4 weeks left!!!

So, we are down to 4 weeks left here in the 'Gina. Or, in terms of our blog, hopefully at least 4 more posts till the end of this particular S&K adventure! Were is the time going?!

Just a few things to talk about today...

First of all, we thought we'd provide you with some more "Giners say the darndest things" quotes (we kinda fell down on the job with this segment till now):

•  "couldn't you just get a job at a restaurant or something?" - advice from a little old lady with regards to our job search
• "it's so amazing when you get your first paycheck and you can finally afford the Activia yogurt!!" - discussing our job search with a coworker... K could totally relate; it's hard only being able to buy yogurt when it's on sale!! :p
• "my kid is such a turd" - overheard a mom referring to her child  

Yesterday evening it was beautiful and sunny out, and since it was the end of a long week we decided to go out for supper. We desperately wanted a place with a patio so that we could stay outside and enjoy the nice weather... there aren't many of these to choose from near the mansion, so we ended up at "Original Joe's." It's apparently some sort of chain where the waitresses are super classy and all wear identical black MINIskirts and shitloads of makeup. We were able to get a table on the patio pretty quickly, and in all fairness, our waitress was good so no real complaints. Bonus points for no smoking allowed on the patio! K had some sort of salmon and avocado sandwich thing with sweet potato fries and a salad; S had a blackened chicken and cheddar sandwich (with K's bacon) with regular fries and a caesar salad. We were both pretty happy with our meals, even though when S tried to put mustard on his sandwich it squirted halfway to Saskatoon! 4 SKs out of 5 (including the bonus for the smoke-free patio). The best part of our Friday night was going to sleep at 10pm (yes, we are in fact ballers) and not waking up until 9am!!!!

So far today (Saturday), it's another lovely day out in the 'Gina. We started off with our now Saturday morning tradition of PANCAKE breakfast!! Yum! Then we headed out for some great weather and our other Saturday ritual of iced tea from David's Tea. (By the way, you know an establishment is trying to be hipster when all of its employees have to wear cardigans!) We may eventually do a tea review blog post. K also got to wear her new ($15) sundress for the first time! Yay summer!

Now we're back at the mansion having a little rest... soon we'll be heading back outside to soak up some sun and start reading a new book together (tune in next time to find out what we're reading)!

Happy weekend, everyone! :)

We are back! Please forgive us!

Hello everyone... we hope that at least some of you are still with us!

We apologize for our month-long hiatus. The internship has gotten quite busy, and we've also been doing tons of job searching (to no avail, yet). Plus, we both had colds (K's lasted for over 2 weeks), and S had a bout of some sort of stomach bug. Excuses, excuses - we know. Anyway, here's a little re-cap of what's been happening in our spare time since last we wrote:

• On the Sunday of that long weekend, we went to trivia night at O'Hanlon's pub. It was awesome! We participated in both rounds, had a good laugh (the hosts were quite entertaining), and we CAME SECOND in the late round (a pretty cool feat, considering it was just the 2 of us on the team, and all of the other teams were a lot bigger)!! Yay us!! Our prize: free beer. K doesn't drink beer (it has bubbles!), and S had already drank 2 beers but he forced down our prize anyway. All in all, a great night. And we plan on going back for more trivia asap.

•  On the Monday of the long weekend (day off! woo!), we finally went to see the Hunger Games movie! Our quick review: it was a bit too long, and there was too much camera shaking (in the style of the Bourne movies), but overall we enjoyed it! It didn't stray TOO much from the book either. Curious to see what the next 2 movies will be like. After the movie we took a million years to decide where to go for supper... we finally decided on Pasta Prima, a fresh pasta place. There were tons of old people there - S felt right at home! The food was yummy and not expensive. 4 SKs out of 5! 

• Our next big outing was the following Saturday, to the Cathedral Arts Festival. It's basically a big street sale, with different local artists and lots of food. There was even some live music. S got really excited when he saw that there was a "jazz" band playing... turns out it was a weird duo of flute and guitar, which was fine and dandy till they started to sing. At least we got a place to sit down and eat our big juicy wieners. We also ate some delicious (and overpriced) cheesecake fudge, and a "tornado potato" on a stick (photos to come). And we ran into every single person that we know in Regina (i.e. our coworkers). That evening, we went to a restaurant called Viet Thai for supper that had been recommended to us. (Guess what kind of food they serve!) It was a yummy meal, though one of the dishes had a strange odor. 3 SKs out of 5. We then ventured to a little shop called Dessart Sweet just down the road for, you guessed it, dessert! It's a cute little place with tons of candy and chocolate bars from different places, and they also serve lots of different ice creams. We both had a cone - delicious! We spent Saturday night at a B&B called the Dragon's Nest (as a belated anniversary celebration and getaway from the mansion). It was lovely! Gorgeous room... but our jacuzzi didn't work properly, so that was a bit of a disappointment. Breakfast the next morning was tasty: bacon (which K gave to S), crepes (Montreal is following us everywhere), and fruit salad with granola and yogurt. We left, after a nice peaceful night, to have to schlep back to the mansion in the POURING rain. Sigh.

