Burrito West Blog

Internet peoples, I am drenched in sweat from trying to get my hips and legs to do the proper chacha swivel. Do you have any idea how fast your hips are supposed to move in chacha? Inhumanly fast. Sweat-causing fast. I'm going to need a lot of practice and much more stamina if this is ever going to happen. Our instructor is also going hard core on us with our waltz. If we can ever do it properly, it'll look amazing, but I'll be a big pile of sweat because, suddenly, it's very athletic (and we're supposed to make it look effortless). Peter's loving dance even more now... before, it was almost not a legitimate hobby because there was only a little sweat. Now we're both disgusting after our lesson, so he's pleased. Boys are weird. I'm enjoying it too, I just wish they would crank the AC at the studio so we don't die.

Back in April I read this account of a girl in Montreal who ordered glasses off the internet for super cheap. I checked it out and got ridiculously fixated on a pair if argyle frames. I got my eyes checked at the eye dr and then went online (Zenni Optical) and ordered them. Knowing that most frames do not fit my weirdly narrow head, I also ordered another pair that were less flashy but much more likely to actually fit.

The glasses arrived while I was away. The review: the argyle glasses aren't great - the colours bled into each other a bit during some part of the process, so it's not a crisp argyle pattern like it appears on their website. The metal frames seem good though. The anti-reflective coating on both is not as good as on my store-bought glasses... in most of the photos I took there's a lot of glare, and there shouldn't be.

On the whole - each pair cost about $35 each with shipping and conversion to $Cdn. The argyle ones look very silly on me, they're waaaay to wide for my face. The other ones are pretty good, although still probably not the best pair for me.

I have mixed feelings about the online ordering process. If you have a hard time finding glasses that suit you, ordering online will be hard because it's kind of a crap shoot. But, it's a cheap crap shoot so it might be worth a try.

So, anyone need some argyle frames?
(Left: This is my serious model face. Below: this is my, I'm late for work, gotta take a pic face.)

The weather in Halifax is crazy warm - a bit too hot, actually - 29degrees! In May!

Peter and I are heading back to Vancouver today......

Have relocated to Dartmouth, NS (the old stomping grounds) for a few days to finish off the vacation. Will be heading out to the cottage shortly - haven't been there in years!

Peter and I have compressed all of our home-owning chores into this one week in Saint John, it's been kind of funny. We even got our hands dirty doing yard work (under the supervision of someone who knew what they were doing, because we sure didn't!). It's also strange to be in a 2200 sqft house when I normally live in a 600sqft apartment!

The lack of blog posts lately stems from the fact that I'm on vacation in Saint John. Except by vacation, I mean meeting with the heating guy, window restoration guy, heritage planner guy, property manager guy, insurance guy, etc. We've got 3 houses here to deal with, one of which is 150 years old. But things are going well. And it's really neat to sleep in my own house.

Don't do anything exciting until I get back!

Lately one of my co-workers has been bringing her puppy into work.... it's AWESOME. I want a puppy in my office all the time, forever, wherever I work! So much cuteness! He greets you at the door all excited to see you, it makes you feel very important.

He's a Havanese, a breed I'd never heard of before but now I'm sold on. He's the most cheerful puppy, but also has his downtime where he's quite chill if you need him to be. I babysat for a few hours one afternoon (in my old office), and he wooed everyone with his cuteness and then slept on my desk for 2 hours.

His name is Apollo. You'll have to make do with some photos, but I get to see him every day! =)

Does anyone know of any stores in Canada that would be good to check out for non-hideous, long dresses? Peter and I are working on a waltz routine and I'd like to have a waltz-worthy dress to dance in one day (no rush). But I don't want an actual ballroom dress because they raise UGLY to a whole new level. Seriously - click that link, I dare you. Ballroom fashion is a very niche thing and does not suit my tastes. So I need a dress that is long and has a flowy, swishy skirt (and isn't too restrictive or fragile). Also, cheap would be good.

If any aspiring fashion designers out there want to tackle the ballroom market, go for it - there is a serious lack of modern, attractive dresses, you'd make a killing.

In the past month, I've been to the dentist for a cleaning (not bad), the doctor for the annual checkup (hate), and the eye doctor (ok). I could not possibly be more up to date on my health checks. Which means I get to forget about it all for a year! Sweet!

I went to the eye doctor on thursday so I could have an uptodate prescription for ordering my awesome new glasses online for dirt cheap. Which I did yesterday. I can't wait to get them! I suspect the argyle ones will be a tad too wide for me (90% of all frames are too wide for my weirdly narrow head), so I ordered a second pair of frames that are specially for us weirdly narrow-headed people. We'll see how it goes.

Going to the optometrist is always kind of annoying. The doctor is okay, mine is actually super nice, but having the doctor's office in a sales environment is really annoying. I don't want someone to try and sell me $400 glasses when I'm there for a health checkup and to get my prescription so I can go online and get $20 glasses. Anyway - I had 3 pairs of glasses with me (spanning the past 5 or 6 years - the advantage of having an unchanging prescription) so they really couldn't argue that I needed more glasses. So they tried to sell me sunglasses. *sigh* I will credit one sales guy - he took one look at me and said "we only have about 5 frames in this store that will fit you" and he pulled them out and said that with a face as narrow as mine, I'd have to shop around and most likely stores that carry brand names won't have anything to fit me. So thank you to that dude for being honest and helpful.

In any case, I escaped with my clean bill of eye health, dilated pupils (hate), and my prescription.

In other news! Peter and I had a dance lesson last night and our instructor started us on a waltz routine (our waltz has been lagging behind our other 125 dances). We get to do some fancy stuff, including a dip! We're very excited about it (our waltz has been quite boring for a while).

And in other other news - tomorrow is Got Craft - the awesomest craft fair in Vancouver. For any Vancouver peoples - it's Sunday, May 3, 2009 11am - 5pm at the Legion Hall on Commercial Dr (@ E6th Ave). My craft group Maked will be there again and we've got some awesome new stuff. Got Craft was the first fair we did as a group - and this one might be the last. We're going on a hiatus... maybe to return, maybe not. Everyone's just gotten really busy and we're all kind of going in different directions so we want to give Maked a bit of a rest, see what happens. So - this might be your last chance to shop Maked in person! (We'll keep our online shop open long enough to sell out our stock