*Deborah*

It has been said that we're pretty clubby, the Vancouver eGulleters... My personal life...well, I'm a single girl these days, never married, no kids. Still looking for a nice boy to help with the mise and wash the dishes afterwards Happily I have some good friends who will help (or lend a spouse to help) build the IKEA and so forth! Thanks, Ann. I don't know about effortless; friends and coworkers can attest that I've been one cranky evil girl these past months Dude, I'd even take an old Gregory Peck. If only I were as beautiful as Audrey! The colours are definitely me, and the cabinetry style. Daddy-A advised on stuff like hardware and so forth, and the layout design is all his. Oddities like the huge sink and faucet are all my own strange self!

judiu, I hope I will have an opportunity to take a better shot of him, he is really a handsome beast. I sympathize with you in your cat-less-ness. The few periods of my life when I have been unable to have cats have been quite unhappy times. There's just nothing like a gentle paw on the face and very loud purr to wake you up at 5:00 am...MUMMY, I WANT MY BREAKFAST NOW!

Mmm, here's today's coffee (nice crema! basically a double allongé or Americano, with milk and sugar. Please don't hurt me ). You can see the blue and fluffy-clouded sky reflected in the countertop: another beautiful day ahead. And here is *Ziggy Palffy*. He is a Manx, hence the great size, funny tail, and long, long hind legs. Not his best angle!

Hey! Nobody said anything about this being a TAG-TEAM blog! Not so much tag-team blog, as tag-team eating

I tried to get a close up of that fish, but it didn't come out very well. Thanks for the Vespa love! if the cats don't start spending a little more time indoors, it may be the closest you get to a pet photo.

I didn't. My day job is with a small consulting engineering firm: administrative, word processing, website stuff, writing responses to requests for proposals. Herding a bunch of engineers and building technologists. I've been here for ten and a half years. My love of words and language also led me to start a tiny business for myself. I do some work in the restaurant trade, and some out of it. It's very casual, I get the odd commission off the internet or eGullet. I should probably start hard-selling myself to pay off the Wolf! I love dim sum! But I have none scheduled for this weekend, alas.

I think of you when I see a whack of Pocky!

Oh, Pan, the thing is that I scarecely look at the menu at Pondok; I mean I do, but Moosh does the ordering, as she's such a regular and knows the proprietors. So she asks for everything in its original language, and while my grasp of the Romance languages is not negligible, I am quite lost as yet when it comes to Asian languages. I know a little dim sum, basically! but that's good to know that the names are just descriptive. That will make it easier

It's not THAT big! OK, it is.

Thank you , oh wise one!

Then I went home. The Mice came too, we were going to assemble my new dining room table, but the room isn't ready for it yet. So instead, Mr Mouse went above and beyond to do what my Contractor hadn't: level the range. It took a good hour, I'd say, but we're all level all over, and I am now free to cook! Here is a somewhat better picture of the Wolf, showing the S-grates and the lovely red knobs. And many fingerprints! Unfortunately, I am simply exhausted and will not be cooking tonight at all! My Power seems to be going fine in the kitchen, though, so my trusty Gaggia is plugged directly into the wall Here are my T&T purchases, minus the duck, which is in the fridge defrosting: Dried aniseed, coarse salt, fish sauce, sesame oil, black sesame Pocky, coconut milk (on sale for $0.69 a can!) and some loose tea And here are my current beverages: San Pellegrino Aranciata with vodka and Campari, and water And that's just about it for me for tonight! I have a clawfoot tub in my living room at the moment...it looks as though the bathroom upstairs might be functional for Saturday night! Thanks again, everyone, for the kind words

I met up with the Mouse Family for supper on Commercial Drive: A beautiful Indonesian puppet greets you at the door: And the Mice were just about to order the food. These were our beverages of choice this evening: Tiger Lager, not sure what Junior was drinking, and Jasmine Tea for yours truly We began with a refreshing salad with jicama, pineapple, savoy cabbage, bean sprouts, a nice vinaigrette, and peanuts: Then a few shrimp chips to tickle our tongues: ANd then the real food started coming out: barbecued chicken (Junior Mouse's fave, and one that we grownups are all fond of as well) and a very nice vermicelli in kecap manis with various bits and pieces dish (I apologize, but I cannot remember what these dishes are called. Moosh may correct me, or I might find the energy to figure them out on the website later!). We also got the extremely tasty green beans and prawns and fried tofu: And a tilapia in spicy tomato sauce making funny faces at us. Oh, wait, I think he always looks like that: For dessert, we managed to share a dish of deep fried bananas and ice cream (verrry good!):

