Curtis was up at 05:45 to watch Great Britain play the first game of the world championships against Russia.
The game went about as you would expect, with GB losing 7-1, but they actually played really well.
Curtis went back to bed after hockey and then got another hour or so of sleep in before we got up.
Curtis had a homemade breakfast sandwich for breakfast and Kim had French toast.
We got ourselves ready and walked down to the driving license office to renew our licenses and health cards.
We got there early and were able to get it done, and it was nice and fast! We do need to call about our health cards, apparently, but that’s not a big deal!
Once we got that done, we got doughnuts and coffee and went for a little walk.
When we got home, we watched the F1 qualifying and then Curtis watched the next Leafs playoff game whilst Kim did some work she needed to get done.
After both of us were done, we had some leftovers for dinner and then used the rest of the evening to just relax.
Curtis is staying awake to watch Great Britain’s second game tonight, which starts at 02:15! Late one for him!
We woke up pretty late and had the remaining croissants for breakfast.
It took us a while to get going today, but we did eventually.
We got showered and then we started to do some packing! We are going away from Tuesday – late Friday (nowhere too far, but it should be fun!), So we needed to pack, of course.
We packed a bunch of things and decided what we need to take, also.
Mello Doughnuts
Once we did that, it was about 16:00 and we decided we wanted to get a doughnut!
We found a place which was a 20 minute walk, but it had great reviews and the flavours sounded good, so we took the walk there.
The area it was in wasn’t the greatest, but we queued up and got our doughnuts!
Kim got a chocolate old-fashioned and Curtis got a lemon doughnut.
We didn’t eat them right away as it was nearly dinner time, so we saved them for dessert.
Pirates of The Caribbean
We got home and had our dinner, which was just some sweet and sour chicken with rice, peas and sweetcorn. But, before we did that, we had a Vietnamese coffee, because why not!
We watched Pirates of The Caribbean (the first one) whilst we ate dinner.
Once we did that, Kim had a relaxing shower and did a facemask, then we watched some more TV.
We have work for just one day tomorrow, and then we’re off for our small trip!
We were up around 09:30 and Curtis got ready to go to get to the barber for his haircut.
Curtis got there and the barber was his usual guy, so Curtis didn’t have to explain anything and the barber knew exactly what to do!
Curtis got his haircut perfectly and then met Kim to go for a coffee and doughnut!
Coffee & Doughnut
Curtis queued up whilst Kim held a table. The queue was huge!
Curtis had a cappuccino and Kim just had a chocolate doughnut whilst Curtis had a very long (and filling) doughnut which had chocolate icing and a vanilla cream filling.
Successful Shopping
We had a few things we needed to buy, so we popped to a few shops.
Kim got some bras from Victoria Secret and then we went on to American Eagle where Curtis got some jeans and Kim got a couple of things, too.
The last stop was H&M for some underwear, which Curtis got and Kim got some socks.
All things we needed and very successful!
Hockey x 2
We got back home and had a tuna sandwich each whilst watching some TV.
After that was done, Curtis watched the leafs game whilst Kim did some studying.
We finished with both activities and then Curtis sorted out his hockey stuff as he has a game tonight!
We had some food and then headed out to the rink.
Curtis’ hockey game starts at 22:00, so we’ll let you know how that goes tomorrow.
Curtis’ day was full of mostly just trying to get laptops setup for a company ran exhibition/conference which happens in September.
The specifications were a little different, so Curtis and his team had to find out how to do certain things etc.
As well as doing that, Curtis had a long meeting to discuss the new team structure followed by lunch!
For lunch, Curtis went to the Mexican truck just outside which was delicious as ever.
After lunch, Curtis gave someone a new laptop and then the company got some really good news, so they got to celebrate with prosecco & delicious doughnuts!
After that, Curtis went back to doing what he had been doing all day, but then had to offboard someone at 15:00 and once he was done doing that, it was beer o’clock.
Curtis sat with others from the office for around an hour and then headed to mert Kim.
Kim’s Day
Kim spent the beginning of her morning at her desk sorting out emails before having a sit down mid morning to eat some breakfast. When she got back to her desk, Kim had a nice catch up with the lady who comes in to water the plants. Its been over 6 weeks since she saw her last! Madness!
Kim then started her first bigger task for the day which was to replace the legs on one of the desks. She managed to remove the legs okay, but was finding it difficult to screw the new ones on without just a screwdriver as they kept getting stuck at a funny angle. So she found a drill and tried again, it turns out that the screwdriver was wonky. So Kim put this task to one side as the pizza for the end of month talks arrived. Just as she was finalising the payment the other food delivery arrived so she ran that to the group and went about setting up for the monthly talks. She organised the chairs and helped set up bits of the AV and then set the pizza up.
