I focus on the pleasure, somethin' I can treasure, can you picture that?

Bad Leigh. Bad bad Leigh. Bad bad bad Leigh. 8 days between posts. Sigh.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOOKUM and DAD!

For those of you not in the know, today is my sister Danielle's 24th birthday (or as my mother put it, "Now you're an entire package of candles!" day) and the 14th of May was my father's !@#$)* un-birthday (dates have been encoded for the protection of the parties involved) .

Why is her nickname Bookum? Hint- say it out loud. Twenty sparkle points to the first person that gets it, thirty points if you are under the age of 25 (no cheating if you already know, and I know if you know).

Lets see, what have you missed in 8 days?

CLEANING!

LOOK HOW CLEAN!!

This is the part where you say "Oh my stars Leigh, I marvel at the cleanliness of your not-entirely-humble-and-actually-fairly-impressive abode. Is there some precipitating feature of your week which inspired such shining..., er...shiny-ness?"

Why, yes, in fact. Sarah's grandparents (and naturally Sarah herself) had a visit. =)

We made a very successful meal of shrimp stir fry (with bok choy!From scratch!) and Terry and Brenda very wisely brought wine and chocolate, which is the ultimate ambassadorial gift. When we find alien life out there, all we have to do is bring wine and chocolate to the intergalactic dinner party and the human race will be golden.

The next day we visited the twin towns of Courteney and Comox, each with some lovely features. Firstly, Comox, which basically looks like this;

Which makes me very very comfortable, because basically small shoreline towns here are exactly the same as small shoreline towns in Michigan- the inherent differences being that you don't float as well in Lake Michigan, and that Lake Michigan is...well, a lake, as opposed to an ocean. Regardless of its well deserved but notwithstanding capital L.

Speaking of the ocean-

And then of course, this. 

How many crabs can you spot? Hint: there are a BAJILLION of them and I am terrified and fascinated by them in turns.

So after a few lovely hours at the seaside, where we also spotted a bald eagle (note: if the locals see you getting excited about seeing a bald eagle, or mention in any tones other than those of boredom the existence of an eagle, they know you are not a local) we moseyed into Courteney.

This man; too excited about eagles to be a local. We geeked out together. This is Terry BTW, he and Brenda are wonderful.

I will now show you the two most exciting things about Courteney. One is this restaurant, called "The Mad Chef"

Are we surprised?

where I had bugs in my soup

Haha! Bugs in my soup! See what they did there?

and where Michael picked up a sweater proclaiming that "Animals Taste Good". Which back east would just be funny, but here in the land of the hippy veggie earth muffins is both hilarious and kinda dangerous. Not unlike Ash with his chainsaw hand and lack of medieval tact.

Pop cult-ture reference anyone?

The other most exciting thing was the Mario sighting.

Of course that's really him!

Other highlights of the day included a baby fawn that wandered about downtown Comox eating the flowers out of people's gardens in the middle of the day without a care in the world, and various establishments that had ship appendages.

I said various, I really just mean this one.

When we came home, there were fresh oatmeal cookies waiting for us with cold milk, making Cam the official Hero of the Week. Also, Emma in a box.

"But Leigh!" you say, and quite rightly "That only accounts for...well...maybe three days, if it was some really intense cleaning! Six if you count going to work and them coming home and doing laundry and unpacking and maybe playing an hour or so of Diablo. What else could you possibly have done in the remaining two days?"

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to unveil

(dramatic pause)

PROJECT HOBBIT HOLE

You remember the murder-room? The room in the basement that looked as though it was the primary shooting location for the ickiest scenes in "Last house on the left"? 

NOT ANYMORE. 

Behold! My sewing/yoga/playing-the-wii-because-only-Sarah-and-I-like-the-wii/crafting/escape/lair  room. Which I am painting. This is phase 1

Um...it won't let me rotate the picture, so just tilt your heads to the right. Thats the cutting in. 

And this is the finished product!

