Pookie's

Tonight, we went to my new favorite restaurant. It's a Thai place called Pookie's.

We meant to go yesterday, but after a failed attempt at the outlet mall, I was grouchy, and didn't want to ruin the Pookie's experience!

It's a small place, kinda hole in the wall, but it looks really upscale inside. It's tucked away in a hard to find spot in a strange "business park" that looks more like an apartment complex, and is surrounded by ponds, waterfalls and families of ducks. It's quite relaxing and peaceful... I wish I worked there!

Anyway, back to the food. The restaurant is owned by it's namesake, Pookie, a very friendly woman who seems to know all of her customers, even those of us who have only been there once or twice (The first time we went, she remembered that Jason had been in there once before, and that I had not)

For being so hard to find, it certainly doesn't lack customers! It's always busy! One of those little "in the know" kinda gems.

The food is soooo yummy! I wish I had taken pictures, but that would just make you jealous ;)

Tonight we ordered Tom Yum Gai (chicken & mushrooms in hot & sour soup) along with a dish called "Mango Apple" -and interesting combination of "diced meat, stir fried with fresh mango, apple, pineapple, cashew and bell peppers" and also the California Curry (chicken, potato and carrot in curry and coconut milk. and as the menu says "the Colonel doesn't have this recipe")
Jason was sad at first that I vetoed ordering Pad Thai, but I thought we should try some new dishes each time we go, so we will know which ones are the best! He wasn't sad when the food arrived... it's all yummy!

The menu has some entertaining descriptions, and I think next time I might try the Emerald Broccoli, which is described like this: "He's mad. He's bad, and he's broccoli with an attitude steamed in his own brown sauce, and delectable. He'll leave a lingering flavor"
I picture a plate arriving at the table with a caped veggie superhero, ready to fight... uh...hunger? crime? anyway... it amuses me.

Also of interest is "Sweet & Sour" - "deep fried forerunner to Mc-nuggets, but better! deep fried chicken beef or pork cooked with pineapple, bell peppers, onion, carrots in sweet and sour sauce of a lifetime" OF A LIFETIME! I'm not normally a giant fan of sweet and sour, but how can I say no to the sauce of a lifetime?!


mmm... Can't wait to go back to Pookie's! wanna come with?

that is all.

Life changing events

Ok, so I promised an update, and here it is!

I usually like to write about one thing at a time, but there are a couple of things that are oddly linked, timewise.

I've been thinking for a while about switching to an insulin pump, which would eliminate the multiple daily injections I've been talking over the last 17 years to control my bloodsugar...

It's something my doctor tried to convince me would be a good idea many years ago, but I wasn't interested. It seemed kinda scary, and so...permanent. But a few months ago Jason and I were at a JDRF fundrasing event and stopped by a few info booths set up by insulin pump manufacturers.

Now that I'm down here in the states (with insurance coverage again) I decided it would be a good time to give it a try. The insulin pump works a lot like a normal, healthy pancreas, pumping insulin into the system continuously in small amounts and also required amounts to balance whatever food I eat. It's just... plastic, and on the outside.

Anyway, after meeting with various professionals over the last month or so, my brand new insulin pump arrived at my door last week!

On the same day, I had a job interview at the grocery store across the street... it went well, sounded pretty much like I was hired, but they officially had to wait for the drug test to come back (something I'm still not used to, as it's not very common in Vancouver)

On Tuesday morning I went in to fill out the paperwork for the job, and do a required food safety training thingy on the computer in the store and earned my first paycheque in SEVEN months!
(it's only for two hours... but.. yay! paycheque!)

Tuesday evening Medtronic (the makers of the insulin pump) sent over a trainer to teach me how to use the insulin pump, she was here for about an hour or so and went over all the buttons and menus and features, as well as showing me how to hook everything up.

(I did say the two latest life changing events were oddly connected, timewise. You know what else is eery? The same day that the Medtronic Rep called to let me know that my insurance covered the pump and they would be shipping it out was the same day that the manager at the store called to ask me to come in for an interview!)

So... that's what I've been up to lately.

The job isn't super great, low end of the pay scale, and I'll be bagging people's groceries, but the commute is FANTASTIC. It's across the street, and the commute takes me about 2 minutes. on foot. The people there also seem to be nice, and management seems to be good (I checked it out before applying, because we shop there... the employees seem to enjoy being there, which speaks volumes!)
I go for orientation sometime next week.

