photos – Imaginary Sunshine

LiveCity Yaletown, Ontario House and Sochi World

Michelle — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:18:36 +0000

After splitting up with my sisters yesterday, I met up with my friends (J and S) at Waterfront Station in Vancouver. Our first move was to go from Waterfront Station to Yaletown-Roundhouse Station as the wait for the train was not that long and it’d be a bit faster than walking.

There was some interesting entertainment while my friends and I were waiting in the line-ups. People dressed in gold, silver and bronze were living statues. The gold statue was a skier, I’m not sure what the bronze woman was (possibly figure skating, sans skates?) and silver was a snowboarder.

Gold living statue at LiveCity Yaletown – golden skier.

Photo of the line to get into LiveCity Yaletown.

My friends and I wanted to go into the Happiness House (the Coca Cola Pavilion) first, but the staff person at the entrance to the line told us that the line was now closed (their way of ensuring that they don’t have massive wait times, I suppose?). We wandered off to go see other things first.

Happiness House, aka the Coca Cola Pavilion, at LiveCity Yaletown.

At the Panasonic Pavilion, we waited in line for tickets for a 3D movie and also got to check out some of the new technology, get our photos taken with Olympic mascot plushies and write our own eco-friendly tips that get scanned in to be added to all the other submitted tips.

Outside of the Panasonic Pavilion while waiting in line for movie tickets.

Mascot cubes inside of the Panasonic Pavilion.

After we left the Panasonic Pavilion, the lines were still closed to the Coke Pavilion, so we lined up for Samsung (another Olympics sponsor). Inside there was live entertainment, a lot of cell phones to try out and some activities to do in order to earn stickers in a passport to exchange for a scratch card. Despite having full passports, we couldn’t get any scratchcards because they had ran out for the day.

Outside of the Samsung Pavilion

After that, we went back to the Coca Cola Pavilion and the lineups for open! So we lined up. While in the lines, we watched the hockey game (Canada vs. USA). (Which was an incredibly disappointing game, I must say.) The inside of the Coca Cola Pavilion was fun though! We had to snake through this area that displayed all the styles of Coke bottles that were ever made and even clothing from Coca Cola sponsored Olympics. Even the people working in the Coke Pavilion were wearing clothes that were made from recycled plastic bottles, which I thought was pretty awesome. We got to watch a movie about Coke’s involvement with the Vancouver 2010 torch relay and then after that we got a free drink, did some activities (I got my photo taken with a Vancouver 2010 torch) and then I exchanged my empty Coke bottle for a plastic bottle that changes colour when it’s turned on – very cool indeed.

Outside of the Happiness House, about to enter.

Display of the different looks for Olympics-specific Coca Cola bottles/cans.

Display of the different looks for Olympics-specific Coca Cola bottles.

At this point, it was around 7:30pm and we made our way to a McDonald’s (I’m still on the hunt for some of the more elusive Olympics Happy Meal toys) and we made our way to one that had security at the doors, which was insane in my opinion (but it made going in pretty nice, since they only allowed a maximum of three people lining up at each cash register at any time). I got Happy Meal toy #1 (now I’m only missing #2 and #3) and we ate dinner there before wandering some more.

It was at this point we decided to make our way to Ontario House and the map that I had was missing the street that we were on (go figure) so we asked a pair of police officers how to get to where we wanted to go. In their opinion, my map was crappy and they directed us to the general direction that we should go. Problem was is that even they couldn’t remember which roads were closed to pedestrians! We eventually made our way there and got to Ontario House and we watched the 4D movie (the chairs moved, there were bubbles, fake snow, water being sprayed in our faces and also smells of hot chocolate, trees, snow, etc.) which showcased the province of Ontario, but it was really fun, since there was so much going on.

On our way to Ontario House, spotted an amazing view of Science World (a.k.a. Sochi World) with the lights reflecting on False Creek.

Inside of Ontario House, waiting a very short amount of time to watch a 4D movie.

It was a really fun day, getting to see so much with different people (Royal Canadian Mint Pavilion and Northern House,with my sisters, and LiveCity Yaletown and Ontario House with two of my friends). It was definitely a fun-filled day but now I’m just glad to have a day to relax for a bit I did do a lot of exercise yesterday and my legs could use a bit of a rest.

