how little there is to clean up. Nom nom eggies.
My super from tonight...the toaster is making me eat healthy. Check out my other blog for the deats!

In other news, Moseby got into the royal tour spirit and modeled the latest trend..the fascinator:
Human look (from globalnews.ca)
Super good look for a male cat...I am sure he is impressed.
oooo awww
Moseby has a habit of getting things on his head (the thing above is actually a cat toy)..No I am not one of those people who dress up their cat. Just sometimes he ends up in funny poses...like this from back in January:
Such a photogenic beasty

Ok enough of me rambling about my cat! It is friday!!! No idea what my plans are for this weekend..but I am in desperate needs of some groceries..or I could just keep cooking eggs!

Monday, July 4, 2011

Mi Casa-600 sq ft of livin the dream

So as I mentioned in the last post (almost 2 weeks ago..whoa!) we were looking at apartments downtown. Well we got one! It is brand spanking new (the ice cube tray in the freezer was still taped down) and is literally down the street from the CN tower. It is super convenient for me to get to work, and not that bad of a commute for Mike.

Here are some pictures! It is still a work in progress, but at least we have furniture!

View from the bedroom..WATER!!!

The bedroom, Moseby loves his new digs
Looking from the living room into the kitchen, nice and open
Kitchen to living room, woo Ikea furniture
Mike's office/den for when he is doing homework (sucka!)
Decorated bathroom
We have a patio too, but it is really warm out there right now, and I am comfortably air conditioned indoors.

In other Toronto news, today was the first day I drove on the big scary highways all by my one-sy.
This was taken last week when Mike was driving, not today when I was driving
Cars everywheres!!! I commute against traffic so it isn't too bad, and I am not on the dreaded 401 so that is a good thing!

Other than that TO has been keeping me (us) busy. We went up to the cottage for the long weekend, and enjoyed getting out of the city and into a lake!

Hopefully now that I am settled I am going to be able to blog more! I have a growing list of things I want to write about just waiting to be typed!