Blue Sky Paradise

We have had nearly a week of blue skies and perfect winter weather. I've noticed the sun rising earlier which just makes me all happy and giddy inside. But the blunder I'm not going to let myself go for doing is that I didn't have my camera last night after sunset. It was clearly the most incredible sunset ever.

I'm hoping some other Vancouverites captured it because it was just incredible. Just think purple, blue, and orange with exceptional views. I'm pretty sure that's why they call Vancouver one of the best places on earth. Just look at my proof: oops, I don't have any....

It's a blue sky day again today so I'm going to take my camera with me today. I'm not sure if I'll get time to take a photo, but at least I'll be prepared. In other news, I'm not so into letting my freedom come to an abrupt end, but who would!

And a weekend shot of me and the Lions..

Lucky Happenings

Over the weekend, we had one great thing happen after another. First off, we had a beautiful blue skies weekend without rain. P and I decided to weather the cold and go out for a small walk. I was taking a photo of the Lions when P told me to take a photo. I had about 3 seconds and was lucky enough to get this great photo of the bald eagle. I've never had one fly right in front of my camera like this.

What luck we had!

That night, we went up to view some stars. Venus and Saturn are in the sky as well as an interesting moon. I figured the fog would make a great photo. Here's one of the shots.


If you look hard enough, you can see the Lions Gate Bridge in the fog too. Here's an interesting history of the Lions Gate Bridge. It's funny, way back in 1955 there was still bad traffic!

P's Corner - Spaced Out Sundays

Credit: NASA/ESA/AURA/Caltech

The Pleiades is the easiest star cluster to see without binoculars. You can even see it from inside some of the most light-polluted cities. The other night, ET asked me about a bright star that she was wondering about, and I thought she was referring to the Pleiades. But after consulting my favorite interactive sky chart, I figured that she was actually referring to Venus.

The sky chart I link to in the previous paragraph is a very handy tool by the way. All you need is a Java-enabled browser. You simply input your location, time zone, and local time and then it will provide a detailed interactive chart of the sky above your city. I like checking it out before we go out for evening walks.

Getting back to the Pleiades... Did you know that the Japanese word for that star cluster is Subaru? Yes, like the automobiles. In fact, their logo represents the Pleiades:

I laughed when I first learned about it. I had seen that logo so often here in North America and hadn't a clue what it was all about. Well, now I know!

Have a nice week!

Crazy Cows

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This weeks Photo Hunt Theme is Silver.

Isn't that a silver cow bell? It's very funny at least.

The cow can be found somewhere above Montreux.

Well I certainly see Silver from this photo
Vitznau - a village on Lake Lucern, Switzerland

Birthdays

Today is my mom's birthday. Our birthday's are exactly 2 weeks apart from each other which is nice. So once I knew my birthday was on a Friday, my mom's would be two weeks later on a Friday.

It's a milestone birthday for her, she's turning 40 but doesn't want to admit it. It's been filled with 3 cakes and tons of birthday cards and phone calls already. My dad made sure she knew it was her birthday. He hid one in a stack of papers at her computer, one on the sheets of the bed, one on the breakfast table and another she sat on in her car! She didn't figure that out until she got out of the car.

It also just happens that it's a beautiful sunny day today and I no longer have a fever. I'm going to work on being medication free today. Yes I'm feeling a lot better. P is doing fine, considering he cracked a beer last night. I got hit a lot harder with this flu bug for sure. But we are both looking forward to the sunny weekend. Yeah! Bring on some photos - I hope!

Cool Idea For World Travel

I just can't get enough of this video.

Be careful it's catchy...

Work Permit Excitement

Drum Role Please....

Yes My Work Permit finally came in the Canada post yesterday. I think my excitement level would have been a bit higher if I weren't so sick. I honestly don't know how much I kept P up and how much I too actually slept. We've got the same thing but it seems I'm aching and coughing more so far. He's sleeping a lot less. But we are coping together. :)

So what does the permit all mean? Basically as long as my application for immigration is completed, I'm free to work in Canada without any problems anymore... Mind you it's been 1 full year in the waiting as of Friday, Jan 26th.

Anyone hiring? LOL...

My Surprise in the Canada Post

A few months ago, I saw a compliments ad in our local paper which claimed to have reusable bags to "Bag your way to a better environment". As I investigated further, it looked like something that I really wanted to collect.

Little did I know, there was one certain hiccup in the way of me going to the store and just getting a sac. Since IGA is in competition with one of the suppliers of these bags, they are not available to be bought here in BC or Vancouver for that matter. As I sat scratching my head, you mean we aren't aloud to buy recyclable bags here?? It seems a little backwards if you ask me. Go on Canada, there's something which will help you with doing your part for the environment!

