August 2005 Archives
Hi everyone! I've finally arrived in San Francisco for good this time!!! my plane arrived late monday night with Aruna picking me up with a beautiful bouquet of flowers to welcome me to the US..cute eh?? so nows the fun part, getting settled in this apartment and exploring my surroundings, since I'm going to be here for the next few years or so,......now all I need to do is drop my Canadian accent (eh?) and I'll fit right now...hehe...wish me luck everyone, as this is quite a big step for a little Canadian girl like me. Vancouver at over 1 million people is small to these Californian folks down here and damn small is my home town of Prince Rupert-population of around 11,000 yikes!!!
Was the total price of gas yesterday when I filled up my Cooper S. Wow. It is $2.999 a gallon, three bucks for 91 octane. Yikes. I went into San Francisco proper last night, and it was up to 3.10 there. Regular 87 octane is running around $2.80. What's it like in your neck of the woods? I can't imagine filling up a twenty gallon tank every week! Sucks for those long distance commuters. It's almost time to start biking to work!
Well, today, August 21st, is our anniversary date! It's been a very short year of being apart.. Lisa is coming down to San Francisco next week. Last night we had an enjoyable stay at the Pan Pacific Vancouver hotel, which is right on the waterfront directly above Canada Place! Pretty much one of the more expensive hotels in the area. But hey, it's pretty much our honeymoon again, since we've only really seen each other about six weeks in the first year of our marriage!
We had a really enjoyable dinner at Lumière, a wonderful upscale restaurant. The nine course meal was exquisite and presentation was flawless. It's been voted the best restaurant in Vancouver for several years now. We had the Kitchen Menu, which had selections of some of their most popular meals over the course of three and a half hours. Some wonderful food, and excellent and friendly service!
Here are a couple pictures to tide you over, and to show you the wonderful view and room that we shared! We stayed in the elegant Topaz suite, which I'm sure was expensive, but I was able to get an upgraded suite because of our 'special anniversary'. We also had a friend that was able to negotiate a better rate at the hotel. It all paid off!
Here's a view of Grouse Moutain. You can see the ski slopes across Burrard Inlet. The Canada Place sails are just below our room.
And here is a panorama of the view that was from the Topaz balcony. A very nice 270 degree view! This image is clickable, and it's 550KB! View this image! From the left to right, you can see Stanley Park, the Lions Gate bridge, the Lions, West Vancouver, North Vancouver, Grouse Mountain, Seymour mountain, Burrard Inlet, and Gastown. Whew. And below is Lynn (Lisa's sister and our taxi service!) and I hanging out in the main area of the room.
This weekend marks all sorts of cool and exciting things. Tomorrow is moms anniversary of her birthday, so Happy Birthday Mom! :) I'll try and give you east coasters a call sometime tomorrow. Hopefully you had an enjoyable vacation down in the midwest. I received your postcard too, which was great! Hopefully you'll write up a little something here. ;)
And then on Sunday, it's Lisa and my seven year anniversary! Can you believe it? Seven years. Wow. They've gone by so quickly. Seven years on August 7th. Of course, it's not the anniversary of our wedding.. That happens on the 21st. Hopefully I'll see a lot of you when I come up to Vancouver for one last big party!
Work is going well. Fully into the Chevy commercials. I'm scheduled until the end of September, and then onto Charlotte's Web. I assume. I'm always supposed to be on Charlotte's Web whenever my current show ends, but never actually get around to working on it.
Business wise, things are slowing down just a little. Haven't registered for a fictitious business statement or license. Just slowing down, taking a breather. I was finally able to get online to register for classes at DVC (Diablo Valley College), but haven't done so. I can't find out their credit prices for courses! Hopefully I'll receive something in the mail this week or next. The hope is to take the evening business management course one day a week for the fall semester, and then in the spring either take the second part of it, or take the machine tech courses for two evenings a week.
Strange that as soon as Lisa comes down, I'm thinking about spending more time away from her! It's only one night a week, which is good. We'll have all the weekends in the world to spend together now that she's coming down here permanently.
Lots and lots of ideas churning in this brain of mine, just need to bring them to fruition, which is probably the hardest part.
Went paintballing Sunday. It was quite fun! I even got some video! Here's a 3MB mpeg file to give you a taste. If you want more, here's a 11MB mpeg file that's 49 seconds long. And then here's a different 38MB one, and a 45MB one!
