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.


View Larger Map

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.


View Larger Map

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)

Spring!

Last weekend we went to the Chinese New Year celebrations in Chinatown, not far from our neighbourhood. I forgot to post about it, but it was spectacular. The roads were blocked off, pedestrians were everywhere. Dragons were dancing in front of businesses, maybe as a blessing? There was something about lettuce, too - lettuce was strewn all over the streets. We ate some steam buns, moon cakes, and soaked it all in...





This week spring has sprung in our yard. The crocuses are up, the weather is gorgeous, and we were inspired to do a bunch of gardening. I can't believe our luck at inheriting such a fabulous garden, and am excited to see what else will come up.



In keeping with spring, several friends are due to have kids, so I've knitted up another batch of felted booties. They're quick and cute. Here they are before felting



And here they are after felting, steaming like little furry bread rolls, fresh from the washing machine. I finished them up after s&b at Kathleen's house this afternoon, hooray for s&b.

TED

The TED conference brings together fascinating people at the tops of their fields, and asks them to give the best talk of their lives, in 18 minutes. The original three themes of the conference were Technology, Entertainment, and Design, but the range has expanded to include deep-sea biology, poverty, history, and happiness. The talks are all online now, and they are fabulous 20-minute packets of pure inspiration. Check them out here.

We've been watching them one or two at a time (they really blow your hair back and I haven't been able to watch more than two in a row), bouncing from topic to topic. wheee

snippets

It's snowing outside, and Douglas has gone diving this afternoon. It's his second time - he's finished his volunteer training at the aquarium, and is getting set to dive in their tanks. He says it is COLD, but beautiful! He even saw a nudibranch on his Monday dive!

Saira's bandages have come off, and her foot is looking small and crooked - it reminds Douglas of a camelid's foot. Saira doesn't even seem to notice that she is missing a toe, though - she is just happy to be able to go for walks again now that the bandage is off! Pics of the odd-toed dog coming soon.

if it's good enough for the queen...

http://youtube.com/user/TheRoyalChannel

reprieve

Whew! The letter from the immigration office wasn't a work permit, after all. Just a notice that Douglas can now pay a lot of money and *apply* for a work permit. But since we can't find (after an hour of looking) the correct form on the website, and his passport is still off somewhere getting renewed and barcoded, it will likely be a good long while before he can apply for the permit. We couldn't find work permit processing times on the website, either, but we can safely assume that that will add another few weeks or months.

Thank goodness for the tremendous efficiency and transparency of the immigration offices!

triple eek!

It has been a crazy pair of days.

First. Yesterday there was a lockdown in my building because someone e-mailed in a threat to do harm to someone in the building. Everyone in the building was either evacuated or told to stay behind locked doors from 2pm onwards. They brought in the SWAT team, there were helicopters circling, and general mayhem ensued. Fortunately, the SWAT team didn't find anyone, no one was hurt, and everyone eventually got to leave their offices (some people as early at 4:30, some as late at 6pm). I was evacuated, went to a meeting in another building, and then went home, after asking the campus police to turn off the little old space heater I had left on beside my desk.

Second. The Canada Immigration website says that they have processed my Irish husband's application, and mailed him his working papers! He's in shock at the thought of having to go back to work. He may have to ease into it, and is considering driving a snow grooming machine on the local ski hill for a while.

Third. I coordinated another big grant application this week. This one is ~42 single-spaced pages long, and has contributions from 6 people, including me. I've finally written my parts, gathered everyone else's parts, and made them all sound like they are part of a single application. Tomorrow I have to finish figuring out the budget and cut and paste it all into ridiculous online forms. Lots of work!

snippets

Life has been busy!!! Mark and Erika visited us for a fabulous week. We ran around Vancouver, showing them the sights, rode our bikes,



and ate lots of sushi.



Then we drove up to Sun Peaks for the icewine festival, went tubing (a first for all of us, and wayyy more fun than we expected - the hills were steep, the curves were sharp, and the snow berms were high - but sometimes we thought we were going to go right over the edge!),



and drank lots of wine. We went to two seminars, one a wine & chocolate tasting that was like a science experiment with food (you tasted 8 wines and 4 chocolates in every possible combination, then drank the wine at the empty tables - lots of folks were too rich and too busy skiing to attend, even though they'd bought tickets),



and another was a progressive wine tasting, where you walked from booth to booth, tasting wine for 3 whole hours. It was SO decadent, and so delicious.

