BeautyMark: Canada’s Premier Beauty Boutique for Makeup, Skincare, Fashion and so much more.

BeautyMark: Canada’s Premier Beauty Boutique for Makeup, Skincare, Fashion and so much more.

Weather Forecast: Maple Ridge, British Columbia - The Weather Network#ltermfx#ltermfx

Weather Forecast: Maple Ridge, British Columbia - The Weather Network#ltermfx#ltermfx

What's It Like to Win a Freakin' Condo

A local radio station held the kind of contest that makes you listen to them 24/7. They were giving away 200 keys, one of which would (sort of) eventually open a door to a Vancouver condo decked out with a Mac station, a home entertainment system, a really expensive BBQ and a Harley, all worth a whopping $350,000. The biggest radio give away 'ever', they said. Might be right, I never checked.
To have a chance at winning a key you had to sign up for the radio's online club, fill out a form, checking of slots of time when you might be listening and then wait for them to say your name during one of those times. Then you phone the radio station within an allotted time ( 10 minutes and 10 seconds) to win one of the keys.
This was our way out of the economic slump (dump). My husband immediately signed up, made me do it as well, spread portable radios throughout the house and instructed us all to listen at all times. And now we all waited with bated breath for one of our names to be called. After all this was destiny. We would win this condo.
We dreamt of the bike, the good times we will have with the BBQ and what would we do with the condo, once it was ours. Obviously, we would rent it out for the Olympics and make unnatural amount of money. Then we would simply rent it out to tourist (after all it was fully furnished), and use it ourselves during visits to the city.
I daydreamed about the furniture:would I like it, could I use it? I daydreamed about the sophistication of owning a city apartment. Aah, it was meant to be.
First 100 keys was given away, but none to us.
Did we miss it? Did they say our name and we due to some bodily function missed it? Doubt began to nag me.
130 keys gone.
Oh well, I began to argued with myself, maybe it really was not destiny and I began to slack in my condo-winning efforts. But my husband kept listening. (Driving me crazy was more accurate).
150 keys gone.
OK, that's it I am not listening anymore, this is b&*($%%t! And I am really getting sick of this m$%^&&**^%#%^g music!
180 keys.
I stopped paying attention. What contest?
"Honey!" the sound seeped up from the kitchen, bit strangled, somewhat hard to hear. But I knew. They called his name. They will give him a 189th m$%^&#$%^&*g key. If he manages to dial the phone. On a fourth try my husband got through ( I got through).
It truly was a glorious day in our house. It was destiny! Now, we just had to wait for the rest of unlucky-won't-get-you-a-freakin'-condo keys to be given away. 11 more keys to go.
And then...
500 hundred of enthralled key holders and their loved ones gathered on a wet Friday to finally realize their dream. The radio station thought up a wicked plan to make sure the first contestant didn't open the condo door and ruin the show scheduled to air for the entire afternoon. All would pick a key off a wall and one by one they would attempt to unlock a door leading to the 'coffee room'. Only lucky 50 would get in. And I mean lucky, because it was freakin' cold outside. These victors would then repeat the entire production with the hopes that 15 of them would unlock the door to the 'VIP room'. Out of these lucky chumps, two would emerge as finalists with the chance to open one of the three last doors:the condo door, the one that wins it all.
But, wait it does not end there, don't go home yet. You have the chance to win until the last freakin' minute.
The lucky key holders that got weeded out and joined the unlucky key holders twittering under the sopping tarps. They all hoped until the last minute (all 3 hours worth of wet minutes) that their name would be the last name called to join the two finalist and possibly be the one to open the winning door. If they could hold the key in their water logged fingers, that is.
A wicked plan indeed.
We did not pick a lucky key that advanced us into the cozy 'coffee room'. We did not get the chance to pick the key for the 'VIP room' either. Nor did we get to be one of the two finalists.But, really, did I want to win a key to a lukewarm room or the winning key to the resplendent condo? I was willing to suffer for it. I believed. We tottered under the tarps, positive and smiley, socializing with the rest of the hopefuls. For 3 hours.
Then, the moment came for the third finalist to be called. I knew this was our moment.
"Julia something or other from White Rock, come on down!"
What?? That's not us! They didn't pick us, we didn't win, it wasn't destiny.
So, what do you wanna know, I am sopping wet, can't feel my toes and I don't know what its like to win a freakin condo!

