In my last post, I started by mentioning that it had finally stopped raining. Well, guess what? Nope, you're wrong. It's still sunny! It's been sunny all September so far. That's already made up for those couple of dreadful weeks in August. We're making the most of it while we can. Steph has been getting out and about in the daytime while she's not working, and I've been cycling to and from work as much as I can, which has been great for exercise.
Last weekend, we cycled around Stanley Park which is much nicer now that the heaving summer crowds are dying down. We followed that with a swim (for Steph), and a walk up to Prospect Point and back for me. It was lovely to walk through the park again, as I haven't done it in ages. Shame to see that they've constructed a huge car park at Prospect Point. I expect there will be a mall and a bunch of fast food restaurants there soon :/ The park itself is still lovely though.
On Thursday, Steph's parents arrived for a two-week holiday, so they are currently enjoying the sunshine with us. Steph has been attending an animation festival called SPARK over the last few days, and has been thoroughly enjoying the various talks. I went with her to see the directors of Horton Hears a Who! from Blue Sky studios, which was very entertaining, and that was followed by a screening of the film which was excellent.
Tomorrow, we are off to the beach to enjoy some of this late summer sun. I hope the weather is good wherever you are.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Monday, September 01, 2008
Labor Day weekend
It's a long weekend - yay! It finally stopped raining - yay!
August has been a pretty awful month. It's supposed to be the hottest and driest of the summer, but instead it has rained consistently for over two weeks! This weekend has been much better though - still some cloud around, but plenty of sunshine too.
On Saturday, we invited our good friends Colin and Jo round for food. They were very nice to Steph recently and let her use their computer to prepare her showreel for job hunting, so as a thankyou we made them home-made pizzas, followed by honey cake and custard. Om nom nom nom :) We were all happy and full.
Yesterday, we did some gardening (!). Steph wants to get an allotment plot to grow some stuff, so we went to a work party at Strathcona gardens. This enabled us to put our name down on the waiting list for an allotment there. Apparently, there are about eight others on the list, but free plots get given to those who show up for the work parties once a month, so if we put in the effort we might get lucky. We both enjoyed getting to do some outdoor stuff anyway - we picked apples in the orchard there and helped to clear some weeds. Everyone got to take a share of the fruit home, and Steph has some earmarked for an apple and blackberry crumble - nice.
Today has been pretty lazy so far. In a while, we are going to a BBQ held by some friends and work colleagues. Let's hope this good weather will stick around for a while.
August has been a pretty awful month. It's supposed to be the hottest and driest of the summer, but instead it has rained consistently for over two weeks! This weekend has been much better though - still some cloud around, but plenty of sunshine too.
On Saturday, we invited our good friends Colin and Jo round for food. They were very nice to Steph recently and let her use their computer to prepare her showreel for job hunting, so as a thankyou we made them home-made pizzas, followed by honey cake and custard. Om nom nom nom :) We were all happy and full.
Yesterday, we did some gardening (!). Steph wants to get an allotment plot to grow some stuff, so we went to a work party at Strathcona gardens. This enabled us to put our name down on the waiting list for an allotment there. Apparently, there are about eight others on the list, but free plots get given to those who show up for the work parties once a month, so if we put in the effort we might get lucky. We both enjoyed getting to do some outdoor stuff anyway - we picked apples in the orchard there and helped to clear some weeds. Everyone got to take a share of the fruit home, and Steph has some earmarked for an apple and blackberry crumble - nice.
Today has been pretty lazy so far. In a while, we are going to a BBQ held by some friends and work colleagues. Let's hope this good weather will stick around for a while.
Bowen Island
Last weekend Steph organized a day-trip to Bowen Island for a whole load of us. Steph and most of the others went to do some kayaking, but I don't like sitting in kayaks so I did some walking with a few friends. We originally intended to walk to the top of Mount Gardner on the island, but when we realized how long that would take we wimped out and went for a nice stroll around Killarney Lake instead.