Also sometime next week? I get to put actual insulin in my pump. Right now I'm supposed to be "practicing" with a saline solution. In a week or so I'll have an 8 hour session with the doctor and medtronic rep where they switch it over.
So far it's looking fairly easy, altho it's a bit of an adjustment to have this thing attatched to my side all the time... it's about the size of a pager, or fat cellphone, and kinda heavy!
I'm already feeling healthier & am so excited for both this change, and the job (yay for social interaction!)

(Ps... I also opened a bank account, finally! and we went on monday for the "Framing walk" of the house, where the builder took us through to see the framing stage of the house... it doesn't have walls yet, but we have windows now! and all of the electricity is in place. It's kinda neat to see the insides of your house like that. Too bad I forgot to take pictures!)

Happy REAL Thanksgiving, Canadian peoples!

We have a roof!

Today was an exciting (and scary) day! We had an appointment at the Design Studio to select some finishes for our house.

On the way we had to stop by the site to re-initial some papers and noticed that our house now has a roof!


At the design studio we looked at a mind boggling number of samples for everything from the floors to the ceilings.
Prices for the upgrades were the scary part... everything is inflated so much! (if we want them to paint a neutral color -instead of builder white- it's over 4 THOUSAND dollars... for one of 10 shades of beige/tan!)

We choose flooring in Oct. (goodbye budget!)

So, as I've been promising pics, here's a tour of our new house.... but keep in mind this is the model... so EVERYTHING is upgraded! ours won't be quite this fancy... but it'll be cute anyway!

Here, we have the "living room" ...bookcases not included. And in our house, this will be the dining room. There is a coat closet and 'powder room' to the right.

And, down the hall a little bit, the kitchen: our cabinets will be "mocha" a slightly lighter shade than the one in the pic... it is the standard color. Our granite backsplash won't go all the way up the wall like that either, and the granite color will be a sort of pinkish gold shade (not my favorite, but I couldn't afford the 5k upgrade for the one I wanted!)



next, the "dining room"... which we will use for the computer area


diagonally across from the dining room is the family room...which will be our living room (because to me, it's all the same thing!)
TV unit/armoire not included, and the fireplace surround will be more traditional (and white)
(the door you see on the side of the pic opens to a giant under-stair storage closet)
The living room looks out a sliding glass door to a teeny little patio space big enough for a small bbq and small table set


Going up the stairs, there's a nice large plant ledge at the top, and a built in kitchen cabinet style linen storage unit (matching the kitchen color) the washer and dryer are also in a closet up here. I won't post pics of these, just to save space...so if you want to see them, you'll have to come visit!

Moving on, here is a secondary bedroom that we will use for an exercise room (hellooo 9 foot ceilings!! I have a friend for you!) and another guest room, in a pinch. Regular mirrored closet in here.


Here's the official guest room! (so when you come visit, this is where you will stay! It has it's own walk in closet! woohoo to extra walk-ins!


There's also another bathroom but it's kinda standard....visit me if you want to see it!

This is the master bedroom... it has a cute little balcony! (but ours won't have the awesome fountain view that the model has! boo!)

And: the master bath! This is the room we bought the house for ;)
Our tub/shower will be in the standard white tile that comes with the house (the granite tiles are gorgeous, but expensive!) but we've upgraded our counters a little bit to a corian slab in a sandy color with little aqua and white flecks in it, and a stripe of "lagoon"color blend of iridescent glass tiles at the backsplash, tub and shower. There are two sinks separated by the tub and a window, and directly across from the tub is a standing shower. oh yeah, and a giant walk in closet! and a linen closet... and another window... and a little hotel-style room for the loo! (I love my new bathroom! I can't wait to move in!)


So that's the end of the tour, thanks for stopping by! When making your vacation plans for next year, don't forget: it's sun-shiney and warm in SoCal year round! (and in our area it's more temperate... so not as blisteringly hot in the summer!)

It's only September?!

Well, here I am again, and things have changed. Again! Who is suprised? ...nobody? Didn't think so.

What a crazy few weeks it's been.

Today, I woke up late, took a shower, watched some Japanese Unicycle competition/gameshow, oh yeah - and BOUGHT A HOUSE!

Well, sort of. We signed the purchase agreements today. The house should be ready mid-February.

(WOOHOO! ...but how am I going to manage a six month wait?! I'd already moved in before we even signed the papers...)



Here is our sold button! They let me stick it on myself! =) Mine is the one on the left, under the topmost one, closest to the street.