See? Can't be a murder room now. The smurfs are inherently non-violent.

It's actually a really lovely shade of teal. The accent colors will be cherry red and a very pale spring yellow. My next order of business is to get a carpet remnant to lay down over the scary (and rather worryingly stained) 70's carpet, and then start setting up furniture and my sewing machine. I have so much work to do!

Whats coming up this week? Well, my 9-5 job on Tues, Weds, Thurs, and then Friday more house-ular organizing and de-cluttering, and then this weekend garage sales to try to fill some the gaps in our furniture needs.

Until next time, more hilarious Emma!

"ooh, wus dis?"

"Ahh! Can see dah nay-boors. Put da clotheses on!"

I never think of money, I think of milk and honey, grinnin like a Cheshire Cat-

I've found it. I've found the catch. I knew this life was to good to be true. The one fly in the B.C. ointment-

365 lawn maintenance.

I just spent the evening of my long-weekend sunday raking the grass clippings from the front lawn. Sigh. Oh well, at least this was typical of my view for most of the week.

"Double rainbow all the way acrooosss the skyyyyy"

I guess I can live with mowing the lawn every 6 days if I get to live in rainbow country. 

Meanwhile- why haven't you posted in 5 days Leigh!?!?

Because I got a job. And all I'm telling any of you is that I'm working as the office manager for an organic personal hygiene products company. Its part time, completely flexible around my theatre schedule, and is work I enjoy, so good stuff. I was hired wednesday, and started the very next day, so lots of adjusting for me. 

The other reason I haven't posted sooner, is that we went (epic travelling music please) to visit Ms. Sarah! We went up last night to take her out to dinner in the wilds of Campbell River, and we wound up in a really excellent sushi joint on the River. Afterward we stocked her up on chocolate, snacks and juice (and timbits for her classmate who has never been to Tim Hortons), then moseyed off for a walk down the river. I was unwisely in evening attire, so I trekked in white strappy sandal heels LIKE A BOSS. Badass me for being outdoorsy in a dress, no? 

The best part of the river walk was when Sarah explained to us all the awesome stuff she learned about white water kayak/canoeing and how to recognize different waves. These are haymakers, the swishy and theoretically fun/safe to ride waves, created by the river bouncing off the bank and back onto itself, not unlike Uncle Tom's tubing Waffle Chop. 

This, however, is an underwater rock, which you can tell because the water is almost going backwards around the rock. These are both theoretically and practically a very sad day for you should you hit one. 

And this is just a general shot of the beautiful river and trail we trekked on. 

We did come across something quite wonderful on the trail- about halfway to the second bridge was a memorial bench, representative of the many people who have had their ashes scattered in the river. It was a beautiful spot and a lovely reminder. 

And this is a banana slug. 

"Lets name it Steve!"
"Steve?"
"It's a pretty name..."

Finally we hiked it back to the car. 

Lovely, no? 

It was a lovely visit. Sarah is doing well, learning tons, and looking forward to applying all the terrifying things she's learning how to do to small children. Rock climbing has been a bit of a bother for her, but it was a brand new skilll whereas the others were at least a little familiar, so no surprise of a learning curve. Her response was of course "Screw you wall, I WILL CLIMB YOU!" And then proceeded to do so, skillfully and politely. Because she's Canadian and thats how they do. 

That catches us up to today, wherein I CLEANED the kitchen, did laundry, did dishes, hooked up the new shower head, caught up on e-mails, vaccumed and cleaned the living room/couchular area, bought paint, made lunch, raked the lawn, and was generally useful almost all day. There might have been a little bit of Diablo, I won't lie. Now I'm helping Michael make dinner, and planning out the groceries for the rest of the week. And then maybe a little more diablo before bed. Maybe. 

Tomorrow, project Hobbit Hole begins. 

And now, I shall leave you with some joy. 

"Oh! Uh...Hai."

Crazy as a rocket, nothin' in my pocket, I keep it at the rainbow's end!

