Final Fantasy X Finally Over
Hubby and I finally finished Final Fantasy X (ffx) last night. I say finally because it took us a long time (in terms of number of months we have owned the game) to get through this relative to other similar games. And frankly, we did the bare minimum.
I have to say that we aren’t huge fans of ffx, although I think that this is a bit unfair to the game. We got Final Fantasy XII about 8 month before we got ffx, and we went through it super quickly (by our standards). in four months we beat that game for the first time, we didn’t do all the extras (we played without a walkthrough, so we missed some things) but we did a lot.
The problem, when we got ffx was that while it was fun, it wasn’t as much fun as ffxii. There are things that XII simply did better than X in our opinion. X has a sphere grid, which when the game was new probably seemed like a lot of flexibility. However XII has a license board which allows even more flexibility, and is much harder to shoot yourself in the foot with.
As well, we found ffx to be quite a slow game, the battles took a long time, and they were super frequent. This made doing anything in the game a time consuming effort. We also could never get the hang of blitzball, which is the major mini-game in ffx. Perhaps if we’d managed to do blitzball we’d have had more fun.
Overall, I’m happy we played it. We’re generally big fans of Final Fantasy games and I’d have been sorry to have never done it. However I don’t think I’ll be playing it again.
My Auntie Helen
I talked to my Auntie Helen on the phone the other day. This is always a bit of a treat as we just don’t manage to talk as often as I think either of us would like to. She’s actually my great aunt, and she talks to my mom and grandpa quite a bit so at least they can keep me updated on her goings on.
Auntie Helen is my Grandma’s sister, and she lives two time zones away in the town that they grew up in. I’ve been there several times; and Mom has mentioned before that even though she never lived there, it’s still what she thinks of as her “home town.” Auntie Helen has three granddaughters and seven great grandchildren of her own all living in the same town. However she’s always filled a role closer to what I refer to as “bonus, long distance grandmother” than great aunt in my life.
It could just be that I’ve never been close to any of my other great aunts, although I have/had several. But in fact in many ways I’m closer to Auntie Helen than I am to my non-great aunts. Hubby and I just had our one year wedding anniversary. One year isn’t a major milestone that I expect many people to acknowledge. but Auntie Helen did, she and Grandpa were the only people other than our parents to send cards.
Like all important people in my life, it’s her little quirks that make her extra special. Although I send all cards and correspondence addressed to Auntie Helen, I’d be confused if she ever signed on that way. Seriously, I’d be wondering if something was wrong. That’s because she signs everything addressed to myself, my sister and my mother A. Helen HerLastname. Even my wedding guestbook is signed this way.
I asked my mom once why she did it, and what the A stands for. Not all that surprisingly the A is for Auntie. When my mom was little, and Auntie Helen’s husband was alive, she would address letters to A. Helen and U. Les. The reason for this was simple: anything else was too long to fit on one line. Funny how life’s little mysteries, and the fun quirks always seem to lead back to the practical.
Ready, Set, Tidy
My parents are coming to town in about a week. My Mom was here last year when we were just moving in, but hasn’t actually seen our place furnished or fully unpacked. My Dad has never been here. They’re also bringing my sister with them, but she’s been here lots, as she goes to the same University we both work/study at.
Now, Hubby and I aren’t slobs, but that hasn’t stopped me from going a little crazy. I keep making lists of things that need to get done before they come to visit. Hubby’s likely to be super busy next week before they get here, so I want to get things figured out by the weekend.
The actually cleaning jobs aren’t a big deal, we clean anyways, so that just has to get done like regular. But there are a few things that need tidying/organizing before my family gets here. Also, my sister’s mini-fridge is currently serving as a side table in our living room. While I will be very happy to get rid of it, I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing with our wedding album, which is currently sitting on top of it.
I also spend about half an hour today trying to figure out where the heck I can possibly put an air mattress in this apartment. Luckily my parents are only sleeping here one night, because the only possible answer is kitchen floor. And that requires that we move our kitchen table into the living room. Fortunately we have the world’s most awesome kitchen table, which can be turned into a coffee table, and then squished into the living room. Although I don’t think anyone will actually be able to get to/from the couch when the table is there.
I’ve also been changing my mind like a maniac about meals. I’ll have things all planned out, and then I’ll remember that curry isn’t my Mom’s favourite, or some other fact like that.
I’m really excited that my Parent’s are coming. But a little part of me is starting to understand the mini-frenzy that they used to go into back home when grandparents were coming to visit. I probably owe them an apology for all the times I thought they were going overboard. It turns out they weren’t crazy, they were normal (and who ever thinks they’re going to say that about their own parents?).
Happy Anniversary to Us
Hubby and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary yesterday. I can hardly believe we’ve been married a full year already. It seems like it can’t possibly have been that long.
We had a really awesome day. We slept in, and then went for a picnic lunch at a small park near our apartment. I roasted a whole chicken the day before, and then carved it up and refrigerated it over night. I also bought a couple of those “finish baking it yourself” baguettes, so we had nice warm bread. We added in some pate, spicy hummus and roasted garlic (yummy, and so easy to make in the slow cooker while roasting the chicken).