The talks for the month were wonderful, Kim didn’t understand them all but it was very interesting. At the end of the talk, the lady who usually presents past that role over to Kim as she just took on a new job and wouldn’t have too much time for it anymore. Its exciting for Kim to have this as an on going monthly little project.
After the talks Kim sorted the leftover pizza and cleared the area up before taking another stab at the desk. A colleague allowed Kim to use their drill from the IT department, turns out that the battery was flat and once it had ‘charged’ they learnt that the battery did not work. Kim then made makeshift legs out of 2 pedestals and called it a day with that!
Kim then took some time to head to the liquor store and pick up some wine and cider.
Kim then took some time to clear out the junk she had inherited around the front desk area and put a lot into storage. She also took a cabinet filled with paper to use as a cover up to hide things behind!
It was then the final task for the day and Kim set up all the drinks and made them loom beautiful! Kim stayed for most of the afternoon drinks and then left to meet Curtis.
Someone Stealing Shoes!
On the walk home, we saw a guy tackle someone and were a little confused.
Turns out that the person had shoes on from Foot Locker and hadn’t paid for them and the other guy was a Foot Locker employee trying to get the shoes back.
Before we were able to help, the guy had broken free and ran away, unfortunately.
After that event, the rest of the walk home was uneventful.
We had taken food out but couldn’t really be bothered to make anything, so instead we had toasties for dinner!
We watched some videos and relaxed. It been a tiring few weeks.
Curtis had a meeting booked in for 09:00 but when he joined no-one was there. He spoke with everyone and they rearranged it to 30 minutes later but even then it didn’t happen, so Curtis didn’t bother.
Most of Curtis’ morning was taken up with 2 onboards and setting up their laptops. Once they were done, Curtis had a team meeting but unfortunately this ran over through lunch and Curtis didn’t eat until 14:00! Luckily, the meeting was very useful and a lot of good points were brought up.
The afternoon consisted of Curtis finishing the laptops and then trying to get a Mac to update and then he can use that to create a bootable USB which will be useful for Mac devices.
Curtis left the office around 16:45 and met Kim on the walk home.
Kim’s Day
Kim got into work and helped set up the meeting room on the roof. She first had to find the AV kit for the room, once she found that she took the kit and a fruit bowl up to the room so their meeting could get underway.
Then Kim spent some time organising some aspects of her ongoing project. She had to fix some links that had broken and took some time to see how the other teams were progressing.
Someone then mentioned to Kim that a person needed catering for the lunch that was being held today so Kim arranged to pop to the shop to pick them up a salad. Just before she left someone else mentioned that the fridges had no milk alternatives so Kim made a trip of it and headed out to the shop to pick everything up. As she walked out it was absolutely pouring with rain!
The side of the road Kim was on had no covers beyond a certain point so kim dashed across the road where there were covers the while way back to the building. It just so happened that the dash across the road put kim right at the front doors of a Tims, so of course Kim went in, picked a doughnut for herself and Curtis and then 4 random ones for friends at work! She then did a brisk walk back under the shelter out of the rain.
When she got back from her little jolly outside Kim started setting up the catering for the lunches. Once the actual food arrived, Kim loaded it on to the trolley and popped upstairs to get everyone fed and happy. She also took up some more fruit and soft drinks.
Kim then went through the quotes she received from the UK coach services and collected all the different quotes into one simple spreadsheet. Much easier to compare that way.
Kim then joined her boss in a meeting to talk about her project and go over what has happened since before kim took it over and they discussed what will be happening next.
The towards the end of the day the trolley Kim had left upstairs came back down so she was able to sort all of that out and get things ready to do it all again tomorrow.
Ice Skates
We got home and were only there briefly before we had to walk for 15 minutes to look at some ice skates for Curtis.
We got there and he was a very nice French man who was leaving the country. The skates seemed perfect and were a great price, so we got them and headed home.
Dinner
Kim wasn’t sure what to make with the pork we had taken out of the freezer, but what she made was excellent!
We had paprika-cooked pork with a sauce made of mustard, white wine vinegar & the pork juices. As sides we had German potato salad which Kim got as leftovers from work, our leftover sweet potato and some sweetcorn. A terrific dinner considering we had no plan.
After dinner we watched some YouTube and a couple of TV shows and then went to bed.
We left the house around 10:15 and walked to the train station. We caught a train to the city to then catch a bus.
We got on the bus which took us all the way to Deep Cove, about 45 minutes from downtown Vancouver.
We got off the bus and just started walking. We walked for a bit and then noticed a sign saying we had gone the wrong way and had to turn back and walk all the way back to where we had come from! Luckily, other people had done the same so we weren’t all alone. We also got to see some really nice houses here, so not all was lost.
