Dine Out Vancouver is in full swing again this year and throughout the Lower Mainland people are exploring restaurant menus and getting great deals.
Vancouver’s most anticipated food and wine event is back! Offering an extended 17 delicious days and 156 leading Vancouver restaurants, Dine Out Vancouver 2007 is bigger and better than ever!
From January 19 to February 4, enjoy delectable three-course prix fixe menus at one of Vancouver’s hottest restaurants for $15, $25 or $351 per person, complemented by quality BC VQA wine pairing suggestions [TourismVancouver]
It sounds like a deliciously good time but it just so happens to coincide with Vancouver Coastal Health’s annual restaurant inspections and a healthy number of establishments in the area have been shut down [VCH].
14 eateries in Vancouver, Richmond, and the North Shore were closed because of rodent infestations. Other infractions include unsanitary conditions, poor food handling, and at one sushi restaurant, a sewage back-up.
[CKNW]
Anywhere from Sushi bars to Subway chains have been reprimanded and shut down for unsanitary and unclean environments, although a handful have reopened within days of the closures. You can view the full report online [PDF] to see what was closed, when, and why. You may also want to cross reference it with any dining locations you were considering in the near future.
I’m not sure when it exactly it happened but our company cut off permissions for MSN and all other chat clients a couple weeks ago. Since then, we’ve all been logging into IM via web based messengers. AIM Express, Web Messenger and the most annoying of all, e-Buddy. I tried getting Gaim or Trillian but still no dice so it was time to find a web-based program that could a) work b) not be annoying with ads and pop ups. What I came across was Meebo.
Meebo is an in-browser instant messaging program, like AIM Express, which supports multiple IM services, including Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, AIM, ICQ, and Jabber. Meebo makes instant messaging services more accessible to users who are unable or unwilling to download the appropriate software.[wiki]
You can log into any of your chat clients and either keep the main contact window and chat windows within one browser window or pop them out. Only issue with that is pop up blockers will have to be modified. You can also add widgets and there’s a blog feature, which I have not yet explored.
Overall it’s pretty darn cute, yes… I said it was cute. Smooth colours, very “Web 2.0” looking. It’s been a great workaround all morning so we’ll see how it fares the rest of the day, it could be a solution to the office chat crisis.
Fellow Crazy Canuck, JJ and I were talking about our hometown prior to the start of recording an episode of the podcast the other night. He mentioned his high school reunion, we giggled reminiscing about P.M.S. and s-l-a-y-o-R. Those familiar with school district 36 will know what we’re talking about.
The topic originated from a discussion about music played at certain clubs, which we don’t really patronize anymore but just the thought brings memories of more innocent days flooding back. Those songs that you’ve heard over the last decade while sharing pitchers, doing shots and getting your shoes all sticky on the disgusting dance floors of certain establishments. You know all the words, of course, you’ve heard the songs enough times and so has everyone else, and they make that quite evident by singing along at the top of their lungs. Because of these guilty pleasures, (come on, you know you sing along too) and the memories conjured just thinking about this post, I put together a little list. You don’t have to have feathered hair, wear tapered jeans or popeye pants to appreciate the pure cheese that follows:
Surrey Top Ten:
Pour Some Sugar On Me
Thunderstruck
Living On A Prayer
Sweet Home Alabama
Sweet Child Of Mine
Hurts So Good
Jessie’s Girl
Mony Mony
Sweet Caroline
Okay so there’s only 9, but I’ll leave number 10 up to you. These are the top songs you’ll hear when you head out on the town, mid-week (because hey, Wednesdays are wing nights) or on the weekends. People young and old sing along, and it’s either because a) you remember the songs and had the album when it came out, hung posters of the band on your wall and air guitared b) you remember going to these pubs and clubs and hearing these songs, over so many years, it reflects back on all those good times – and bad c) it’s just hilarious.
To add your pick for number 10 (Scorpion, Whitesnake, Vanilla Ice…oh boy!) feel free to comment or use the contact form. Thanks for letting me use ‘Surrey Top Ten’JJ!
A fellow blogger at Metroblogging – Chicago pointed this out. It’s an interesting map compiled by a Norwegian blogger, placing countries (based on their GDP) in corresponding US States [TheBigPicture]
Canada: 1.035 trillion USD
Texas: 989,443 billion USD
If you want to get really picky… you could break it down by Canadian province. British Columbia being at 168 million behind Alberta, Ontario and Quebec. You could say, BC is the new Connecticut, or Alberta is the new Missouri… or just let Wiki do the rest of the comparisons for you.
According to Hockey, A People’s History (which John and I watched religiously but are too cheap to purchase the DVD box set) Tim Horton was trying to subsidized his meager hockey earnings by becoming an entrepreneur. He worked for Conn Smythe’s [wiki] cement company before starting up his own burger joints and eventually the donut shops which became a staple of Canadian culture [wiki] .
We were talking with Bradley (yes, name drop, don’t you feel special now?) on the weekend about how prevalent Tim Horton’s are back East. He said they even have different products including the rumoured “Gretzky”. We all know a Double Double is two sugars, two creams[CBC], but the fabled “Gretzky” is nine of each [wiki].
But the Tim Ho specialty I’m missing right now is the bread bowl. I got some gift certificates for my birthday so I’ve been pumped with coffee for about 3 days now. At lunch I ran down to get some chili, which is accompanied by garlic bread, which will have to suffice for now. I’ve told John about the commercials for a while, since sometimes I’ll just blurt it out in every day conversation but I really do want to say, with merit, “…and then I ate the bowl!” (followed by cheesy laughter).
