dad - internet - me - 'nough said..

my parents are current when it comes to technology in general. email has been a regular in the household for quite some time, they have been chatting on msn for quite a number of years, use gtalk to chat with me, and is able to navigate the internet better than most parents. which is a problem.. for me.

why you ask? oh, just a little something called the husband hunt *dun* *dun* *DUNNNN*. last week dad sent me a link: www.gujaratimatrimony.com with a message telling me to find a husband there. that evening my parents call and dad asks, "did you go to that site? did you find yourself a husband yet?" yes, i'm SERIOUS.

today.. oh today..

dad went to another site (www.shaadi.com) and went as far as searching for guys:
link 1
random guy's profile dad picked out

oh.. dear.. GOD.

it's one thing for my parents to take initiative in the search by telling family and friends that it's time i find a husband, so if they know of anyone.. it's another thing for my parents to immediately jump to the internet. it works for some people, yes, but it doesn't work for me! as much as i'm online (and we all know that's a lot), the idea of dating someone i met online freaks me out.. unless i have some way of connecting a person i already know to you (even three or four steps would do), there's no chance in hell something's going to happen.

hrmm.. wonder how long before my parents actually post a profile of me and start messaging guys.

i have frogs

if that's an innuendo of some sort.. then it was unintentional.

i've been watering the garden the past few days and i've been noticing a frog hopping about in the front yard amonst the flowers and bushes. today, i saw like four little baby frogs hopping about. where did they come from?! certainly they couldn't have been born in my yard because don't they need to be in water?

anyway, i haven't quite figured out if this is a good thing or not. are frogs a sign of something good or bad? am i watering too much? am i watering too little? is there a plant that attracts frogs? are they a sign of something to come..?

disgusting to watch, but i couldn't look away :S

i was sitting outside chris/matt/matt's building waiting for chris, greg, and keizo to get back from the dinner with lee i missed.. while waiting, i was witness to something fairly disgusting, but i couldn't possibly look away because it was happening right in front of me.

a van was sitting in the drop off/pick up area. an old woman was standing just outside the sliding door facing the van, a man (who i assume to be her son) has the passenger door open about to help (who i assume to be) his father out of the front passenger seat. all of a sudden the old woman pukes. then stands up straight as if nothing happens. then pukes again. at this point the son is trying to find something, a bag, tissues, who knows. then the woman pukes a third time, except this time her dentures fall out.. she tries to catch them, but is very unsuccessful. so she bends down, pick up her dentures off the ground, and places them back in her mouth. pukes again, but is able to catch the dentures as they fall out. by this time, the son has found tissues and a bag. the husband is now out of the front seat, so they make their way into the building.

.. why am i sharing this?

cbc's great canadian wish list

cbc is using facebook as a tool to compile a canadian wish list. it's an interesting concept since it's user driven (not mediated by cbc) and it's using a popular social network. this is why i like the cbc: they come up with the most interesting projects, engage thoughtful topics of discussion, and copies the best british programs.

one obvious problem with this method is it limits access to the experiment to those registered with facebook - there are no alternative methods for participation (by mail, phone, fax, website). there are 2 million canadian users on facebook [source] - considering the current population is approximately 33 million.. that's 6% of the population who have used facebook at some point in time. that's actually a decent number, especially since more than half the users on facebook (in general) are out of college/university [source]. so one would hope the facebook demographics are a decent representation of canadians to some degree.

anyway.. i'm done rambling.

my real issue is with the current top two wishes: abolish abortion and remain pro-choice. should this even be debated?! ugh. i'm not going to preach my belief on here.. i'm just really bothered with the fact that with all the problems we face today, people are still mulling over this.

summer colds SUCK!

it's HOT out. i don't like it. i'm ready for winter to be back.. i have a cold - in hot weather i caught a cold *sigh* it bites. at least my boss made me go home early on friday, so i had the joy of having an afternoon nap. this weekend was full of buckley's, tylenol, and brandy - this cold remedy combination seems to be doing the trick :)

saturday after buying plants, we left my brother to his own gardening devices.. my parents and i went house visiting. i was obliged to go since i'm now the one living in toronto. my brother needed the suv in case he needed to borrow some gardening tools from dad's sister, so that meant i was driving. mum HATES my driving :) well, she tolerated my driving in ottawa. she hates my driving in toronto.. before i moved to toronto i was just speedy gonzales to her - a girl with a heavy foot. here in toronto, i found i turned into an aggressive driver. not sure what it is.. maybe it's the city? or i'm just turning restless..