• The next Friday, we were pretty tired, so we decided to have a low-key outing of dinner and a movie. We went to Montana's for big disgusting burgers (of which we have now had our fill and will not be returning to eat for a very long time) and then went to see Men in Black 3 (not in 3D). The movie had a few good laughs and allowed S to drool over his boyfriend Josh Brolin, but it probably wasn't worth the $9.50 admission charge.

• The next day (Saturday), we traveled around the world for the Mosaic festival. It's a supercool thing that they do here in Regina, where people from all of the different cultures have a pavilion to show off food, dances, etc., from their country. We bought our "passport" and traveled by shuttle to: Ukraine, Greece, Romania, Ethiopia, the Caribbean, the Francophone pavilion, and the First Nations pavilion. It was a lot of fun, and we ate TONS of delicious food (e.g. souvlaki pita, vine leaves, Greek donuts, mamaliga and cream chicken, apple strudel, mango loaf, and bannock... and we talked ourselves out of getting poooooteeen). Unfortunately, the food was not free. But it was worth it! Pictures will likely come soon.

• The following Saturday, we took in a matinee show at the legitimate theatre here in Regina. We saw "Buddy - The Buddy Holly Story" at the Globe Theatre. It was FANTASTIC! The music was great, the actors were super, and we really enjoyed ourselves! Really glad we got the cheap tickets though, since the theatre is quite small and all the seats are essentially the same. We also got some free treats afterward (cookies, etc.)!

• On Sunday, we had a HAIR CUT DATE! We are so cool. We were both in desperate need of a trim, so we headed to Chatters Salon at the Cornwall Centre. We managed to get the place to ourselves, which was nice and relaxing. And now we are super beautiful with our new 'dos!  :p

• This past weekend, we mostly just took it easy. We went to the Regina Jazz Festival for a bit of free live music... we ended up seeing our good friends from the Cathedral Arts Festival (i.e. the weird flute/guitar duo) again! We also went to a few travel agencies to try our luck - we're hoping to go on some sort of relaxing getaway vacation once this internship is all over! (Any advice? Let us know!)

• Over the course of the past couple weeks we've also gone to the cheap movie theatre twice: once to see "American Reunion" and once to see "The Five Year Engagement." We enjoyed both (especially at $4.50 a ticket). 

Ok, so that's it for now! You're up-to-date! Thank you for sticking with us! Hopefully we'll be back very soon.  :)

Long weekend part deux!

Moving right along to Saturday:

We hopped on our chauffeur service to the downtown area, then walked a little bit to the "Italian Star Deli", which is the top-rated restaurant in the 'Gina according to TripAdvisor. It did not disappoint! For starters, we were served by an adorable, stereotypical little old Italian lady (note: this is in NO way meant to be offensive - she was actually awesome)! S ordered a Hungarian Salami and Prosciutto panini, and K ordered a Chicken panini (she originally asked for Turkey, but they didn't have any... the little old lady then informed her that turkey and chicken "belong to the same family" haha). You can get mild, medium or hot paninis - we both got medium, which means that it has banana peppers on it, along with grated feta cheese, pesto, and mustard. These sandwiches were so huge that we ended up eating only half of it for lunch, and then ate the second half for supper! Pretty great, especially considering that the paninis were relatively inexpensive. 5 SKs out of 5! We took our sandwiches over to the park between Scarth and Lorne (we know street names now! woo!), and ate on a park bench. It was lovely. Next time we go back to the Deli, K wants to get some cannolis!

S's panini! Sooo good!

Before running some quick errands at the mall, we ran in to the Globe theatre box office, to get tickets for "Buddy", the Buddy Holly show. We'll be seeing it on June 9th... very much looking forward to taking in some legitimate theatre in the prairies! Review to come!

Nothing too exciting happened at the mall... except some AMAZING iced tea from David's Tea!!! If you ever want to drink something delicious, go get a "Tropicalia" iced tea (sweetened with guava)... it takes like Pina Colada! SOOOO yummy!!

To show our ever-growing comfort level here in Regina, we decided to walk back towards our mansion (instead of bussing it). Along the way, we stopped at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum for a visit. It was pretty cool! We really liked their exhibits - they had one about dinosaurs, one about native history, one about animals & plants of Saskatchewan. K pretty impressed with the taxidermy: the wolves in particular seemed very lifelike!

The wolves!

