I Need To Bake!

I have the sudden urge to bake.  Maybe because I just saw an awesome sale on a professional series KitchenAid mixer that I happen to have resisted to buy.  Again.

Or maybe it's the two egg whites sitting in the fridge that's calling to be used.  (Ahem, macarons?)

Well, I settled with making apple pies.  At 1am.  On a weeknight.  Shaped like fish.

I need sleep.  lol.

Christmas Presents Are Ready! (Almost)

Insomnia from the last week or so prompted me to have a bit of "me" time again so going down my bucket list of things to do, I decided to start on the Christmas presents (plus I don't think I'll ever get to bake that damn cake).  At first I was going to do a desktop or a monthly wall photo calendar for the grandmas but after getting some inspiration in the blogosphere, I decided to do a 16x20 framed, poster-type calendar instead.

I spent 2 full insomniac nights putting it together and I'm happy to say I'm pretty thrilled with the resulting product.  Although manually typing in each and every day from scratch wasn't exactly my idea of relaxing, seeing the poster come together nicely really gave me a sense of accomplishment.  I can't wait to have them printed and then framed and then I can be proud to say I've got my Christmas shopping started!

Just a few finishing touches, final proofreading to make sure I didn't give September 31 days (oops, lol) and off to the printers it'll go.  Can't wait to see the framed product!

I Did It!

小芬 is a little techy, a little geeky and a little handy, even if I say so myself.  Recently, I've taken apart my Roomba to service the clunking sound the brush assembly was making; I fixed a flashlight in which I removed a couple of corroded, exploded, stuck batteries; I installed two light fixtures and two dimmer switches in Tinlop's new condo; and my newest accomplishment: fix the scroll wheel of all three of my malfunctioning MS mice.

Following the powers of the interwebs, I found some pretty detailed instructions on how to tweak and fix the issues and now I have a whooping four functioning Arc mice (including the new red one).  Stupid MS just had to make things difficult by using one torx screw (out of 7, in which the other 6 were all Phillips) so I had to make a special trip out to Home Depot to pick up the right screwdriver.  So much work!  LOL~  The fix was actually really easy once the screw is out, took all of 3 minutes per mouse.

All fixed, yay!

On another note, I haven't worked a crazy opening in years nor have a worked a project where we sold out entirely in 20 hours.  Despite not having a complete APS (I had to make the schedules), no disclosure docs, faulty internet connection, computers that couldn't connect to our server, photocopier that stopped working, we still pulled off selling them all.  The paisans started lining up at 3am (yes, I was still at work) and it was funny to hear them exaggerate about being there since 2am.  Typical paisans.

Reception area of the sales office

Dining area

Kitchen - I love this kitchen

Living area - with a $15,000 upgraded fireplace built-in

Spacious 20ft wide, so atypical of a townhouse

The mob of people, angry that they didn't get a chance to even come in, let alone buy one

Time I left work on Friday - yes, I'm dedicated

Nick got us each a bottle of Veuve Clicquot for all our hard work!  We all deserved it!

Condo townhomes, 2,100sq.ft., $700,000... a little hard to swallow but people inhaled all 69 of them nonetheless.  Wish I had that kind of money to burn.

Me Time

Work continues to be crazy as we prepare for the Urban Towns at Bayview & Briggs opening and the phone calls just keep on coming in for UV1.  Occupancy issues, sigh... this is Richmond/Rosewood all over again!

For the last few days, I've been having trouble falling asleep before 4am and that's sans caffeine.  Which probably means I'm just really wired from the day's work and can't doze off despite being exhausted.  Me, the adrenaline junkie, aiya~  So I told myself I'm going to unwind tonight and do something for myself after CLM goes off to bed.  In no particular order, I wanted to do up a long overdue scrapbook page; start making a photo calendar for the grandmas for Christmas; try to fix my three MS mice; bake a cheesecake (I was going to do that when CLM was 7 months.  AND... he is now 20 months...poo).  Well, since CLM didn't head off to bed until midnight, I just managed to look up how to fix the mice (yay, the internet) and did one whole page!  Hoot!  Feels good to get something accomplished.  I can't believe a simple page like this took almost 3 hours to do.  Must be getting rusty!

Doot 嘴-ing with Cur Cur B

Knock on wood, CLM has now FINALLY started sleeping through the night.  He has been consistently going to bed around 11pm and waking up around 6:45am to 7:30am.  I can finally say "it got better".  He currently has six teeth and I can see the next ones coming in so I guess I should cherish these 7-hour stretches of sleep while they last but of course I have to be wired and can't sleep.  FML.

The little bibibak continues to test my patience daily with his new-found interest of lugging out all my bottles of Tide and lining them up nicely along the window sill.  Where he gets the energy I have no idea.  Well, to prove he is no match for mammie, I hid all the bottles.  I'm so mean, lol.  Will do an update on his recent development when I have more energy/time.  Since it's now after 3:30am and I have officially screwed myself over sleep-wise for the third night in a row.

Off to bed, my dear.  Now.  Please.

I'm Impressed

My MS mice have been driving me bonkers for a while now and I've been wanting to see if they're still within warranty for replacement.  I have three (3) Arc mice and all of them are doing the same thing: while scrolling down, the page will go down a few lines and then go up.  Now, can you imagine how frustrating it is when you physically take two steps forward and three steps back?!?  Now why I keep buying the same mouse over and over again is another story but I've been putting off calling Microsoft for the last few weeks partly because I've been swamped at work preparing for the occupancies at Upper Village and running the South Asian Expo (aka Code fork).  Swamped is probably an understatement since I worked until at least 10pm most of last week.

I finally decided to take a few minutes to call Microsoft just now, the entire time keeping my fingers crossed that I don't get the doorknob that I dealt with last time (hate to say it but that was also Code fork).  That was a freaking long, tedious, facepalm kind of experience.  To my great surprise tonight though, an English-speaking, local Torontonian answered my call after 2 minutes of MS pre-recorded switchboard, dealt with my concern, took down serial numbers to check their warranties AND recorded my info to send me a new mouse (only one was still under warranty), all within a 13-minute phone call.  Did I mention he was local?  and spoke perfect English?  Win!

Now can anyone fix this scrolling issue?  If so, then I'll have a few mice to spare because they didn't ask me to send the defective ones back again.

I hope the new one is problem-free... or is that wishful thinking?

Update: the new mouse arrived on Monday, September 23!  and in red!!!  That was faaaasssst!