Been a while since I’ve posted anything, but I have an excuse this time — I was in Thailand again. Well, only for a couple of weeks. I even tried to go without checking email but ended up with 400 messages in my inbox (350 of which were spam, mind you.)

Anyhow, I’m back now and the jetlag appears to be wearing off and I figured I’d post a little recap of the journey (having to take a Gravol every night to fall asleep is pretty sad; however, lying awake until 3am each night this week even AFTER taking the Gravol is worse.)

Hayley and I spent nine days with my uncle and his partner in Bangkok, and another five days on the beach at the Sheraton Krabi. Well, technically it worked out to one day on the beach, one day of travel back and forth to Bangkok, and three days sick in bed with door locked, the drapes pulled, and a nurse visiting several times a day to administer various medications that a horse would have trouble swallowing. We both ended up with some kind of food poisoning (I blame the hotel breakfast buffet, but I don’t have any proof), a couple of bad sunburns, and heatstroke. The nurse actually laughed at me at one point, telling us he hadn’t seen so many things wrong with a patient in one go. :/ Either way, the beach was excellent for the one-and-a-bit days we managed to enjoy it.

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Not that I was really ever on the market to begin with, but the big news this week is that Hayley and I got engaged over the weekend. (!!) (cue jumping and screaming!)

Having never gotten engaged before, I was quite unprepared for the deluge of excited congratulations we received. I also wasn’t quite ready to explain what went down about a dozen times to every woman I happened to mention the engagement to.

Strangely, most men seemed satistified with offering their congratulations and that was pretty much it. However, nearly every woman who found out wanted details, details, details — have we set a date yet? How did you propose? Was skywriting involved? Where did you go for dinner? Did you buy flowers? Was it a surprise, or did she expect it? Did she cry when you asked? Did you cry? Did the dog cry? Did the neighbours cry? Is it a shotgun wedding? How big is the rock?? I think I’ve heard just about every question under the sun in the last few days. :)

Well, to answer most of your questions in one fell swoop:

1. No skywriting was involved. None. Zilch. Nada.
2. What was involved: a fantastic 10-course dinner at Lumière, a night at the Met downtown, flowers, chocolates, strawberries, a cheesy card, my crappy drawing skills, expressions of my undying love for her, champagne (err, sparkling wine), and an amazing breakfast at Diva. And some other stuff in between.
3. Yes, she had an inkling of what was going on. Not going into details there. :)
4. She cried; I nearly did earlier that evening. The dog seemed strangely unaffected. The neighbours are still unaware, as far as I know. At least, I haven’t told them…
5. No, not a shotgun wedding. :o
6. “The Rock” is viewable in the photo at right. I think it looks bigger than it actually is, but I guess that’s up for debate.
7. We haven’t set a date for the wedding yet, but suffice it to say that it’ll be sometime in 2008. (I hope.)
8. What, aren’t you satisfied yet?? :p

I have to say, it went off without a hitch… aside from me leaving the ring in the car with a valet during dinner because I couldn’t easily get it out without Hayley seeing it (yikes, that was stressful.) I honestly think I was more nervous when I went to tell her mother what I was planning than when I actually proposed. I went in anticipating all sorts of screwups, and even though everything I read about proposing (yes.. I googled it. :o) suggested a backup plan, I didn’t have one ready. I just figured que sera, sera and that I’d have to count on Murphy’s Law not working against me that evening. In the end, I think it all worked out perfectly.

Oh, and I guess opening the ring box and having the ring fall out right as I presented it to her probably wasn’t the smoothest move, but at least I got a laugh out of it. ;)

Alright, so bear with me. I don’t usually write this kind of thing, but I’m feeling vaguely inspired by a blog post I just read over at Recovering Overachiever. I just found the blog via this NaBloPoMo thing, and started reading. One of the more recent posts hit a nerve; I just went to my 10-year high school reunion 3 weeks ago and had a very similar experience.

It was interesting, in that in high school I was what you could describe as a somewhat of a dork. Things have changed in 10 years, and now I’m a much more refined… well, dork. Granted, I dress significantly better; I’m in moderately good shape; definitely more worldly; my girlfriend is gorgeous, funny and intelligent; and I make a decent wage. However, I still work in technology (i.e. sitting in front of 2 LCD panels in semi-darkness cutting code all day), which by definition makes me a dork, or geek, or whatever you want to call it (i.e. unlikely to win any popularity contests.)

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I’ll get the mandatory apologies for not posting any updates recently out of the way first. OK. That’s cleared up. Moving on. :)

And now for the breaking news — I finally found a new apartment! Things worked out a little differently than I had anticipated; the place I ended up buying is in Brentwood (yes, in Burnaby.) I know I told a lot of people I was mainly looking at the North Shore and Kits, but after I saw what I could get on the western outskirts of Burnaby for the same money as a much smaller, older, and generally less appealing place in North Van, it was a no-brainer. While I’m not extremely familiar with Brentwood yet, from what I’ve seen in my trips out there so far, the area seems to be shaping up pretty nicely. There’s a Save-On-Foods a block or two away from the high-rise I bought in, Brentwood Mall about 3 blocks up Halifax Street, a Skytrain station within spitting distance, and it works out to be about the same distance to my folks’ place as Lower Lonsdale was before. Plus I don’t have to fight bridge traffic in the morning, which is great. I hate the North Shore bridges with a passion — not having to wait for traffic to crawl over those bloody things in the mornings will be a nice change from the last few months (and the years previous.)

On to the property details…

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Hot off the heels of the Canucks’ victory in the Motor City last night, I figured I’d take a look back at my original picks and see how I fared when picking the opening night lineup. Looks like I wasn’t far off the mark with my team. :)

I don’t think most people that follow the team were expecting the tenacity and grit they saw last night in Detroit. Even various bloggers and hockey news sites seemed surprised by the Canucks’ play. Of everything I read this morning, I think James Mirtle’s blog post was the most eloquent in summarizing the win:

If he keeps this up, Luongo’s on his way to becoming the most popular Canuck of all-time.

Vancouver’s Lineup in Detroit

My forward line picks were pretty close; things worked out being a bit of a combination of my two possible scenarios: the Swedish Touch line of the Sedins with Naslund has worked out well so far for a first line, B. Mo centering Bulis and Pyatt from my second scenario, and an energy line featuring Kesler, Burrows and Cooke as the third line. Mark Chouinard, disappointing in the pre-season, sat out the game with a shoulder injury, Josh Green pulled in on the right side of the fourth line, and Rick Rypien is back in Manitoba until his thumb heals. All in all, not too shabby.

My defensive pairings were a bit off (Salo and Ohlund playing together is an interesting combo, I really thought Ohlund and Mitchell would both end up playing with the young guys, but I guess it comes down to who is most comfortable playing with whom.) Rookie D Luc Bourdon sat out the game but will be in the lineup for tonight’s match-up against the Blue Jackets; veteran Rory Fitzpatrick took his spot with Kevin Bieksa. I’d be surprised to see Bieksa and Bourdon paired up tonight, considering both are a little more on the offensive side of the game and both are quite young. We’ll see what happens in a few hours…

It’s no surprise that the Canucks plucked a backup goalie off the waiver wire earlier this week; the big surprise was that it seems they had been watching Danny Sabourin for an entire season. I feel bad for poor Wade Flaherty, being demoted once again to the AHL, but I guess Sabourin must be a decent pickup considering how long the Canucks scouted him for. It will be interesting to see how many games he gets to play in a ‘Nucks uniform this season, and even more interesting to see how he performs.

Aside from Rypien (which was pretty unpredictable, and he’ll probably end up being called up very soon), not a bad showing…