The Pros and Cons of Fluffy Snow

Today has been an interesting day. And somewhat terrifying.

My parents and I went to a Chinese buffet restaurant today for a relative's birthday. On the way there, it was starting to snow, in big and fluffy flakes. It started out as being okay for visibility, but the closer we got to the restaurant, the worse it got.

Now, crazy weather and I don't mix well. I get a little tense, because I sit and hope that nobody hits us, because the roads are usually greasy and slippery, and some drivers tend to drive like idiots, which makes matters worse :p So I sat in the backseat of our van, trying to look at the snowy buildings instead of the traffic and focus on the songs being played on the radio. One of those songs was 'Time Stand Still' by Rush, which is one song by Rush that I seem to hear waaaay too much, but I hummed along to the song anyway. What was funny was when the radio DJ was talking about the snow, and said something like, "Coming up next, a song by The Scorpions about weather that isn't quite as bad as what we have," and after the commercials he played 'Rock You Like a Hurricane' :p

It got a little easier once we got in the parking lot. The lot was a lot less greasy than the roads, so getting into a parking space wasn't too tricky. When we got inside the restaurant, I kept my coat on, because even though it was fairly warm inside I was still pretty cold.

The restaurant was one we'd tried almost a year ago, on my dad's birthday. They were only open for a week or two, so the food had been mediocre and the layout of the tables was pretty tight. However, they seemed to have changed the layout since then, so there was a lot more elbow room :)

The food was okay - I generally prefer the food at Mandarin, another Chinese buffet in my city. Some of their food was fairly good: the torpedo shrimp were very tender and flavourful, and not too greasy; the shrimp dumplings were tasty (I got one that was a little crunchy, though), and the pork siu mai was tasty as well. However, the noodles were a bit greasy, there weren't a lot of vegetable dishes, and the General Chicken had too much breading for my taste. The desserts were better, I think: I picked up some Jello, a brownie, a mango-flavoured cake slice that Mom had liked (it had mousse between the cake layers :D), some blackberries, and a cream puff. The cream puff was a little dry, and the Jello seemed crunchy in texture (that's the best way I can describe it :p), but the brownie was pretty good, the mango cake was delicious (so much so, I want to attempt to make a similar cake :p), and the blackberries were delicious - I'd already tried one of Mom's blackberries, so I knew they were good. Oh, and I'd had won-ton soup to start, and it was delicious as well - the won-tons were packed with meat, which was nice to see.

Once we were done, the weather quieted. The roads were still a little greasy, but it had stopped snowing, so we could see things :p Right now, it looks like a Christmas card outside the spare room window.

In knitting news (it seems I don't post enough about my knitting anymore!), I'm almost done the garter stitch half of my bobble pillow from... June '09 :p It had been living in my wardrobe too long, so I'm trying to get it finished. Of course, I might not get it done for a while, because I'll have to buy a pillow form. But getting it off the needles is enough of an accomplishment for me :)

And in reading news, I'm trying to finish Blood and Chocolate. I've only got a few more chapters to go, but because of my habit of re-reading sentences, I was reading too slowly :p I'm trying to break that habit, though, because I miss being able to read books very quickly. I think I'm getting back to a better reading pace :)

That's pretty much it. Well, except that I made some late-ish goals for the new year: get out of the house more (which I did yesterday - I went shopping for a birthday gift with my parents, and my mom and I walked to Shopper's Drug Mart to buy a birthday card :D), drink less soda (because there's quite a bit of sugar in a can of soda), and eat for fruits and vegetables.

Until next time... :)

I should probably update.

So, sorry about the lack of posts. I've done most of my computer stuff on Dad's computer, because mine lags on sites with a lot of Flash, and my cousin was always up in the spare room where my computer is, so I had to use Dad's a lot. Not that I minded much - his computer is so much faster than mine.

Not much has happened since the tent sale. Justin (my cousin) didn't come back for his stuff, so Mom and I had to bag it all up... including his dirty laundry. eww. There's still a pair of his underwear that we somehow missed, and his umbrella. Dad came home from work not long after we started packing things up, so he helped with packing boxes and the heavy lifting; and when Brent (my uncle) arrived, he helped pack it all into Brent's Jeep.

Anyway. We couldn't go out for dinner on my birthday, so we went out for breakfast/lunch/brunch instead - the restaurant we went to has all-day breakfast, so my parents ordered off the breakfast menu and I ordered off the lunch menu. Then we went to the British imports shop and bought candy and stuff. We even bought a kebab-flavoured Pot Noodle, which I ate for lunch yesterday. It tasted pretty good, although I had to add a little bit of the chili sauce that came with it to perk up the flavour a bit.

Yesterday we went to Denninger's to buy a cake. I decided on a cute little square cake, because it didn't make sense to buy a huge cake since only three people were eating it. It's a chocolate/mocha/caramel cake, and it's absolutely delicious. We bought cold-cuts and chocolate, too, and ordered Chinese take-out for dinner.

Mom annoyed me this morning by telling me that tomorrow I had to 'hit the books, make a schedule and stick to it, and take my GED stuff seriously'. I guess she didn't notice all the GED English work I've done. Granted, I did my work in spits and spurts, but whatever.

Anyway, that's pretty much it. I'll try to post more often :)

Visiting my sister

I went to London, Ontario to see my sister Katie yesterday. My dad was meeting folks, so while we were waiting for him and my sister's boyfriend to come, the three of us - me, Katie and Mom - played Scrabble. Katie won, I came in second place, and Mom came in third. For me, the best part of the game was when I had a blank tile and got 'hijabs'. And, if I remember correctly, it was a triple-word score. Sweet :)

Also, she gave me three packs of gum. She bought this huge mixed pack of gum, and found out that she only liked one kind, so she game my mom three packs of peppermint gum and she gave me three packs of berry-flavoured gum. I was only going to take one pack when she offered us the gum, but she said, "You want two packs? Three?", and just gave them to me.

We went out to a Japanese restaurant for dinner. The food there is so good. I didn't eat any sushi (I wasn't too keen on it the first time I tried it), but I did have a bowl of BBQ pork udon, and some tempura, and some squid. Yum :) I also had a few edamame, which were quite good, and some deep-fried squid rings. Then everyone except Dad had ice cream. The servings of ice cream were small - which is actually good because desserts are often so huge. Mom, Katie and I had mango-flavoured ice cream and Katie's boyfriend had vanilla. The mango ice cream was so good!

I took two books with me for the trip there - a book about Bob Dylan, and Emperor Mage by Tamora Pierce. I was going to bring my discman, but I decided against it - I hate my discman. I really don't like the buttons on it, because you have to dig your finger into them, but that might have been because I had the discman on my bed while reading or something when I was using it. Anyway, I might have to get an MP3 player, so that I have some music to take with me on those long car rides.