As it ended up, I would have to find these bags outside of BC, and had to think of someone to turn to outside of BC. Luckily I had just the person in mind. Since I've got some great blogging friends and sure enough, Canadian Swiss and Orange X happily bought me 2 of these bags while she was visiting family near Ottawa.

I took a pic or two of the bags and am just tickled pink at my first present via snail mail last Thursday. The two bags ended up being from Proxim and VilaBag, both of which are ultra cool. Check out the pics from below!



Out here in Vancouver, not too many people use their own bags at the grocery store. Maybe it's because plastic bags are free and it's just much easier not to bother bringing their own bags to the store. I think the usage/waste here was part of my culture shock while coming back from Switzerland to get used to free plastic bags once again. But it is quite depressing seeing how many bags everyone uses, especially compared to Switzerland. You use it if it's available to you and are forced to use your own when there is nothing there. I guess we are a bit slow to that here.


But here are a few interesting statistics from the bag. Every year, about 2 billion plastic bags are used in Quebec. That represents a weekly average of 10 plastic bags per household. Plastic bags take some 400 years to disintergrate. So if that is a statistic out of Quebec, I'm scared to know what it is for North America and the world! It's sort of crazy what differences are out there especially when you start living in other countries.

If your looking for spaced out Sundays, P is taking off this week. I might have given him the horrible flu cold that I've been nursing since Friday morning, so he's in no mood to be blogging right now.

Wild Colors

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This weeks Photo Hunt Theme is Wild.

I went with an easy one, wild colors!

Some wild colors from a beautiful March night in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Now it's more motivation to find my original photo and retouch it.

Ouchy Harbor, Lausanne

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a presentation called Babe With a Backpack. I had met up with a local fellow Vancouver blogger who is as nuts about travels as myself to go together. Karina is so warm and inviting that we both decided there will be another meet up in our future. So the talk was about Fiona Scott's, whom I had the pleasure meeting earlier in the week, adventures to 24 countries in 365 days.

For many of you who know me, this is right up my alley on things that I love doing. Fiona had a great slide show presentation which I was most interested in learning how she show cased her own photos. Many of you have already told me I need to be publishing as well. Hopefully this will be the kick in the pants I need to really get to work soon!

Oddly enough, Karina's write up is wonderful but so how both of us felt. You should check out what she had to say about it because I was just way too out of it yesterday.

Over the weekend, we hope to be going to a few World Travel slideshows along with keeping up on the workout schedule. It should be pretty nice. But I think our next big vacation will be visiting Lake Louise and Banff which I am dying to check out!

Bird Watching

Over the weekend, P went out to do some bird watching. It's sort of the best of both worlds because I get to use my camera and P gets to do some bird watching which is something he enjoys. We set off on a cold morning for a tour of The Conservation Area at Maplewood Flats.

My ears kept on ringing Ginnie, Ginnie must be here taking photos too... Well at least that is what I envisioned. The Maplewood flats is in part run by the government but is all open and run via volunteers. It was a fun thing to do once with the group tour but we aren't as serious as most birders and got extremely cold standing out in the snow.



I'm still working on processing those photos, so here are a quick few. The below photo is from a beautiful day last Thursday at Ambleside beach and park.

Duck walking at Ambleside

Loosing It But Maybe Not

I went to start a few loads of laundry this morning without soap! Makes for not so clean clothes and a grumpy me for doing such a stupid thing! And I thought I knew how to do the laundry...

More things happening.
Swam a fun swim meet last night. Loved it.
I think talking with the 80 plus years olds was a blast, really!

It might snow again tonight. I told the weather man to pass this snow onto Switzerland but he seems not to care what I have to say.

That's it for now. Ciao.

P's Corner - Spaced Out Sundays

Photo Credit: STS-9 Crew, NASA

The Manicouagan Impact Crater in north-eastern Quebec (also known as "the eye of Quebec") was created around 200 million years ago when a 5 km diameter asteroid hit the Earth. It is one of the most interesting geographical features of the province I grew up in. The impact created land features that have filled in with water and resulted in an annular lake. The island in the center is called Rene-Levasseur Island and the highest peak is called Mount Babel. The picture above was taken by Space Shuttle Columbia in 1983 and you can see its tail fin at the lower left.

The lake is often referred to as the giant battery of Quebec because it is the source of water for several hydroelectric projects. The lake water levels are typically much lower in the winter because of high electrical demands, and the resulting elevated outflow needed to run the turbines. Water levels then recover or recharge in off-peak periods, hence the battery reference.

Manicouagan Dam

I grew up in the Lac-St-Jean area that is located about 300 kilometres south-west of the Manicouagan crater. The photo below shows Lac-St-Jean quite well at the bottom left. Apparently, it is possible to kayak or canoe around the Manicouagan annular lake and the scenery is quite spectacular. ET and I have been talking about learning how to kayak in the near future. Perhaps someday we will take a trip around the Manicouagan reservoir.

