Totem poles in Seattle

I biked down to the AAA office to pick up maps for my trip, and since it was such a very nice day, I continued to bike down to the University area. I stopped at the Burke Memorial Museum of Natural History and Culture. It is a small museum with essentially two permanent exhibits and two temporary exhibits.



The permanent exhibits were of aboriginal peoples of the Pacific Rim and the local geology of the state of Washington; the temporary exhibits were of polar bears in Alaska and Arctic migratory birds. Both of these exhibits were photographic.



The geological exhibit was interesting, I was expecting the geological history of Washington to be similar to that of BC but it is not, primarily because the glaciers did not extend this far south. When the glaciers melted a large lake was formed in Washington and that shaped much of the landscape of the state interior.



They also had an Egyptian mummy on display, I guess that would be their Odds and Ends exhibit.



I took some photos of the totem poles outside of the museum.

A sunny day for a bike ride

Today was a nice sunny day so I thought I'd go for a bike ride around Green Lake, which is just a short distance from Dave's place. It's a very pretty little lake, similar to Trout Lake in Vancouver but a bit larger I think. And apparently safer for swimming, they have signs up allowing swimming anywhere up to 50 feet from shore. In Trout Lake you can only swim at the supervised beach at one end.

I also saw someone out in a kayak on the lake, it made me think about doing the same. Maybe tomorrow if the sunny weather holds. There were lots of people walking, running and roller blading around the lake, I only saw one other bike.

I biked around the lake once in one direction and then a second time in the other direction. I saw a Great Western Grebe on the lake, haven't seen one of them in a very long time. Also saw a stand of Bald Cypresses, a very interesting looking tree. From a distance it looked to me like a redwood, but then I got up close and saw that its needles are quite different.

I also went shopping for groceries for Dave and for my trip. The supermarket had substantial savings on food items if you have a card for that chain, but of course I didn't. However, when I was looking at the apples, the guy in Produce told me I could get the card price anyway, just tell them at the cash that he said so. So I did, and the cashier gave me the sale price, along with an application for a card. Should I fill it in?

She asked where I was from, I said Canada, and she said, Oh isn't it nice that your dollar is the same as ours now. I said, Not anymore, it's gone down!

She said she'd been in Victoria for her wedding anniversary last February and it had been so expensive because the Canadian dollar was worth more than the American then. I said, Too bad you couldn't postpone till now, you'd have saved a bunch!

As it is, I'm paying pretty high prices for groceries here. The prices of things in Seattle are much the same as in Vancouver, but the dollar is just worth more (or less, depending on your perspective).

I looked at the weather map of the US on a website that showed what the predicted temperatures and precipitation will be for almost a week ahead. My big concern is cold temperatures at night and possible snow on the road in the Rockies. It looks like I can minimize both if I leave here Thursday morning. Even so it will go below freezing at night in the Rockies, so I will have to try to stay at lower elevations at night.

My hope is to get to Toronto around the 28th, leaving on Thursday gives me ample time. I'm probably going to take I-80 rather than I-90 across, but we'll see.

A Canadian in America, attack ads and initiatives

Dave works during the week but I decided to stay on for a few days to cook some food for my trip home, do a little laundry, and catch up on my blog. Dave's cat Diamond is not sure what to make of me, she is not used to other people being around but she hopes that I might be good for opening doors and putting out catfood.

On Monday it rained most of the day so I stayed indoors. When Dave got home we watched some TV. I am amazed at how different the political ads on TV are from the ones in Canada. Our election was quite brief in comparison, less than two months. But we don't have primaries, each party already has its leader going into the election. I don't know how Americans can keep up their interest in an election process that takes two years!

The ads I saw on TV were all negative ads. You only know about a candidate through what the opposing candidate says about him or her, and of course it is quite bad. So you never hear much good about anyone! Washington State is I gather supporting the Democrats unequivocally (for President, that is), so neither party has any Presidential ads on TV. That is a done deal here, the ads are all for Governor and members of Congress. Lots of Obama bumper stickers around. Dave's next door neighbour supports McCain, but he has no lawn signs for him. Instead he has three lawn signs for other Republicans running for Congress and Governor. Dave figures his neighbour is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican who has doubts about McCain.

Another interesting thing, Dave gets an election pamphlet that describes every candidate running for every open office, and all of the referendums and initiatives being voted on as well. It's huge! Almost a small novel! The information is quite detailed, so I guess if you never saw a TV attack ad you could still make up your mind on the basis of the less biased information in the pamphlet.