The week was over too soon, and we had to let them go. Two days later, Saira had her toe operation. She's likely got bone cancer in one of her toes, and she had the toe removed last Tuesday. It's been hurting her for months and months, and she is recovering from the surgery amazingly well. We were worried about how she would make it through the anaesthetic, but she was just fine. She's walking around with a cute bandage on her foot, and eating well - probably better than before the operation!

Work is going really well at the new job. It's intense - I'm doing a million things I've never done before - in my first week, I co-wrote a $100,000 grant. Next week there is more grant writing on my plate, and a meeting with the Vice-President of the Properties Trust to talk about the budget. eek! It's fun, and scary. I'm sure it will get less scary as I get a better idea of what my responsibilities are. But for the moment, every time I hear about something that needs to be done and isn't getting done (which, since everything is ramping up for our move in a year, is about every 5 minutes), I feel like maybe *I* should do it - obviously that's ridiculous, but it's how I'm feeling right now.

Douglas is volunteering at the Vancouver Aquarium as a diver, and loving every second of it. Every time he comes home from an orientation session, he tells me about a dozen cool things about local marine organisms. I'm going to have to get a membership so I can go there often and check out everything he's telling me about!

I went to the second Vancouver stitch and bitch meeting today, at my friend Shelley's house, and we made plans for a next meeting, so stitch and bitch lives! hooray! I'm still obsessed with ravelry, too, and have picked out a pattern for my first sweater.

I'll leave you with this vision of Douglas' and my future:



How many llamas will fit in a sprinter??

r-a-v

I've been a bad, bad blogger - I haven't blogged in aaaages. And the longer I leave it, the more stuff there is to mention, so I leave it even longer...

This morning we went cross-country skiing at Cypress Mountain. We drove over the bridge to North Van, along the trans-Canada highway for a bit, and suddenly we were in a winter wonderland. They have a 10-foot base layer of snow, and a foot of new snow. The trees are covered in snow - even their trunks. It was gorgeous up there. And it's such a perfect arrangement - the snow is up on the mountain where it belongs. You don't have to shovel it, or drive in it, but you can go visit it whenever you want.



Here are our friends Yanick and Tina:



The Christmas holidays are over, the days are getting longer. The friends who were in town visiting have gone home, the Christmas parties are over, and the Christmas baking is gone (though I might have to make another batch of shortbread - that stuff is addictive). We both had the flu this year, so the holidays were quiet. I feel rested, ready for the new year.

I have 2 new obsessions, both starting with r-a-v. Ravelry, first - it's facebook for knitters. I can browse patterns, looking for something new to make. Or I can pull a lonely bit of yarn out of my stash, and see what other people have made with it. Or I can check out how a pattern I want to make will turn out in various yarns people have used. I can see friends' projects. It's eating a lot of my time! There are a lot of other obsessed knitters in Vancouver, though - we tried to go to a late boxing day sale at 3 Bags Full on Main Street, and we had to leave because the lineup to pay for yarn was about 60 people long. The store was *packed* and everyone in there was in line with a basket or bag full of yarn.

O, and before I get to my next r-a-v obsession, I've found something else to do with wool - felting without knitting! My brother gave me a book called Felt: Handmade Style (which I can't find on amazon, oddly) about felting straight from unspun wool. It's crazy. You take the unspun wool (called either sliver or roving), lay it out on a sushi mat, wet it, roll up the sushi mat, bash it around a bit, and voila, you have a flat felted fabric. Crazy. You can also make bubble wrap forms, and make hats and bags, you name it. I'll post pictures when I make something other than a flat piece of fabric.

OK, and the next r-a-v obsession - ravioli!! We got a ravioli tray from the Italian market down the road (where everyone speaks Italian all the time), and have been making ravioli non-stop. mmmmmmmmm



Douglas has been working on camperizing the van, and soon, soon, it will be functional!! I can't believe the progress he's making. Here's the inside of the van (and me, looking silly):



I hope everyone is having a good New Year!

Wind energy

Imagine having your very own wind turbine in your backyard! Apparently they are becoming more and more affordable, and homeowners are putting them in their backyards. You can even buy them at Canadian Tire, a Canadian hardware store chain that is a lot cooler than I remember it being.

Crazy. There was an article about this in the New York Times today, too.

Douglas says he can build one from a bicycle generator hub. I'll keep you posted.

yahoo!

I got an official job offer from UBC yesterday, and starting January 2 will be doing something much more up my alley - I'm positively oscillating with glee.

I handed in my resignation at the engineering company today. It was sweet. Very sweet. It was also fun to watch people's eyes get big when I told them about my new job. Hell, I didn't get a Masters degree to be a secretary, sugar.

