Photos from recent events

Another quickie catch up blog with lots of eye candy!

First off, my younger sister came to visit from Edmonton for the May long weekend. We didn't get many pictures except for during a hike up to the first peak of Chief Mountain. Excellent hike! Super hot day and good company.

That's the other four taking a breather on a large sunny rock midway up the vertical portion, and I do mean vertical.


Rocco and I on top of the peak. He took the opportunity to have a quick snooze while I held him upright.

The three sisters conquering the mountain. Apparently there's a hike somewhere further along the sea to sky highway called the "three sisters" so maybe next time K's out here we'll hike that. We all had a great visit which included some shopping time, a rum and bbq party, and pedicures for some. Come back any time, Kath!

And now for the obligatory cat shots:
Boris completely drunk on a recent tuna feed. Note the tuna detritus all around his furry little mouth.

Boris is a fat-ish cat. We feed Sophie up on a bookcase so Boris can't devour her food as well as his own, and his heft disables him from jumping up to get at it. BUT, we are encouraging him to learn to jump and this photo is evidence that he's actually starting to get it! Not sure what this means for Sophie's food...


"I'm in your files, breaching your security." Sophie "the Secretary" adores the filing cabinet. She'll run from the other end of the apartment when she hears it open. Not sure what she gets up to in there, and maybe I'm better off NOT knowing!

And finally a note from this more recent weekend:
I was at the Trout Lake farmer's market this Saturday and picked up some awesome rhubarb. Made up a rhubarb crumble for our dinner guests last night - woooeee!!! I'm a very, very recent convert to rhubarb and I have found that the secret is a fresh, hot crumble laced with cold cream. Holy good times Batman.

Ad-vancement

This new ad from Huggies is hilarious. Not only is it specifically aimed at dads (how long did THAT take?!), but you can totally imagine it happening to you. You're at your boss' house for a work party and slip into a quiet room to change a diaper, then ... ARG!



The kid looks so pleased with himself!

And just to prove to any non-parents that this does indeed happen, here's an older blog from Marko Polo with golden evidence.

Destroyer of Worlds

My Intel Mac can boot in the Mac operating system or the Microsoft Windows operating system, should I choose to set it up that way. This presents a bit of a problem for sharing files across the platforms because the two operating systems are compartmentalized on the hard drive and don't read the files of the other OS. Lo' and behold, someone built a cool piece of software called VMWare Fusion that allows a virtual machine to be constructed within the Mac OS so that you can run Windows (or another OS) in a window on your Mac OS. Ironic? Oh yes. Useful? Hell yes. Creepy?

Well yes, actually. I love Mac and will always choose it over anything IBM or MS. Trouble is, there is some useful software out there that is still only available for IBM-compatible machines. For a current project we need to be running SPSS which is available for Mac or IBM-compat, but the recent add-on, SPSS with Text Analysis for Surveys, is only written for the Windows version of SPSS. And, of course, that's what I need. So I installed VMWare Fusion and now I have a virtual Windows machine running inside my Mac screen and can run this software on files saved to the Mac. Pretty handy stuff but it is SO WEIRD to see the iconic Windows screen open on my Macbook. In fact, the following cartoon sums up the experience very well as I'm sure other Mac devotees will agree.

Worth watching

This week I managed to catch two very worthwhile films that, if you have a couple hours to spare, you should definitely try to see.

Monday night I saw Young @ Heart, a documentary of the Young At Heart Chorus who sing together in Northampton, Massachusetts. The chorus is a gang of seniors who range in age from 72 to 88 and sing a wide range of music including a Sonic Youth tune, some Rolling Stones, and songs like "Doo Wah Diddy" and "I Feel Good" by James Brown. The documentary is hilarious and astonishing, truly heartfelt and very moving. I won't kid around here, because no one who saw it before me warned that it is also very sad, but trust me, amid all the giggling and cheering you do in the audience, there is also some crying. These folks are octogenarians and older, remember, so health concerns are top priority for most of them. Some characters really stand out, and some of them can still REALLY sing, too! I think Young @ Heart is playing pretty widely so if you have the opportunity to see it at a local theatre, spend the 12 bucks - trust me! Everyone I know who has seen it raves about it, and I'm no exception.