Swelling-be-gone =)

Michelle — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:17:11 +0000

Wow, the last time I blogged here was Tuesday? Lots of changed since then (sort of).

Wednesday
This was the day that it really hit that I got my wisdom teeth pulled. I woke up very tired and sore. The swelling really started to hit. Also, I didn’t eat very much with the medication that my dentist prescribed and it said ‘Take With Food’. Apparently half of a mushed up banana wasn’t enough and my body really did not like the medication and basically rejected it. Which sucked. I got incredibly cranky and ended up sleeping with an ice pack against my face (don’t worry, I pushed it off sometime during my sleep). I watched some of the Olympic events, fell asleep during it though. I didn’t realize that I’d get so tired from getting my teeth pulled. I guess it’s my body’s way of saying that I need to sleep, rest and let my immune system deal with the trauma of minor oral surgery.

Thursday
So Thursday I actually left my house. I went to No Frills just to buy bananas and generic ibuprofen, which was fun. I swear the cashier looked at me funny when she eyed what I had and went “Is that all?” like she was expecting me to have a shopping cart full of stuff. I watched some Olympic events again. I find that I like the ‘racing’ type events the best, or the ones that have the most aerobatic things. So far, I’ve enjoyed watching the moguls (each run is fast and plus they do neat tricks), snowboard cross (racing!), halfpipe (men’s is so much more entertaining that women’s, only because they do more interesting tricks) and some of the figure skating events. Went to bed relatively early (just to wake up again and stayed up until around 1am). Studied for my biology lab midterm (the Tuesday I go back to school) and did some math problems.

Friday (today!)
So far, I’ve taken some photos of my dolls (who’ve been neglected), some things I’ve made for the Blythe Spring Swap (criteria is that everything needs to be handcrafted) and of my sister’s Vancouver 2010 Olympic plushies. I adore them, Quatchi is super cuddly. I plan on repotting my bean plant as it’s outgrown the small pot I initially planted it in, as well was watching Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice (I didn’t last night because I was feeling tired, that’s a first!). I also plan on trying food that’s a little bit more solid today! Since getting my two left wisdom teeth pulled on Tuesday, I’ve consumed: congee (rice porridge), peanut butter, mushed bananas, apple sauce, cream of mushroom soup and clear chicken broth. Mushed bananas are the best since even if I don’t get the pieces really small, I can swallow them straight down. Peanut butter took a lot of effort, the swelling didn’t allow for very good movement of my tongue (TMI?). Cream of mushroom soup was delightful. I’m pleased to be able to say that the swelling has gone down quite considerably, there’s barely a difference between the two sides of my cheeks now (yay!). I’m also able to brush my teeth without being in pain (whoot!) and the incision site for my bottom left wisdom tooth is healing quite nicely!

These are my sister’s plushies. At the back (in the earmuffs) is Quatchi. In the front row, from left to right, is Sumi (Paralympics mascot), Mukmuk (sidekick) and Miga (whom I personally consider to be the mascot who transfers the worst from drawings to plushie form):

And this is my favourite photo that I’ve taken today, it’s of Sophie (my first Blythe doll):

Beach time and photo dump!

Michelle — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 08:04:28 +0000

My friend J had her birthday party yesterday at a local beach! It was quite fun and it was really warm out (however, when we first got there, the beach had just a few people and it was breezy and cold). It was fun though, I got to see people that I generally don’t regularly get to see (they attend different schools, I’m not really friends with them, etc.) and got to meet some new people as well. I made her a teddy bear hat (photos over at Chelle-Chelle.com) and she seemed to like it. She put it onto her head when she got it and left it on for the rest of the time that we were at the beach and all throughout dinner (we went to a restaurant as we were sorely lacking actual ‘meal’ food while we were at the beach).

I didn’t feel like going into the water today, but I had company up on the beach as I, S, S2 and A weren’t going into the water either (all girls – so typical, as commented on by one of the guys that were there). I took the time to take some photos while I was there today, which was nice because I’m so used to having to adjust colours in Photoshop due to crappy indoor lighting. Instead, I got these great shots and all I had to do was resize, crop and sharpen them once and that was it.

Random person about to catch a ball (the original photo had the other person in it as well, but showed their face so I cropped them out).

Clouds! Pretty clouds! My friends spent some time today lying on the beach and pointing out clouds with funny or interesting shapes.

