Unexpected Package

Got a package in the mail today, but it wasn't something I ordered. It was a package from Will! He sent me a Holografic-variant Iron Man Bobble Head! It's pretty cool.


^ Iron Man Bobble Head.
Thanks Will!

Back Ache!!!

I stayed home from work today. I hurt my back more than I thought yesterday. When I woke up this morning, it hurt to walk without hunching over! When I sat down infront of my computer to email Steve, it even hurt to sit!
So I mailed Steve, rubbed on some Active On, and layed down flat until 1:30pm.
I got up and drove to CMC to get some docs to work on at home. The car seat was hot, but it felt good on my back.

Dinner today -> Lamb Curry Rice.
Influenced by Marc's almost daily curry-fest last week, and watching this weekend's "NHK's Begin Japanology" episode about curry; I was in the mood for to eat curry.


^ Lamb Curry Rice.
Maybe today wasn't the best day for curry. It was really hot in the house (I didn't turn on the AC and it was +26C). I was sweating buckets while eating my curry.

Useless Japan News:
I found this weird sushi commercial on Youtube for Gin no Sara delivery sushi restaurant in Japan. Does this commercial make you want to eat sushi?


^ Weird Sushi Commercial.

Weekend Report

Friday:
I was in the mood for something really sweet and cold today. So I went to Quickie and got a large slush! The flavour choices were between Grape, Fruit Punch, and Blue. Ofcourse I went with good old Blue.


^ Slush. The awesome flavour of Blue :)

Dinner today -> Maple Garlic Wings.
Deep fried wings, lightly coated in my home-made maple-garlic sauce. Cucumber sticks on the side.


^ Maple Garlic Wings.

Saturday:
Went out for DimSum for my dad's Chinese birthday. Among the dishes we ordered, we got a dish with Jelly Fish, Pig's Feet, and... Duck Tongue!!!


^ Duck Tongue.
It taste like chicken :). There is a bone down the middle of the tongue too. I didn't expect that.
I'm not a big fan of it, but Susanna ate 3 of them!

Dinner today -> Home-made Burgers and Fries.


^ Burgers and Fries.

Sunday:
Lunch today -> Home-made Burgers and Fries Part II.
I added sauteed mushrooms.


^ Burgers and Fries Part II + sauteed mushrooms.

I wanted to do some yard work today, but somehow I tweeked my lower back picking up a huge bag of wood chips (or maybe it was moving the bat bag?). I didn't get any of my planned yard work done.
I applied some Active On for Backache. Works pretty good.


^ Active On for Backache.
Anyways kids, remember to always stretch before doing anything!

Dinner today -> Eggs and King Mushrooms.


^ Scramble Eggs and King Mushrooms.

Happy Chinese Birthday Dad!!!

HAPPY Chinese BIRTHDAY DAD!!!

Thursday... the Day Before Friday :)

Dinner today -> Deep Fried Wontons, Deep Fried Mushrooms, and Salad with Elk Sausage.
Th, th, th, th, th,... That's all folks!


^ Deep Fried Dinner and Salad.

Willy's

Lunch today -> Pizza
After all the pizza talk last night at the softball game, I was compelled by my stomach to order pizza for lunch. I ordered a Canadian from Willy's Pizza. There's whole bacon strips and a ton of cheese on it.


^ Medium Canadian Pizza.

Useless Idol News:
I wasn't able to upload a video of AKB48's Heavy Rotation yesterday. I can't get any audio when I convert a .ts file to .mp4. But a found a performance on YouTube from CD TV last week, and ripped it.


^ Heavy Rotation @ CD TV
(Ripped from YouTube.)

Strike Fighters Win! and Lose :(

CMC Strike Fighters vs General Dynamics today in a softball double header. We easily won the 1st game 16-5 with 2 home runs by Jeno, 2 by Jeremy, and 1 by Stefano.
After the 1st game, we seemed to lost our energy and lost the 2nd game 11-5. Or maybe everyone was pre-occupied with ordering pizza than playing?
1 more game left in the season, and then the playoffs.

Useless Idol News:
I got my new AKB48 CDs in the mail last week.
The B Version's Yuko cover is so...!!! BUT when the CD booklet is unfolded... @_@; !!!


^ Heavy Rotation CDs and booklet foldout.

"Heavy Rotation" is their latest single and hit #1 on the charts this week. Even though I don't think it's that great of a song, it's somewhat catchy.