Playing with Style

The Book of Swine and Illness
Kundera Style Public Announcement

The Greek word for “suffering” is Algos. The mutating strain that is Swine flu causes human suffering. The flu season, a constant in our autumn lives, the repetition in the yearly cycle, it comes again with new worries. It is a yearly kitsch of fear that invades our lives. The mother worries for her children; the son for the health of his elderly mother, the fear of loss permeates daily existence. The flu comes again and always it is different. Germans are familiar with it, Mexicans feel it, and the Americans with their health care longings suffer through it. In each language “fear” has a different semantic nuance. In Catalan enyorar is derived from the Latin word ignorare (be unaware of, not know, not experience; to lack or miss). Ignorance, this familiar way of being, they know is not easily corrected state. Should they trust the regime, with its propaganda and its collaboration with pharmaceutical companies, or the chicken littles that are spreading fear across the Internet? Should they choose to vaccinate their fragile loved ones and take a risk, of possibly living through a repeat of the 1978 swine flu fiasco in America? In that light the fear is contagious more than the flu, the kitsch that grips the masses.

Finally Sephora

Recently and finally, the beauty giant Sephora has opened its doors in the Western-most Canada.

After years of hunting down Sephora stores while traveling or endlessly waiting for online orders to arrive (Sephora can take as long as three weeks), I have the option of simply walking in and choosing from a number of cult favourites and otherwise hard to come by products. Hooray!! Two stores have opened in Lower Mainland, one in Coquitlam Centre and one in Pacific Centre on July 10^th. Metrotown will be opening one in the fall. All who know me also know of my addiction to the store.

They would be surprised that I was not standing in the line up downtown Vancouver at 9 am, July 10^th; you know the one that snaked out of the mall's doors and around the corner of the building. The one, beautiful Vancouverites--girls and boys alike-- braved for two hours just to get into Sephora's door. I waited until the next day, Saturday, so that I may experience this historic moment with my best friend. Fully worth it, we were third in line, half an hour before the store opened. Three hours later, spent and happily carrying bags full of new goodies, we exited the store.

Sephora offers plethora of brands such as Ole Henriksen, Ojon, Fresh, my personal favourite Korres, and many others. The beauty experts, fully trained, are waiting to help you choose the right product or offer a makeover. Many of the brands they carry were previously available to us only online. Keep in mind that the stores still only carry a small percentage of what is available through their website www.sephora.com . Sephora' conveniently located stores now offer me quick access to my favourite things, without the travel or wait. Have you checked it out yet?

As local beauty junkies fully know, Sephora is not the first beauty shop in Vancouver to carry some these lines. Beauty Mark in Yaletown has been operating for years and is still worth the gander. Aside from carrying almost the full line of Ole Henriksen, John Masters and Stila--which has recently been pulled from the Holt Renfrew shelves-- among others, they offer an array of funky jewellery, under things, bags, etc. Another store, Beauty Bar, similarly operates in Kits on West 4^th. Both of these have been my haunts for the unusual and the effective for many years. But I live outside of Vancouver and so in order to shop there I had to travel of over an hour each way. With two and a half kids, a husband and school work, some days that was an impossible task.

With Coquitlam Sephora, new age has dawned.

Ministry of Environment - Golden Ears Provincial Park - Hiking Trails

Ministry of Environment - Golden Ears Provincial Park - Hiking Trails

Old Vancouver

I love history. Herzog exhibition at the Art Gallery downtown Vancouvers couple of years ago was amazing. I dragged my children to see it. As a matter of fact we have been to about every museum and heritage site in Lower Mainland. When we go on holidays, our initiary includes ruin and museum visits. To my husband's dismay. Discussing an upcoming trip with my eldest and our possible visit to the B.C museum, he mentioned and old Vancouver footage from the 1920' he watched in school. The eternal geek that I am, logically I deduced I might find it on You Tube. And I did. Very interesting snipet of a life long gone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpPhg9AG_H4