Old People's Weekend

Spent the weekend at.... The Cove Lakeside !

No... not our unit yet (still isn't finished but, apparently it might be ready by Christmas).

It was Timmy's treat for my post-birthday weekend and it gave us a chance to pre-check a few things so that we know what to look for & ask about when it comes time to go through our suite.








Took nice autumn walks through the "nut farm" --- man, there's cool trees there...

And I got the collector's edition of the BBC series "Pride & Prejudice" plus collector's set of "Fight Club" --- probably two of the most opposingly different movies imaginable!

At the end of the weekend we went home & picked squash before the coming frost kills 'em all.

Our Mitchy Witchy Weekend

There should be a whole heckuva lot more photos on this post but --- our witchy ways musta blowed up my blogger because it just won't accept any more pix.... (blast!) Go HERE for more photos...

Even the photo at left is a fake (!)--- taken from an earlier Vic trip. But the right end of the human sandwich (pictured) was our purty-party-hostess for Thursday eve and we got to see her rad pad & drink wine & eat cheese with her at The Mint restaurant (not that I have any photos to prove this claim, but....)


Day Two of the Witchy Weekend was spent checking out the bunny-ful UVic campus.

Boys & Bunnies held our focus fully, but we also found time to buy some "athletic gear" (ha ha!) at the campus bookstore -- not to imply that there was any athleticism attached to the weekend's activities, aside from our sauntering between the hotel & restaurants & clothing stores & the fact that we wagged our tongues so much during marathon gossip sessions that we almost needed resuscitation!!


By Day Three, shopping fever struck.

Luckily, Dr. J was in the house and cured us (quickly) with a trip to Patch! (not that this *$&% blog will accept the killer pix I took there or anything....)

After negotiating some sweet deals in the clothing & jewelry departments, we mentally jogged out to lunch for our imagined health-food indulgence (Noodlebox had a line-up.... damn!).

The last eve (my birthday!) was spent in the presence of the lovely ladies below (not the one holding the massive water bottle, tho...). They graciously treated us to sups at this funky Italian restaurant called Zambri's --- where we accidentally (but happily) munched on fried octopus & spicy tapas - why couldn't our Sicilian companion translate the menu?

After a nearly fatal final night of female chatter, we awoke on the fourth day, looked around for a Noodlebox (.... noodlebox?)... packed up, jumped in the car and promptly got lost.

Octopus musta made us a bit smarter, tho, because we finally found our way to the ferry terminal and the long (mathematical) drive home.

The weekend count was: wine bars visited (3), restaurants pigged out in (4, maybe 5), clothes bought (lots), beans spilled (50), noodlebox eaten: (0). Warning Noodlebox: we shall return!

Ya Ya Wine Weekend

Ya-Ya SisterSpeak: "Which Way to the Wine Festival?"







I'm thinking that this weekend will go down in our family history books as one that required mucho recovery (ouch)!

Present for this wine-0-rama were... my mum's many zany sisters, plus Wunderfull Winnipeg cousins & kooky kid, plus Awesome Ottawa cousin, plus Ever-Lovely Edmonton friend, plus a few fun tagalongs here & there, as well! Phew. Needless to say, wine flowed all weekend, along with conversation and food and craziness (did they really dance to Bryan Adams on Saturday night??)....

On Saturday, the requisite day-o-touring was performed here in Kelowna -- with visits to Summerhill Winery, St.Hubertus and Cedar Snobby Creek (the last winery being too damned uptight to even bother tasting there.... seriously, a reality check for folks-working-at-local-wineries: it's Kelowna fer gawd's sakes...as in, l'il ol' Canada! not the snotty south of France! )

Then it was off to Carmelis Goat Cheese heavenly cheese shop for delectable samples of their extremely wine-friendly products (which we later consumed in mass quantities at home!). Then a quick trip up to Mission Hill Winery to see if we could make their wimpy wineshop staff cry (I won that competition in record time, too!!) and Quail's Gate for a last stop on the Kelowna arm of the tour.

By Sunday, we poured our remains into a few cars and drove down to Oliver, at the South end of our Okanagan grape growing region, for the annual Festival of the Grape and Grape Stomp competition (note, a few pictures up, that even the youngest generation was enticed to smush grapes between his toes!.... which, by the way, were not washed at all for the rest of the weekend...!)


Grape Stomp is a festival that's growing in popularity down here, due mostly to the fact that, well, it rocks. Killer music all day (see funny, "puffy" photo of The Nylons above), awesome & various food, lotsa hippie-inspired clothes & jewelry and, of course, wine wine & more wine to slosh into your glass & then gulp down yer gullet (as demonstrated by this hairy pair at left!)

And somehow, our livers and this little fella below survived the whole weekend. Which begs the question: will Grape Stomp become an annual event for the Ya Ya Familyhood? I know that if we buy just a few more cap-guns, that one little critter will already go out & buy his plane tickets tomorrow!!