On October 4th, Kylie Minogue plays the Hollywood Bowl. In her only Southern California appearance, I decided I am going to take opportunity to see the global megastar live in concert. This may be my only chance to see Kylie Minogue in concert on “my turf” so to speak.

While Kylie plays Europe and Australia every time she releases an album, the United States rarely gets more than a television appearance. Granted she doesn’t have the same popularity here in the United States as she does abroad. But I think it’s awesome that she’s coming to the United States and Canada (does it really count as including Canada when its just a single show in Toronto?). I have several of her concert DVDs from past tours and they’re always enjoyable to watch. Welcome to California to perform Kylie.

I wonder if she’ll incorporate an ABBA song or two as she was recently at the BBC2 concerts in London paying tribute to the music of ABBA.

If you’d like to join me, tickets are still available from TicketMaster. Click here to visit TicketMaster and let me know if you’re coming. I’m not getting fancy seats. I managed to get $30 tickets in section N1 which is pretty close to center albeit pretty far from the stage. I just bought my tickets this morning too. The show is not yet sold out.

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As of September 17th, 2009 until supplies run out, Raymond Aaron is offering the opportunity to get his book, “Double Your Income Doing What You Love: Raymond Aaron’s Guide To Power Mentoring” for free, directly from Raymond. In addition to the free book, he’s autographing it for you and including a special DVD about Raymond’s participation in Polar Race. Polar Race is a event where competitors compete in a foot race to the magnetic North Pole and not only did Raymond participate in the 2007 event, he was at age 62 when he did it.

Raymond’s book is an amazing book. I’ve owned a copy since it was first released and have given it as gifts, it’s a very wonderful and powerful book explaining the need for mentoring and introducing the concept of goal setting using Raymond’s MTO Technique. MTO stands for Minimum, Target, and Outrageous and together they make for the most powerful way I’ve ever encountered for goal setting. Just by applying this methodology guarantees some accomplishment on your goals whether you hit your minimum level or shoot for the stars and hit the outrageous achievement level.

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As I’ve started to become proficient in making sugar-free alternatives for desserts that are compliant with Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure program, one of the challenges I’ve had in mind that I wanted to attempt for myself was to make an as close to sugar-free as possible Black Forest cake for my birthday. Not any of the fancy Black Forest cakes made with Cherry liquor or several fancy layers as those to me aren’t Black Forest cakes to me. For me, I tend to like the plain ol’ neighborhood supermarket variety of Black Forest cakes.

The reason I love these kinds of Black Forest cake is because it was always something special my grandmother would get from her local SuperValu Grocery store back in Calgary, Canada when I was a kid. She would do this especially for me when I would come to stay with her or at least that’s what she would tell me. Its not so much that the cake was anything special in itself, just the memories of time with my grandmother where she would make me feel like I was the most important person in the world and we were getting to enjoy a special treat together. I miss my grandmother since she passed away at the end of 2001, so I generally like to celebrate my birthdays with a Black Forest cake to not only celebrate my birthday but to feel like I’m still having a special moment with my grandmother.

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Having hit a little bit of music boredom with the more limited selections on my iPod Touch, I decided to bring out the iPod Classic which is loaded with over 11,000 audio files. I let it play on random and one of the things that came up was “Hooked On Classics – Part 1 and 2″ from the original “Hooked On Classics” album by Louis Clark and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

I ended up taking the iPod off random and played the full album. It’s been a very long time since I last listened to it. I don’t remember when exactly I added the Hooked On Classics albums to my iPod as the last crash of my iTunes wiped out the date added for every track I added prior to December 10, 2008. In any case, I was happy I had it on my iPod to enjoy without having to dig out the CD.

I remember having worn out two cassettes of this album back in the early 1980′s. I loved it. To me it was all the good parts of classical music without so much of the really boring stuff. And I suppose a disco-esque drum track didn’t hurt either for helping keep those classics going at an upbeat pace. I remember Hooked On Classics being very popular when it was originally released in Canada. It was released on the K-Tel label which I always had some collections of popular music from them. Probably my favorite of which was “Raiders Of The Pop Charts” which capitalized on the Indiana Jones theme which was current at the time.

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On my last visit to my mom’s house, I presented her with a couple of Eat-More candy bars from GoCanuck.com that I had ordered for her. The candy bars sparked a discussion of some of the things from Canada we miss, and as we reminisced, my mom mentioned, Nanimo Bars. Nanimo Bars are a layered dessert cake that feature a base layer, a layer of custard, topped with a layer of chocolate. The legend has it that the dessert was created by a housewife from Nanimo, British Columbia who decided to name it after the town. How true that is or not, I don’t know, but in any case, it’s kind of a well known dessert in Western Canada.

Well my mom, pulled out her recipe book from Canada from which she used to make the recipe and I decided to make a photo copy of it and thought I would see if I could make a sugar-free version of it to be complaint with Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure program. And it presented some interesting challenges. A couple of the ingredients were going to present a challenge, but I was up for the challenge.

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As many know, I’ve been making my own cookies in compliance with the Belly Fat Cure program by Jorge Cruise. And today I attempted another batch, but this time I was getting a little creative with the recipe. And unfortunately, this time the cookies ended up being a failure of mass proportions. But a very delicious failure to say the least.

This time I decided I wanted to try and mix in some of the Shreddies, I had gotten in my order from GoCanuck.com. Shreddies is a popular breakfast cereal made by Post in Canada. Since their sugar content is a little over what I’m technically allowed on the Belly Fat Cure program, I thought I’d try and find some additional uses for the cereal that would allow me to enjoy them but with fewer of them in a serving so that I can keep the cereal compliant with the program. So as I pulled out all my supplies for making cookies, I thought, maybe I should try using the cereal instead of the Soy flour I had and so I smashed up about 2 cups worth of Shreddies to replace the 2 cups of of flour called for in the recipe.