I found the initiatives quite interesting, we don't have initiatives in Canada. I am still not clear on what the difference is between an initiative and a referendum, but referendums are pretty rare in Canada too. Each initiative is described in detail, including background history of the initiative, lists of pro and con arguments for it, the exact costs of each initiative and even rebuttal arguments for the pro and con arguments. There is one for opening up HOV lanes during off peak hours, one for assisted suicide, and I forget what the third one was about.

There's a huge emphasis here on taxes. It's all about reducing taxes, or at the very least not raising taxes. I find it odd that the richest country in the world is so hung up on not spending tax money. Dave explains it to me as a fear of "Big Government", somehow government is viewed as a necessary evil and god forbid it get any more money or else it will become even more evil. Somehow, in spite of this fear of Big Government and rising taxes, the US administration still manages to spend huge amounts on war and subvert the American constitutional separation of powers and protection of civil rights.

A country of contradictions.

Lucy's Legacy

On Sunday we planned to go see Lucy's Legacy at the Pacific Science Center. On the way we passed the Seattle Center and there was a Turkish Cultural Festival going on there. I was hoping we could get some Turkish food as snacks before proceeding to the Science Center, but there was none there. We had fish and chips instead. There was however Turkish dancing which we watched a bit of.

I took some photos, but they did not turn out well, not enough light. According to the program, we had already missed the Whirling Dervishes (which I would have loved to have seen) and the Belly Dancing (which Dave would have liked). We proceeded on to the Pacific Science Center.

You're not allowed to take photos in the exhibit, so instead I am showing the Space Needle which we passed on the way to the Science Center, and the towers at the entrance to the Science Center.

Lucy is the name given to an ancient hominid fossil skeleton found in Ethiopia. Her official Latin name is Australopithecus afarensis, it means "southern ape of Afar" (Afar is the nearest Ethiopian town to where her bones were found). One skeleton is not much to make a full exhibit out of, so the display is fleshed out with a history of Ethiopia and some background on the evolution of hominids.

Ethiopia, in brief

The part of the exhibit about Ethiopia itself is rather interesting. Ethiopians trace their history back to Solomon. The last emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, is considered to be the last of Solomon's line, via the Queen of Sheba. Whether this is actually true or not is another question, but Ethiopian has certainly been ruled by a long line of emperors from several centuries BCE. Back in the nineteenth century (CE), when European countries were carving up Africa into colonial empires, Ethiopia (then known as Abyssinia) was the only country that maintained its independence. All of the rest of the African continent was divvied up amongst various European colonial powers.

Italy tried to claim Ethiopia by a rather devious method: they signed a trade treaty with the emperor of Ethiopia but two copies of the treaty were prepared, one in the Ethiopian language and one in Italian, and they were worded differently. The Italian version called Ethiopia a "protectorate" of Italy, the Ethiopian one did not. When the Ethiopian emperor Menelik found out about the discrepancy, he called on the Italians to fix it, the Italians refused, and the upshot was that Italy sent an invasion force into Ethiopia. The Italians were beaten soundly by the Ethiopians at Adwa in 1896. This battle is celebrated in a mural showing ranks of Ethiopian soldiers and royalty on one side, and numerous Italian body parts on the other.

Later, in the lead-up to World War II, Mussolini invaded Ethiopia and carried off many archaeological treasures, including a Stela erected in honour of the Queen of Sheba (Ethiopians assert that she was from there, other sources place her in Yemen). He also used chemical warfare against the Ethiopians, sending in planes that sprayed toxic chemicals on people and crops. Emperor Haile Selassie complained to the League of Nations but he was ignored. Italy and Germany went on to invade and occupy most of Europe and northern Africa shortly thereafter.

Ethiopia is home to strong Jewish, Orthodox Christian and Muslim traditions, the Jewish population dating itself as far back as the time of King Solomon and perhaps earlier. However today they have largely relocated to Israel. The Christian church in Ethiopia has been isolated from both the Catholic and Orthodox traditions of Europe and the Middle East, it is an entirely separate branch of Christianity that still practices rites of the earliest Christian churches.

Lucy, herself

At the very end of the display you get to see the skeleton and a model of what Lucy might have looked like in real life. She stands less than four feet high and appears to be faintly smiling. Her fossil remains were discovered in 1974, the same year that Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed. This discovery is considered pivotal because it answered the question, which came first, bipedalism or large brains. It turns out that Lucy had a brain the size of a modern chimpanzee but walked upright like a modern human. She is considered to be an ape and not a hominid, but there is strong reason to believe that hominids developed from her species.

Lucy represents the first ape that walked fully erect on two feet. Most apes either swing from tree branches or "knuckle-walk" on all fours. They can walk short distances on two feet, but it is awkward and not their preferred method of walking. Lucy was built to walk upright, she would have preferred this over knuckle-walking.

