And, just like that, the 2010 Spring Winter Olympics are done.
Frankly, I’m not missing them. The choppers flying around day and night, the road closures, the crowds, the noise… It could have been worse, though. I could be living right next to one of the venues.
Sometimes things have a way of working out. Not for the “best” (this isn’t Candide, after all) but for the pretty good.
“Do one thing that scares you every day,” the bumper sticker says. In that case, I think I’ve saved up enough terror for the next couple of months. Because this weekend, some friends and I went to Whistler for zip-lining.
So this weekend, a few friends and I decided to take a day trip to Victoria. The twist was that we’d fly there. It’d be quick and pretty cheap, and (to me) a new experience. Plus, I hadn’t been to Victoria in a while.
Hey, who wants to see shots of the PNE dog show, the ferris wheel, and a spider flashing its privates at me? You came to the right place.
Last night was the first installment of the Celebration of Light. I was exhausted from work and volleyball, possibly coming down with something, and I actually considered not going. But hey: I’m right next to the beach, it was Canada Night, and I’d get to see how this new camera of mine handled fireworks.
Verdict: awesome.
Quebec (the province and the city) has a lot of history. In Vancouver, “old” just means turn of the century (Gastown, some of Strathcona and New Westminster). But Vieux-Québec? Try turn of the eighteenth century, then we’ll talk. Everything just feels old, every street corner has a hundred stories to tell.
A week ago I came back from a trip back east to visit family. It was tons of fun—flitting back and forth between Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City—and I got to see some relatives I hadn’t seen in years. Plus, I hadn’t been back east in the summertime in ages. As much as I enjoy a white Christmas, going outside without freezing my tail off is nice too.
For the last week, I’ve been taking advantage of the nice weather to get some more exercise done. On Tuesday I decided to get off the SkyTrain at Science World station and use my own two feet to get the rest of the way home. I’d done that just once before, taking a direct route through Yaletown.
This morning, I just happened to see a Great Blue Heron by Still Creek, about fifty feet from Gilmore. There wasn’t anyone nearby, so I approached very slowly and quietly.
I admit, it was a pure stroke of luck. I was walking home, looking forward to an evening of volleyball, when I happened to look up and saw a lovely new crescent moon. The light was still good so I took its picture, not paying much attention to the nearby bright spot. But it turns out, it’s Venus.
Hey, remember the last time I blogged about crows? Back then I was just on one of their commuting routes. But my present job happens to be very near their roosting grounds around Still Creek and Willingdon. Until recently it was still dark when I left work, so I had so I walked past, oh, a couple of thousand crows, I’d say, settled in the trees along Gilmore Ave. And that’s just a suburb of Crow Central.
I took the day off sick. No, I really wasn’t feeling well, this wasn’t so I could watch the US Inauguration live—though that was a nice bonus. And I’d like to say that, as Barack Hussein Obama took his oath of office, that the damn fog that’s been hanging around downtown Vancouver for the last, oh, ten days at least, miraculously parted, letting the daystar shine down on my light-hungry eyes.
The weather here on the West Coast’s been very cold for the last week, with some snowfall and a bit more on the way. It hasn’t been as bad as the last major snowfall two years ago, which suits me just fine. This is just enough snow to make the holiday festive. It looks like we’ll have a white Christmas after all.
For the Culture Crawl this year, I decided to do things a little differently. Instead of visiting just two buildings, I’d try to wander around, hit as many studios as I could and get a broader feel of the whole festival.
Some photos I took last weekend at the East Side Culture Crawl. Only one of actual art, the rest are shots of Strathcona and the Downtown Eastside.
I’ve just posted a few photos I took at the Eastside Culture Crawl last year, and then inexplicably never put online.
Boy, I hadn’t been to the Parade of Lost Souls in years! Sorry to say, I almost forgot about it. But no more!
I gotta say, being unemployed in the West End at this time of year has its up sides.
So I learned a lesson: on Wednesday, (the previous Wednesday) I was experimenting with relatively short exposure times, about 1/4 sec. That had given me good results the first time, but this week I wasn’t doing so well. China’s show didn’t have a lot of big showy ’splosions like Canada’s, instead focusing on short, small bursts that disappeared quickly. I thought it was quite neat and original, but a lot more challenging to shoot. I ended up being disappointed by most of those photos, and had to rethink my strategy.
Last Wednesday I saw the first installment of the Celebration of Light. It was amazing, though far too short. On the bright side, I found a good spot to set up my camera–not as close as I would have liked, but I had a perfect view.
On Monday morning, the power went out in part of Gastown and downtown. Specifically, the part where my work was. Surprise holiday! I spent it walking around a bit, running some errands, and going to the Art Gallery. There was an exhibit on comics, anime and cartoons which… but more about that later.
Today the power was still out. So, I called up my friend Sandra (who had the summer off, being a teacher) and we hung out for the day.
So just over a year ago, as I was coming up the escalator from the West Coast Express, I snapped a picture of the harbour, with Canada Place, the North Shore Mountains, and a lovely summer sky. This picture right here:
I hadn’t been feeling too inspired, photography-wise. After my trip to beautiful Galiano Island a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t see much to catch my eye in this cold, rainy city. But then I decided, hell with that, there’s interesting stuff everywhere even if the weather’s all yucky. So I took out my camera again.
It was kind of a last-minute thing, really. A ferry queen (yes, you read that right) friend of mine wanted to take one last trip on the Queen of Tsawwassen, which was due to retire at the end of the summer. Would I like to go on a day trip to Galiano island? Sure!
