Calvin's Weblog

Summer Blog 2006 - Day 10 - Me Bro

Temp: 30 degrees

My Brother came down from the Shuswap today to check out my new home theatre, to drink copious amounts of beer with me, and to show me how Need For Speed should really be played.
I guess it was nice for him to hang out on a nice cool 30 degree afternoon, considerig it was 39 when he left the Okanagan.
We caught up over a few beers in the afternoon sun, then proceeded to the basement for a few houirs of Need For Speed on the 90 display. Then it was dinner at Boston Pizza, picked up another case of beer on the way home, and watched Kung Fu Hustle on the big screen.

Pretty good night. Carole was out for drinks with co-workers until 10, so it was pretty much "boys night in".

Summer Blog 2006 - Day 9 - Geocaching

Temp: 28 degrees

Getting warmer again. I likes.

Here's a realtime link to my GeoCaching statistics :

It shows the number of caches I've found, and the number of caches I've hidden.
As of today, I've found 98 and hidden 4, but since the numbers above are dynamic, they'll increase as I log more caching activity.

Of the four caches I've hidden, two are within walking distance of my house, one is near where I work, and the other is on Bowen Islan, near my parents place.

Here are links to my four caches. To see all the details, you may have to sign up for a free account, but even without an account, you can read my descriptions :

What a bunch of burnouts!

"Industrial Respite" Super-mini-micro-cache

Cache Blitz: Picnic at Kilarney Lake

Field of Dreams

I've also set one TravelBug off into the wilderness. His name is "Hyde the Dog" (get it? Hide the dog? YukYukYuk...)
Here's a link to 'Hyde' the Dog's website, where you can track his travels and read about his aspirations. He's already made it to California! Lucky dog...

This is Hyde:

Summer Blog 2006 - Day 8 - MySpace

Temp: 25 degrees

It's strange how 25 degrees feels so chilly now...
There's a cool ocean wind sweeping eastward, and while the sky is as clear and blue as it was 2 days ago, the air temperature is a full 10 degrees less. I spent a couple hours kicking back in the yard, listening to music and jotting down lyrics (yeah, I've started writing some stuff so that hopefully I'll have a complete album to record come the fall).

But most of this evening I've spent tweaking my MySpace page. I resisted this myspace thing for soooo long, but finally gave in to peer pressure. My argument has always been "I've got a personal blog, I've got a band website, I've got several other personal websites, a family site, and a photo site so why on earth would I want to sign up on a 'personals' site... just because everyone else is doing it?"

Well, slowly but surely I gave in. First I just made a blank template to reserve my name but then Carole added me as a friend and got one of her co-workers to add me too. So now I felt guilty that there was no content to look at, so I added a picture, some bands, and answered a few of the stock questions. But then I started looking around and saw that other people were using cool templates for their pages, so I began designing my own - simply because if I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it right... I'm kinda anal that way, generally right up to the point where I give up out of frustration...

So now I've got an okay template, but no real content and only two friends. I decide to give my site a musical theme, and begin requesting adds from some of my favorite bands... to my surprise, many of them actually accept - well, that's pretty cool, so the other day I decided to write a blurb about my musical interests, favorite bands, influences, and how my tastes have changed over the past 20 years. Well, that really got me thinking about how I was only adding bands that are my favorites "this month" but was totally neglecting virtually all of my all-time favorites. So tonight I've been kicking back on the couch with my laptop on my knee searching for all my favorite bands of all time. And at the same time, as I think of people, I'm searching for people I know/knew too. I know, I know, I've become the typical lamo MySpace user - what has come over me???

The upside is, I'm learning a lot about what all my old favorite bands are still up to, it's like a total blast from the past and has been pretty fun. Hopefully once I've got the page looking okay I can just forget about it for a while ... like anything I sink my teeth into, once I think the job is done, I move on. I guess time will tell.

For now, it's just fun to invent a hardcore persona - sure, that's all the music I like, but obviously it's only a fraction of who I am ... anyone who's been reading this blog for the past 3+ years will know that. Wanna checkout my rockstar persona? Here it is again ... I'm calling myself Ephemeral Demise, 'cause of all the band names I've been tossing around for my next solo project, that's the name that has stuck in my head the longest without me getting sick of it.

Summer Blog 2006 - Day 7 - Carole's Birthday

Temp: 28 degrees

Much more tolerable temperature for spending the day outside today! Don't get me wrong, I love it HOT but not so much when I can't escape from it.