We had accidentally chosen the weekend for our trip that was also"Bowfest" which is some sort of annual fair / festival on the island. We were going to check it out after we finished our walk (while waiting for the kayakers to return) but it cost good money to get in so instead we went to the pub :) It was called Doc Morgan's and had a very nice location by the water (shame about the service though).
We also lucked out on the weather. The week before had been dreadful (see my previous post about Radiohead), and the following week was also dreadful. In fact, even the next day it poured with rain but on the Saturday we had warm weather and sunshine. Hooray!
I've uploaded some photos to Flickr. Sadly, I don't have any of the kayaking, or the pub. I'll see if I can dig up any from other people.
Drowned Rats
I spoke too soon in my last post about the weather. The next week, things turned for the worst. Our Radiohead gig on Tuesday evening was very soggy indeed. It was certainly memorable for a variety of reasons:
Still, I think everyone enjoyed Radiohead anyway. And although I was still non-plussed by them after the gig, I now really like their latest album. Weird.
Here's a couple of dodgy movies with awful sound :)
- I lost my umbrella - they wouldn't let people into the event with them :(
- We ended up more wet than we'd ever been in our lives.
- At the end, there were thousands of people trying to get out of UBC, which caused gridlock on the roads, and completely overwhelmed the bus services. We were very lucky to push and shove our way onto a bus late that night, or we might have ended up stranded miles from home when the bus service stopped.
Still, I think everyone enjoyed Radiohead anyway. And although I was still non-plussed by them after the gig, I now really like their latest album. Weird.
Here's a couple of dodgy movies with awful sound :)
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Bad news
If you are in the UK right now, you probably won't have too much sympathy for us, but it's hot here right now in Vancouver! Summer is in full force, but the weather is turning today with possible thunderstorms later, which precedes a coming week of rain and showers.
To say that it's been a stressful week would be a major understatement. The company where Steph and I work has been going through some "realignment" under its new management, which meant more than 100 people being made redundant. Unfortunately, Steph was one of those people.
On the lighter side, Steph's friend Helen is visiting us and having a good time so far. She's been travelling a lot so we haven't seen so much of her so far. She comes back this evening from the Okanagan valley. This week we are all going to see Radiohead play outdoors at UBC Thunderbird Stadium, and then at the weekend we are going on a day trip to Bowen Island for some kayaking and walking, with a bunch of friends. So plenty of good stuff ahead.
Last night was a wedding celebration for Steve and Janine - good friends of ours - which was great fun. There are some photos on the web taken by other friends of ours if you'd like to take a look.
Let's hope next week is better than this one!
To say that it's been a stressful week would be a major understatement. The company where Steph and I work has been going through some "realignment" under its new management, which meant more than 100 people being made redundant. Unfortunately, Steph was one of those people.
On the lighter side, Steph's friend Helen is visiting us and having a good time so far. She's been travelling a lot so we haven't seen so much of her so far. She comes back this evening from the Okanagan valley. This week we are all going to see Radiohead play outdoors at UBC Thunderbird Stadium, and then at the weekend we are going on a day trip to Bowen Island for some kayaking and walking, with a bunch of friends. So plenty of good stuff ahead.
Last night was a wedding celebration for Steve and Janine - good friends of ours - which was great fun. There are some photos on the web taken by other friends of ours if you'd like to take a look.
Let's hope next week is better than this one!
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Fireworks, and other things
July was a busy month for stuff. We saw a bunch of movies, which I'll maybe get around to reviewing at some point soon. July was mostly great summer weather, apart from the last week which was cold and wet. We spent time on the beach, and cycling too. The last two weeks has been the Celebration of Light again, which for those that don't know is four big fireworks displays from English Bay (close to where we live). This year Canada, USA and China competed, and Canada won again for the second year running. I reckon it must be a fix, as China was the best in my opinion (they were the best last year too). Last Saturday we had people round to ours for drinks and to watch the fireworks from our apartment, which was cool. Yesterday was the final display, and our friend Jon has a BBQ at his place which was fun. It eventually degenerated into several hours of Singstar karaoke which was quite hilarious (especially Rick Astley). It's a long weekend here (Monday is BC Day) so we'll be taking it easy for the rest of it.
