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!
Early this morning, I made my way to work under a clear and stary sky, by the light of a full moon. For the first time this season the temperature dipped to zero, and the moonlight sparkled like a sheet of diamonds in the frosted windshields of cars parked at the roadside.
By eight AM, the sun was shining brightly, and the veil of low lying cloud that had hovered precariously over us for the past two weeks gave way to reveal snow capped mountains on a crisp blue sky backdrop. The last I saw the north shore mountains, some weeks ago, there wasn't a pinch of snow to be seen. But now, as if miraculously dumped there overnight, the newly revealed peaks proudly displayed a pristine crispness covering the top 1/3 of their majesty.
The forcast called for sun and double digit temperatures for the entirety on the coming week, but this morning you could smell winters proximity in the fresh, crisp air. We've yet to see a flake of snow fall at ground level, or a frozen puddle, or even sub-zero temperatures - but you can tell, winter is close.
Carole and I had a nice full weekend. Friday night we drove around some of the new housing projects on the hills to the east of us. Not exactly a thilling Friday night date, but it gave us a good sense of the sheer volume and scale of the houses being built these days. Yes, you guessed it - we've starting contemplating a residential upgrade, and have begun the quest for the perfect domecile. Saturday was more of the same, looking as far as Fraser Heights, Blue Mountain, Burke Mountain, and Thornhill. We're seen some doozies, but can we afford them?
Saturday night we went to a poker tournament in Surrey. I was out in 7th place, and Carole hung in to 4th, so neither of us made it into the money ... but it was still a fun night, as always.
Sunday we went to Bowen Island and spent the afternoon/evening with my parents. We had a good visit, took a nice walk to Crichen Park to watch the fish spawning, then returned for an awesome dinner of escargot and roast lamb. Now y'all know where I get my culinary skills from - my mom puts me to shame! It was an awesome meal. We had to catch the ferry back at 9PM though, and our visit seemed way too short - but at least my parents are so close to us now... only an hour away! It's awesome that we can go see them pretty much any time.
So, this week, we've got a few concerts to go to - well, Carole's got a few, I've only got one. We'll be seeing Static-X at the Commodore on Wednesday. Hopefully I'll find some time to write about it!
Hello - another two weeks already, eh? Wow - where does the time go... hell, where did summer and fall go? It's all a blur.
At the end of November, Carole and I went to the Judas Priest concert. Anthrax was the opening act - Anthrax, by the way, has been the opening act at 6 concerts I've seen in my lifetime. Only once have I seen them as headliners. So, ironically, a band that I've only bought tickets for once, is actually the band I've seen live the most times... seven times now! It was great that they've got Joey Belladonna back singing - yeah, John Bush was a WAY better singer, and I'm a big Armoured Saint fan, but bands like Anthrax NEED to stick together, and it was cool to see the original line-up back together again. Judas Priest was as awesome as ever. Rob Halford slows dows a bit more every tour, and he's almost an automaton now - but they're still ageless, and still cranking out a killer heavy show.
For Halloween, Carole and I decided to bail on the whole 'handing out candy' thing at the last moment, and decided to go to dinner and a movie instead. We saw "SAW II", which had better acting than SAW I, but wasn't nearly as good of a psycological thriller as the original. They concentrated too much on adding gore, and too little on inventiveness.
This past weekend we held our pre-empted end of summer party finally - though we've found that not nearly as many people are eager to come to a BBQ when it's pouring rain and 6 degrees out. Of 33 invites, we ended entertaining 9 people - but for that I'm kinda thankful... all food and drink was "on us" that night, and I spent the entire time on my feet tending the BBQ and mixing drinks - and that was only for 9 people! At about midnight we went to the basement studio and jammed for about an hour or so, and that was a lot of fun - haven't done a drunken house jam in years! As is tradition, everyone stayed over, and in the morning they watched a couple of movies while I made breakfast. First course was a quick bacon,scrambled eggs and toast, while the 2nd round was strawberry stuffed crepes with whipped cream! Now THAT went over well!
So work-wise, in the last week I've had my hours cut back then re-extended, had my overtime rate cut in half, and have been told that this 'job action' that has plagued the company may actually be over before the end of next week - so hoorah for normalcy! I'm going to take a LONG vacation when this is all over.
Last night Carole and I did the 'dinner and a movie' thing again. We saw "Jarhead" this time. For anyone contemplating seing it in the theatre, my advise is to rent it - it's not a bad movie, but it's really not the action blockbuster they make it out to be either... in fact, it kinda goes nowhere and has a pretty lame ending ... exactly like the real Desert Shield/Desert Storm. They try really hard to drive home a few points: A.) The war was about guarding the Saudi oil B.) Ground units didn't get to fire a single shot, the war was won from the air C.) The era of conventional warfare is over.
It's just unfortunate that the director didn't think we'd "get it" the first 3 or 4 times... yeah, we get it - what, did they mistakenly ship us the American version of the film? Here in Canada, telling us once or twice should have done the trick, thanks...
So all in all, the acting was okay, there were a few tidbits of original story line, but as a WAR film, following a unit that never sees an enemy combatant and never fires a shot isn't exactly a thrillride. But that was the point, wasn't it.