In the final display area of the exhibit is the actual skeleton, a model of what Lucy might have looked like, and a panoramic mural depicting some of Lucy's ancestors and descendents. At one end are great apes and at the other end are humans.

A couple of interesting things about this mural, the different species are somewhat mixed together because in all likelihood they overlapped each other's ranges in time and space, and the humans are brown. How many depictions of the evolution of humans have you seen that show hairy black-eyed brown apes at one end and blond blue-eyed white humans at the other? It was refreshing to see distinctively African facial features on the modern humans.

A ride in the Merc and a walk in the trees

It rained most of Friday but it started to let up a couple of hours before I left New Westminster. When I arrived at the border the sign said there was a ten minute delay, but there was only one car ahead of me in the line-up and the wait was more like five minutes.

I was prepared for a bit of a hassle, what with my "defective" passport and my mismatched licence plates (BC plate on the front, NS plate on the rear). But the US Customs guy did not seem concerned. He asked where I was going and where I lived, shone his flashlight into the space behind my seat and then handed me back my passport and wished me a good trip.

I was able to listen to CBC radio almost all of the way to Seattle. I was finally out of range about half an hour before arriving at Dave's, and then felt incredibly sleepy, so I put on the first tape I could reach in the dark, which turned out to be an old Moody Blues album. Cranked it up and it kept me awake the rest of the way.

I've known Dave for almost ten years, we've visited back and forth between Seattle and New Westminster many times. I've stopped working as a technical writer but Dave continues, currently on contract at Microsoft. He has a little bungalow in a quiet residential area and lives there with his cat Diamond. For almost as long as I've known him, he's been working on restoring a little red Mercedes that he acquired for next to nothing. Finally, it is driveable. Not finished, but driveable. So the highlight of this visit is a ride in the Merc.

Dave has been restoring cars for a very long time, he currently has four vehicles, two of which are licenced and driveable. One is a Rover, one a Lancia Scorpion, one a Toyota truck (the main work-a-day vehicle) and one the Mercedes. The Merc is the only one I have not yet had a ride in.

We spent a little time catching up with each other on Friday night. Dave normally stays up until 3:00am but these days I am lucky if I see midnight, so our waking hours are somewhat out of whack. By midnight I am good for nothing at all so I head for the bed made up for me in his office.

Saturday morning I am up early but Dave does not rise until close to noon. I make coffee and toast, do some browsing on his computer and a little work on my own computer. He does not have a router so I can only access the internet through his computer. When Dave gets up we continue our conversation for the next couple of hours and then I suggest we go out for a walk since it is sunny today. Dave says there is an exhibit at the Pacific Science Center called Lucy's Legacy that we could see, but it would be best to do that on Sunday. For today he suggests a ride in the Mercedes and a walk in the Arboretum. We have walked in almost all of the walkable places in Seattle, and I think we did the Arboretum when we first met, but after almost ten years I don't mind doing a repeat.

The ride is brief as the Mercedes still has one or two mechanical problems and Dave does not want to risk getting stranded too far from home. But it is a momentous occasion and probably my one and only ride in a classic Mercedes.

My memory of the first time we walked in the Arboretum was not particularly great, I mostly remember that it was close to the Interstate and you couldn't really get away from the highway noise. However, it was not that bad and we managed to walk in a part of the park that we hadn't been in before. Many but not all of the trees have little tags on them identifying them, but I was wishing Pat were here to help identify a lot of plants I had no idea about. I saw a Chinese Paperbark Maple that had bark like an Arbutus, very thin and peeling. I saw a fern that sort of looked like the Maidenhair, and sort of not, I don't know what it was and there was no tag for it.


For pictures and more information check out the Arboretum website.

We stopped at a QFC to shop for dinner, Dave picked up a couple of lamb chops and potatoes and lettuce. Great dinner!

Leaving New West

You never know

On Thursday I had to pack up and leave again, but my intention was to leave fairly late as I did not have to be in town until after 7:00pm. I emailed my brother Peter about the yellow light in the truck, he emailed back that it was most likely a dirty oxygen sensor and highway driving was likely to clean it up, so he thought I could probably leave getting it fixed until I got back to Toronto. I said goodbye to Sam and also to the guys he works with in his basement, and headed out around 3:00pm.