If you are interested, there are pictures from the fireworks here, and some from last night's karaoke fun here. Or check out the movie below :)
If you are interested, there are pictures from the fireworks here, and some from last night's karaoke fun here. Or check out the movie below :)
Spamalot!
The theatre show based on Monty Python's The Holy Grail (and some other Python stuff) came to Vancouver, and a bunch of us went to see it. It was enjoyable enough, but mostly just regurgitated the funniest scenes from the film, performed with bad English accents (which sometimes added to the enjoyment) and slightly suspect coming timing and delivery (which did not). I am glad we got our tickets half-price as otherwise it would have been rather a rip-off. As it was, the production was good and the song and dance routines were most enjoyable, but it would have been cheaper and funnier to watch the movie again.
Paul and Jane visit
I'm so late mentioning this, but better late than never. Our friends Paul and Jane stayed with us for a long weekend at the beginning of July, pretty much straight after our weekend in Seattle. They were on a round-the-world trip virtually, from Australia where they now live, via San Francisco. I used to share a house with Paul when I lived in Cambridge so we are good friends. He moved to Melbourne in Australia probably a year or so ago now with his then-girlfriend Jane. Recently they got married but I missed the wedding as Steph and I were too busy to travel at the time. It was really great to see them, and we packed in a few tourist-type things in the short time they were here - a trip to Granville Island Market and to Grouse Mountain. We also got together with Chris and Katie and their new baby Lucas for the evening (we all knew each other from when we worked at Sony and lived in Cambridge). After leaving here, they went back to the UK for a wedding reception for the guys that couldn't make the Melbourne wedding, and then on to Italy for a week of actual holiday before returning to Australia. An epic journey indeed. I heard the other day that they made it back safe and sound, but narrowly avoided being on the Quantas plane that nearly crashed that day. It was only because that flight was overbooked that they ended up on another one. A close shave!
Oh yes, and one other thing. While they were visiting, we learnt that Jane is pregnant. Congratulations guys!!
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Seattle
On the last weekend in June, we travelled down to Seattle to meet up with our friends Holly and Pat, whose wedding we went to in Florida last year. They were travelling to a family reunion in Oregon. That weekend was a real scorcher - up to 35 degrees C in Seattle. We hired a car and drove down at what we thought was a pretty early time, but we had awful queues at the border. It took 3 hours 15 minutes to travel the final 800m to the border crossing - aaaaarrrrgh! So we arrived mid-afternoon in Seattle which was much later than expected, but actually tied in pretty well with Holly and Pat's schedule as it turned out. We did some walking around Downtown that afternoon and along the promenade, but it was baking hot and we had to keep hiding in the shade :)
The next day we had brunch and then Holly and Pat left to start their journey to Oregon. It was a brief rendezvous, but great to see them nonetheless. After our border ordeal on Saturday I decided that we should wait until late at night to attempt the crossing back to Canada, so we thought we'd spend the whole day in Seattle and make the most of it. We did loads of walking all around the Downtown area and got a flavour of most of the different districts. We found a great little place for lunch in Pike's Place Market too, called the Soundview Cafe - recommended. In the afternoon we had to escape the heat so we spent a couple of hours in the Aquarium which was pretty cool - bigger and better than the one in Vancouver. We topped off the day with a tasty meal at Anthony's on Pier 66, and then set off for home. This time we reached the border at about 10.45pm and waited only 10 minutes - bliss!
We certainly enjoyed the trip, and we liked Seattle too (thought perhaps the lovely weather helped). There seemed to be lots to see and do there. Perhaps we will go back again sometime. You can find the photos we took on Flickr.
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