saturday night we headed downtown to the brasserie, a pub down the road from the citytv building. we were late for the reservation i made, but the staff were incredibly nice about it. my cousin, dharmesh, met us there for dinner. the martini list looked delicious! i indulged in the yellow polka dot martini for two reasons: it has yellow in the name and it's made with lemon vodka. oh so yummy. the martini and the belgian frites certainly made up for my dinner's shortcomings. i ordered the goat cheese and chicken pizza (sans chicken) because it had roasted red peppers. i kind of expected the peppers to be in strips, as it should be in this case because it's pizza. they were placed diced.. ugh. not impressed. but oh well. would i go again? certainly - for the martinis and frites! mmm..

serial garden killer is my middle name..

my parents and brother came down this weekend for two reasons: gardening and invitations. my brother's wedding is in september, so we needed to get the invitations written up for my parents to start making deliveries over the long weekend.

the front of the house is bare.. i mean BARE. it's a five year old house with not much in the front except a tree. the person who owned the house before was a single man in his 30s.. and by the looks of it, not a gardener. i tried planting a few flowers around the tree.. note the word TRY. the planting was okay, the act of watering.. not so much. it's the reason i'm a plant killer - i don't remember to water plants. mum keeps little potted plants on the kitchen window sill in front of the sink. my parents went to england for a week, and i killed the plants. so for mother's day, i bought her more plants for the window sill.. well, my parents went on holiday, and .. i killed the plants AGAIN. it's why i like cut flowers sadly.. they don't need to be watered often. and they eventually die anyway, so no big loss.

saturday morning we made a family trip to the store to buy plants. bought a whole bunch of stuff i have no idea the names of. i have lilies in the front! i *heart* lilies :) i always buy them for the kitchen table. so, the lilies are my motivation to keep this garden going.. not to mention the part that i would have to pay my parents $400 if i kill this garden.

welcome to the family feud *part deux*

here we go again..

dad: Here is what Rogers have sent for the phone.
mum: WHATS THIS U GETTING  A NEW PHONE?
me : It's actually a phone for you.. I'm just borrowing it for a month *hopefully*
dad: She asked her AlanBro for new phone, hoping he can get it cheaply. Also she has asked him for a guy who she can look forward to get married! Since her other Bro's are not any helpful finding married type guy!
mum: DAD IS FUNNY  REALLY...U ASKED ALAN?
me: Pannaben's also looking into phones for me..
heren: Mom's asking about the guys.... not your phone....
me: I just reread dad's email.. you want me to meet a married guy?!  :O  isn't polygamy illegal?!

*ba boom boom ching* thank you ladies and gentlemen, we'll be here all week..

for the love of breakfast..

most of last week for breakfast i had marscapone with strawberries on toast. SO deliciously satisfying. i saw it in a movie (kate & leopold - yes, mock me now..) and thought it was worth a try! i walked into the grocery store last monday and that's all i could think about.. weird considering i haven't seen the movie in several months. you'd think fantasies of hugh jackman would have led to food.. but no, i just walked in and thought "marscapone & strawberries on toast". anyway, i'd thought i'd share my love for this new found piece of heaven. i'm pretty confident a girl is sure to fall in love with you if you were to serve her this! (unless she's allergic to strawberries, wheat, or is lactose intollerant.. then she'll just hate you.)

side note: somehow i've ended up with three loaves of bread in my kitchen.. i have no clue how that happened.

kenny's birthday but shea gets the gift

yesterday was kenny's 15th (28th) birthday, so out we went dancing! we met up at venice: a cafe, lounge, fitness club.. or it was associated with a fitness club, i still don't get it. kenny arrived rather inebriated from after-volleyball-funness and a barbeque, should be an interesting night :) we hung out at venice for a bit where they had an artshow going on, a tattoo artists giving tattoos in the corner, and gypsy joe giving out fortunes. the place was great to sit and chat, but the mood to dance was in the air.

off we went to footworks where things got interesting.. a guy came up beside shea and took off his top to reveal his oh so sexy wife beater. his eyes were freakishly wide open, very creepy. he then went and introduced himself to shea, chatted him up for a bit, then proceeded to show off his liquid skills to complete the pre-mating ritual :)

he then introduced shea to his 22 year old friend who could do liquid better than freaky-eyes guy. then they disappeared for a bit and the 22 year old came back, started to dance some more and chat with shea. turns out the 22 year old was really 44, which you could tell because his jaw line looked old. a couple of times he danced REALLY up close to shea, as in his face was a couple of inches away from shea's face. kenny and i were having a BALL! hahahaha, oh it was hilarious watching this. kenny came up with the theory that when the two guys went away, they played rock paper scissors for shea. anyway, we left after shea exchanged emails with him (ooh la la).

awww.. poor shea. he wishes that cute girls would be just as forward as the two guys that night :) but where would the fun be in that?!

the deadline is back..

yesterday my parents called as they always do.

mum: you have to find a guy by tonight.
me: uh.. what?
mum: you have to find someone by tonight.

this was brought on by the fact another one of my cousins is ready to get married. since he's only 4 months my senior, my parents decided it's time i actually get serious about finding someone. after i got off the phone with my parents, ten minutes later mum calls again..