Swearing

Dinner today -> More Deep Frying Foods.
Deep fried some tempura shrimp, Vietnamese crab rolls, an another onion blossom to go with leftover chicken wings. Susanna told me to use a sweet onion to make the onion blossom. It turned out limp and didn't taste as good or as crisp, as the red onion. I shouldn't have listened to her. She doesn't know how to make this.


^ Deep Fried Foods.

NOTE: Someone was B*TCHY today and actually deliberately swore at me, while talking to me!!! I do not respect anyone who needs to swear while talking, when there is no need for it; especially to me! It pissed me off and there will be payback.

Weekend Report

Friday:
Dinner today -> 100% Duck Sausages and Peas.
The 100% Duck Sausages were from Bearbrook Farms. It tastes like normal sausages too me. Not worth the money I spent on it.


^ Duck Sausages and Peas.

More Magic gaming today. Only 3 players tonight.


^ Friday Night Magic.

Got a few wins in tonight, but the best was when I pulled off 2 Rite of Replication with Kicker, targeting Gavin's Lightning Angel :)


^ 10 3/4 Lightning Angel tokens and a 3/3 Elephant token for the win.
Note: Ben is becoming a sore loser when we game recently. If things don't go his way, he starts whining about it. Ben, SUCK IT UP!!!

Saturday:
Went to Toys R Us in the morning to get a Baby Shower gift, before Stefano's BBQ/ Tanya's Baby Shower. I got a gift, and I ended up getting a ton of Transformers for myself :)


^ New Transformers: WFC Prime and Bumblebee, Drift, Thrust, and SeaSpray.
I'm really impressed with SeaSpray. Super articulated and poseable, with a cool looking robot mode.

Stefano hosted an excellent Baby Shower for Tanya and Tyler. He was volun-told to have it :P.
The BBQ food was good, and the many desserts were awesome. I tried 1 of everything, and took a doggie-plate full of dessert home.


^ Desserts.

Sunday:
Broke out my deep fryer today. I've been marinating chicken wings for the past 3 days in a Japanese Hot Pot Stock. It's got a slightly sweat, soy sauce and miso type flavour. The plain wings tasted great marinated in this.

For 1 batch, I tossed it in a garlic butter and maple syrup mix. Yummy stuff.


^ Garlic Maple Wings.

I tried making something new: Deep Fried Onion Blossom.
Partially cut a red onion and soaked it abit of salt water before flouring and deep frying to make the Onion Blossom.
It turned out pretty well. I didn't keep the red onion in the fryer long enough, as the center wasn't caramelized. I think I needed more flour between the sections/"petals" to make it more crispy too. The outer "petals" were tastier when dipped it in Wafu sauce.


^Deep Fried Red Onion -> "Onion Blossom".
Oooo... so pretty... almost too pretty to eat... almost.

Dinner today -> Marinated Wings and Onion Blossom.


^ Marinated Wings and Onion Blossom.

Settlers Round 2

Some more gaming tonight in both Magic and Settlers of Catan.


^ 4 Player Settlers.

I made a critical mistake placing my 1st settlement, which helped Gordon to the win. He won the game without much of a threat, as his numbers kept coming up; while everyone else wasn't drawing much or trading 4-to-1.

Gordon's only played Settlers 3 times, but he's won 2 games! He might be a natural at the game :) He just needs to work on his gaming speed. Your playing your turn too slow ;P

Strike Fighters beat the Streaker Team

Dinner today -> Rib Eye Steak :)
Rib Eye Steak is on sale this week at Farmboy. I was in the mood for wings, but I couldn't pass up the steak deal. Maybe I'll get wings tomorrow?


^ Rib Eye Steak with Cucumber, Tomatoes, and Garlic Butter Mushrooms.

Useless CMC Strike Fighter News:
Had to eat dinner early today, because we had a CMC Strike Fighters game late tonight. We played Junkyard Dogs. A Tier B team (tier above ours), and the last team we lost to during the tournament earlier this year (aka: the game with the streaker in it ^_^. That's how everyone remembers them; and how they remember us).
It was a high scoring game, but in the end we beat them in extra innings 29-28! Great game. I almost hit the cycle. I got a single, double, and a triple, but no home runs.

Fongpay's Blooper of the Night: Fongpay striking out on an outside ball; called a strike; by Jeno! And after I gave him a Pepsi Strong Shot too!


^ Jeno on 1st. Minutes later, he called me out on Balls...

Fongpay's Highlight of the Night: Jeremy hitting a walk-off home run with 2 out and runners on 2nd and 3rd; in the final inning, for the win!

Spy! Spy!... an another Spy!