K was afraid they were going to start moving and attack us!

A medical prescription written 2600 years ago - kinda cool!

As we continued home, we were able to explore the other side of the Wascana lake, which was absolutely beautiful on the sunny evening. Lots of geese, lovely-smelling trees, families out playing, and several wedding parties getting photos taken!

Lovely foliage!

View of the legislature building from across the lake.

The biggest hill we've encountered in Regina in 3 weeks.....

Side view of the legislature building

Pretty tree full of blossoms!

Long Weekend!!!

Happy Victoria Day! You kinda forget how amazing a long weekend is when you are in school (since you probably have work to do anyway). It's been such a grueling first few weeks, that having this long weekend is a godsend. And who benefits more than anybody from this weekend? You, our loyal followers!

The biggest news of Friday was that we FINALLY FINISHED THE HUNGER GAMES TRILOGY! We more or less read all three books since we landed here in the 'Gina. It's been hard to talk about the books without giving spoilers so our final thoughts we will be very general: K liked it but found the ending a bit rushed (S agrees with this last point). Overall, what she expected to happen happened (ditto for S). We've been commenting on S's angst expectations throughout our readings. In the end, he thought it could've been just a little more angsty but regardless, the male-on-male angst scene in book 3 took the cake (we both thought it was hilarious and perfect!). We are totally looking forward to taking in a matinee showing of the Hunger Games movie at the ghetto cinema this afternoon. Hopefully it stays pretty true to the first book. Review to come, duh!

Since we didn't want to waste time preparing supper since we had sooooo much reading to do, we decided to order in. It was our first time ordering in, which we were sort of worried about given the SaskTel debacle. Thankfully, the good folks at Houston Pizza are capable of seeing three feet in front of them and pressing glowing yellow buttons! Yah! Before we talk about the pizza, we just want to mention that apparently Regina is the capital of "Family restaurants". While looking for place to order from, we came across no less than 39809869 restaurants of different varieties claiming to be "family restaurants". We wonder if there is some kind of turf war going on here. Like the mob families but with "family restaurants". That would be amazing!

As for the pizza, we didn't have very high hopes (who in their right mind would think Pizza in the middle of the prairies would be good), but it was..... actually awesome! Like seriously, probably the best delivery pizza we've had (and even better than Delissio!). We had a cheese pizza with pineapple. When we first got it, K was worried because there were only a couple of pieces of pineapple on top and she was all like "WHERE'S THE PINEAPPLE?!?!". Luckily, it was all hidden under the glorious, delicious, gooey cheese! 4 and 1/2 SKs out of 5 SKs!

YUMM!

Apparently, it's a secret what time they close!

Speaking of "food", here's the poutine we mentioned in an earlier post... Enough said.

We will have another post shortly about Saturday and Sunday which involved more food, museums, outdoorsy stuff, trivia, etc.
 

another week down...

It's the end of another long, busy week of internship. So busy that we didn't have much time to get out and explore or do much of anything besides work-related stuff...

The main thing we did during our free time was read more of the Hunger Games. We are ALMOST FINISHED!!! Book 3 is over two thirds of the way done! Getting excited for the conclusion! S is still holding out hope that it will be very angsty.

Our big outing this week was a walk half-way around the lake. We are, in fact, two wild and crazy people! We probably would have made it the whole way around if we hadn't gotten stuck at the restaurant and couldn't figure out where the trail went from there. We are also very smart, apparently. But, the lake was very pretty, and we kept getting distracted by all the BABY GEESE!!!!!!!! (or goslings, if we want to get technical) They were SOOOO cute! (pictures to come!)

K made her first "real" trip to North Central on Wednesday. By real we mean that she took the bus both ways, all by herself. She's such a big girl! (and brave to boot!)

Today at lunch, we decided that it was finally time to try the cafeteria POUTINE! Kinda wish we had held off a while longer... or indefinitely, to be more precise. S said it was the worst poutine he'd ever tasted. The "gravy" tasted like chalk. It also didn't have actual cheese curds. K, who doesn't have quite as discriminating a palate as S when it comes to Quebec's favourite dish, found it edible but definitely not tasty. It was about as good as the poutine you could get at K's high school cafeteria. Anyway, we ate with some of the SLPs today, who informed us about some choice Reginese (*coinage*) poutine spots. There'll likely be more poutine-tasting to come!

In other news, there is a leak in the mansion hallway. Hopefully it will be repaired soon, as the stuff dripping into the bucket looks kinda gross. Also, S is not what you would call a "strong swimmer," so the place had better not flood!

That's all for now, folks! We're hoping to do lots of fun things on this LONG WEEKEND! We'll be in touch! :)

Sunny Saturday!

