unreal estate

OK, so we're not totally sold on living on a sailboat. We're looking into buying a condo, just to stop throwing our money away on rent, and to start building some equity. I did a real estate search for properties, and this is the kind of thing I get:



This spacious cupboard could be yours for just $288,888.00!

long weekend

OK, this is my third post today - I've been bitten by the blogging bug this weekend, for sure. 4 whole days off! The time seems endless!

I've also been bitten by a bit of a techie bug lately - odd for me. It was inspired by museum stuff - needing to investigate a video camera that researchers can take into the field with them. I found two cool new things: the Flip video camera, and PicLens.

PicLens first - a simple Firefox addon, it gives you a fabulous interface for viewing photos. It's really intuitive, and reminds me of some of the new software coming out for touchscreens. The photos all come up on a black background, you can easily navigate through them, zoom in on one, zoom back out to look at all of them. It's great.

Second, the flip digital video camera. I read about it in a NYT article. It's cheap ($120 or $180, depending on memory size, 30 or 60 min), portable, and simple. Their design philosophy is *basic* - something you can take with you everywhere, and is so simple that it has no learning curve. It's like a point and shoot digital video camera, with good video quality. I really want to try one out.

all for now

newest crazy plan

We love living in Vancouver. We want to stay here - but there is *no* house to be bought for less than a half a million dollars. A mortgage on that is about $4000 per month, and you end up paying 1.5 million, once you include decades of interest. Crazy. We're not too keen on the idea of buying a condo - no basement for tools, no yard. Still several hundred thousand dollars. And we can't rent forever - again, substantially more than a thousand a month, paying someone else's mortgage. We're too old for that.

So, the newest crazy plan (that just might work): living on a sailboat for a few years! You can find really nice old sailboats from the 70's for ~20,000. Then all you pay is moorage - ~ $2000 per year (about one month's rent for a house/apartment!)

Douglas, of course, has been completely engulfed by the idea, and is spending every moment looking at sailboats, reading about living aboard them, scouting out marinas, and planning to sail around the world! I'm a little more cautious, but like the sounds of it. A 30+ foot boat would be a lot bigger than the van, and we lived in that for 8 months. I kind of miss the simplicity of van life. And on a sailboat, we could park in marinas in neighbourhoods we can't possibly afford to rent/buy in - my commute would probably be cut in half.

Heigh, ho, heigh, ho, a sailor's life for me...!

cookie epiphany

Huh. So I never knew what do to about cookies that turned out flat as pancakes and too crispy. Sometimes they did, and sometimes they didn't. The other day I was making a recipe that sometimes turns out like that, and I had an extra egg open (I was making wontons or something, and using the egg to seal them), so I just chucked it in.

And lo and behold, they were tall and moist and *delicious*!!! Eggs, marvelous eggs. I've made them several times since, and every time they turn out great. I've added the extra egg to a few other recipes, too, with great results.

Here's the new fav cookie recipe (modified from a cookie book, a bit):

Oven to 375

1 c butter
3/4 c packed brown sugar
1/2 c white sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 2/3 c flour
1/3 c cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 c choc chips
1 c almonds/some other nut

cream butter, beat in sugars, eggs, and vanilla.
combine flour, baking soda, cocoa, salt.
blend flour mix into butter/sugar mix.
stir in chips and nuts.

drop by tablespoons onto cookie sheet, bake for 10-12 min.

mmmmmmmm. We usually make the batter, bake up one batch of cookies, then put the rest of the batter in the fridge. That way they it doesn't take so long, and you have fresh ones in a few days (if you manage not to eat all the raw cookie dough....ugh).

more springing

Spring is getting even more into swing here - the cherry trees are full of buds, some of which have opened. Soon the streets will all be lined with pink! When I was at the Botanical Garden last week, their magnolias were blooming. I took yesterday off to garden, but it rained, so Douglas and I went recumbent bike test riding, instead. Today will be gardening day! I'm trying to decide what to plant in the few spots open in our garden - I'm thinking some cosmos, some poppies, some osteospermum, not sure what else.