I stopped in North Vancouver at Morrie and Sher's place to pick up a coffee mug that I left there the last time, and ended up having supper with them. Then I drove back to New West, dropped off a couple of things at Dave and Johanna's and then headed over to Kim and Josh's place.Josh ordered pizza and it arrived just as I did. We had a great visit, chatting over pizza. We talked a bit about whether I should go to Jim's memorial service in Edmonton this weekend. Josh and Kim were flying to Edmonton on Friday, the service being on Saturday. Kim kind of urged me to come to, I have very mixed feelings about it. Josh tended to think I should not skip it if I didn't feel the need to go. I had pretty much decided I wasn't going but was going to visit my friend Dave in Seattle instead, Kim thought I might regret it since the memorial is a one-time thing and I could always visit Dave anytime. Well, that's not really true, and with Jim's unexpected death, I kind of feel like I shouldn't put things off thinking that he will always be around to visit. You never know!

Close the door!

My plan is to drive to Seattle on Friday evening, arriving fairly late at Dave's place. This is what I usually do when I visit Dave, in order to avoid line-ups at the border. And anyway, Dave is usually up very late so it is almost impossible to arrive too late. So on Friday morning Johanna and I met our friend Judy for breakfast. I had been looking forward to seeing Keith and Judy when I came out here, but they had booked a trip to England that pretty much coincided with my trip to BC. So I saw them the night I first arrived here, and they only just returned from England this week.

We went to Amelia's for breakfast, a little Chinese restaurant down the street that does a very good bacon-eggs-homefries-and-coffee breakfast. They fill your coffee cup endlessly and it is very strong coffee, so I usually end up leaving there vibrating on caffeine. It's kind of a local hangout, lots of folks go there for breakfast, and when you come in the door the first table has a pile of local newspapers to pick up and take to your table to read. The door is old and you really have to come on to it to open or close it, and the restaurant is so small that on a cold day every time the door opens there's a cold draft that makes everyone look up and hold their breath until you've closed the door. It's like everyone is counting to five before they yell, "Close the door!"

Johanna and Judy and I had an animated conversation about Judy's trip to England and my visit here, we went from there to various world problems which we attempted to solve over breakfast. A couple of men at an adjacent table couldn't help but chime in occasionally with their own opinions about the world and its problems. Judy was on a schedule, she had to be at her daughter-in-law's place in Squamish by noon, so we hustled out of Amelia's around 11:30am on a tide of caffeine.

Johanna had some marking to do, I did a little shopping returned the last of my library books. I will surely miss the New West library! I also did a laundry and the final packing of the truck. I had some difficulty with the little wooden ramp that I had brought with me from Nova Scotia, but Dave arrived home from work in time to help me with that. I was ready to go. I went over to Ole! Ole! to order burritos and tacos for dinner. Another favourite restaurant in New West.

Come back fifteen minute

Ole! Ole! is a tiny little place run by Raul (Mexican) and Bing (Vietnamese) with the best Mexican food in the Northwest. I am not exaggerating. Bing does the cooking, Raul runs the cash register and waits on tables. Raul was away on Friday night, and the woman taking orders did not understand English, so Bing came out from the kitchen to translate. When he had taken my order he said, "Come back fifteen minute." I did, but Bing had forgotten the order! He said, "Ten minute, ten minute!" I waited and in less than ten minutes he had our order put together.

After our great Mexican take-out dinner, I said my goodbyes and set out for Seattle. I'm still up in the air about what route I'll take home, but I picked up lots of maps from BCAA and I guess I'll decide when I get to Seattle, where to next.

Back to D'Arcy

Service engine soon

On Tuesday I headed back to D'arcy for a last visit with Sam. I would have liked to stay longer but I had also arranged to see Josh and Kim one last time before I left and the only time we could fit that in was on Thursday night.

This was the first time I loaded the kayak onto the truck entirely by myself, without any backup. It went fairly smoothly.

But I had a bunch of running around to do before I could leave, shopping, returning books to the library, etc etc, so I didn't get away until after 2:00pm.

I bought a bike lock and bike pump at Canadian Tire in Barrie a couple of months ago and then found my own bike lock, so I decided to return the new bike lock to the Canadian Tire in Squamish, en route to Sam's.

Just before I pulled in there, the yellow "Service Engine Soon" light came on. Uh oh.

So I went to the auto service counter to ask them what that meant and what it would cost me to get the computer diagnostic done. The guy there said that it was not likely to be urgent, and the diagnostic would cost $90. So I decided to just continue on for now.

Otherwise, the trip was uneventful. The yellow light went off after that, flickered once before Whistler and then stayed off for the rest of the trip.

I got to D'arcy just as Sam was getting off work, so we went for a brisk walk in the woods. I asked Sam about the bear he had seen the last time I was there, he said he hadn't seen it since. So I felt OK about going for walks by myself.