Old Vs. New Technology

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This weeks Photo Hunt Theme is Technology

I must admit, I had to hurry to put this photo hunt together because I've been busy yesterday celebrating my birthday of all things. Thanks everyone for your comments!

Technology has advanced over the years so I figured I put up something older and something newer which we have used for so long now.

An old Model T - Car next to Vancouver's Historic Building.
Ironically now the building is home to our North Vancouver ambulance service.

A new Cruise Ship passes under the Lions Gate Bridge and onto it's Journey to Alaska.
(Note that's Stanley Park before the big destruction of trees.)

I originally thought about putting up something from Switzerland saying how lucky I am to have visited such a place but without technology I'm sure most of us would not travel as much as we already do.

It's My Birthday

I was able to process a few pics. I'll try to share a few here.

From the Rooftop in North Vancouver


The place where I swim at also has a lawn bowling club next door. Fresh Snow.

Thank you all for the birthday wishes already and the cards!
We'll be going out to dinner tonight too.

Seeing Blue

I woke up this morning jumping for joy. Do you see why I am so excited?

This of course is just a teaser pic and there is blue sky everywhere. It's just in time in fact for my birthday (which is tomorrow). What more could I have asked for than for this! I'm so excited..

I hope to have some more uploaded to flickr by tonight. That's where I really went crazy (remind me to talk about what I saw on my shoot). The good news is that there should be blue skies in the forcast for a few more days. And anyone who knows me quite well knows I absolutely thrive off of this type of weather...

Jumping to joy as I go off to get "love bug" from the groomers right now. Most of you know him as Mr. Twist. Yes this is what the groomer calls him. Isn't that so sweet!

What a Doosie

Yesterday morning I got a phone call from my brother. It's unusual for him to call me early in the morning so I quickly wondered what had happened? Let's just say he hurt himself skiing while he was on flat ground of all places.

So the snow storm yesterday turned out to be a doosie** for most of the lower mainland except here in North Vancouver. We got lucky for sure! P was rather worried while driving home because there was so much snow pouring down on him. He said it felt more like a blizzard. But when he crossed into North Vancouver, all the snow just stopped. We actually got lucky this time. The hardest hit areas were out in Abbotsford and Surrey, etc.

The good news is this storm is bringing a few days of sunshine with colder weather (-1C for a high) in time for my birthday which is tomorrow. So I'm going to make the effort today to get the camera out and snap a few snow filled pics again...

**Doosie -not entirely streetwise with whats happening and going down,
a thing which is an extreme example of its type.

"That next step is a Doosie!" (said to someone about to step off a cliff)

Pimp My What?

Ok this is just to over the top. Roto Rooter is starting a new contest. Anyone in need of a really good laugh has to click on this link.

Pimp My Bathroom - It's a pimped out john. The company is giving away the ultimate thrown. All I can say is NO THANKS!

More Snow

Many of you are wondering if we got more snow last night, so I'm here to write about it. Yes we did, yes more snow at nearly sea level. It was a mild dumping of about 5cm or a bit more on the ground. But there is an arctic flow coming our way which might make the snow stick for a few days.

My bigger problem last night was that I tried to glue up the stupid rear view mirror for the third time and it didn't work. We gave up after 30 mins! I think glue is more challenged when the temps are freezing outside, so it wouldn't stick for anything. I'm not keen on trying again either.

I haven't been in the mood for photos in my few mins that I have had. We will have to see.

But there still is some snowfall warning, and as they call it more weather woes.

Gone Crazy

Too many things are going crazy here.

1. I tried to sign into blogger earlier but it was giving me a lot of trouble. Told me I needed a Google account. I have one, still didn't work after following the exact instructions as told... Google you're not doing a good job!

Also people have told me my site is all messed up. Please also tell me what you are viewing me from (firefox or IE) please.

2. A Big Storm coming in this afternoon. I guess trees are already down in Langley.
The storm is supposed to following with some snow. Yuck!

3. The first ever Canadian Sextuplets were born over the weekend by a Canadian woman in Vancouver this weekend. At any rate, this is quite rare no matter how you look at it.

4. BC place is ripped apart and apparently everyone in the world knows about it. More later on that. From television reports, this was a hoot to watch. However, they started saying the B.C. government could end up paying the bill as the stadium is owned by the provincial government, which is not a hoot.

5. Stanley Park keeps getting hit. More to come there too. The BC Park Board is actually trying to get aid from Ottawa. People on the radio keep reporting that visiting Stanley Park is a must see in person because the apparent amount of damage from fallen trees.

Ciao

I've Done It

I've committed myself to Fitness.