Then for dessert we had blueberries and cherries (yay for yummy local fruit) and also some chocolate covered strawberries. Again, I had made these the day before. We made some Southern style sweet tea, using the recipe from the Joy of Cooking, and then headed out for our yummy, yummy lunch.
The park was surprisingly quiet; we were a bit worried about that as it has a playground but the only child there was one toddler with his parents. We also saw a few people walking dogs.
After our lunch, we took a break from the anniversary celebrations, then headed back out for dinner. I was way overdressed for the little italian restaurant we chose, but there was no way that I wasn’t dressing up for our anniversary dinner.
We had a fantastic dinner. We’ve been to this restaurant a couple of times before, so we know the food there is always good. Our waiter was great too. He was very friendly. Hubby gave the kitchen a bit of a thrill by saying that the pizza he had reminded him of the pizza in Rome. We then enjoyed a very dressed up, somewhat tipsy bus ride home to end the evening.
Watching the Olympics
I love the Olympics, absolutely love them. I watch them constantly while they’re on. This is true for both the summer and winter games, but obviously at the moment it’s the Beijing summer games that are keeping me glued to the screen. I’m actually watching them now as I write this. We’re currently losing the baseball game to the USA, but I haven’t given up yet.
I’m actually starting to drive Hubby a bit crazy. We’ll be watching something, and he’ll suddenly realize it’s a rerun of an event we’ve already seen and look at my incredulously like “why do you still want to watch this?” It’s kinda funny actually. You’d think after a week of them he’d be used to me, but apparently not. We also don’t love the same sports, I get most excited when gymnastics and diving are on, and I think those two are among his least favourite. Oh well, he’s putting up with me anyways.
One thing I’ve found really interesting watching these commercials is the ads. I’ve never before been in the country, let alone the city, where the next Olympics is to be held. I honestly feel like I see as many ads (or more) promoting Vancouver 2010, or showcasing the winter sports or athletes as I do with the summer athletes. This might also be influenced by the fact that we don’t have a lot of big stars in this summer games.
I’m finding it a bit odd. I’m used to watching sports, and then seeing ads about those sports in the breaks. not watching some summer sports, and then seeing adds featuring a future biathlon contestant. Or Wonder bread ads with little kids dressed up as winter Olympians. Although I adore those Wonder bread ads, Those little kids are so cute, especially the little figure skating pair.
I’ll miss the Olympics when they’re over, but as the tv keeps reminding me, the next ones are only 18 months away. And Hubby will probably be glad for the break.
I had to edit this post to add that less than two hours after I finished posting this we were watching the olympics when Hubby exclaims: “Oh God, didn’t we watch this? Twice?!” after a short pause he followed this up with “no more swimming.” I think he thinks they’re replaying Michael Phelps too often.
My Legs Hurt
After our bike ride around the seawall the other day, Hubby and I have been enjoying the idea of getting more physically fit. So we’ve taken up jogging. It hasn’t been too bad so far, but today my legs are rebelling a bit. I’m hoping that they’ll get over it by tomorrow night, when we should be jogging again.
We’ve been using a jogging program that I found online called Couch to 5K. We’ve been doing pretty good so far. It’s hard but not impossible. We’re only at the end of the first week, so starting tomorrow we move things up a level: 90 whole seconds of jogging at a time.
We’ve only encountered two real problems so far. The first is that Hubby’s comfortable jogging pace is alot faster than mine. This isn’t a problem at all when you’re only jogging 1 minute at a go; I just catch up to him on the walking breaks. It does cause some concern when we move up to more jogging at a time though. I think we might check out some of the schools nearby and see if any of them have a track, as then we wouldn’t lose track of one another.
A track would also be good as this is a very hilly city. It’s hard to find a stretch to jog that doesn’t have some significant slope to it around here. This is hard both ways, uphill is obvious, but I found that when jogging downhill I ended up going faster than was really comfortable.
Our other problem is that we don’t have a decent stopwatch to time the segments of running and walking with. We thought about buying a cheap one when at Sears the other day, but it hardly seems worth it as hopefully in 7 weeks we’ll be up to just jogging for 30 minutes. So far we’ve been using Hubby’s GPS, but it’s terrible on batteries, and uses AAA’s. I think I solved this last night with a new podcast for my Ipod.
I just grabbed a bunch of my favourite songs, quick paced ones for jogging and somewhat slower for walking, and cut them to the right length. It’s a bit choppy and awkward to list to, but much better than trying to watch a stopwatch. And really, I tend to skip around between songs and miss the second half of them half the time anyways.
Overall, I’m still looking forward to going jogging tomorrow, so I think this might be working.
How to make Cherry Jam
One of the most common searches that leads people to my blog is “how to make cherry jam.” I assume that this must happen because of my earlier post about the annoyance of trying to find a cherry pitter. Since I hate disappointing people, I thought that I’d write a post answering that question.