Dinner today -> Rideau Restaurant Take-out.
Ordered some Beef Chow Mein and Dry Fried Beef Rice Noodles for Ben and I for our pre-gaming dinner. I haven't had Rideau in awhile, and it still tastes so good.


^ Rideau Restaurant Take-out.

Useless Gaming News:
Played some 4 player Magic today. I lost every game as I got double teamed again. Gordon had some land shortages again. He needs to shuffle better.

Gavin had to leave early to do some work, so we played 3 player Settlers of Catan. Ben and I taught Gordon how to play with the Cities and Knights expansion.
It was a long game and Ben almost won. He screwed up when he didn't use his Alchemy card to set the die roll on his turn to draw and win. Right after that I played Spy! on Ben and took his Spy card. Used the 2nd Spy! card on Ben again and took his Deserter card instead of his Alchemy card. Then on Gordon's turn he played a 3rd Spy! on Ben and took his game winning Alchemy card :P
Because of Ben's mistake, Gordon won.


^ Early stages of Settlers.

Black/Green of Doom!!!

Gavin is town for business this week. So I made a new Magic deck today for some multiplayer gaming this week. It's fast, simple, and combos together well. I suspect it will slaughter, but I will lose alot because Ben, Gordon, and Gavin will have to gang up to beat it.

Useless Idol News:
Got my No Sleeves (no3b) CDs in the mail. The AKB48 sub-unit's 5th single "Kimishika".


^ No Sleeves "Kimishika" CDs with Bonus Cards.
Nice song. I like the video too. I believe this is the intro song to their Cell Phone Drama (yes, streaming TV/video to cell phones in Japan).


^ No Sleeves - Kimishika.

Weekend Report

Went to the Garlic Festival in Carp with Ben and Jane.
We tried out abunch of different kinds of garlic samples. Some of the kinds were pretty spicy. Ben and I like the "genki" garlic variation, but we didn't see any for sale. Only the samples were available.
I got an elk and garlic sausage from the Elk Farm booth. It's $12 for a huge sausage.


^ Elk and Garlic Sausage.
Tastes pretty good, but I think it could use more garlic...

I also got some sweet local corn, but I don't remember the type. Freshly picked corn tastes so much better than from the store.


^ Steamed Fresh Corn.

Lunch Sunday -> Salad.
Made a fresh salad using the sausage and corn from the Garlic Festival. It was tasty, but it lacked some tomatoes.


^ Salad with fresh corn and elk sausage.

Useless Transformers News:
Finally some new Transformers are out. I picked up the new Power Core Transformers. I didn't think these were that good when I first saw them, but the transform design is actually pretty good. Each Transformer has an alternate head to be used when forming the body to combine with the drone transformers. Neat idea. The mini-cons I can do with out.


^ Power Core Transformers.

Gordon was able to find for me Arcee from Transformers: Animated. She's abit hard to find.


^ TF: Animated Arcee.

Happy Birthday Will!!!

Happy Birthday Will!!!

Round 3

Dinner today -> Steak and Veggies... Round 3. FIGHT! Shoryuken!
Cooked the last of the steak from the 3-pack I got from Farmboy. Veggies were simple tomatoes and mushrooms.


^ Steak and Veggies Round 3.
It looks good, and tastes even better :)

Useless Idol News:
3 members of Morning Musume are going to graduate from the group this fall: Kamei Eri, JunJun, and LinLin. Announced a few days ago, and I'm only finding out about this now. Gees..., I must have really converted to AKB48 fandom, because this news didn't really shock me that much (Well... Kamei was a shock, but the other 2 weren't so much).
3 gone in 1 shot is pretty dramatic for Morning Musume, since there are only 8 members in the group. But also announced was a 9th Generation audition to take place, to replace the members leaving.
It's too bad Eri has to graduate. She's one of my favorites.


^ Kamei Eri.
Story here.
(Credit to Hello Online!)

Slow Rolling Grounder...

CMC Strike Fighters lost today 15-6. The score seamed worse than it was. They were hitting into our gaps (ie: a slow rolling grounder through Jeno's legs) and we committed more errors than they did (ie: a slow rolling grounder through Jeno's legs). LOL
Sorry Jeno. It was too funny not to mention :)

Dinner today -> Steak and Veggies... Round 2. FIGHT! Tiger Uppercut!
Using my +2 Fry Pan of Searing, I seared the outside of the steak abit more than I wanted, because Ben called me while I was cooking. Due to it's magical properties, the insides were not over cooked, but still the way I like it: bloody rare.
Veggies were cooked in the same pan as the steak, but with a blob of garlic butter today.