So, we are now officially over the bug, whatever it was, and back to doing what we do best which is work really hard at finding some work. Sadly for me the interview I had this morning didn't pan out, as the employer was specifically looking for someone to stay in the position at least ten years, and she felt that I was looking for something temporary given that kids are coming along in a few years and so on. Also, I was a little young. K, well, worth a try, good thing I've been churning out job applications like a machine. Something better will come along.

Meanwhile, I have been a busy bunny. I put up the strawberry planter (okay, Michael put it up, I couldn't reach)

 the clothesline,

put the baker's rack back together (sadly not all of it arrived, so I'm going to have to make a new cover for it) unpacked the entire kitchen (no, you may not have a picture) and gotten halfway through unpacking the clothes. Also, a great deal of progress has been made on the dining room! Observe.

Before

Before

After!

Seriously,  this is progress, I promise. You can now see the floor in this room. 

Also also, new haircut.

I'll like it better in about two weeks when it's grown out a bit I think.

Michael and I have also been running every other day, and have now completed week 2 of the couch to 5k program. I do feel like I've made progress, and I am 1) No longer in stupid amounts of muscle pain all the time and 2) feeling like my muscles are responding better to me than ever before, which is encouraging!

From our run last night

Getting the geek on!

Last night Michael Cam and I attended the midnight release of Diablo III, to which I appeared in my comfy robe and slippers because it was midnight and I was tired and couldn't be bothered to put real clothes on. Which ended up being okay anyway, because the staff thought I was adorable. Which I can be. Sadly I had my interview this morning, and had already been busy yesterday cleaning and unpacking and generally bamfing about, so I couldn't stay up to actually play the game, which I might engage in once I've finished my chores this evening. But Michael and Cam jumped right in and enjoyed until about 3 A.M. Also, we got the very very last collectors edition, which comes with all kinds of cool stuff including a making of DVD which I will play while I clean the living room today.

Gorgeous 180 page art book. The artists who work on these
games are incredible. 

 I'm a complete geek when it comes to how things are done. As much as I enjoy the finished product, I have a greater love for the process.

I find in myself a need to have several focuses at once. For instance, my large focus is unpacking. But that task feels almost overwhelming, so I focus on some smaller things. Like last night I spent a few hours organizing all the magic cards (no small task). Its a little thing, maybe a silly thing, but being able to finish something that is a task I would need to do anyway, and knowing it was something I could accomplish to completion, makes me feel better.

Look how organized!!

Ms. Sarah is finding COLT to be a varied experience. Some of her instructors aren't terribly on the ball, and they are pushing them very hard (seriously, they are in class from 8 in the morning til 9 at night. University wasn't even that punishing). But, she says that she is growing in skill and making friends, and isn't that the point?

Emma and Dinah have a new game. It's called "chase each other up and down the stairs at 3 in the morning".  So for about 20 minutes each night I keep dreaming that I'm a comedy drummer for someone making bad jokes, as the sound of the little cat feet (Dinah= patpatpatpatpat Emma= THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD)wanders into my REM sleep. Sigh. At least the cats are happy.

Everybody's lover, everybody's brother, I want to be your lifetime friend-

Sorry guys, but there's only this perfunctory blog today. Michael and I are both under the weather. I would love to say that its some exotic island disease, but its probably just a case of "Hey you've barely stopped in the last several weeks your body hates you". We spent the morning taking a long rest, and by morning I mean neither of us was very able to be up and about until late morning, and then had a little breakfast, and since I was feeling a bit better by then and Cam had come down, we took a short crack at the boxes. That ended up winding us pretty quick, but there are lots of boxes that are now either empty or in their proper places. So, we got a lot done, but we feel rather awful, so we're curled up on the couch watching Sherlock, which is BRILLIANT for the record.