Don't park on hillsides

The next day I went out on Anderson Lake with my kayak. Another first, I unloaded and reloaded the kayak by myself there.

Unfortunately I was parked in a kind of awkward spot on a hillside, and while trying to get the kayak off the roof, I slipped and fell with the kayak in my lap. The bow hit the pavement hard.

But apparently no harm done.

I paddled along the east side of the lake, looking at the cabins along there and the forest.

Once I ran the kayak right up onto a submerged tree trunk, but I was easily able to slip off again.

Returning to the D'arcy dock was fine, but again I slipped and dropped the kayak on the gravel slope when trying to get the kayak back onto the roofrack.

Note to self: don't park on hillsides.

Well, I would have parked somewhere else if I could have, there just wasn't anywhere else to go. And I am getting a little more confident about the sturdiness of the kayak, dropping it does not seem to be such a big deal.

I took all these photos during walks in the woods around Sam's cabin, I didn't take my camera with me in the kayak because I didn't want to have to worry about it getting wet.

.This last picture is a piece of lichen. It grows on a lot of the trees around here and is a brilliant neon lime green. But the photo turned out kind of pale, I had to fiddle with the colour on the computer to get it to look like it did in real life. But that made the background kind of weird.

What's poverty got to do with it?

Today is Blog Action Day, and the theme this year is Poverty.

I grew up in a family that flirted with poverty on occasion, my father had several periods of unemployment with four kids to support and my mother really had no choice about going to work.

For long periods of my childhood our grandmother contributed substantial financial support to our family. Thanks to her, we avoided the worst effects of poverty.

We were poor but not poverty-stricken.

When my kids were little we alternated between being on welfare and being part of the so-called Working Poor, for over fifteen years. I spent twenty years as a single parent, either going to school or working full-time as well as raising two boys by myself.

Again, we were poor but not poverty-stricken, and we got a little help from the kids' grandmother. There was always a roof over our heads and food on the table, and the real possibility of a better future ahead.

The thing about being poor is that there is no margin for error. You are tiptoeing on the brink of disaster all of the time, and it takes its toll in stress, physical weariness, and ill-health.

It's also depressing, there you are with your hands full all of the time while you look around and see other folks apparently enjoying the fruits of their labour, buying nifty electronic toys and wearing cool clothes and enjoying happy vacations in pleasant environments away from the work-a-day world.

I have always been aware that what I experienced was not fun, but it wasn't grinding poverty. I didn't watch my children die for lack of adequate food or medical care, I didn't live in the midst of a war, I didn't live with rats and cockroaches. Well, once I did but that was avoidable.

Being poor is workable, being poverty-stricken is not.

When we face a downturn in the economy, we all get nervous about our future, but the poor just get poorer and watch their flimsy house of cards collapse around their ears. It's very hard. Becoming homeless is a real possibility.

I get impatient with folks who believe that the poor bring it on themselves through laziness and poor decisions, not to mention drugs and alcohol. Yes, it's true that some poor folks are there because of those things, but they are not even close to being the majority.

The thing is, when times are good we as a society can afford poverty. We can afford to have some folks living with stress and ill-health and no money because we can at least keep them housed and fed.

But when times are not so good none of us can afford poverty. We can trace much drug abuse and the crime it engenders to poverty. We can trace poor education to poverty and vice versa, in an incredibly unfortunate vicious circle. And ultimately, we can trace violent uprisings and political instability and even wars to the disparities of poverty and wealth.

Poverty kills and it goes to war and it reduces freedom to ashes. We all need to care about this. The signs are on the wall, we are not headed toward good times for all anytime soon. We cannot afford poverty.

Charity helps, but fairness is far more effective. Vote for fairness, shop for fairness, promote fairness any way you can. Like it or not we are all in this together and trying to climb over each other to grasp diminishing resources is counter-productive.

No Thanksgiving weekend

On Saturday Dave, Johanna and I set out for Gambier Island again. This is the Thanksgiving weekend, but we had no plans for a Thanksgiving dinner, we were just going to hang out and relax. We went over in Dave and Johanna's little runabout, then Dave took it back to Horseshoe Bay and caught the ferry to Langdale and then the foot ferry to New Brighton on Gambier Island. Johanna and I went down to meet him at the dock, but he arrived before we did and was already in the little Gambier Island General Store when we got there. So we had soup and beer for lunch at the store. We all walked back to the house. In the evening we had some leftover sausage from the previous evening, and some salad and boiled potatoes.