The marketing manager, the one with the secret record producing identity, was genuinely pleased for me. He said nice things about how I'd be hard to replace (I've been doing more and more work for him lately) and offered to take me out to lunch next week. The office micromanager was happy, too, but I think she was just happy that I'm leaving so she can complain about how she has to do *everything* around the office again.

ah. 6 more days. 45 hours.

And then I get to work in the technicolor world of biology again! It'll be just like in the movies. Not that there are many movies about biologists. But you know what I mean.

Knit Nuts

With Christmas just around the corner, Douglas and I have been knitting and projecting like maniacal little elves to get all of our Christmas presents made. Luckily Douglas is a fast and adventurous knitter. He went straight from knitting a single, plain square, to making complicated felting projects that involve 4 double-pointed needles, increases, decreases, thumbs, you name it. They're turning out great, and some are in the machine felting right this second.

In the past week, we've knitted a pound and a half of yarn into half a dozen projects. That's a piece of yarn as long as 6 football fields. I wish I knew how many stitches it was...

I won't post pictures of the projects, so I don't spoil any surprises. But here's a picture of Douglas knitting:



At the yarn store, we also found out about Ravelry, a site where you can post and search thousands of knitting projects. People post yarn, yardage, pictures of the finished project, whatever. I've signed up to be a beta tester. There's a waiting list, so I don't have an account yet, but I'll post more once I have access.

I'm still in job purgatory, waiting for HR to do something with my new job description. I've written my resignation letter a thousand times in my head. Fingers crossed...

Seline and Dylan's wedding, highlights

I've been wanting to post about the goodness of Celine and Dylan's wedding for a while, but every time I sit down to do it, I think of too many good moments to write about, decide it will take me hours to do it, and then give up. So, instead, I'm going to post a few of my favorite photos with little captions.

We were immersed in the Arizona heat from Thurs night 'til Monday morning, and when it was all over, and we were saying goodbye to Seline and Dylan on Sunday night (late), we couldn't believe it had gone by so quickly.

Here we are at Elizabeth and Matt's house, around the corner from Seline's house. We were putting flowers in Celine's hair, doing up her bouquet, and feeding her hors d'ouevres and margaritas. That's me, Shelley, Celine, Kelly, Vera, and Elizabeth.



Celine was a beautiful glowing bride:



But she wasn't used to dealing with the paparazzi:



They said their vows in their backyard, lit by fairy lights in the trees:



After the ceremony, the guests gathered at tables under a big white tent in their backyard, to feast on a pig that Dylan's cousin roasted in the ground (there were lots of yummy vegetarian options, too, but the pig is the best food story - o, except for the cakes, but I'll get to those):



Celine and Dylan were both beaming with happiness:



Celine's brother Rene and his wife Nicole started the tradition of asking guests to sing a song about love to make the bride and groom kiss. Celine and Dylan asked guests to do this, too, and it resulted in a great mad rush of guests standing up to sing song after song. Here are Celine's mom, Huguette, and her mom's sister and cousin singing a French love song:



One of the three (!) wedding cakes was the French traditional croquembouche, which basically means mouth crunch cake. It was a spectacularly tall golden confection, a giant cone of cream puffs stuck together with spun sugar. Wow. It tasted at least as good as it looked, which is saying a lot.



The happy couple fed each other cake, of course. These are some of my favorite pictures from the whole wedding:







There was lots of wine,



and live music (provided by the groom, no less!),



and at the end of it we were totally worn out,



and also full of the feeling that the world is a wonderful place. We had such a good time catching up with old friends, meeting new friends, and most of all, seeing two people we love looking gloriously happy. Life is good.

s&b

We just had an s&b meeting at my house. Susannah brought a project she was working on the last time I had s&b in Vancouver, 5 and a half years ago. There were tea and brownies, ginger biscuits and banana bread. Jen learned how to cast on, Katrin tried to remember how to crochet, Shelley cussed out her laceweight shawl, and Kathleen's cabled mittens made me want to try out a cable pattern myself. It was good - I missed s&b. No one bitched as well as Alexandra, but, then, that's a lot to ask. 8)

I am still waiting to hear the final word on the new job - the director submitted my new job description last week, and was told that it would take them about a week or two to process it so they can make me an offer. I'm holding my breath!

Douglas went 'dirt surfing' on the Sunshine Coast today (it's on the mainland, but you have to take a 40 minute ferry ride to get there), and he's just beaming with joy about how good it was. He's glad he's found some friends to mountain bike with, and he still can't get over how pretty it is here....