Meanwhile, Sarah is having a very intense time at COLT. In brief, she has had some adventures in re-learning to paddle (there is new stuff to know!) and her paddling instructor thinks she's awesome because she has nailed all of it and done spankingly well at not overturning her canoe into the white water. One of her instructors did a not so good a job at making sure that lunch was actually with them and not on the side of the road where it
could be stolen by passing motorists. Which it was.

More tomorrow to make up for what was not today.

I'm going to go back there someday.

I apologize for no pictures this post, but you've seen everything there is to see up until this point. The unpacking mess is still an unpacking mess (although slightly more functional now that I've put the baker's rack mostly back together) and nothing visually striking has happened. Well, thats not true, but I wasn't there for the visually striking things I will now tell you about, because they happened to Sarah.

She was able to send us an email, which she had to type in advance because basically there is precisely one internet cable and ten people that want to use the internet, so everyone gets less than 10 minutes. Highlights of the e-mails include- her first day involved a high ropes course and zip-lining (so jealous!) which she thought was totally awesome a la A Very Potter Musical. Day two involved splashing about in the icy cold snow fed lake in a kayak and practicing wet exits, which was fun but chilly. The food is fantastic, lots of healthy veggie options, and she thinks that her classmates are really quite lovely. So things go very well and scenically for Ms. Sarah. 

Back here on the home-front, things are busy and in some ways quite surprisingly complex. We were very upset because the building in Shawnigan lake that we were so enamoured of seemed to be taken, but the deal fell through so its on the market again. However, there is an even more viable venue elsewhere that we are looking closely at, so everything just depends on how the money falls. Regardless, we've already been invited to perform in some local Canada Day celebrations, so thats a good start. We need to work up some sword fights baby!

Michael got me strawberry plants for my planter yesterday, so tonight I will set them up. So excited! I also mowed the lawn yesterday...my riding mower skills are a bit rusty, so I only got it stuck once. Yay me! I also got a response to my resume- I have a job interview tuesday! Huzzah!

Yesterday evening Cam Michael and I went out and made new friends at the local gaming shop, called Dice Bag. We're trying to find a shortening of that name that isn't dirty, but its looking like one doesn't exist except DB. We played Magic for a while, and Michael and Cam watched some table top gaming, and then we headed home for leftover chinese dinner. The DB is pretty cool because not only do they do casual game nights, but they have in house games that you can sit down and play-test before you buy. We have already suggested to them that as soon as it becomes commercially available, they buy Plunder, our friend Doc Franklin's game. Ooh, we also watched the first episode of Sherlock. Its great, I'm in. 

Lessee, today...today we went and looked at building, then had lunch at the Garage, a local vegan hot spot. Unfortunately we didn't know it was vegan until we were already ordering, so I improvised and got the anti-veggie Cam a cinnamon bun. We moseyed home, where I took the better part of two hours putting the bakers rack back together (lets just say I'm never letting Michael anywhere near the duct tape again) and then proceeded to attack the kitchen in an organizy cleany fashion, which ended with me calmly cutting my finger and bleeding profusely. Michael then decided it was probably time for me to stop being productive, and sat me on the couch with a band-aid and Zelda. It was a wise 20 minute rest. 

Afterwards, Michael went for a run with me! He's been looking at the program I'm doing, and his mother has already started the program as well, so he thought he'd give it a whirl. I know I'm doing better, I can feel my stamina increasing, I just wish everything would stop hurting! Oh well, you pay for what you get, I am getting into my first wedding dress again slimmer than when I first put it on. It shall be so! 

There is only one problem with our house...it is a little too close to the local Coldstone. 

Oh goodness...everything is running together in my head so its hard to keep track. I think thats all the stuff which might be of interest. If I think of something else, I'll put it in saturday's blog. 

Keep the peace!

Close to my soul, and yet so far away...

Michael has (I think wisely) decreed that today is "Work-on-our-resume's-and-not-do-very-much-else" day. Which was a wonderful plan right up until we had to do stuff. But, its only three in the afternoon, so theres still some time to relax.

