fried

We spent a glorious few days in Tucson at Seline and Dylan's wedding. It was perfectly sublime, with fairy lights, mouth-crunch cake, old and new friends, and knock-you-on-your-ass margaritas. We could not have had a better time.

I will write more and post more pictures later, though. My computer kicked the bucket today, and I've lost a lot of applications and data. My last backup was too long ago. I've never been so dependent on a computer before. It had started to feel like an extension of my brain. Now that it's gone down the tubes, I kind of feel like it's taken my brain with it.

More later, when I'm a fully functioning cyberbeing again.

Rain and Snow

It has rained steadily for the past week or so. Douglas made Saira a super-cute gore-tex raincoat so she stays dry:


This morning the clouds lifted. Not all the way, of course, but we can see the mountains again. So much rain! At least we have some snow to show for it:



My work mirrors the weather - it is drudgery, plain and simple. Last week I got frustrated with it, and Douglas cheered me up by telling me funny stories about when he stuffed insulation with ex-cons to pay the rent in Idaho. Now, when I feel my brain melting and running out my ears, I remind myself that at least I'm not covered in fiberglass and surrounded by criminals.

Hopefully the clouds will lift in my work life soon, too. There are some other options on the horizon. I haven't heard back from the elusive Project Seahorse folks. They tell me they are still deliberating, and so I am still hoping. (There were 200 applicants for the job, and I made it to the final 5, so that counts for something.) I've applied for a cool-sounding job at the Vancouver Aquarium.

Tomorrow we leave all of this behind. We're going to Tucson, for Seline and Dylan's wedding. I am bouncing off the walls, I'm so excited. The wedding, seeing all of our friends, warm sunny weather, 5 days off work - there are so many reasons to be excited!

Art trade, housewarming, and raincloud

Our housewarming party was last night, and it was fabulous. We don't know that many folks in town yet, so it was small. Not all of our friends know each other, but everyone mixed and mingled really well. The house feels properly warmed, and we're looking forward to the future plans we made with folks last night, like culture crawls and dog walks and dinner parties. I meant to take photos - I even charged my camera battery - but I got caught up in chatting and completely forgot! Next party.

The weather is getting wintery, and there's been lots of in-house projecting time. I finished Erika's fingerless gloves. I'm happy with how they turned out. I'm making Douglas a pair, and maybe I'll make myself a pair, too.



I really liked trading with Erika, so I suggested to Susannah (a talented painter and artist friend) that we should trade, too. She doesn't knit much, and I don't paint at all, so that's what we're trading. I'm going to knit her some felted mittens in return for watercolors. She brought over two miniature paintings as a housewarming gift last night:



I love them! I can't wait to see what she makes in trade for the mittens. I like the water theme; very appropriate for a welcome to Vancouver gift.

Speaking of rain, we've realized that we have our own personal raincloud over our neighbourhood. It is *always* raining at our house, but it stops as soon as we leave our neighbourhood. Our house is right on the Burrard Inlet, and the rainclouds seem to funnel up the inlet, get stuck on the North Shore mountains, and then empty themselves on our house. This has been a really good realization, actually, because it means that it doesn't matter what the weather is doing at our house - there are probably clearer skies just a few blocks away.

Getting ready for our party, we did lots of house organizing, and part of that involved finding our digital collection of music. We keep all of our music on a NAS (network accessible storage drive), and play it from our computer. Before we left for our trip to Latin America, we tried to copy all of our music onto the laptop we were taking with us. Of course it was a last-minute effort, and we set up the file copy the night before we were leaving, hoping it would work overnight with no hitches.

We forgot that we had a bunch of movies on the NAS, and in the middle of the night the copying got to the movies, and never got past them. The last music that got copied was the Mountain Goats. I hate the Mountain Goats, and I still think they killed the file copy....

This meant that our music selection for the past 9 months has been only A-M. Now that we've set up our NAS again, we have all of our music back!! The playlist is all N-Z, of course.

Skunked

Poor Saira got skunked this week. I let her out on the back porch Wednesday night, and she came back minutes later, stinking and shaking.

I'd never smelled fresh, potent skunk before, and it didn't smell quite like skunk. It was a really acrid combination of burned garlic and burned rubber, with a hint of celery. Weird.

We chucked her in the bath (the clawfoot tub is good for this, too - the sides are high so she can't hop out, and when she shook off the spray didn't get spread all over the bathroom).