The short answer is: buy a box of Certo (fruit pectin) and follow the instructions included inside. At least that’s what I did. Other points to know include: pitting cherries without a cherry pitter is a pain, cherry pitters are hard to find. jam is basically equal parts fruit and sugar.
you’ll need about 7 cups of fruit and 7 cups of sugar for 1 pouch of liquid certo. I also use the liquid as that’s what my mom taught me to do. Also, one box of 12 125mL jars is not enough. You need more/bigger jars for one batch of Certo jam.
So there you are searchers, how to make cherry jam
Slow Cooker Spare Ribs
I learned two very important things the other day: you can cook spare ribs in a crock pot and you can cook chicken in spare rib sauce. These things are so important because other than my brief trip home in June, I haven’t eaten spare ribs in a year.
The reasons for this are threefold:
1)Ribs are really expensive in restaurants, so I can’t justify ordering them
2) I don’t have a barbeque or a good pan to make ribs in the oven and
3) Hubby doesn’t like spare ribs.
Point number three is the reason why I was so thrilled to discover that apparently most rib sauce is very good on chicken. Point number two was overcome when my mom mentioned in passing that Grandpa had broken a tooth on some spare ribs he made in his crockpot. “You can make ribs in the crock pot?” says I “Why wasn’t I ever told this?”
So right now, happily stewing away in my crock pot is a half rack of pork side ribs, and a chicken breast. Yummy. The whole apartment smells awesome. I used my mom’s recipe for rib sauce, which I’ve been eating since I was little. Basically ketchup flavoured with some brown sugar, mustard, vinegar, garlic, tabasco, salt and pepper.
I plan to serve the meat with rice and a salad. We just got a yummy new salad dressing from the little non-perishables only grocery store that opened on the corner of our street. I have no words to express how happy I am to have a food store in easy access. Overall, I expect it to be a very delicious meal. Yay ribs.
A Tale of Two Sunburns
This is a story from last summer, but I’m writing it partly as something a bit funny and partly as a reminder and warning to myself, since I plan to go to the beach this weekend. Important background information that you need is that I got married last August, and that I had a strapless gown. I had be very careful all spring not to tan in anything with straps, or that would otherwise show.
A good friend and I went to Europe for three weeks in the spring of last year. We had a blast, but while we were in Zurich, I got a cold. I feel a bit bad for my friend, as I suspect she got a bit bored of sitting around in Zurich while I slept, but there’s not much I could do. Having read about the beaches around Lake Zurich, we decided to seek one out, so that I could nap, and she could hang out on the beach. We didn’t find any sand, but we did find a grassy area near the water. I promptly fell asleep on my stomach. The tag in my shirt must have been flipped up, because when I woke up I looked like this:
me attempting to fix the first tan line
Only I was red and started to peel almost immediately. It was pretty bad sunburn. Backpacking with a burned upper back is not fun. Really, really not fun. At first, I hope that maybe the back of my wedding gown would be higher than this tan line, but my first fitting after I got home squashed any hope of that, the line was a good three/four inches above the back of the dress.
So I determined that there was only one thing to do. I had my sister carefully apply sunscreen on the tanned area, and went out and burned the rest of my back to a crisp. Seriously, the second burn was actually worse than the first. It was very painful, I couldn’t sleep on my back for a few nights. But even worse, it didn’t work. It turns out that sunscreen bleeds a bit from directly where you apply it, so I ended up with a very brown back, with a single, finger width line of white running across it.
The end result. You can clearly see the lines on my back
The picture above is what it looked like on my wedding day. This was about a month (maybe a bit more) later, and I had done more tanning of my whole back, as well as giving it some time to fade a bit. Luckily, I had a two layer veil, which obscured the view of my tan lines most of the time. Although I did show them off to a few close friends.
I learned a few important lessons from this: The way to fix a sunburn is not to burn more, always wear sunscreen, and for goodness sakes make sure that your tag is not flipped up.
Biking the Seawall
Hubby and I went biking today. I haven’t been on a bike in a good 5 or 6 years at least. And I have to say, I’ve forgotten how much fun it was. I think my problem with bikes in the past has been that I absolutely hate biking in traffic. But today we were biking in Stanley Park, so there wasn’t any car traffic to deal with.
I don’t own a bike, although Hubby does. He loves biking, and has been wanting some one to bike with. I said that if he could find a bike I’d go with him, as long as I didn’t have to ride in traffic. Fortunately for us, there are rental places right outside Stanley Park. So for a measly $20, I had a bike for the afternoon. Hubby brought his own from home, which means that we have now also mastered the art of how to use the bike racks on the front of the buses. This is a big step.
So we rode the entire sea wall. I have to say, for a first bike ride in six year, 11K was probably not the smartest distance to chose. It was totally fun, but I hurt now. My shoulders are a bit sore, my legs are aching. And frankly the seat was not that comfortable.
It was really nice to ride beside the ocean. We could smell the water, and for most of the distance the bike path was separated from the car route around the park. We were near the pedestrians, we went by a couple beaches. There were trees and rocks along the other side, as we were down a hill from the road.
Overall, we had a really good day. We got out in the sun for a bit and got some good exercise. Amazingly it only took a little over an hour to actually do the bike ride around the park. That is, except for the time we stopped while Hubby bought me ice cream. That’s right, for going out on a bike with him, I got Mint Chocolate Chip!
