cosmic rose lover

this year, with lindsay and pascale in grad school, we didn't go hog wild about the hot chocolate festival like we did last year.  but there was one place i knew i had to go.  koko monk chocolates--when we went last year the owner who is turkish, talked to us about his hot chocolates like they were pieces of art and talked about starting and finishing notes, like you imagine might happen at a wine tasting.  and they were amazing and very creative.  this year i saw that one of the hot chocolates was called cosmic rose.  it had dark chocolate, coconut milk, rose, salted caramel and cardamom.  i knew i had to have it.  if you go there on the last week you can have 'flights' of 3 different flavours.  i told heather about it and we decided to meet on monday afternoon for some family day hot chocolate.

when i picked her up i was in the middle of drying my hair in the car so it was stifling hot like a sauna without the aromatic cedar.  heather heaved a desperate sigh of relief when i said she could crack open a window, ha ha.                             

for our flight we chose cosmic rose, sin and salvation, which is a white hot chocolate with lavender, chamomile and fig, and talking dirty with sun god, which had black olives, and chili.  cosmic rose was the kindred spirit i felt in my bones that it would be.  all of them were good though.  heather bonded deep with sin and salvation.  

we sat out on the sidewalk and basked in the sun with our hot chocolates. it was such a glorious sunny and mild day.

we decided to have sushi afterwards, and there just happened to be a sushi place a couple of businesses down from koko's.  i got a roll called west 1st and a roll called crunchy roll.  we shared some gomae and agadeshi tofu.  the crunchy roll was rolled in these little crispy crunchies that i was continually fishing out of my bra.  then i looked down and saw i had dripped soy sauce all down my shirt.  "oh great now what am i going to do?" i said in dismay.  heather said that it wasn't noticeable on my shirt because of all the birds.  but i noticed it a lot.  so it was decided that i would go into the washroom and turn my shirt backwards so the soy sauce drizzle would be hidden behind my cardigan.  "going back to my teenage tricks" i murmured to myself.  i also used to turn shirts inside out if i got a stain on it.                                                                                                                             

next we went for a walk at the beach.                                                                                                                                                                                 

notice the backwards shirt

we watched a tree full of noisy chirping birds and sat on logs, walked down paths and eventually found this outcropping of rocks that we climbed up and sat out on the edge watching the sunset.  it was charming night, as an egyptian might say.                                                                                                     

heather often says that she doesn't know how to explain to people back home in ontario about why she loves to live out here.  they need to come and see how beautiful it is, she says.  it's true.  it's such a beautiful land and i feel so blessed to be here.

                                                                                     

so when i got home, i started working on photos.  i'm working on douglas' wedding pics, and i zoomed in on this group shot and what did i find.  i found amy.                                                         

so many shots like that. hahaha ha ahh...    

today i put on a valentine's dance at work.  i wore my new red jeggings, and a pink top with a hot pink lacy tank underneath, and my sweater of many colours.  we made them meatloaf muffins with spicy tomato hearts on top and cheese chunks inside, and mashed potatoes made pink by adding some roasted beets, and roasted cauliflower and broccoli.  we also made cheesecake. we had all these prizes and played games like paper airplane contest (i won for the farthest, because i rock paper airplanes), and freeze frame dance and stuffs.  but after i served the cheese cake everyone took off.  so we were done by 7.