Local Celebrity Spotting

I was on the bus home from work not three blocks from my house, and who did I see crossing the street?  None other than David Suzuki! I quickly rang for the next stop, but unfortunately the bus took me two blocks before it let me off. I started to run towards where I saw David, but he had walked off.

Well, tonight was fun.  After dinner, Sara and me decided to stay away from the computer and TV.  We played  Canasta - a card game we had learned last Christmas but hadn't played since.  Sara beat me hands down, surprise surprise.  But then - world be my witness - I discovered something Sara's much worse at than me - much much worse, and I'm not even very good at it.  Writing upside-down with her left hand.  This quickly evolved into left-handed upside-down mirrored-image writing.  Proudly, I'm also much better than her. But after that, she took me to town at 3D tic-tac-toe.

Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush.

-Rob 

Welcome to our front yard!

With a big weekend of skiing last week, we decided to stay a little closer to home this weekend. The beach you can see in all of these pictures is less than a block from home, and the water and mountains are our everyday view. Walking to our local Starbucks, you see the mountains. Walking to the grocery store you see the mountains. Going to the library...well, you get the idea!

Even though we stayed in the city, we certainly kept pretty busy this weekend. Friday night we went to my gym's annual Christmas Party. It was held at a club in Yaletown - a really nice thing for the gym to do, to rent the place out and let us all in for free! Once I finally warmed up in the drafty room, it was a great night. Lots of dancing, a fashion show, people of all different ages...all in all, a really nice event!

Saturday we spent the day getting chores done, but wanted to make our place feel a little bit more festive. Without spending a lot of money to really decorate, we decided we would make our own Christmas stockings, so that we can use them to exchange gifts in our pre-Christmas celebration before we go back to Ontario. You can see we were both hard at work getting our little pieces of felt to look just right... Good to get some creative juices flowing though!



Then Saturday evening, a couple of our friends from university came over to our place for a board game night filled with lots of laughs. We played Boggle and Scrabble and did a lot of catching up in between. Definitely something we plan to do again in the near future!

By the time Sunday rolled around it felt like the weekend had already been SOO long. Rob got a massage, we relaxed and read at Starbucks, and we finished up a few chores.

All in all, a weekend filled with good friends, good music, and beautiful mountain views :)

-Sara

Frisbee in November!

And today, Sara and I played frisbee on Kits beach with all sorts of people taking advantage of the break in rain season by taking their dogs out, walking on the beach, jogging along the water, pushing baby strollers, etc.  Vancouver's a city where you can ski one day and go to the beach the next.
-Rob

Skiing in November!!

Sara and I ordered some ski equipment online a few weeks ago. We got a great deal on skis, bindings, poles, and bags for the two of us (<$600 total). There are half a dozen ski & board shops about 7 blocks from our house, so we walked there last weekend to get Sara ski boots (my mom shipped me mine from Ottawa - thanks mom!) and get our skis tuned up.

We picked up our skis from the shop yesterday, and this morning we set off to go skiing. There are 3 hills near Vancouver, the biggest is Cypress (~30 minute drive). We found out there's a shuttle that goes to Cypress with a pickup near our house. So this morning we set out - in the pouring rain - and walked 7 blocks to the pickup location. The bus picked us up at 7:30AM and we were at the hill by 8:30AM.



Until the last 15 minutes of the bus ride, I thought the day would be a writeoff - there was no snow anywhere! None in Vancouver (8 degrees), but also even as we were driving up the mountain there were plenty of trees, but not a trace of snow anywhere. And suddenly - Winter Wonderland. All the trees were covered in white, as was the ground. It was a strange experience - like suddenly transporting into a different world.

The day turned out to be great. We skied from 9:30 AM - 11, ate lunch, were back out from 12 - 1:30, took a break, and finally from 1:45 - 2:30, ending just as we were starting to get tired and cold. The snow was heavy, but there was plenty of it! At the top, things were foggy, and over the course of the day our clothing got soaked (maybe you can see in my pic below at the end of the day - my red jacket is completely soaked).

A successful first downhill ski experience on our new skis - and hopefully the first of many this season.