After staying up late into the night making a big dent in book 2 of the Hunger Games, we slept in a bit this morning. Wanting to get some fresh air on this beautiful sunny day in May, we decided to head downtown....

First, we discovered a Farmers' Market! Lots of homemade goodies, plants, crafts, etc. (we managed to get a few yummy samples as we walked). We'll definitely be going back there some day!

Then we went to the Regina Public Library, because S needed to replenish his supply of comic books (for the bathroom). So, we are now proud (albeit temporary) members of the library and we have yet another fancy card to add to our wallet. As S was perusing the graphic novels, K looked around in the teen novels section in the next aisle, and it provided much entertainment (it seems the Hunger Games might end up being a gateway drug for us). The best find of the day: a novel by none other than... wait for it.... Hilary Duff! Hilary f***ing Duff! Bet you never saw that one coming! I mean, she's obviously a great actress and singer... but who knew she was also a successful author?! Wow, she's sooooo multi-talented! (The novel is entitled "Elixir", in case any of you were hoping to run out to your local bookstore immediately.) Anyway, we decided that if it would please our audience, we would read it (after we finish the Hunger Games, of course) and provide commentary and insight into what is no doubt a literary masterpiece. Thoughts???

After our exciting discovery at the library, we headed over to the Cornwall Centre (mall) to run some errands. On our way across the street, we were stopped by some people giving out FREE COOKIES!!! They were DELICIOUS! Bring me another! (*insert Thor voice here*)
While eating lunch in the food court, we did some people-watching and saw the most AMAZING outfit ever: 30-something-year-old man, wearing black cowboy boots, black leather pants, a bright turquoise shirt under a black blazer, a black cowboy hat, and to top it all off, big white plastic sunglasses. We wanted to take a picture, but thought the better of it. We're sure your imaginations can do the trick!

Back at the mansion, K finished reading the rest of the second book of the Hunger Games to S. Two books down, only one to go! We found the end of book 2 somewhat rushed (i.e. too much squeezed into just the last couple of chapters), but we're looking forward to the conclusion of the trilogy. We're gonna start book 3 tonight (if K's vocal folds don't give out). S is holding out hope that Katniss and Peeta will end up together.

By the way, you can all sleep soundly tonight knowing that neither S nor K has tuberculosis. Just in case you were worried about that. (We had to get the TB test done this week for the internship, and apparently we're both a-ok!)

Sorry for the lack of posts!!

Hello everyone!

We've made it through our second week of internship... it's been crazy busy and somewhat overwhelming, so please forgive us for not posting all week (though we haven't had much to say anyway, besides complain about how tired we are)! S had to give a presentation last night (and he did a super job!) despite hating presentations with every fiber in his body - so we're particularly tired today. To quote S, "presentations are for weenies!"

At least it's finally the weekend!! We are going to read SO MUCH HUNGER GAMES (book 2)!!!!!! On a related note, S is legitimately disappointed in the lack of teen angst thus far. K agrees that there is less than expected... but there's usually a pretty hilarious angsty paragraph every few chapters or so. (S might be missing some of them because apparently K's voice is a sleep drug for him.) One of the best ones yet, paraphrased: "I know I love Gale... but what kind of love is it?? I don't know! But I can't think about that! I have to start a rebellion! Why do all boys love me?! AHHHGHGHGHHHH woe is me!!!" We are currently debating whether we will go see the movie soon at the regular theatre, or wait till it comes to the cheap cinema near by. Huge life decision, obviously.

On Monday evening, we had an actual "night on the town" (sans Subway)! We ventured out on our chauffeur service to the Bushwakker Brewpub, where Monday night is Jazz night. PLUS, it's wings-and-a-pint night! So, we listened to some nice music while scarfing down hot wings and a HUMUNGOUS pile of fries. Overall, good times - we will definitely be going back.

On our way to Bushwakker, we had a funny experience: as we were getting off the bus, S says "merci" (in his cute anglophone French accent) to the bus driver... apparently you can take the man out of Montreal, but you can't take Montreal out of the man! Needless to say, the bus driver had a good chuckle and so did K.

The next evening, Jazz music came to us at the mansion!! There was some sort of performance in the lobby of the mansion by a group called the Jazz Band-its (best. name. ever.)! Speaking of the mansion, we don't know how we're ever going to go back to not having our own cleaning service. Life's rough.

Tonight, as we ate a healthy balanced meal of perogies (and baby carrots) for supper, we played a bit of Trivial Pursuit that we found in the mansion's library... You know a game is old when the answer to a question is "West" Germany! (FYI, this version of the game was from 1981.)

The weather is supposed to be super nice this weekend, so hopefully we can do some more exploring of our beautiful area (not sarcasm)... maybe we'll actually make it the whole way around the lake.... or, at the very least, read some Hunger Games on a park bench! :p