And then I also chopped up some Macadamia nuts and threw in a bag of the Hershey’s Sugar Free Chocolate chips, and for good measure, added a bit of cinnamon to the mix. And of course I was using Xylitol and a little bit of Sugar Free Maple Syrup to sweeten the mixture so that the only sugar in the dough was what was already inside the Shreddies cereal. Well when all the ingredients were added together, the dough was very much like the regular dough from when I’ve made cookies before. It was thick so I spooned it all out on the cookie sheets and threw the cookies in the oven to bake.

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My good friend Liesbeth was very kind to bring me back a tube of Nestlé Smarties from the Netherlands when she attended the International ABBA Fan Club’s Annual ABBA Day in Roosendaal back in April. I was unable to attend myself this year, and I had asked if she would be so kind as to bring me back some Smarties from her trip. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, sometimes it’s good to get a little bit of the goodies you grew up on, but aren’t available in the area you currently live. In this case, a tube of Smarties candies which are available in several countries, just not the United States.

As Liesbeth returned and presented me with the tube of Smarties, I was within my first couple of weeks on the Belly Fat Cure program by Jorge Cruise. So I wasn’t going to be able to enjoy the whole tube in a single sitting or even spreading it out to two or three sittings. I wasn’t sure of the exact sugar content as the Dutch nutrition labeling didn’t quite give me the information I was looking for, so I peeked at Nestlé’s website in Canada to see what the Canadian version of Smarties had for sugar content and basically, in order to enjoy this tube of Smarties, I was going to have to limit myself to about five pieces a day. Which I was perfectly willing to do in order to enjoy my Smarties and be compliant with the Belly Fat Cure program.

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One of the things that I suppose is both good and bad about growing up in one place and moving to another is that you get to experience different things, but you also get nostalgic for the things that you can’t get in the new place that were readily available where you used to live. So as a Canadian living in San Diego, I tend to miss some of the things that were readily available in Canada that aren’t readily available here in San Diego. Fortunately, there are some great Canadians who are helping make sure former Canadians can get their fix for Canadian items, such as Rob and Elena Peters.

In what is becoming a more common way of meeting people, I met Elena Peters through Twitter. Somehow she found one of my twitter accounts and started following me. I occasionally peek at who is following me on my twitter accounts I was certainly curious about this “GoCanuck” that was following me, so I clicked over to read some of the tweets made on Twitter as well as follow the link to her site. It looks like Elena spends some time in San Diego every year and I had unfortunately just missed her most recent visit which included a Canada Day celebration that sounded like a fun event to be at. I certainly would have gone to celebrate Canada Day with other Canadians here in San Diego if I had known about the event beforehand.

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I’m excited to report that the folks of San Diego’s North County now have their first Which Wich? Sandwich shop. I’ve previously reported about my first experience at the Hillcrest Which Wich? shop. (Click here to read about my first visit to Which Wich?). For those unfamiliar with the concept of how Which Wich? works, you enter the store and grab a bag for the category of sandwich you want, then using a supplied Red Sharpie pen, you check off all the toppings and condiments you want on the sandwich as well as your name at the bottom, then take the bag to the register to pay and then the sandwich will be prepared exactly to your specifications while you wait a couple of short minutes. No muss, no fuss, no having to shout over a glass separator and pointing at toppings, just a sandwich made exactly how you want it.

With my good friend Patsy Ledene from my hometown of Calgary, I wanted to introduce her to Which Wich? and their amazing sandwiches. Since she was already in Carlsbad staying with another friend of hers in the San Diego area, it seemed almost funny that when I went to pick her up, the Forum shopping center that Which Wich is in, just happens to be the closest shopping center to where I was meeting Patsy. Our first order of business was finding where in the shopping center Which Wich? is located. We ended up driving past several shops before we finally found it.

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Garnier Nutrisse Cream hair coloring has partnered with Chantal Kreviazuk for her upcoming tour that will support her new album, called “Plain Jane” coming out later this September in Canada. As part of the promotion where Chantal has filmed a commercial promoting the hair coloring, fans have the opportunity to enter a contest to win tickets to the upcoming tour, and can vote for the Garnier Nutrisse Hair color that Chantal will wear during the tour. The best part for entering the contest is for the first 5,000 people who enter the contest, they will have the chance to download “Ordinary People” a song that will appear on Chantal’s upcoming album.

To enter enter the contest, just point your web browser to http://garnier.ca/extraordinary/ and fill in all the required entry blanks. Technically the contest is limited to Canadian residents as you’re suppose to enter your Canadian postal code, so if you aren’t a Canadian and want the song, you’ll need to have a postal code to enter. (Just Google any business in Canada.) Fortunately, I still have family in Canada and just entered one of their postal codes. I doubt I’ll win tickets and it’s unlikely I’d be able to go anyway. As for the required phone number entry I just entered my cell phone’s number and it took it just fine despite the number originating from the San Diego area. I just want the song as Chantal is one of my favorite artists. (In fact, she’s playing in Los Angeles next week on July 13th, at the Hotel Cafe).

Chantal is also previewing her lead single, “Invincible” from the album which gets released to Canadian radio next week. It’s available to be listened to on her Myspace page, which you can get to by clicking here. And she’s also previewing a video clip showing the recording of another upcoming song called “Today” on her Facebook page, click here to visit her Facebook page. (more…)

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