^ Steak and Veggies, Round 2.

"Heavy Rotation"

Dinner today -> Steak and Veggies.
I wanted to make some rice too, but I didn't get home til 8:30pm. Picked up a Caramilk Bar. No key inside... :(


^ Steak and Veggies.

Useless Idol News:
A little while ago, I watched AKB48's video for their next single: "Heavy Rotation". OMG!!! It's pretty much 100% fan service!
OMG Yuko!!! And Kasai's kiss on Yukirin was too cute!
I have no other words... just OMG!

You can watch it here, but I warn you... lots of crazy swimsuit/lingerie shots, some cute scenes, and afew almost dirty scenes. Probably NSFW, and I won't be posting the video... maybe.
I think the video is suppose to be a fantasy representation of what fans think/want the idol world to be like? I could be wrong (likely wrong).
I don't think "Heavy Rotation" is that great of a song too. No where near as good as "Iiwake Maybe"(last years election song) . Too bad too, since Yuko is in the center position for the 1st time.
I like the B-Side song "Lucky Seven" more, and the video is of them cosplaying as pirates :)

Puccho

Went to T&T with Ben and Susanna for dinner food stuff. This week T&T is celebrating a "Japan Festival". We picked up a bunch of Japanese foods and snacks, including some Japanese Baumkuchen Cake! It's a really tasty multiple-ringed cake. Really good stuff. I saw this cake being made in a department store bakery in Osaka. The line to get the cake was long and snaked out the door!


^ Baumkuchen Cake.
Does anyone know what the difference between the orange and blue packs are?

Useless Idol News:
I introduced Steve to a new candy from Japan last week: "Puccho". It's available at T&T. We like it alot too. It's a chewy fruit flavoured candy with coloured gummy fruit dots in it.


^ Puccho Candy.

But I found out today that Puccho is now officially promoted by AKB48! Is this new candy campaign enough to push Steve into the world of AKB48? The official website is here. It's got videos, TV commercials, and downloadable wallpapers.


^ Videos and Wallpapers.

Update:
All videos in 1 video below. It's kind of funny that the girls turn into candies.


^ AKB Puccho Videos.
(Ripped from Youtube.)

Weekend Report

Friday:
Not much going on today. Ate some Astroboy cookies, but I mainly got the cookies for the can :) But the cookies were good too.


^ Astroboy Cookies and Can.

Saturday:
Ben and I went to Gordon's for about 10hrs of gaming. We mostly played Magic, but we also played some Ticket to Ride, Blokus, and Gemlock.


^ 3 Player Gemlock.

Sunday:
Downloaded a new game for my iPhone called: Dungeon Hunter. It's very similar to Diablo. It's eating up most of my day.

Dinner today -> Ramen Noodles.
Added a fried egg and sliced some fish paste swirls :)


^ Ramen Noodles.

AKB48 Cards!

Dinner today -> Steak, Potatoes, and Tomatoes.
Basic steak with salt and pepper; then topped with abit of PC Steak Vinaigrette Glaze. Boiled potatoes, then halved and pan fried with rosemary. Plain quartered tomatoes.


^ Steak, Potatoes, and Tomatoes.

Useless Idol News:
I got another package in the mail today from Japan. I got my AKB48 Cards!
I special ordered them through J-List (NSFW). They were released last Friday and I got them in less than a week.


^ 4 AKB48 Card Sets.
I got Takahashi Minami, Kashiwagi Yuki, Kasai Tomomi, and of course Oshima Yuko :)
There are 4 rare cards per box, but I only got 2 of the rarer rare cards: Clear Yukirin and Clear Yuko. I was really hoping for an autograph card. Oh well. I'm still satisfied with the cards.

Happy Birthday Anita!!!

Happy (Belated) Birthday Anita!!!

Sorry, I'm late about it :)

Box from Japan.

CMC Strike Fighters take a loss today. We lost 19-11, against the 2nd last place team. We gave up 10 runs in the 1st inning, and that cost us. A freak accident took out our pitcher too.
Fongpay's Highlight of the Night: Home Plate was a dis-assembled Tim Bits Box.

^ Home Plate.... Mmmm Donuts...

Useless Japan News:
Got a package in the mail today from Japan. It included some Pepsi Strong Shot!


^ Japan Stuff.
Also got some sushi key chains, crab claw pen, and a Pythagoras Switch Book Vol 2.
The book includes a DVD with a bunch of clips from NHK's Pythagora Switch TV show. The clips are of Rube Goldberg machines.