Douglas finished my recumbent bike, and it rides like a dream! I'll try to take a picture today. He posted a movie on his blog. It's made of muffler pipe and pieces of other bikes. It's surprisingly easy to ride - though it's a little tricky to get started unless you're facing downhill. I'm getting better at it. He's going to build one for himself, too.

My commute is still a bit of a bear. I've realised/come to terms with the fact that it actually takes me 1.5 hours each way. That means 3 hours a day. I've never in my life had a commute that was more than 30 minutes each way, 1 hour total. So I'm losing 2 hours each day - that's enough time to watch a movie, or cook a nice dinner. Each freaking day. Thing is, our little house is great, and there's no way we could afford anything like it closer to the university. If we moved much closer, we'd have to settle for a little 2 bedroom apartment, no basement, no yard, and really hard to find a place that would take Saira. And she's a little too big to hide. 8) Not really sure what to do about this - will have to wait and see where Douglas ends up working.

And, just in time for spring/summer, I'm planning to start knitting my first sweater! It's a pullover, and I'm going to get some kind of fancy yarn - Rowan Felted Tweed. Fingers crossed that it turns out!! I spent a long time last night trying to decide which color to go with, and finally decided on dark green - it just barely won out over orange. I might still regain my nerve and go with the orange.

Never get a vonage phone

When we first got our Vonage phone, we were really pleased. It was inexpensive, it had a good Canada/US calling plan, and it e-mailed you a .wav file when you got a voicemail.

We soon grew to hate it, though. The info was carried over internet lines, not dedicated phone lines, and our reception was terrible. People often said they could only hear one word in four, there was a big delay, and many conversations ended with "well, I can't hear anything you're saying, so I'm just going to have to hang up - if you can hear me, call me back another day."

We decided to switch to a regular phone. We cancelled our service, and we've had a regular phone installed for ~2 months. Vonage keeps charging our credit card. Every time we call up to complain, they try to convince us to keep the service. It's like talking to a wall. Not only that, but they've charged us hundreds of dollars for the modem they sent us, which they swore up and down would be free. Of course, they can't disconnect our service without charging us for the modem. Not that they've disconnected our service. Douglas has been on the phone with them for *hours*, with no result. This is the man who recently got a refund for a doctor's visit that didn't meet his expectations.

It's all in the title line - *never* get a vonage phone.

Skookum

When we moved to BC, we noticed that everyone's new favorite word is "skookum". It's a Chinook word that basically means 'cool', and get used by all kinds of people. I'd never noticed anyone saying it before I moved away. I haven't used it myself yet. My parents use it. My parents' neighbours use it. People on the street use it. It's everywhere.

And oddly enough, we've been camping two weekends in a row at places with skookum in the name. Two weekends ago we went to St. Agnes' Wells, near Pemberton, BC.


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It's also known as Skookumchuck Hot Springs, and it really was skookum. O, god, I said it. We went up with our beer brewing crew, and had a great time. It was our first time camping in the Great White Van, and it was fabulous. On the Friday before we left, Douglas bought the 4" thick foam for the bed, we piled groceries and gear into Rubbermaid containers, and headed north. A few hours later, we were at the hot springs, drinking homemade beer, soaking in big outdoor tubs, and relaxing.





I think I must have missed living in the van, too, because I slept better than I usually do at home!



The week passed by in a blur and on Thursday we decided that we needed to go camping again. Douglas was already going up to the Sunshine Coast on Friday to count lingcod eggs with the Aquarium, so I caught the bus and the ferry after work, and joined him in Gibson's.


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The Sunshine Coast is a special part of BC. It's on the mainland, but you have to take a ferry to get there. There's no way to drive from Vancouver to Gibson's. It's only a 35 minute ferry-ride from Vancouver, but it's still small and quiet because of the ferry ride separating it from the big city.

We drove all the way up to Powell River (involving another ferry), then back down to Sechelt, because we liked it better. In between, we checked out the Skookumchuck Narrows, where the tide creates rapids and whirlpools. When the tide is going in or out, the difference in water levels between one side and the other can be as much as 2 metres, and the current can be moving as fast at 30 kph. Plus, it's a pretty spot and a nice hike.



The moss was out in full force, we saw a bald eagle in our campspot, and took videos of barnacles filter feeding. It was a nerdfest. 8)