We had Chinese food for dinner. I open my fortune cookie, and it says, “All your fantasies will come true.”

I show it to the MD.

He looks at it, and says, “That’s not a coupon, you know.”

Anyone who looks at my last.fm knows that I am a huge lover of Depeche Mode. More so their early albums than the last two or three, but still, they’re right up there on my most-played, and Violator is one of my favourite albumes ever by anyone.

The MD started playing this on his computer a few minutes ago, and at first I thought it was U2. Then I thought it was teh suck. Then I wanted to kill myself, to that metronomic tolling piano chord. I really hope it cleans up/mixes/produces well, as right now I don’t even want to hear the rest of whatever they might be doing.

GAH.

Finally?

Hitting Seattle April 27. Onsale next week. The MD and I are considering Lollapalooza, so not sure where the concert budget is on all this, especially since dates are kind of thin on the ground (perhaps they’ll play Lolla as well? doubt somehow that they’ll come to Vancouver but you never know).

FLAPPY HANDS!

Working backwards…Parkside last Friday. 6-course chef’s tasting menu.

Celeriac and cauliflower soup, porcini foam? truffle oil? lush, served with an Italian Bidoli Sauvignon Blanc
The scallop dish with grapefruit, guanciale, fennel, watercress and whatnot, a beautiful Parkside vinaigrette, served with a Hendry rosé
The shortrib ravioli, with a La Quercia Montepulciano
The deer, the lovely lovely deer and red wine reduction, Australian Vasse Felix Cabernet Sauvignon
The steak fiorentina with the most incredible onion ring in HISTORY!, with a Moulin de Gassac Guilhem
The famous lemon tart, which I likely would not have ordered on my own, but which was delicious of course, so glad I got to try it. With mascarpone cream I think? and blood orange sorbet. Served with an Asti Moscato, and then Mr. Stewart gave us a taste of his Tokaji, which was quite quite lush.

Farewell, dear friend. Hope to meet you again one day.

I made a very successful orecchiette with ricotta and basil and tomatoes.

For Valentine’s Day, we stayed in and had a seafood feast. The standout dish was the tarragon crab salad, made with Dungeness claw meat (!!! so spendy! but SO GOOD), followed by the shrimp cakes with lime chili cream sauce. The teeny heart-shaped cheesecakes were not photogenic and hence are not pictured, but were very tasty.

that it is taking a sick day to have some time to blog…not heinously sick, but major headache and backache combine to create a largely immobile Deeb. Perhaps I will feel better later if I have a nap, I hope.

So what’s been up…I joined twitter (@bittersweetdb) and I suppose the so-called microblogging is taking a bit away from the actual blogging. But the feed shows up over here on the right so if you’ve any interest you can just look over there from time to time. Radiohead friends and food geek friends and Philly friends and people I’ve never met can be fun to “follow.” The whole “liveblogging” thing that people do with that damn stupid scrolly window is impossible for me so never mind that but the tweeting is OK. You also find people and media outlets which are just as pompous and tedious on twitter as they are IRL or their primary web presence, or whose web presence doesn’t translate well to twitter…so some people/sites that I have on RSS feed I don’t duplicate on twitter as it’s just a whack of clutter.

But there are surprising people! or at least for me, since I am (voluntarily) shut off from so much media. Stephen Fry is a very amusing person to follow; ?uestlove is a champion tweeter, also entertaining and informative. Cory Doctorow can get on my tits for sheer volume sometimes, and I’m not sure if I’ll keep him or just satisfy myself with my boingboing RSS. I recently found @LaBuca is on twitter! La Buca being the sister restaurant to my dearly departed, lamented and fondly remembered Parkside, which I find I didn’t have a Parkside tag in here, and I ought to have.