Spotted: kayakers! I had to explain to one of my friends (I) the difference between kayaking and canoeing.

Overall, it was a great time. I did get a bit of sun, despite sunscreen (thanks S!). Mostly on my face. I’m expecting to be a bit pink from the sun exposure, but I don’t think I got burnt (doesn’t feel that way, anyways!)

I hope everyone had an excellent Friday and Saturday and an even better Sunday. ^^

Busy like a bee

Michelle — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 01:10:28 +0000

I… may have been a teensy bit bad and spent (quite) a bit of money today. But it’s totally a-okay because I can afford it and, well, my new dolly is going to be here by the end of the week (if the seller’s shipping estimate is anything to go by, apparently 5 working days is all the time needed from Japan to Canada via EMS). And here’s the seller’s photo:

I’m not sure what I’m going to call her yet. I have a bunch of names going around in my head right now for her. In order to really ‘justify’ my purchase, I’m going to spend more time reviewing organic chem for term 1 now. I’ve already started reviewing, I know organic chem is going to be one of those classes that I’m going to spend a lot of time studying for throughout the entire time, so I figured I might as well start during the summer. But I’m definitely not going to name her anything chemistry-related!

I got an absurd amount of exercise yesterday. I went to a fabric store and bought ‘sample fabric pieces’, which are pieces that are about 12″x12″ and only cost $0.25 a piece, which is more than enough for dolly dresses. Plus some roll ends, which are also severely marked down and absolutely huge pieces. I managed to find some in small prints and other that aren’t so small prints, but I just couldn’t resist it. But I managed to completely avoid the yarn section (I was impressed with myself). Later, I had went out to a park and walked around. It’s huge and overlooks the water so I took a lot of photos and only uploaded a few onto Flickr. So here are two of them:

After the park, I was supposed to go see the fireworks, but it started raining. There was lightning fairly early, but it didn’t start raining until much later. I ended up going home early (the fireworks were due to start at around 10pm, I believe I was home about 15 minutes before that). I was soaked so a hot shower and clean, dry clothes were much appreciated at that point. I couldn’t stop shivering until after I had an entire cup of tea.

I haven’t done too much so far for Sunday. Spent an absurd amount of money (well, not too absurd…) on something that I don’t actually need (but really, really want!). I went to volunteering and hung out with some people. Learned how to play Bridge (I swear, I’m hopeless at it and they kept on correcting me every five seconds) – after one game, I was told that I could go if I wanted to. So I did. I played Jeopardy with some of the people and it was really fun, they seemed to enjoy it a lot and they like keeping track of “dollar amounts”, even if they don’t actually win anything beyond candy (and everyone gets a piece).

I never realized how much older people like using endearments for people. Honestly, some of the residents at where I volunteer, it’s always “sweetheart, this” and “darling, that” and “dear, could you please…”. I also got called Pumpkin today. I don’t believe I’ve ever been called Pumpkin before, so it was kinda weird – I didn’t realize that someone was talking to me too, since they had called me “Pumpkin”.

Questions:

What have you been up to this weekend?
What’s the last thing that you spend money on?
What is one endearment that has been used for you before, but is very rarely used?

Photo Saturday!

Michelle — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 05:58:56 +0000

I got new earrings today (whoot!) and the backings are considerably easy to take off (I tested all of them in the store prior to buying them, and it seemed like a pretty decent deal, considering the silver part of it and all). I went over to K’s house and, bless her, she helped me out with getting the earrings out. Quite fast too. I was surprised at how fast she got them off, she made it look so easy! I was jealous. But I got them out (thankfully) and she helped me out with putting the new ones in (the daisy ones with the pink center).

And… Here’s some Sophie-spam for you all, since my dolly blog isn’t up and functional yet (but very soon!). (Yes, these photos are up on my Flickr photostream as well, but I only put up the ones I liked so…

I write this while feeling the bubbles melt =)

Michelle — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 20:05:40 +0000

@ Kimm – Not including the time that it took me to run around the house trying to find a) the yarn for his little sweater, b) the stuffing, c) the eyes (I tried on three different pairs before settling on the large glassy ones) and d) the time to take photos of Barnaby, he took maybe about 45 minutes to make? This is including time that I took to go “… I can’t count” and pulling out the stitches, of course. I’m kind of challenged that way, but if you’re able to crochet and have all the materials already with you and you can count (always a nice asset!), it probably wouldn’t take more than 30 minutes. He’s fairly small, he fits into my hand quite nicely (kind of like a stress ball, but I’m not going to do that to him!) so it’s not a very long project.