Frankly, we need a nothing day. Remember this?

Well, its still kinda that, except more all over the house. 

So today is officially a week since we got here, and the house is everything we could have hoped for and more. We haven't tried any local restaurants yet, being so tired of eating out all the time, but we've certainly adapted to our new kitchen. Some of the kitchen stuff is still packed, but we still managed to Macguiver this tasty meal-

That reminds me. HOW AWESOME WAS THE AVENGERS?!?!

Our exceedingly non-traditional family.

So, the last three day recap.

Unpacking for Michael Cam and I  (I found the dishes!!!), repacking for Sarah as she prepared for COLT was most of Saturday, wrapped up with a watching of Ghostbusters 2 on the newly unpacked TV, plus a catch-up session of Big Bang Theory. 

Sunday we slept in a bit, then back out and about in Duncan checking out some local spots and finding last minute things for Sarah's trip like bic lighters and pens and really bad-ass duct tape with flames on it. I hunted up a new shower head for the downstairs shower (eco friendly!) and a clothesline and brackets for it. I still haven't put it up yet, shame on me, but its been busy. Sunday I made going-away dinner for Sarah of shrimp linguine alfredo with broccoli  and brownies and ice cream for dessert, and then we finished off the day with a drive to Victoria to see THE AVENGERS.

Can I just riff for a moment on how AWESOME that movie was? I can't even type it in lower case, it is THE AVENGERS. Which I'm trying to talk Michael into going and seeing again today. Cause I want to. Thats how good it is.

Now that you have the keys to the studio Joss Whedon, can you PLEASE bring back Firefly/Dollhouse? Please?

With sugar on top?

Which brings us to why I didn't post yesterday, and why we needed a do nothing day today. Monday we woke, got Sarah packed and ready to go, had french toast (you're welcome) and then were off on the three hour drive to COLT. Sarah was both sad and happy to go, and subsequently gets to run around in this. 

Most epic Otter.

Pretty cool huh? Let me tell you, girlfriend has some scary cool gear. I helped her hem some pants. Mom, I need tips on hemming pants, two of them didn't come out quite straight.

We arrived at COLT around 2:30, which is in beautiful Strathcona park. Observe.

She gets to hang out here

And here

And here

Somehow, I think she'll be just fine.

Cam and Michael found her new digs to be cabin-in-the-woods-horror-movie-terrifying, but Michael by his own admission considers hotels without room service to be 'roughing it'. It just reminded me of summer camp, so I was perfectly comfortable. Sarah once made herself and stayed in an igloo of tarps and snow. She'll be fine.

Before we left, I took a picture of this, which was in the lodge. Ten sparkle points to the first person who figures out what this is. 

We had planned to eat there at the lodge restaurant, but found that it wasn't open until evening for dinner. So, dinner would have to wait til Nanaimo. We got Sarah settled into her new digs, wandered about enjoy the gorgeous scenery, almost got the Lancer stuck in a tiny one lane foresty road thing, and got back to the lodge. We then hugged her, left her to run about like a squirrel and prepare for her transformation into a grizzly bear, and headed home. Where we were beckoned to our dinner by this;

Scary? Yes. But it was attached to an A&W/gas station, and we couldn't wait to eat any longer. Ultimately there was a bright and shiny silver lining to this stop, in the discovery of TINY ICE CREAM!

Admittedly not as cool as THE AVENGERS, but I did giggle like a loon for the next hour of the drive over the minuteness of the delicious frozen treat, and its equally miniature spoon. 

Which brings us to today. 

Woke up, unpacked more stuff, put away all the board games (yay!) set up the living room rug, vaccumed various things, watched Emma set up camp on Cam's lap, ran errands to Walmart and Rona with Michael (we have a toaster again!) went for my run (which I completed and was attacked by what I hope was a non-lethal snake) and now am blogging, beefing up my resume, and applying for jobs! 

Talk to you soon!

Also, mountains.