Sunday was still a nice day, although the weatherman was predicting rain for later in the day. Fortunately the weatherman was wrong. Johanna had some work she wanted to get done so Dave and I went out in their inflatable kayak to explore West Bay. Although there is no road around the bay, there are still quite a few large homes there, so we just cruised around looking at them. We also saw four seals basking on logs in the sunshine. Three of them slipped into the water and disappeared when they saw us, but the fourth must have been deeply asleep, he didn't move. When we were almost next to him he woke up and looked around for his buddies and then at us with a look of surprise on his face. I think he decided it was too late to do anything, and he just stayed on his log as we paddled by.

For dinner we hunted through all the cupboards and fridge to see what was available, and put together a meal of tinned salmon, salad and an omelet.

Sometime during the night the rain started and by Monday morning it had settled in for the duration. We decided to take the 4:00pm ferry back to the mainland, and just read until then. At the New Brighton ferry dock we listened to folks describing their Thanksgiving dinners the night before. As it turned out, the Langdale ferry was quite late, we did not get into Horseshoe Bay until after 6:00pm. But we decided to have dinner at a local restaurant and Dave and I shared a pizza while Johanna had a seafood soup.

It was kind of nice to come home in the rain, knowing that we managed to enjoy a couple of days of sunshine before that!

Market morning

Johanna has today off so we spent the morning down at Granville Island Market. It was cool but a lovely sunny day. I got up early and had a coffee and toast, but Johanna got up late and wanted to have breakfast down at the market so we hustled into the car and drove fast to get there. Johanna does not do well before her morning coffee.

We both agreed on the restaurant we were going to have breakfast at, neither of us could remember the name but we knew the location. However, the restaurant has changed hands since the last time either of us was there and it was not as great as we were hoping it would be. Afterward we took Leia for a walk along the False Creek sea wall, and then strolled through the market and the Net Loft. It was most enjoyable to view all the fresh fruits and vegetables, and also the various crafts and arts on sale. Johanna picked out a silk scarf she liked and I bought it for her as a Thank You gift for having me in her home for so long.

Beneath the chaos, the beauty

I went to see my financial advisor again today. You know, John from the Shambhala Buddhist Centre.

We had a couple of things to talk about as a result of our last meeting, and I guess he had hoped that the stock market would have settled down by now so he could say something useful about that.

Not so. Or rather, it hadn't settled down but he did have something useful to say.

The first thing John did was show me the ikebana arrangement he had on display in the reception area.

John does ikebana as a kind of meditation exercise.

I don't know how much you know about ikebana, but I have had it explained to me in this way. Every floral arrangement follows certain rules, and is made up of three major elements: something representing heaven, something representing the earth, and something representing us, humankind.

John said this display was not one of his better ones, but he had it here because he wanted his clients to get something from it. What he wanted to convey was: beneath the chaos, the beauty. The financial world may be in turmoil, but still there is beauty in life and we should never lose sight of that.

So, in spite of lots of bad news we had a few laughs and once again a most interesting conversation.

Our meeting was in the Board Room on the 16th floor, with a view of downtown Vancouver.


Mostly the roofs of other office buildings, and a peekaboo view of the harbour.

Afterward I went for a bit of a walk around Canada Place, a building that juts out into the harbour and offers great views of the city, Stanley Park, the North Shore and of course the harbour. The roof of the building is made up of huge canvas sails.


Then I took the skytrain back to New Westminster.

An afternoon on the north shore

I went to visit my friends Morrie and Sher at their home in North Vancouver on Sunday. Since I last saw them, Morrie has come down with pneumonia! He is somewhat better now, but quite fatigued.

Sher and I were going to take the dogs for a walk in the woods but it started to rain and the two little dachshunds really were not happy about that. So we took them all home and as soon as we left the house again, this time intending to go for coffee, it stopped raining and we changed our minds and went for that walk in the woods without the dogs.

Sher felt guilty about leaving them behind, especially Raven who really would have enjoyed it, but I have to say I was secretly glad to walk in the woods without the dogs. It was most enjoyable.

Later we went to the White Spot for veggie burgers. I was quite stuffed when we left there, I felt like I was going burst a button on my jeans!

We went back to their house and watched an old movie with Morrie, I don't remember the name but it was a Cary Grant film. Jayne Mansfield played the classic dumb blonde that Hollywood used to love, wiggling her butt and talking in a high pitched squeal.

This also was most likely a last time visit, I might see them again before I leave but I don't know. It's hard to leave friends.

Island in the rain

I went back to Brentwood Bay to visit Peter and Pat again this week. Peter was going to install new shocks on the truck and his friend John arranged an appointment for my truck to get transmission service at a shop he recommended.

So on Wednesday I took the ferry from Tsawwassen to Schwarz Bay.