Last night was date night with the boyfriend. Erm, date afternoon + night, to be correct. But whatever. We met up and our first stop was 7-Eleven to get some snacks (Iced tea, Skittles, Aero – yum!). I got a tour of his house and met his dog (who was quite nice, despite being absolutely massive and had giant teeth and all) who was fairly well behaved and didn’t try to eat me alive or anything, which is always a plus when I’m meeting canines for the first time. We… talked about work, his massive video game collection, how I have watched more than 10 movies out of his collection that he has, work (… I don’t know why we always talk about work, but we do anyways, and it’s occasionally nice to get caught up on assorted work related gossip on the people that I know and don’t).

He made me tea! Which was really awesome, and I was quite pleased that the tea that he had at home was the same type that I normally drink (or else I would have declined – I’m rather picky like that). So that was nice. And, umm, dinner was, umm, interesting, I think is the politically correct word for it. Food had be hunted for and then the choices was kinda left to me. We had fries and chicken nuggets with drinks (iced tea for me, cream soda for him). I should have taken a photo, but hindsight is 20/20. That being said, I had barbecue sauce on fries for the first time ever and it was fairly good. We ate while watching this show called Guinea Pig, which was kind of disturbing because the guy was trying to get bitten by random marine animals (some kind of fish, I can’t remember the name anymore, an eel, looking for squid, etc.). Absolutely weird, hands down. But it was kind of interesting at the same time, since I do like marine wildlife.

But it was fun and plus I went home with most of the Aero (love, love, love Aero) and the rest of the Skittles. I asked if he had an elastic or something for the bag of Skittles because he’d cut the bag open. He picks up a roll of black electrical tape and proceeds to cover the entire thing while I’m staring and he hands it back to me and I’m like “…” while I’m dropping it into my bag. Luckily it comes off with no problems and the Skittles are currently next to me in a nice zipped bag, no electrical tape required. The unfortunate thing is that I can see a lot of grape ones…

And he liked his birthday gift! I did (accidentally!) leave part of his gift at home, and the other part hasn’t been bought yet, but he knows what they are, well one of them anyways. Here are some photos that I took pre-putting everything into the gift bag:

Wall-E with the card that my printer didn’t try to eat up! (I go for super simplistic at times):

View from above of Zero (from A Nightmare Before Christmas):

View from the front of Zero – I am never again embrodiering anything with yarn. Ever. Again. I redid the face on the pumpkin a million times (and have a few other pumpkins to show for it, haha):

The pattern for Zero came from Lizville (click here). Slightly tweaked pattern for the tail (I didn’t like how it turned out with the original pattern, so it got changed slightly). Also did it in the rounds instead of joining (easier for counting, I find) and I changed the pumpkin nose just slightly or else it would have been the same size as the head, and that just looked awkward).

Happy Valentine’s Day/Singles Awareness Day!

Michelle — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 21:57:50 +0000

So I hope everyone is having a good February 14th, regardless of the fact that you’re in a relationship with another person (or many other people – just no animals, please, I’m pretty sure that’s illegal in most, if not all, countries). Granted, I generally wish everyone a good day. And just because it happens to be the 14th day of the 2nd month should mean anything. But it does. Because a little chubby toddler in a diaper with a bow-and-arrow says so. And does do all the major (and minor) greeting card companies and electronic stores that feel the need to pull out everything that’s pink and red. I mean, I like pink as much as the next girl, but it’s really not the best colour for electronics since it can vary so much from promotional photos to the actual product in store. Like when my sister got the Creative Zen V Plus in pink? It looked like a bright but dark pink in the photos – it was three different shades of pink for all three major body components and resembled Pepto Bismol.