We've had a lot of "I've Done it's" this week, but the one I'll definitely mention involving exercise is the one I can't believe I'm going to keep on doing. I've made it into the gym this past week and well I really enjoyed it. So what am I going to do? Commit myself to going 2 more times a week! I'm not sure if I thought I would be getting back into this but I have.

I've also been really inspired by our new swim site looking at the swimming times in Canada. Needless to say it has gotten me thinking. I'm just starting off slow and this weekend I'll be swimming in my first "FUN" swim meet in say 8 1/2 years and counting! I can't really say that I'll do more swim meets but I'm certain I'll swim this weekend!

Here's to starting a new leaf this new year.

P's Corner - Spaced Out Sundays

Have you ever noticed that the moon, when it's high up, sometimes looks bigger than normal? ET and I were wondering about that a little while ago, and then we just forgot about it. But last night, the issue came back when I surfed an astronomy site and saw a nice photo. We learned that the moon has a non-circular orbit and that it looks bigger sometimes because it's actually closer. Duh!

Then I found the following lunation cycle simulation video that shows very well the change in the moons apparent size. The yellow circle is there as a reference. Oh well, another one of our little mysteries dispelled!

A Trip Down Memory Lane

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This weeks Photo Hunt Theme is Memory

This photo hunt I decided to take a trip down memory lane. All photos were taken with a disposable camera so the quality is very low, but sure to produce a few laughs. All photos are from my first visit to France from August 8th to 18th, 2001.

The first photo I took while I was in Nice, France. The city is a major tourist center and a leading resort on the French Riviera (Côte d'Azur). This was actually my first ever trip to Europe with a great friend. We had a wonderful time flirting with me and shopping until we dropped.

A trip to a Museum in Paris. I don't think I've changed much since then.

Much embarassing photo for me now in Monaco. Why did I dress this way!!!
I can't stand my hair back like that.

Yes we were having a fun time in Paris Latin Quarter, but why did I wear my hair this way!!!!

I think I wore that jacket just yesterday in fact. This was a time when everything was still in French Francs, something like 8 to 1 conversion at the time. I hope you enjoyed a visit from now 5.5 years ago with some friends that I still keep in touch with. 2 of us in this pic are now married.

Not Again

Houston - we've got snow again. Again... Yes Again...

I tried but I guess they didn't get the message to ship the snow off towards Norway, Andorra, Austria and Switzerland.

It all started when I woke up this morning early, which has been unusual for me lately. I couldn't sleep but thought nothing about it. Then, when I finally knew I had to get out of bed, I looked outside in shock! So now we might get up to 15cm's of the stuff.

This is 4th time this season we have gotten snow. For me, I could care less if we get snow here on the streets of the lower mainland. Save it for the slopes above 1000m and I'm happy, but not down below that level. In fact, I'd be happier to blow it onto Europe's streets instead of these Vancouver ones.

You see most of the time our area is not equipped for driving in snow. They only salt the main streets, and don't have any proper snow removal. The result can be a big headache on the roads. At times, many people are told to not even drive if they do not need to do so. In fact, my work car isn't equipped to drive in the snow which doesn't make for a fun time driving in it. I still have my 4 wheel drive truck in California. I miss it dearly on these days as I love just switching it over and going.

I guess the explanation for all of this wacky weather might be called an El Nino.

A Funny Quiz

What kind of yarn are you?

You are Shetland Wool. You are a traditional sort who can sometimes be a little on the harsh side. Though you look delicate you are tough as nails and prone to intricacies. Despite your acerbic ways you are widely respected and even revered.
Take this quiz!








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Starting 2007 With Rain

So we are on our third day in 2007 and we are still 3days for 3 for rain. But just how much rain: a lot! It's starting to turn out like last January where we tied record amounts of rain. Although the airport is where all of the records are recorded, that area is quite far away from the North Shore mountains where the rain really comes down.

So far this 2007, we have had about 200mm or rain. That's about 6 or 8 inches in less than 3 days! Luckily I think there is a break in the storm. This wicked west coast rain has caused more flooding in fact in other areas which aren't located on a hillside.

I guess I think about this rain so much because it hampers great photo days... Oh well, at least we are getting the stuff..

Starting 2007 Off Right

I've started 2007 off with a morning swim. Yes myself and about 40 or more other swimmers jumped into the local indoor pool for a beating. Really it is just that because there are just too many people to do more than just swim a bunch of laps. For me it was a chance to meet everyone I didn't know because I don't swim with these people, who mostly swim in the mornings.

After that, I came back home, did a lot of cleaning up on my computer and listened to the pouring rain. Unfortunately that pouring rain hasn't let up yet! I don't like the pouring rain because it's not fun to walk in either. I sure hope this will be a bit of a change compared to last years January. As my memory serves me, it was a really rainy month which equals not too many chances to photograph.

Now I just need to work a lot more on my photos, especially sharing them with you...