It's Carole's birthday today! Should I mention how old she is? That's a no-no isn't it...
Is it okay to say "29 + 3" ?
After work I slicked up in sun tan lotion and just lay out in the sun for two hours straight. The first hour I listened to MnemicDeftones for another hour.

We had leftover Texas Strawhat for dinner, then went down to Newport Village for some Casa Dolce Gellato and a nice evening stroll.

Another beautiful day in paradise!

Summer Blog 2006 - Day 6 - The Scorcher

Temp: 35 degrees

Okay, it's a little warm now. But I prayed for this for nine months straight ... I ain't complaining! Bring it on!

The weather station says Vancouver will be 35 in the shade today, closer to 39 with the Humidex - even hotter inland.
Kamloops is supposed to be 39, Kelowna over 42! I wonder how my brother's handling the heat in the interior... then again, he lives on the lakeshore - you can't feel too sorry for him.

I woke up at 5AM again this morning - very strange... just couldn't sleep. Sure, it was hot, but we had the ceiling fan on full speed all night, and I wasn't uncomfortable. My allergies are getting pretty bad, and that WAS uncomfortable, but it's not like I was wrestless and unrested - I felt well rested. Which was extremely strange since I'd only had 5 hours of sleep, only 3 hours the night before, and didn't even get home until 4AM the night before that... BUT, by 5AM the sun's already up, so maybe this is my body's way of telling me to get up and take advantage of every second of these miraculously long and beautiful summer days.

As I drove to work at 6:30AM it was already 18 degrees (that was actually the low for the night) and there were oodles of people jogging as I drove past Rocky Point and it made me think that if I keep waking up so early, it would be the perfect time of day to get out for a jog ... well, at least a walk... The last six days have been so hot, I've been going through the beer like it's water, and that's gonna catch up with me if I don't get more exercise.

Hey, come to think of it, it the last six days, we've hiked ForeShore trail, walked an hour in our neighbourhood, done the Wreck Beach climb (which is practically a mini Grouse Grind, and I've done about 6 hours of yardwork... I don't need no stinkin' jogs! LOL

After work I went out to try to find a few more GeoCaches. I only need 3 more finds to hit the 100 Milestone. And besides, I've got two TravelBugs that I've been holding on to for a while now (one since my trip to Tim's Grad in Kamloops two weeks ago!) and I really need to set them free. I've already found everything within a 5 KM radius of my place, so I picked two near Bunzen Lake, and two near Lost Lake. The first two are 5km nort-west, and the the last two are 5 km south-east, so I probably won't get to both locations, but it's worth a shot...

As it turns out, I probably shouldn't have tried to go geocaching near a lake on the hottest day of the summer (so far)... Bunzen was PACKED - in fact, signs were up saying that it was "full" but I managed to find a parking spot with no problem. Fortunately the cache was down a forest trail, so I didn't have to worry about curious folk at all. I had to do some backtracking, but once my GPS zeroed in, it was easy to find, and I finally got to let one of my travelbugs go. Now it was off to White Pines beach for the next find.

Same problem - packed beach, only parking available was in the overflow lot. I've never seen so many people there before! I got really close to the cache, but there were just too many people around. It's not wise to pull out and replace a cache with people watching, 'cause as soon as you leave, they'll go grab it, not knowing what you were doing - and we want these things to stay hidden! So I doddled around for about 20 minutes, but just couldn'r locate the hiding spot "for sure", so I didn't want to be poking and prodding around with constant streams of people walking by. Oh well, I'll leave this one for a rainy day I guess.

Wow - look at the time! It's ten to six already and I've gotta get dinner whipped up for Carole by 6:30 - time to race home! We didn't bother to go grocery shopping this weekend, so I'll have to make do with whatever we're got left in th efridge ... hmmm, what to make... it's gotta be quick! I decide to make a Texas Straw Hat - which is basically a ground beef chilli with melted chedar on top that you scoop up with nacho chips. At 6:20 Carole called me from the 7-11 next door: "Hey honey, want a slurpee?"
"Good think you called! I'm making Texas Straw Hat and I just realized we don't have any nacho chips or cheddar! Can you pick some up?" How convenient was that, eh? So, dinner ended up being ready by 6:30, and it was tasty.

Now it's 8PM and the temperature has gone down to 28, but it's soooo humid - gotta get down into the nice cool basement - time to blog The Scorcher! Yeah, I know - this was a pretty boring day ... how on earth did I manage to write such a long blog entry about nothing? Sorry, just trying to stay cool and kill a little time. TTFN!