So I hadn’t been to Granville Island in years. Since the Sunday of the May long weekend was the first really nice Spring we’ve had in a long while, and the terminal was just down the street from my new place, I decided to take the False Creek Ferry and see Granville Island again.
It honestly took me several minutes of being stuck in traffic to parse that sign.
I was going through iPhoto, and saw a whole album of photos I took in Port Coquitlam (where I’m currently living, though not for much longer). A lot of these were sunsets and I thought of adding them to the sunsets album… but no, it’s only right to acknowledge the place I’ve lived for almost six years (Gawd, time does fly!).
O little Bald Eagle
(Well, not that little, you might have been three feet long)
I saw you from the escalator as I exited the train
Just sitting there, huddled against the rain
Quietly looking around
At everything and nothing
…this being National Poetry Month and all. But as I said last year, I just don’t read much poetry, and what with being insanely busy at work (in a good way, though) I honestly haven’t been inspired to read any, though apparently I have enough energy for supremely long run-on sentences that overuse adverbs terribly.
But behold, I bring you instead some more commuting photos.
This has been a pretty interesting weekend. On Leap Friday I almost went skiing. A couple of friends and I had planned it in advance, but the weather turned out to be too warm. It was raining in the city, and even on top of Seymour it wasn’t much more than heavy, wet snow. But that was nothing compared to the killer fog. Seriously, the drive up (and back down) was harrowing; without those little reflector thingies in the middle of the road, I’m sure we would have either crashed or plunged to our deaths a dozen times.
… and it wasn’t what I expected. Then again, I didn’t really know what to expect, since I’d never seen a lunar eclipse and wasn’t too clear on the actual mechanics. So the dark red moon, covered by a fuzzy circular shadow, took me a bit by surprise.
I’ve just posted a little medley of pictures I took over the month of January. Enjoy!
…of the year, that is.
Okay, it’s been almost a month. What have I been up to, you ask?
Well, I spent 10 days in Ottawa and Montreal, visiting family. I saw Mamma Mia! at the National Arts Centre, which was awesome. Yeah, it was a pretty threadbare plot, little more than an excuse to string together two dozen ABBA songs, but that’s exactly what I signed up for, so that’s all right.
Thanksgiving photos are coming soon. Meantime, here’s what you might call an anti-Thanksgiving photo. I saw this graffiti for the first time as the train pulled into Waterfront station, and took this photo during lunch.
Enjoy. Or, not.
Boo on me. Working so hard on my blog & gallery redesign that I totally forgot to write about Thanksgiving. And it was pretty special, since I spent it in Whistler with a few close friends. Just one day (Sunday afternoon to Monday afternoon), but it was a hell of a day.
As you might have heard, we’ve got a lot of snow here.
Of course, “a lot of snow” for Vancouver is not a lot for, let’s say, my home town of Ottawa. But it’s thick and soft and has fucked up traffic and power lines, and even though the weather’s warmed up some now, it’ll be hanging around for a while. There was a bit of snow on Saturday, in the higher places, but it’s been coming down hard between Saturday night and Wednesday, with just a few breaks.
For the second time in three weeks I was on the Island; not in Tofino but the little town of Sooke, for my friend Nathan’s wedding. It was a very nice ceremony, nothing fancy, with Sooke Harbour as a gorgeous backdrop. Which became a grey and rainy backdrop the following day, so we really lucked out.
Last week I had friends visit from Ottawa (not just to see me, tho: they’ve gone on an Alaskan cruise) and we spent a few days in Tofino. I picked them up at the airport Monday evening, and we headed down to Tsawwassen to take the Victoria ferry. We spent most of Tuesday traveling across the island; we could have done it in a few hours, but why rush? There was so much to see on the way.
Last weekend some friends and I went up to Whistler for a bit of zip-lining. Being afraid of heights I was pretty nervous, but it turned out to be one of the most amazing thrills of my whole life. I got to soar high above Fitzsimmons Creek with the wind and fog in my face, surrounded by the beautiful mountain scenery of BC.
Taking a brief break from Web development, with the coding and the styling and the restructuring, to write a quick entry. (A month between entries is not good. At least I’ve got a good excuse this time.)
So anyway, last Saturday I went to Davie Days, a street festival sort of thing where the businesses (queer and otherwise) along Davie Street all have booths displaying their stuff; there were a couple of beer gardens, a guy making balloon hats for the kiddies (of all ages) and a couple of stages for entertainment.
Hey, that was fun.
Here’s the thing: I hadn’t been to the Pride parade in six years. I swore off in ’99 because I was disgusted at how commercial and corporatized the whole thing was, with the huge floats for the bars or mainstream sponsors (Air Canada, CIBC, Royal Bank, VanCity… come to think of it, is there a single major bank who’s not hot for gay money these days?), with less and less visibility for community or political organizations.
I’ve got a new pet.
About a week ago, I noticed a big Orb Weaver spider had settled outside my living room window. It’s a beauty, a bit over 1cm long not counting the legs, with pretty patterns of brown and orange on its abdomen… and the impressive web itself, a couple of feet across, spun in the traditional spiral pattern that gives these beasties their name.
Fall is in full swing. Trees are reddening (and browning and yellowing and orangeing, and is that even a word? Orangeing? Orangening? I could look it up, but it’s more fun to speculate). I felt like writing something here, but it all came out so generic. The leaves are falling and the days are getting shorter and the birds are flying south and something about the changing seasons and maybe the circle of life, and then a rousing rendition of Turn! Turn! Turn!