Largely a Lovely Day

This morning, hubby gave me my gift (Labyrinth on DVD and a bar of Denman Island Espresso Chunk Chocolate). I, on the other hand, get the Idiot Award® for losing part of hubby's gift. It'll show up eventually... meantime... I had to give him what I could find (sigh) -- sculpting supplies (since the 8th anniversary is pottery) and an art card that depicts the restaurant where we had our first date.

After that, hubby went out to workout, but the van had other ideas. He came back half an hour later and a few dollars lighter for a litre of oil and several (eep!) litres of water. I also added engine coolant later. Needless to say, the van is running hot and needs some serious TLC. I hope it's not too costly; we're taking it in first thing tomorrow morning.

We decided to still go out for lunch after dropping kiddo at school, and settled on Pagliacci's. I hadn't been in ages, but it hadn't changed any -- still elbow to elbow with the other tables, and the bread is still the best in Victoria. (The food is pretty good too!)

After lunch we wandered around town for a while, including a brief wander through the Empress where I found something NEW (well, not exactly new, but something I didn't know existed) -- the "Empress Archives." Really, it's just a little alcove in the basement level with some framed postcards and menus plus display cases with hotel and Canadian Pacific memorabilia. Still, pretty cool [pictured below is an old Guest Book].

We also tried some gelato (green tea for him, strawberry cheesecake for me) from Oh!Gelato on Government (yummy, but the portions are waaay too large).

A bit more wandering (hardware store for home reno fact-finding; and the mall) and then we picked up kiddo and headed home for a huge sushi feast care of (you guessed it) hubby. I sure do love him. :)