The web was really helpful in figuring out what to do. We checked out wikipedia and learned a couple of cool things about skunks. We washed her in a combination of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and dish soap, as recommended, and it did the trick. She still has a bit of an odor if you get right up close, but it's not too bad.

Golden Ears

This weekend we went camping with my parents in Golden Ears Provincial Park, just an hour's drive from our house. Well, it would have been an hour's drive if I hadn't messed up the directions and taken us on a tour of north Coquitlam, and a detour to Pitt Lake. The Pitt Lake detour was cool - we saw folks filming a western. Movie sets are all over the place here. You can't throw a pebble in the Lower Mainland without hitting a movie truck, or a kid with funny hair and big sunglasses directing traffic around a shoot.

Anyhow, we got there, eventually, and went for a walk down to Gold Creek, made s'mores around the campfire, and generally had a grand time.

Here we all are in front of a giant tree stump:



Making s'mores:


The perfect s'more:


Douglas and Saira at the creek:



The lake where we took Saira swimming the next day:



and, OK, one more of Saira, after her swim:

Criminy

Last Thursday morning, when I was heading out to work, I found a black baseball hat in the middle of our backyard. I figured someone had tossed it over the fence and not wanted to come through our gate to retrieve it.

Douglas got the real story from a neighbour a few days later. Apparently, just a few houses down from us, a young punk kicked in the front door, grabbed a bag from in front of the surprised residents (who were at home), and raced off. The neighbour gave chase (even though the bag was full of dirty laundry).

The punk jumped our back fence, ran across the yard - lost his hat - jumped the other side of the fence, and vanished into the night. With the dirty laundry. Lucky guy.

I guess we should be a little more careful about locking doors and windows. And ask our landlords again about fixing our front door (which has been kicked in and glued back together...).

Turkey and Feng Shui

Last weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving, and our family gathered at my parents' house in Langley to eat turkey and celebrate the harvest. My brother came over from Victoria for the weekend, and Douglas came back from working with Mark on the skate park in Idaho just in time and full of stories.

We've had a busy week, with lots of work and bread baking, and sorting out all the stuff that Douglas brought back from Idaho. We finally have all of our junk out of storage, and boy do we have a lot of it. The shui of our house got all fenged up, but Douglas spent a couple of days sorting it out, and now it looks better than ever. It's finally feeling like home. My papasan chair is installed in a corner, tables are covered in Guatemalan textiles, the stacks of books reach the ceiling in places, and Douglas can find most of his tools. Ah. Home.

Here are a couple of pictures from Douglas' skate park building trip. Here's the skate park:



And here's Douglas enjoying some Idaho snow:



And here's a cute one of Saira:

Tango in San Telmo

I just found a few of my favorite pictures from Buenos Aires. On Sundays in San Telmo there is an antique market that stretches for blocks and blocks. There are tango dancers, street vendors, free hugs, street orchestras, and, yes, antiques.







When night fell, they cleared part of the square, laid down a portable dance floor, and set up some big speakers. Then the locals came out to tango. My favorite part was the expression on their faces while they danced: utterly, utterly absorbed. This video is dark, but you can hear the music and get an impression of what neighbourhood tango is like.



And, because they are the very best cookies in the whole wide world, some pictures of alfajores. They sort of look like hamburgers, but they are melt-in-your-mouth cookie sandwiches filled with caramel.

Quiet

Douglas and Saira are in Challis, ID this week, helping Mark build a skate park. Saira has a lot of experience working with concrete, and Douglas just went along for the fun of it. He says it's gorgeous down there, a real small town. The kids come past the job site and say 'thanks!' for building the skate park. And in the evenings the guys go to the nearby hotsprings for a soak. It sounds idyllic. The concrete truck was supposed to come today, so they're making good progress.

It's been a quiet week here, aside from Sunday's whirlwind shopping trip with my parents. I wanted to get some new work clothes with my first paycheque, and we all 3 went to the mall in Coquitlam to check out the new H&M store. It's billed as the Ikea of clothing, and I'd say it's not far off. We all got some good stuff. Well, not my dad. We looked at some tools, but he didn't buy them. He did spend some time browsing through the clothing racks, though, and even suggested we try on the odd item. Mostly he was very patient.

I didn't take any pictures this week because, as soon as Douglas left town, it started to pour and it hasn't let up for a moment. Here's a picture he took last week on one of his bike rides:



I'm working on editing the rest of our Latin American trip photos. Maybe soon the Uruguay, Brazil, and the last of the Argentina photos will be posted....