I was intending to catch the 3:00pm ferry, and I thought I had left New Westminster in ample time to make that ferry, but apparently mid-day mid-week is a busy time! I had to wait for the 5:00pm ferry.


Fortunately I arrived in time for one of Pat's wonderful meals, a roast of pork with vegetables and salad.










Bike ride to Todd Inlet

On Thursday morning we took the truck in for the transmission service, but Peter could not install the shocks because they had not arrived yet. John was supposed to have ordered them but it turns out he hadn't so they wouldn't arrive until Friday.

Island life: sometimes you just have to wait for stuff.

I went for a lovely bike ride in the nearby provincial park, through the woods and down to Todd Inlet. This is the inlet that Peter and I kayaked in the last time I visited Brentwood Bay.

I wish I had brought my camera, it was so beautiful. The water of the inlet was like glass, and there was a mist drifting down from the trees. I could see delicate white jellyfish in the water, and the faint outline of a large fish swimming deep in the water. This time of year is exquisite here!

Watching the leadership debate

In the evening we watched part of the leadership debate on TV, it was very interesting. Elizabeth May was so good! Very impressive! And it was a beautiful moment seeing her wagging her finger at Stephen Harper, like a mother to a naughty little boy. My favourite moment though was her accusing Stephen of fraud. Someone asked her to repeat the comment in French and in a very terrible French accent she said, "Fraud. Fraud!" Quite funny.

Gilles Duceppe was good too, but I guess that since both Elizabeth and Gilles haven't a snowball's chance in hell of becoming the next Prime Minister, they are both free to speak their minds without worrying about how many votes they will win or lose. It was hard to be impressed by either Dion or Layton, much as I would have liked to have been.

A walk in the garden

On Friday Peter got the new shocks and went to work on my truck, while Pat and I went off to the Glendale Gardens and Horticultural Centre of the Pacific. It rained most of the time we were there but it was still most enjoyable. All of the pictures today are from there. Glendale is small compared to its much more famous neighbour, the Butchart Gardens, but it is well laid out and is a working garden for the Horticultural College. Pat is a member and can use their extensive and wonderful gardening library, and take courses at the College.

New shocks

Installing the shocks took more time than Peter expected but I was nevertheless able to catch the 5:00pm ferry back to Tsawwassen without any problem. I would have thought there would more likely be delays on a Friday rather than a Wednesday, but not so.

Peter noted that one of the old shocks he removed from the truck looked different from the others, it had more rust, was more worn out and did not have the same label as the others. We speculated that when I got four shocks put on the truck last June by Canadian Tire, only three in fact were put on. I am not happy about that.

I said my good byes to Peter and Pat after a very pleasant couple of days visiting with them.

I don't know when I will see them next, so I left feeling a little sad, I will miss them.

And Spencer the cat too!

Once in a blue moon

Isaac stopped briefly in Vancouver today, on his way home from Hong Kong to Toronto. He was here for a few hours so Josh and I had time to go out to the airport, pick him up and take him to The Elephant and Castle on the little branch of the Fraser River between Lulu and Sea Islands.

It was good to see him even if under rather sad circumstances. And of course I had to snap a few pics of Josh and Isaac together, since this is once-in-a-blue-moon kind of stuff; Josh and Isaac in the same town at the same time.

The social whirl, part II

On Thursday, Johanna and I met Zorica for dinner at Felico's, another Greek restaurant in Richmond. It's not that I have a thing for Greek restaurants, that's just the way it worked out!

Zorica and I started working at a company called Techware on the same day, back in 1995. We learned our respective jobs there together. Eventually Techware became Brooks Automation, and Johanna started working there shortly before I left the company, in 2001. I had not seen Zorica since I left Brooks, so it was very good to see her and reminisce about our times at that company, and catch up on what various other folks who used to work there were doing now. Zorica has been very good at keeping in touch with all those people.

Friday I stayed home.

Saturday I met with Sam in the afternoon to pick up a few things I forgot at his place in D'Arcy the week before; we had something to eat at Boston Pizza and did a bit of "hanging out" at Metrotown and out around Burnaby in his truck. Later in the day I went to Josh and Kim's condo in Sapperton for dinner. They've been living there for half a year but to me it is new, I hadn't seen it since the year before when it was still under construction. They showed off their condo (and little pup, a Shih Tsu!), I showed off my kayak. I brought my camera but forgot to take any photos!

