Saturday afternoon, Carole and I went for a nice walk through our neighbourhood. The clear blue sky and radiant sun warmed our spirits, and though it was barely 9 degrees outside, it was a glorious day to take in the amazing view, and check out all the new housing starts a block up the hill from us.
What a difference a single block makes. A four minute walk from our house, Parklane is building The Estates - seventeen luxury showhomes, starting at $1,750,000. Directly below the showhomes is August Views - more 'modest' luxury homes, starting in upper $650K range. Ah, to dream.
Sunday morning, to our utter surprise, we woke up to nearly two inches of snow! How that happened, we still have no idea. It wasn't in the forcast, and it seemed clear and far to warm a mere 16 hours earlier... but, it didn't last long. There's still a skiff, but it has mostly evaporated. For once it didn't rain and turn to slush, it's still dry, just a light dusting of snow on the lawns. Very wintery, and not even December yet! Of course, the city didn't get any snow, in fact a mere two blocks down the hill from us, there's no snow - we just seem to be right at the snow line where we live. i guess you gotta take the good with the bad.
Speaking of the good though, all of last week - I'm talking 7 complete days - Vancouver has been completely socked in with fog. Dense fog. I've never seen anything like it in my life. Sure, I've seen fog before, but I've never seen fog that sticks around, day and night for two days, let alone an entire week! It was the eriest thing ... made me think if that's what London fog is like. But the great thing about where we live is, we were actually ABOVE the fog for that entire week! It litterally hung about 100 to 200 feet in elevation, below us and we had perfectly blue, sunny skies all last week. It was totally amazing. We had been looking around at new houses in new neighbourhoods for a couple weeks now, but when we realized that where we live NOW, is the only place is the lower mainland to have beautiful blue skies, we totally started re-evaluating whether we wanted to leave the mountaintop. Hense the look through August Views and The Estates ... we're a few bux shy of that particlar purchase however.
Fridat night we were at another poker tournament. I played really well, pretty much dominating the table I was at right up until making it to the final table, but by that time the blinds were so high, I was blinded out before I ever got to make a play. Carole had played conservatively and also was able to make it to the final table, but with only a fistfull of chips, and after posting the first big and little blinds, she was out in 6th. I made through two more rounds, but with no carsd coming my way, I was out in 5th. Only first through 3rd got paid. Oh well, maybe next time. After running my online poker account down to a mere $9, I entered a table this weekend, and within an hour I had been blinded down to only $3. I decided this would likely be the last time I put money into online poker, and then an amazing streak of luck hit me. Over the next 3 hours I turned that $3 into $65 - so who knows, maybe I'll stick around online just a little longer.
On Wednesday the 14th Carole and I went to the Static-X concert, had lots of fun, saw some old friends we haven't met up with in a long time, and we really enjoyed the show. The following weekend we went for dinner with some other friends we haven't seen in about eight months (since their wedding actually), and we had a really nice time with them. They also invited another couple that we had met at their wedding and we all hit it off really well. We're now invited to a housewarming at the other couple's place in a week or so, so that should be a lot of fun.
Last night Carole's mom and Brian stayed the night, and were up and out at 3AM this morning, as they were making a quick pit stop on their way to Cabo. Gotta love those early flights! I made a nice lite dinner (Sole in cream sauce, salad, steamed bokchoy, potatoes) and we kicked back with a few beers and watched Desperate Housewives. Nice and relaxing. I had spent most of the day sorting my filing cabinet and riggings all my computers to share their hard drives, printers, etc, and hooked up a KVM so that I can use a single keyboard, monitor and mouse for the two main servers. I had also bought a big dolby 5.1 THX sound system for my media computer a while ago, and I finally got around to getting that all hooked up ... so it was nice to kick back in the evening with a nice quick meal and a couple brewskies.
Oh - Did I mention the strike was over? Yay! Don't get me started on what the work environment is like now that everyone's back at work, don't really want to go there... but I can definately say it's great to not be working the 72-hour-a-week emergency operations shifts anymore, though the overtime bucks will be sorely missed.
I think that's enough typing for today. You're all caught up, and I've got work to do anyway, so talk to ya a bit in a week or so!
Posted by Calvin at November 28, 2005 11:38 AM