Summer Blog 2006 - Day 5 - A Sunny Sunday

Temp: 33 degrees

HooooWeeeee! Did I say I could feel the hotness coming, or what? The official high was 31 with a Humidex rating of 35, but the two thermometers I've got around the house both said it was 33 in the shade yesterday (that's 91.5 yankee degrees) - and when placed out in the sun, the poor thermometer nearly popped ... it was at 44 when I figured it probably only works accurately in the shade.

So, oddly, even after a really late Friday night followed by a fairly late Saturday night, I found myself awake by 5AM this morning. That's only 3 hours sleep, but for some reason I couldn't get back to sleep. I tried - for about 2 hours I tried, but the sun was shining, the temperature was rising, and my alergies were really bugging me, so there was no hope of getting any more sleep.

I made some breakfast and puttered a bit, went to the basement to play with my big screen a bit ... I had bought a digital-audio fibre-optic input/output board for my computer last week (only $70 - can you believe it???) so that I could input from my DVD player, digital hard disk recorder, and DAT machine, and I've also got a Dolby 5.1 THX audio system for the computer, so I'm working on making this puppy the one-stop audio/video server for the new Rec Room. I popped a wireless internet card into it (only $40 at FutureShop) so that it's online with the rest of the computers in the house, and I've got the Dolby 7.1 emulator working for all audio sources except the DVD player for some crazy reason. I'm convinced that the 7 year old DVD machine I'm using, while capable of transmitting digital audio over a SPDIF fibre-optic cable, isn't capable of Dolby encoding ... or maybe my fancy shmancy new sound card is only accepting a stereo feed? Who knows - I still need to investigate that one.

But I digress, it was now 11AM and I wanted to be in the SUN! I started weeding the back yard, and watering all the plants. That turned into a re-grooming of the flower beds, and a weeding/watering out front. Wow, it's noon already? I'd been in the noon-hour sun with my shirt off for an hour, so better safe than sorry, time to go in for an hour and make sure I wasn't burning. Back to the basement to start up the video game console ... but ... before I could play 10 minutes, Carole came downstairs saying "It sure is hot up there, and it's so cool down here in the basement - what do you say we watch a movie on your swanky six foot screen?" Sure, why not... so we threw in "Rock Star" and killed an hour and a half of the midday heat in the cool dark basement.

After that though, secure that I hadn't had too much sun yet, I headed back outdoors, looking for something that needed to be done in the yard. Over the next two hours I raked two garbage bags full of moss out of the lawn, then arranged a rockery trim around my newly groomed flower gardens. Sweet Baby Jesus, it was hot out. I was drenched in sweat - which I guess is a good thing... it's when you stop sweating that you're in trouble, right? I still felt like I wasn't getting enough liquids, so I went in for a few beers. and a steak sandwich made from yesterday's Keg leftovers. Yeah, I think it's time to cool down again - so I went back down to the basement and popped in another movie. LOL, two movies during the heat of the day, yet I still managed to get my fill of sun (my back was a little red, but completely fine by bedtime) and I managed to have a really productive day of yard work.

I went back out again for half an hour around 6, but it was so hot and humid (By this time it was 35 degrees INSIDE the house!) that the only bearable place was the basement, so, armed with a six pack and some nachos, the rest of my evening consisted of racing my way up to 6th position on the Need For Speed Most Wanted blacklist. I headed up around 10pm, where Carole was watching Ralphie May's trials and tribulations at Celebrity Fat Club. That was mildly amusing...

Before we knew it, it was dark out, and by time we were in bed, it was past 11:30. In a way it felt like a lazy and unproductive day, what with all the movie watching and video games, but at the same time I got a month's worth of gardening and yardwork done, AND I'm starting to get a nice base tan ;-)

I hear tomorrow's going to be a SCORCHER! ... and I'll be back in the office...

Summer Blog 2006 - Day 4 - Wreck Beach!

Temp: 27 degrees

I'm not ashamed to say, we slept in a bit this morning... like, until 11:30. Hey, gimme a break - that was still only 7 hours sleep!

It's my Mom's Birthday today, and though they're vacationing on Vancouver Island this weekend, I managed to track her down and call her to pass on some birthday wishes.