Once we returned to the right place, we began the walk up to Quarry Rock.
The trail up to the rock was 1.2km with the majority of it being on stairs but through some gorgeous woodland and higher up and up the mountain.
It took us about 30-45 minutes to get to the top, dodging people and crossing rivers (on bridges).
Once we got to the top, we had a stunning view! The weather wasn’t great, so there was no sun, but it was still nice to sit down and admire.
We walked back down the trail as we were very hungry and thirsty!
Lunch & Doughnuts
We were recommended a cafe called Cafe Orso so we went in, grabbed a table and each got a coffee.
Along with the coffee, we got half a tuna melt each with a tomato bisque, which was great!
We left after our lunch, incredibly full, and went for a bit of a walk and sit down by the beach.
We then went to Honey Doughnuts to see what all the fuss was about. This place was recommended to us by more than one person and the queue was out the door, so we had thought it would mean it was amazing!
We walked all the way down to Central Park again today as it was nice weather so we had to use it somehow.
We stopped at Tim Hortons to get a doughnut for Kim and when Curtis scanned his loyalty card, it came up and said we had a free reward, so the doughnut was a free one!
We walked out of Tim’s and went down the road to Starbucks to get a nice cold iced coffee before heading into the park.
We walked a different way around, but with no real plan. We just walked and talked for a couple of hours, only really stopping to take a few photos of the beautiful environment.
We also saw a really big tree that had fallen, and the routes were insanely large!
Supermarket & Pizza
We left the park and walked back home via the supermarket. We picked up a pizza for dinner, some ice cream and something to drink.
We ate our pizza (which was OK) and watched some TV. We started a couple of new TV shows; Lucifer & a Norwegian show called Occupied (Okkupert).
It’s just 2 days until Curtis starts work, but Kim does have some things to do during the week to keep her busy, and get us ready for our move in on (hopefully) Saturday!
We then moved to the next floor, which was in the basement, and was all things horror films and a whole section which were the prison cells from the Hannibal Lecter films.
The next floor was all about the animatronic and models used in films. This was the most interesting section in the museum.
The final floor was not overly interesting, though there was a section with the batmobile which spoke all about batman.
There was also a section here which had a lot of old cameras, which was awesome.
Trejo’s Coffee & Donuts
We walked from here just down the road to Trejo’s Coffee & Donuts, which was created by the actor Danny Trejo.
Curtis got a cappucino and we got a doughnut each.
Kim got one with cinnamon sugar filled with ice cream and Curtis’ was lime and sugar, like a margarita, which was great.
We walked from the museum for about 45 minutes and got to our first shopping mall of the day, which was the famous The Grove.
Kim was looking for a few things here, as well as just looking around as it was somewhere you are meant to visit in LA.
We walked around but we didn’t find anything of use, so we left the Grove and walked 20 minutes to the Beverly Center, which we bought Curtis’ shirts in the other day.
Beverly Center
We got to the Beverly Center and weren’t getting too much luck with the shops, until Kim got to Forever21 where she was able to replace her flip-flops and get some clothes she was looking for.
Fatburger
We got hungry, so we stopped off at Fatburger which was a burger place recommend to us.
We each got a medium sized burger and Kim added cheese whilst Curtis added cheese and bacon. Curtis got onion rings as his side and Kim got chilli cheese fries.
Overall, the meal was disappointing. There was too much lettuce, the tomato slice was too thick and caused everything to slice around, the meat wasn’t staying together so crumbled everywhere, so overall it wasn’t great. We just saw that they are apparently rebranding to be called Skinnyburger…Interesting.
We were also recommended an underground tour of Seattle.
We walked from the breakfast place down to Pioneer Square, where there is the entrance for the underground tour.
We were first sat in a room where we listened to our guide talk about the history of the city and its founders.
After we had a 15 minute listen, we were walked around various points under the city, told stories regarding the great fire of Seattle (which burned the city down) and how all the original buildings are actually underground now as they were built below sea level, before the fire.
An Old Toilet. Due To The Tide, The Would Often Become Geysers!
An Old Sink
Our guide was very funny and informative. We were able to learn a lot about how Seattle was, the ‘villain’ and the founder of Seattle, all told in an interesting, funny way.
The tour took about 1 hour, over several buildings and down many tunnels.
Afterwards, we were speaking with the guide and she said there was a good place to get doughnuts and so we took her up on her suggestion and visited general porpoise.
We got a doughnut each. Curtis got a lemon curd doughnut and Kim got a chocolate marshmallow doughnut.
Curtis got a cappucino, and Kim had a hot chocolate with our doughnuts. The drinks were great and the doughnuts weren’t bad either!
Mr & Mrs Hale 