Last night I went with friends to see Carts of Darkness, another documentary but this time about North Shore binners who ride shopping carts down extreme hills at great disk of death and disfigurement. For anyone outside of Vancouver, a binner makes cash to live by collecting bottles and cans and returning them for the deposit. The main guy in the film, Al (pictured), used to be a skateboarder and gets a supreme high from coasting down the steep hills of North Vancouver on a shopping cart going up to 67km/hour! The documentary covers how these guys make a living, where and how they live, jail time, and the motivation to make the film by the director, Murray Siple. Murray used to make snowboard films but was in a car accident a decade ago that left him essentially quadriplegic. This is his first film after a decade hiatus and you can feel his thrill to be back behind the camera and to be...well, you'll see! I doubt this will be circulating very widely since it's a low budget, local film, but it's funded by the NFB so you might be able to get a hold of it through them somehow. Jaw-dropping action, I guarantee you!

The Chief - 2nd and 3rd peaks

Saturday was the first beautiful Saturday of the season and some friends invited me for a hike up The Chief near Squamish. We had a gorgeous day of it and I've decided that this hike is one I will take all my visitors on. It's totally accessible - only a short drive from Vancouver, the views are astounding, and it actually gets easier as the hike progresses so you get the hard stuff over with early on. Plus it has very fun elements like bolted chains to help you climb up rock folds.
Here are some photos one of our group took:

Climbing up a rock fold using the bolted chain.

Reclining on the warm rocks of second peak with a beautiful view.

A gap between second and third peaks showing Squamish down at the bottom.

On top of third peak, admiring the view.

Playing ketchup

Not really. There are very few condiments involved in this post, actually. But it sounded fun and caught your attention enough to read on, right? Ha!

So lots of people came to visit and I do believe a good time was had by all. Mom flew out for a girls' visit and much, MUCH time was spent at cooking ware stores and fancy grocery stores. She and my sister also went to Mama Mia - yabba ABBA doo! It was a great visit, all told.

Next, the Duchess was in town for a family wedding. Well, one wedding but two twin sisters marrying off at the same event. Clever way to do it, plus it scored me some D time. We did a lot of eating and some MEC shopping (two more of my favourite things). A short but sweet visit that should be repeated soon.

Two days after D flew home, Dora arrived for a few unencumbered days of bliss; aka, the big guy stayed home with the little guy and left Dora to travel alone for the first time in years! She has captured much of the visit on her blog so I won't repeat it here. See Vancouver One for a hiking and Toyota FJ adventure, Vancouver Two for pics and description of our fantastic mid-week camping trip (complete with beer chiller stump), and Cameras Are Heavy for a quick recap of our run around Stanley Park and the magnificent blossoms in that area. So we played in the dirt a bit and we also got all cleaned up for a girls' night out with another friend of mine. We went to a semi chi chi club downtown called Lucy Mae Brown and tried almost every martini on their list while solving global issues and delving into our emotional baggage. Damn good. I really adore the big and little guys in their family but it sure was a treat to have Dora all to myself for a few days. Girl trips should never be underrated and should often be repeated (hint, hint)!

The other thing that has recently been keeping me occupied is that I went out and spent part of my tax return getting geared up for my running plans this summer. I bought a Garmin Forerunner 305 that has GPS and a heart monitor. It's super cool and desperately geeky gadgetry! It will map my route, tell me my pace (instantaneous and average), distance from a set point, pulse (instantaneous and average), and even act as a virtual trainer once I set it up with some workouts. It's total indulgence but it will help keep me interested in all the running I hope to do this summer. For the upcoming trail running, I also bought a mini backpack with a hydration system. It's big enough to hold 1.5L, my glasses case and wallet, keys, cellphone, and even a light jacket. I've worn it a couple times now and it's relatively comfortable. That might change when t-shirt weather turns to tank top weather but there's always Body Glide for any chaffing. Here's a photo of me all geared up:

Good thing the overall effect will make people look since I apparently prefer to run blind. The goofiness extends further too, evidenced in this next photo of me trying to figure out how to drink from a camelback. What a dork!

Thanks for reading - it was a long one! And big thanks to everyone who came to visit. I'd been feeling kinda blue and lonely in recent weeks and your visits made me feel all loved up and surrounded by fantastic friends. Come back anytime!

Nüsse!

You've seen the Tom Cruise Scientology video, right? Bonkers, mate. Truly bonkers.



And now there are many, many rip offs, piss takes, and generally mockery of the original. This one might be my favourite. A German dude who translated the transcript of good ole Tommy using Babelfish, then reenacted the entire video to the new script. The best part is the 7th cut with "pshooo!"

Tom Cruise Scientology Deutsche original Übersetzung


The maniacal laughter is damn good too, as are his freaky popped eyes. So true!