And if you will all direct your attention towards my Flickr photostream, you’ll see my sugar cookies (made with this recipe!) and my attempts at being creative with the decorative sugar. I’m happy that I had bought the cookie cutters in advance to Valentine’s Day (they’re plastic, but they do the job well – $2 for a set of 6 in varying sizes). I took three of the more nicely decorated (in there different sizes) and put them into a cute gold box with pink wrapping paper. Those are currently in my fridge and hidden behind some random casserole dish to prevent them from being eaten. My dad will never admit it, but he likes my baking. Maybe I could convince him to get me the silicone bakeware and cupcake liners. Mmm… Cupcakes! But I guess I shall settle for sugar cookies in the mean time. A word of caution about decorative sugar, if you’re going to be sprinkling it in a very specific area (and likely to use your fingers), you end up dying your fingers red. Literally. Clay called me last night while I was watching them in the oven and I went “So I dyed my fingers red with the sprinkles…” and he just answers back “Did anyone catch you red handed?”. … Yes, he really does think that he’s cute and witty sometimes.

Anyways, I should probably get ready for my date tonight… I hope everyone has an excellent day and hope you all have a great Sunday as well.

Full memory card means…

Michelle — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:04:51 +0000

Lots and lots of photos that I need to take off of my cell phone and move onto my computer and then opening up Photoshop in order to shove all the somewhat clear photos into the template and then save them as a .jpg… Oh, the work! But I have photos of baking (when J came over and we persevered and made over 200 cookies), a Christmas card (that I just receieved from Cody at HumanGirl.com) and the mini-tree ornaments I bought today that will look awesome decking out my mini tree next year (which, unfortunately, falls over whenever I try to put on the regular-sized ornaments onto it’s teeny, spindly little branches).

Sugar cookies waiting to be placed onto the trays.

Butterflies and doves.

Stars… Lots and lots of stars… As well as some bells and butterflies.

The stamps that were on the envelope of the card that I got from Cody (it’s blurry, but the one on the left is a 27-cent US stamp with the picture of half of a pomegranate, the one on the right is of St. John, US Virgin Islands… It looks really warm there, I wish I was there…). I don’t have these ones in my collection yet either.

Eeeeeee, the card I got from Cody – isn’t that penguin adorable?!

She even included a cupcake recipe, my cell battery was dying at this point so I didn’t take a picture of the back, but it’s a recipe for ‘Crimson Velveteen Cupcakes’ and it’s a vegan recipe, which is good considering my house is running low on butter and milk.

And this is what happens when my parents tell me to pick whatever I want in the clearance section of the Christmas decorations… I ended up with a few things, but this one was my favourite. 20 small glass ornaments (only 2cm across!) in varying shades of beige and they’re going to look awesome on the 1-foot tree that I have. Plus it was only $1.60 for the box.

Happy (early) Halloween!

Michelle — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 06:14:15 +0000

Only 24 hours and 46 minutes until National Novel Writing Month commences! Go quick, join now!

@ Cole – that would work, if he didn’t work at the same company as my mom. And lying, in the situation with my parents and the restrictions that they’ve placed on my life is, is more beneficial than detrimental.

I was bad again today…

Michelle — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 23:54:18 +0000

But in my defense, I did need some of the things that I got today. Plus, I was shopping with my sister and my dad told her to put everything I wanted on the credit card that is linked to his account. So, in reality, I wasn’t that bad. I mean, really, my parents are paying for it. Still, I managed to get almost everything on sale. So I mean, I do fairly decent in terms of getting things that were on sale (which was, umm, almost everything?). Other things that I bought today while out with the family was a giant box of Nature Valley granola bars (64 bars, 4 different flavours, $13) and sandwich fixings (non-Maple Leaf sliced meat, tomatoes, lettuce). Nomnom, food!

Now I’m going to go back to doing my biology assignment because I don’t feel like doing it tomorrow.

Not shown is a pair of scrapbooks (12″x12″ standard pages) that was in a package for $7

From the childrens’ clothing section: “Little Miss Chatterbox”, long sleeve tee – $10 (marked down from $15). There was also a Little Miss Sunshine shirt that I wanted to get, however they only had it in extra small and small, and since it was a childrens clothing, I can’t exactly fit into XS or S. As it was, this was marked as a large for childrens, size 14.

From the childrens’ clothing section: Care Bears (Grumpy) 3/4 sleeve tee – $10 (marked down from $15)

From the adults’ section: ‘Think Pink’ (Breast Cancer Foundation) long sleeve jacket (the parts that appear white are actually pink) – $13 (marked down from $20)

The unmentionables! The first two were marked at $17, but the cashier wasn’t paying attention and one was $17 and the other was $8. The green one (it matches my bedroom walls, I am not kidding) was marked at $10 but the cashier inputted the price at $8.