mum: find a guy yet?
me: yup, we got married already - by elvis!

so what's a girl to do? attend a cultural event to meet a group of sophisticated individuals? pfft.. go to a brown jam, that's what! heh. anyway, such a plan is always an unsuccessful one. i've come to the realisation (after being told by people) when it comes to guys i'm oblivious to what's happening around me resulting in missed opportunities. regrets, eh. nothing i can do about it now since i have yet to own a time machine!

apparently i have another deadline now (since my find-a-guy-by-the-time-i'm-25 deadline is now past!) - it's 3 months, basically my brother's wedding.. ugh, should be an interesting summer! hopefully i'll have plenty of escapades to blog about.

toronto sens fan

it's hard being a sens fan in toronto.. the amount of crap you get is RIDICULOUS.  seriously.

my sens paraphernalia consists of a jersey (at home), a "got senators?" decal (on my car's back windshield), a sens flag (on my car's antenna), sens logo decal (on my car passenger window) a sens drink cup (at work), a sens logo (at work), a sens roster picture (at work), and a sens penant (at work).  the sens logo decal curled and broke because it's not meant to sit in "cold" weather apparently (i made it with the crayola window clingers).  the flag on my antenna was STOLEN.  someone just took it *tear*

on a daily basis i get general comments at work such as, "hey, your team's doing well!" to congratulations/condolences on a win/lose to full out banter.  one guy at work came up to my desk, noticed the sens stuff, exclaimed, "senators?!", then walked away shaking his head.  one day on my way home, some random guy pulled up beside me, gave me a nod of approval, then made a right turn.  that was rather amusing :)  i have yet to experience someone honking their horn and giving me rude hand gestures like that time on the 401 with the truck driver..

the one comment that annoys me is, "you live in toronto now, you should be a leafs' fan!"  to that i give them the finger.. okay not really, but in my mind i do.

my mum asked me if i watched the game on saturday.  during the playoffs i haven't really sat down to watch a full game - more so i would flip to the game or go on the internet to check the score.  i actually sat down to watch the first two games of the finals and the sens lost.. so i told my mum this.  her reply: "oh ok.. so don't watch tonight either." :|  i guess i won't be watching tonight so as to not *jinx* it.. hey, it's more hygenic than not changing your underwear for the entire series.

radiation popcorn

in february we visited the sears liquidation centre since they sometimes had good deals. we walked out with a microwave, not in box. got home and discovered it's not useable.. why? no roller ring (the thing that makes the glass plate spin). a typical microwave would have been okay to work without one, but this was a convection microwave, so it needed the roller ring to sit above the coil if i decided to bake something.

i called the store about it and they said to come in since they had a couple of extra roller rings lying around. so i picked up the roller rings and took them home. they don't fit.. they're not the proper part for the microwave. the girl gave me these plastic roller rings with wheels, my microwave required a flat metal plate that sits on a little pole that spins. boo..

called sears' 800 number, "sorry we don't stock microwave parts, please take the microwave back to the store." *sigh* so i went back to the liquidation centre with the microwave, receipt in hand. not an easy task since the microwave is HEAVY! but i somehow got it out of the house and into my car <*0*> (<-- muscle flexing emoticon). they called sears' 800 number and to their surprise, "sorry we don't stock microwave parts, figure something out yourselves.." well then.. so the customer service desk lady said to check the stock of microwaves to see if they had any other microwave i liked. it's a liquidation centre, so stock is random and tends to go quickly. well.. i was in luck! they had the exact same microwave, but in a sealed box! *excellent* the only problem was the microwave was $50 more expensive. it pays to be nice to customer service reps.. because she gave the in-the-box microwave at the same price as the other one. i took home the microwave and, again, somehow made it into the house with it, set it up, and voilà: a working microwave.

over two months go by and the microwave decides to stop working. for no reason what so ever, it just stopped responding when you pressed any of the buttons. BOO. so back to sears i go, this time my parents and brother were in town so there was someone else to carry the microwave into the car :) the store sent the microwave in for repair. 1-1/2 weeks later they called saying the microwave was ready to be picked up. finally.. 10 days without microwave popcorn had put me in a sad state of affairs. brought it home, set it up, and.. *sigh* NOT FIXED. still won't work. pissed off, i called sears. after a good hour on the phone talking to sears, talking to my parents, my parents talking to sears, me talking to sears.. i got an appointment for a technician to come and fix my microwave!

today he came, my hero. he fixed my microwave. and it took him all of 10 minutes. that's right - ten freakin' minutes. the technician opened up my microwave, looked around, fiddled witht the ribbon, plugged in the microwave and whoa.. it's working! we tested the microwave with a mug of water just to make sure it's actually working. *excitement* now i get to enjoy my lazy saturday night with a bowl of warm popcorn.. mmm..