Here it is! It's a Tri-plex townhouse. Our part of it is approximately everything from the white post left-ward. It looks funny naked like that...



...but soon it will look cute, and just like this one. (minus the white car outside)



oh yeah! I suppose you want to know the details?

3 bedrooms (plenty of room for you to come visit... you know who you are!)
2.5 bathrooms (will post pics tomorrow. The master bath pretty much sold the place by itself)
1800+ sq ft (almost triple the space we have now!)
all for somewhere in the mid 300's.

... of course, that's before upgrades, which I am picking out now! (I need a job!)

Siren Song

So The new obsession I posted about a couple of days ago turned out to be not the one. It was a great house, but listed at 400k, was a little our of our range. The listing agent pretty much told us it would be a complete waste of time to write an offer for less than asking, because they had 13 other offers on the table already. *sigh* goodbye pretty, super convenient house. hello more window shopping.

We've been out looking at tonnes of houses the past few days. We even have an offer in on a huge one, that we're both secretly hoping we don't get. (shh! don't tell!)
Last night and this afternoon brought us back to Riverpark.

Ahhh, Riverpark. Why do you have to be so tempting? It's like a siren call. The other houses in the area are great... but... they're not riverpark. which is partly what's so great about them, and partly what's holding us back in finding the perfect house.

I'm partly happy to announce we've come to a decision tho. We want Riverpark! Previously we'd been flip-flopping back and forth between two floor plans, and couldn't decide. Today, another got thrown into the mix, but after a lot of soul searching and debate (but no arguing! yay us!) we've decided on a plan.

Problem is it is currently sold out. Boo. If we had come to this decision 2 weeks ago, or even last week, we probably could have moved in next month, AND saved a tonne of money. (this is where the new floor plan enters. plan 6 is available right now, with some nice...incentives... but I'm not totally in love with the plan. Jason wants to get it, because it's a good deal... but what good is a good deal if it's not "home"?)

So I guess we will wait. and keep browsing a little...

Hopefully within the next 6 months I will be posting about my brand new house...

Window shopping again

We didn't get our house. Somebody came in a little higher than us. And while, yes, it's disappointing -it was a beautiful house- it's also kind of a relief. It WAS more than we wanted to spend (not super uncomfortably so, but enough of a difference between it, and some comparable houses to make me wonder.)

Also a relief because yesterday when we didn't hear from Larry, Bear and I went for a walk, and found an open house in our neighborhood. Already, it gets crazy bonus points for being in Camarillo, because it's a good city to live in... it's sort of like Burnaby or Coquitlam (for my fellow BCians) with less (read, pretty much zero) grow-ops.
It also gets bonus bonus points for being in the area of Camarillo I like (it's 5 blocks from where I live right now...)
only problem? again, it's listed higher than we want to pay. I'm hoping we can work out some kind of deal where we can afford it... but I imagine they'll get all kinds of offers that will be way higher than ours.

Stay tuned for updates on my newest obsession... ;)

Pendulum

It's been a crazy mix of emotions here the last couple of days.

You know how I said it was going to be the longest weekend ever? psh. what did I know? Things are happening like crazy!

Firstly, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BabyP! and CONGRATULATIONS to your surely overjoyed proud parents! =)

Secondly, I just found out a dear family friend passed away yesterday. We haven't seen her often in the past few years, but she was a woman I admired greatly, and someone I considered family (the mom I always wanted? lol. jk, mom. but family all the same)
I hope her passing comes as a releif, both to her, and her family, and that she's having as awesome a time in heaven as she did down here with us =)


Thirdly, on the house issue...
We were sent a listing on a duplex in Camarillo. It's older, and a bit smaller than the Oxnard house we offered on, and it has a pool (which most people see as a bonus, but I don't want a pool). However... it's in Camarillo. ginormous bonus points for being in the city we want. and it's cheaper.
we're going to go see it tomorrow.
seconds after submitting the request online to see it, Larry calls. Boy, that was fast. This guy checks his email every 45 seconds. =)
Apparently there are some other offers on "our" pretty house... we upped our offer a little bit, and I guess we'll hear back soon. this is the final round for offers, and we're competing against 4 people now instead of one. =P where did these people come from anyway?

flip....flop... the pendulum keeps swinging... do we want it? or something else? of course we want it. we want it more than anything. ....no we don't. we want riverpark. it's shiney and new. but the oxnard house is a great deal! and no shared walls! but camarillo is camarillo...
flip.
flop.
.......

this is it, btw.