We had planned to get together with our friends Wayne and Patty this afternoon for some cervesas and perhaps a few hours on one of the nearby beaches, but last night at the Irish Heather a bunch of people started talking about how there was going to be a HUGE Summer Solstice party at Wreck Beach this evening (yeah I know, the solstice was 3 days ago ... but this is what they said) and that a whole bunch of people were going to head down.

So, I called Wayne and asked if they'd be interested in altering the plans slightly to include a few hours down at Wreck. Of course they were! After all, anybody who knows Wayne and Patty, will know that they first met on Wreck Beach five years ago this August. This would be their (and our) first trip down there this year.

So, we hooked up at 3:30pm, and decided to head straight downtown for an early dinner at The Keg before the jaunt to Wreck. Back in Coquitlam it was already 27 degrees (81 yankee degrees) - starting to get NICE! This was going to be an AWESOME day for the beach!

We made awesome time into the city and were parked on Pender by 4PM. We all had big juicy steaks and a few libations, and were back on the road exactly 2 hours later, and $190 lighter.

After a quick BCLCB stop, some intense beach traffic through Kits, a bit of navigational confusion through UBC, and several failed attempts at finding parking, we were on the beach trail by 7PM.

That feeling you get when you finally make it to the bottom of the ridge, as the trees open up to reveal the source of everything mystical and magical you'd been hearing and smelling during the steep and winding trek to the ocean... the never ceasing tribal drums and exotic instruments, the savory smells of hamburgers, falafels, and samosas wafting from the vendor stands, the clapping and cheering of hundreds of people grooving to impromptu jams, and of course the carefree nudists frolicing in the surf. That feeling is pretty hard to describe - but if I had to put a word to it, 'freedom' or perhaps 'inner peace' - okay, maybe a combination of the two... is there a single word that means that? Well anyway, it's a neat feeling.

We pulled up a section of sand, tossed our towels down, cracked a few frosty cold ones and relaxed. Someone nearby was playing Black Sabbath's Paranoid album, and jamming along with an accoustic guitar. The tide was in, and lapping close by. The cool ocean breeze had brought the temperature down to about 23 at this spot. Everything was just perfect. To be honest, Carole and i had only been back to wreck once since the day Wayne and Patty had met five years ago, but it was like we had never left. I could have lay there forever, but two hours after we stretched out, the sun was setting and the "Tribute to the Sun" ritual began. I love this ritual - I've never seen anything like it anywhere else in the world, and it's just so pure, and real, and honest... from the time the bottom of the sun touches the horizon at the westward Vancouver Island mountains, people start clapping. It only takes about two minutes from that first touch of the horizon until the least glimpse of sun dissapears, but in that time the clapping grows louder, becomes cheering, and swells to a crecendo at the instant the crimson glow is extinguished. It's the way the people of the beach say "Thank you" to the sun - thank you for another glorious day, thank you for your life giving light and warmth, thank you for making this another day in paradise. Good bye, good night - we know you have other hearths to warm on the other side of the world... We hope you grace us with your warming presence again tomorrow. And this happens every since night. I just love it.

So anyway, it turns out there really wasn't a solstice party this evening, but that's okay - we had already agreed we'd packup at sunset anyway. It's a good thing too, because the police showed up to anounce that the beach was closed at sunset, much to the surprise of the many campers that had already begun pitching their tents and preparing for the night. I guess that's a new thing, or maybe it was just a special thing tonight, as I've always heard of people spending the night on the beach, where the never ending impromptu jams apparently continue straight through 'till dawn.

Short but sweet, but the perfect taste of Wreck on a glorious evening. It was 10:30PM by time we got to the top of the hill and it was now dusk. Lots more police and parks board people were at the top turning away hoards of people that were trying to get down the hill for the night... maybe there really WAS supposed to be a solstice party, but the police got wind of it and figured they'd nip it in the bud? Who knows...

After dropping off Wayne and Patty, we were home by 11:30 - Carole watched Saturday Night Live while I played Need for Speed until close to two.

What an awesome summer this is turning out to be.

Summer Blog 2006 - Day 3

Temp: 25 degrees

It's Friday, and it's a BEAUTIFUL day. I manage to get away from work at noon, at eat my lunch out on my work's sundeck. I guess that's a pretty sweet deal, having an employer that puts a dozen picnic tables out on a private deck for it's employees, but not one to be satisfied with having concrete slabs underfoot on such a brilliant day, I took a quick (20 minute) walk through a nearby trail before heading back to work.