Parkside was my favourite Vancouver restaurant for the past 4 years or something, hard for me to pinpoint. But I’ve had some of my best meals ever there, made a convert of the Main Distractor, celebrated more stuff there than anywhere else ever, I think, beating out even La Grolla in Philly. The MD and I went there for one last meal last weekend, had a tasting menu that pleased us in every way, and have resigned ourselves to the undoubted excellence that the next incarnation of the space as another La Buca will offer. We’re booked for our one-year anniversary weekend and I will report. It is a continuation of the Andrey Durbach/Chris Stewart partnership that has spelled restaurant gold in this city for some years now. There are flashier places (God knows) and more self-aggrandizing owners (oh man!) than these two, but for diners who are more interested in the food than the buzz; in excellence of ingredients and execution; in a disciplined and devoted back-of-house and a warm and sincere front-of-house, I haven’t found anyone else who consistently delivers at this level. And even I can afford to eat in their restaurants (there’s also Pied-à-Terre, French bistro style), at least sometimes if not as often as I’d like.

So twitter has brought another intersection of worlds; in a good way I guess!

I think I will post more later, about some of the cooking and eating I have been doing.

I keep forgetting I have reading to do for people. This whole live-in boyfriend thing is super groovy, and super different from the Old Ways. I mean I call him my Main Distractor for a reason.

In a good way! but it makes me forgetful of stuffs. So apologies, my dear writers, and I will try to snap myself back into having some reading time in the evenings to provide the feedback you so richly deserve.

(It’s still the New Year, isn’ t it?)

So, hmmm.

Houseguests have come and gone, the Main Distractor has come and stayed, and a fair amount of water has seen the underside of the bridge, I guess, since last I posted.

The snow in the previous post is just now going away (!!!@!@@!). Christmas was v nice (he got me a WII!!! so not only do I has a we: we has a wii! and my units got me a digital camera, yay! and the Dude gave me a wee Minox, too.). New Year’s was v tasty indeed (Parkside!!). He pranged the Wee RAV and he’s paying for the de-prangization, too, which while fitting is also nice of him . My loaner is a tiny little Suziki AWD hatchback. It’s kewt. But I feel short.

With the departure of the lovely houseguests, and the start of the work year, life has calmed down in some ways and ramped up in others. Work is v v busy. Cohabitation is sometimes stressful, but the exponentially increased cuddle-availability goes a long way toward making up for that

We’ve been commuting together given the snow and ice situation (which is finally abating; I should be able to start riding Enzo again next week) so I haven’t yet heard the proverbial HI HONEY I’M HOME! but I’m sure it’s forthcoming

In any case. Still alive, and all is well.

Just over two weeks to go till Christmas, and I expect I’ll have even less time upcoming than of late, so I figured I’d better update a bit.

The Main Distractor made it through a few weeks ago, no drama. Two-year permit. The job title was a bit off but close enough for jazz and the nice lady who processed the paperwork. My dad was around that weekend and we all went to Parkside to celebrate and it was marvelous. He’ll be arriving in 16 days. I’m beside myself .

One of the internet friends the boy met last year in France is also moving to Canada, arriving Tuesday. He’ll be staying in the (recently relocated) spare room till he finds a suitable apartment for himself and his wife, who will arrive later in the month. Looking forward to having him here as well.

Had lunch with Shanny on Friday and she and Nic will be over for brunch tomorrow (oh, must buy OJ) for general holiday get-together and keep-in-touch. Lise and Carey and Metta passed through town last week also, and I got to see them briefly and meet the gorgeous babe. The Dude will be through en route to and from New Jersey for work in the next week as well. We all know what all this company means: lots of cuddles for Choobie! .

I put up a small and somewhat wonky little Christmas tree, since the Main Distractor will be spending a few nights here before we head up to Sun Peaks. We’ll have our own tiny tree .