Josh and Kim were just back from two weeks in Europe so they showed me some of their photos from their trip. They travelled mostly in France and Italy. They had some great pictures of Rome, especially the Coliseum, and of the chateaux along the Loire. Many many years ago I got to go on a tour of the chateaux on the Loire, some of the ones Josh and Kim visited looked familiar, but it was so long ago for me (forty years!) that I don't know if they are familiar because they're famous and I've seen them in pictures, or because I was actually there.

Today the sun came out. It has been raining and dull for over a week, so having the sun come out is a major event here. I didn't know what to do with myself! Kayak? Sit in the sun? Bicycle? Oh yes, I got my bike fixed, finally, and it was no big deal. I took it to another bike shop (The Bike Doctor) and they had no problem fixing it for me. They said it was a good bike, nowhere near ready for the trash! Glad I got a second opinion. In the evening Dave, Johanna and I went to a local pub, The Thirsty Duck, for steak and beer. Cheap. Not exactly gourmet quality, but cheap.

I tell people that I am stocking up on socializing now. I didn't get to visit with friends in Nova Scotia near as much as I would have liked, and I don't know a lot of people in Toronto, so I am expecting a fairly solitary winter there. So I am visiting with old friends (and family) while I can!

The social whirl, part I

This past week has been a busy social whirl for me. I went out for dinner with friends and family four times!



On Monday Lea-Anne and Tamara and I went to the Greka Taverna in New Westminster, a favourite haunt of ours. We have been meeting for dinner on a fairly regular basis for about ten years now, ever since we all joined the STC West Coast Chapter Programs Committee together. Actually, Tamara was the first to join, she was a newbie technical writer in with a group of presumably more experienced technical writers, but hardly had she joined the committee than they all jumped ship, leaving her holding the bag.

Somebody in the chapter did a bit of scrambling and managed to dig up Lea-Anne and myself to flesh out the committee, and I think we made quite a success of it. None of us knew what we were doing but we learned pretty quick and had fun doing it I think. Eventually we all moved on to other things, but we had such a good time working together on that committee that we continued to meet regularly for dinner, and long may it last!

On Tuesday I had an appointment to see my financial advisor, John, in downtown Vancouver. I drove to the old Planetarium (it's now the Vancouver Museum and Space Centre), parked there, and walked to John's office across the Burrard Street Bridge. Just about the only place left with free parking is at the Planetarium and I used to take advantage of that and walk from there to many different places (Kitsilano, Kits Beach, Granville Island Market, False Creek parks and trails, across the bridge into the downtown and West End areas). It is still free. It only took about a half hour to walk to John's office tower near Canada Place and the Vancouver Harbour.

John and I met at the Vancouver Shambhala Buddhist Centre many years ago, we've done a few retreats together and I am very happy with him as my financial advisor. He takes the time to understand how I want to live and gives me financial advice accordingly. John was quite reassuring about the latest market turmoil, I am not sure whether to believe him entirely but he sounded like he knew what he was talking about and I have every confidence he wouldn't lie to me.

A long time ago I used to live next door to a stock broker and she told me that it was entirely reasonable for me to not only know little about stocks and markets and such, but to not want to know. She said we don't have to know everything about everything, and should hire people to know about the things we don't know about and don't particularly want to know about. So on that basis, I am glad I know John. And it helps that he's a Buddhist, or at least subscribes to Buddhist ways of thinking about life and such.

My appointment with John lasted three hours, and with him, that's normal! I was a bit impatient about it when I first started going to him, but now I am used to it and plan for it.

Later that day, I went to Catherine and Asoka's place for dinner, Catherine and I used to work together (and so did Lea-Anne for a while) at a company called Brooks Automation. We also spent one summer doing research for a book that Catherine wanted to write. We were both unemployed at the time, Catherine had a brainstorm for a book that she thought would be worth millions (or something) and I tagged along just for something to do. It was interesting research, basically involved visiting potential venues for reception events, and then Catherine got a job and the idea got shelved. Catherine's pretty happy with her job now and she and her husband have recently bought a house that they will soon commence to renovate.

Wednesday I took a break, Johanna and I watched the TV show Heroes.

My ex has left the building

Sometime yesterday my ex-husband, father of two of my sons, died at age 64. Apparently a heart attack. He was living in Hong Kong with his wife Ali, teaching English and enjoying travel. He had recently returned to Canada, visiting friends and family in the Vancouver, Victoria and Edmonton areas, in August.

The photo above is from 1969, shortly after he first arrived in Canada (he's originally from California).

I will miss him. I know he was a regular reader of my blog, and I followed his activities on Facebook. We last talked to each other via Skype sometime during the winter, it was a good conversation and I always meant to call him back but somehow never got around to it. I thought I had lots of time.

The second photo is recent, I copied it from his online photo album of his visit to Canada last month.