Twenty five degrees (77 yankee degrees) isn't all that hot to me when I'm wearing shorts and a T-shirt, but in my business attire, it was making me a little sticky - so it was quickly back into the airconditioned office to finish off the work day.

Unfortunately, I only get 45 minutes in shorts when I get home, because this evening I'm meeting Carole and her co-workers at the Irish Heather Pub for a few hours before walking over to Pub 340 to see some friends of ours performing in their respective tribute bands. First was Damage Inc., our friend Colin's Metallica tribute band. Next was Denton, Roger, and Dean in Vancouver's premiere Black Sabbath tribute band, Sack Blabbath.

The bands were absolutely awesome, and we had such a great time - before we know it, it was past 2 AM, and both of us had been consuming a bit of beer, so we headed out for a late night stroll through Gasstown, looking for an open diner or coffee shop. HoooWeee, let me tell ya, the 2:30AM club crowd in Vancouver is something else... fortunately there were nearly as many cops as drunken hip-hopsters roaming the streets, so order was kept (more or less), but in the half hour we sat in the cafe sipping coffee and gnawing on samosas, we saw at least three take-downs. Vancouver night life... gotta say, I don't miss it.

So, but 3:30AM Carole figured she'd be fine to drive home (which she was) and when we finally made it back home a few minutes after 4AM, daylight was just starting to peep over the eastern mountains.

Summer Blog 2006 - Day 2

Temp: 23 degrees

Nice. One good day begats another. It's a shame to have to sit at work on a beautiful day like today, but at least I've got an office with a window and a nice view. My commute in to work at 6:30 was glorious, with the sun already high above me.

I went to a pub with a couple co-workers after work for a snack and couple few pints, and as nice as that was, all I wanted to do was to get home, get my shorts on, and get into the sun. The hot-hot-hot days are coming soon, I can sense it... I wanna be ready for 'em!

I made it home before 4:30, so still lots of sun left. I puttered outside for about an hour, watering the plants, doing a bit of spot weeding, snipping some fresh herbs, etc - but having learned my lesson many, many, many, many (too many) times before, I figured it wise to limit my sun exposure for the first few weeks of summer ... so I went down to the nice cool basement and played some Need For Speed: Most Wanted on my new 100 inch digital projection screen (oh, didn't I mention I got a digital projector? I'll get to that... there's a LOT we've done the the past 6 months that I haven't been blogging, but I'll save those storries for a rainy day). The next thing I know, Carole was home and wanting some dinner and some sunshine, so we whipped up some quick eats then went for a nice evening walk through our neighbourhood. We were back before nine, so still low sunshine on the horizon.

Man I love these long summer days!

Summer Blog 2006 - Day 1

Temp : 21 degrees

Ah, the first day of summer. Finally!
Almost as if it were "meant to be", summer in Vancouver started with a beautiful, warm day - right on the heels of a week of rain and overcast skies. Though it's true that the last two days of March were over 30 degrees, that freaky hot spell for the first week of spring dissapeared as quickly as it came. And while it hasn't really been all that bad of a year so far, June wasn't getting of to a very good start. It was so awesome to finally see the sun again.

After work I put on my shorts and did a bit of yardwork, then packed up a nice picnic of paninis, potato salad, fresh strawberry tarts, and a bottle of cabernet sauvignon. When Carole got home from work at 6:30, we headed up to our "Field of Dreams" (long story... it's a baseball field with picnic tables at the top of our mountain that nobody knows about... it's in the middle of nowhere, but has a million dollar view) to soak in the evening sun on the longest day of the year.

An hour later, it was eight o'clock. we went for a little walk to check on a GeoCache I had placed nearby some months ago. Then, we figured that since we still had a couple more hours of sunlight left, we'd better not waste it - so we headed down to the beach at Port Moody's Foreshore park. Since I had packed my GPS, we parked such that we'd have to walk past a new GeoCache I'd been meaning to locate, and we quickly made my 97th find before heading out to the shore. We spent about a half an hour there, admiring the nearing sunset, but the time we'd spent in the field and on the trails with all those wonderful grasses and pollens was taking it's toll on us, so we opted to race home for a couple of allergy pills, then at 9:22 we took in the sunset from our back patio.

All in all, it was a pretty nice way to kick off my favorite season.

Blog Upgraded

Who knows, maybe I'll blog again someday...
Not today, but since a new version of my blog software has been out for quite a while, I figured I should upgrade.
Now, if I ever feel the urge to write again, I'll be using the 'latest and greatest'.