After work, I stopped off at T&T Supermarket, the mecca (or one-stop shopping, at least) for all things Asian. They have a lot of live fish and shellfish: Live King Crab and Spot Prawns up, Oysters down For those who don't know, Vancouver has a very large Chinese population, so these kinds of items aren't all that hard to find, but it still amuses me to see duck tongues all plastic wrapped like this: Duck Tongues, Geese Intestine, American Wagyu Beef Carpaccio... The tea section is twice as wide as this picture: And the Pocky aisle is a favourite place of mine This is only a portion of the Pocky selection, there are Pocky and similar snacks displayed throughout the store! And here is my trusty Enzo, ready to transport me and my purchases onward: I can fit quite a bit in the "trunk": various items, a whole frozen duck, and several ice packs that were in my freezer at work today

So many many hours ago, my day officially began with me riding Enzo to work. You couldn't ask for a nicer day to scoot: Trout Lake (John Hendry) Park I stopped off at the Mouse House to pick up a little brekkie: Junior Mouse and Moosh...with cocktail buns! And got to work to find that I had more snacks awaiting me! A coworker just came back from vacation in Pennsylvania, and actually remembered I had given him US$5 and asked him to bring me back...what else? TASTYKAKES! behold, the Butterscotch Krimpet! with Double Icing! An unusually full morning; normally I don't have breakfast except for coffee, and don't snack at the office. Lunchtime arrived, and since it is Thursday, I had Chicken Curry from the restaurant across the street from my office (which shares a kitchen with the William Tell), pretty good. I mean, I've eaten it 19 Thursdays out of 20 for the past 9 or 10 years.

Well, it's been a full day, and I will have pics very soon. Snacky! look forward to seeing you! Canucklehead, am I doomed to hearing you go oohm and visualizing you rolling your eyes in your head each time I go into the kitchen??!! Time will tell. Back in a flash.

Official red ones, rather than colour-coordinated black ones, of course! Oh, and dinner will be a bit lowkey, in the (uncertain) circumstances. Sigh. But there is promise of fabulosity in the future! Thank heavens I've been in the Advanced Serious Foodie lately, or I wouldn't even remember how to turn on a burner

A big ole' virtual hug from me right back at you and the Mr. And so it begins, Deb: six days out of the coming seven that we'll be spending together! Let the eating commence! See you in a few hours for dinner. ← Looking forward!

Well as of yesterday the hallway was floored, and about 1/3 of the dining room. I think today he was going to start tiling the bathroom. Supposedly! I just want the power on in the kitchen and the stove levelled so I can fire her up!

Pics to come sometime...

Not at all! I wouldn't pick a fight with him on eG even if it were true (which it really isn't). Hugs back at you, Abra

Well, thanks everyone for the encouragement and compliments to my taste My creamsicle orange glass tile backsplash might be in by the time this is done, even! Tonight's schedule has been revised to include dinner out, since I'm fairly confident there will be men in my kitchen from around 5:00 till around 8:00, and Junior Mouse's bedtime is 8:30. Alas. I should be doing some cooking tonight though....

You and me both, sister.

If your daughter likes to eat, it can be a good motivator! ← Yes, the eating part won't be a problem. So tell me, was there some sort of sliding scale involved, or was it a "good/bad report card--go/no go" system? Inquiring minds want to know! ← Never having had a bad report card while this system was in effect, I can't really say And once I went off to college and university, I had to make my own celebrations

I usually work best to deadline; I think my contractor does, too. I like the faucet a lot, so far! it was much bigger than I expected (I ordered off eBay), but seeing as I have the enormous, pony-washing sink I think it works out OK. It is big...it has a great spray, and I'm getting used to the one-hand operation.

That's a good option. I don't know if I will keep that quantity of glasses out all the time, either; I might put some back in the box and have a little more space on the shelf for other things.