In moving the spare bedroom upstairs (for two reasons: one, comfort of guests in colder weather if not in hotter; and two, creation of a Man Cave space for the MD to keep his stuff and have a space of his own in the alien landscape), I have lost my study, and now have my computer desk out in the living room to the increased squishiness of furniture. In a way I don’t like it because it’s out in the middle of everything, but having a more streamlined setup at the moment, with the powerbook instead of the desktop, and a USB hub that I got for a really good price to keep everything humming along, is working. I’ve also set up my wireless keyboard and mouse, which is a relief indeed after the laptop keyboard and track pad thing, On the other hand, it’s so…plugged in that it’s functioning not at all like a laptop. But that’s OK.

My microbusiness got a query from a big company, like BIG company, that would have conceivably had enough steady business for me to, like, buy some new clothes or go out to dinner or something. But they seem to have lost interest, as I haven’t heard from the guy in a couple of days. I think he thought I did that full time, but of course lacking lots of nice big corporate clients, I don’t. Oh well, it’s his/their loss as much as mine, I suppose. He may come to realize that the 24-hour type of turnaround I can offer is not impossible to work with, it’s just a small mental adjustment.

Today’s agenda includes some Christmas and grocery shopping, hair appointment, and more vacuuming (welcome my friends to the chore that never ends).

Happy holidays and whatnot, everyone!

(Apologies to Aaron Sorkin.)

So the Main Distractor’s work permit application stuff has been progressing, glacially. Yesterday morning I got up and counted some days on my Hello Kitty! calendar and thought, hmmm. And I said to the MD, I thought there might be good lawyer news today.

Late morning (my time), he said SPOOOOKY, and there was good news! email from the lawyer saying here’s your thingie, follow the instructions on the attached carefully, and yada yada yada! Wheeeeeeeee! countless exclamation points flowed from my fingers! it’s actually still early enough that he could probably get everything squared away and move here by the end of the year!

And then?

And then.

He got to the last page of the document, and discovered that the application had been made using the wrong job classification number. Presumably the steps leading thereto had also been using the wrong job title. For whatever reason, the documentation pertaining to all this leadup had never been copied to him (which never made any sense to me at all; standard practice is to copy people mentioned in business correspondence; you’d think a copy of relevant forms and such would have been sent to the subject of same?). So he had no opportunity until all the time and application fees and lawyers’ fees etc. were all spent to say “Oh, that’s not correct.”

So. Back to square one.

The absolutely least time I can see this taking is three months, if everyone hustles. Given that it’s taken seven and a half months to get this far, any hustling on anyone’s part seems…unlikely.

And a Happy Friday to you.

(My own, not the SNL one.)

The Main Distractor is visiting friends in Ohio this weekend, leaving me without anyone to chat with online or give me virtual cuddles   I hope he’s having a good time though. His friends have a darling toddler and a dog, so sounds like a fun household to visit. ^_^

My weekend may or may not include the following: a couple of hours of work to try to get some catching up done; some housework; should cook something that I can take for lunch this week, hmm; rake some leaves today maybe except oh, I missed the no-rain window, it’s just started coming down again, rats; a drive to IKEA as I think I’ve found a combination of v cheap rugs that will increase the livability of my downstairs a bit, and I want to put up some hooks in the non-closet area; and I think that’s about it. I dreamt about flank steak last night, I’ve just realized (!!) so I think there’s going to be some beef stew in my future. YUM!

Halloween last night was fun, I got a super cheap witch hat at the dollar store to wear to give out candy, and had some excellent trick-or-treaters!! there was a little toddling pumpkin girl, and a little guy dressed as Superman who had only been walking for a month, and he was just ZOOMing down the sidewalk, it was just comical. The oddest sight was the entire family who went out together; 3 or 4 kids, mom and dad, and GRANDMA all dressed up and lined up for candy to go in their grocery bags. Um, OK! I guess they all like candy and how could you say no to Grandma? My own Gram had a definite sweet tooth.

I wish the kids didn’t set off so many firecrackers, but on the other hand, it makes it easier to keep my wee black cats in the house, and safe.

Have a good weekend, everyone!