-Rob

P.S. We were able to buy Olympic Women's Hockey tickets.

VANOC TICKET FAIL - making the most of the day

We were carefully aware of Saturday, November 7's approach, the day was circled on our calendar. At 9:45 AM we stopped all our morning activities and both waited anxiously at the computer as the last 15 minutes to 10AM ticked away. At 9:55 AM, 5 minutes before the start of the final opportunity to purchase Olympic tickets, we started trying to login to our previously-setup online Olympic ticket purchasing account. Finally, the time was upon us. 10 AM. We tried to login, and...the server was busy !

The error message on the computer screen told us to try again later. We interpreted "later" as meaning "right away". And tried again. And again. And again. At 10:30 AM we were still continually trying to login to our account where we could buy tickets. Finally, at 10:38 we got through. Mind you, not all was right - the page was basic HTML, but we didn't care - we could still navigate to the ticket search area. We found the event we wanted (Women's hockey - Canada vs. Sweden - $25/ticket). Almost there! We clicked the tickets and - ... - loading - ... - Error message - the page cannot be found. Crap! Click back - can't do that. Click reload - are you sure you want to reload? - yes - wait..wait.. Error message screen - server is busy. Now it's 10:44 and we've been booted out of the system.

But we're not going to give up. We keep trying to login - server busy error page. At 11:10, I realize there's a phone number to call if you want to book over the phone. I try calling - busy signal. Redial - busy signal. Try calling the hearing impaired number - busy. To optimize our chances, Sara works the computer retrying continually, and I work the phone lines. At 11:30, we switch roles to keep things interesting. At 11:55 - two hours since we started - we're mentally losing steam. At 12:30 - hallelujah - Sara gets through on the phone - it's ringing!! An automated voice informs her that the office is currently closed, and is open on Saturdays from 9AM - 4PM (which means it should be open!!). That was the last straw. We decided to get on with our day.

We had wasted 3 hours of our Saturday NOT getting Olympic tickets. The morning was over. The weekend felt like to was zooming by. What a disaster.

Luckily, the next 9 hours turned out to be really fun and felt long, so by Saturday night we'd felt like it had been a long weekend. After the Olympic ordeal, we ate some lunch and went to pick up some groceries - I wanted to pick up some items to make some home made pasta sauce.

My meat sauce with some spaghetti - a rare cooking venture for me - turned out to be delicious. It was really easy to make too - I'd say the whole dinner took about 35 minutes to prepare - and we had most of the ingredients already: italian sausage, crushed canned tomatoes, onion, garlic, oregano, basil, red wine, and olive oil.

After dinner, we bussed over the UBC Hockey Arena to watch a game - UBC Thunderbirds vs. University of Alberta Bears. It's the same place that the Olympic Women's Hockey game we want to see will take place. Tickets to the UBC game cost $10 each and the game was fun to watch. It went from 7:30pm to 9:30.

Saturday turned out to be a great day, even if we don't have our Olympic tickets. (Turns out the whole ticket system was a bust and VANOC has postponed the sell date until next weekend! We have to go through the whole thing again, but at least we still have a chance to get our hands on some tickets)


-Rob

Baking bread

Quick update here. I just finished reading the book "The Cure for Death by Lightning" by Gail Anderson-Dargatz. (I've been doing a lot of reading these days). For those of you that haven't read this book, it includes a lot of recipes and remedies, including a cure for death by lightning. And it was really impressive and foreign for me to read about how the family in the book lives mainly off of ingredients grown right on their farm. At age 15, the main character has so much responsibility for keeping the home and farm running and more or less everything they eat was cooked/baked by her or her mom.

So...I decided to try baking some bread. I have made bread once before, while camping in Alaska. We had a break day, so I took the time to bake some bread from scratch - I did that another day and made some cinnamon rolls from scratch too... But I'd never baked bread in an oven, in "normal" circumstances before. I found a great recipe online, and on an evening Rob was actually home early from school, we bought the ingredients I didn't already have (I usually keep yeast in the house...), and I baked some bread.

It was a mix of regular and whole wheat flour. And it was quite the hit. Really delicious if I do say so myself. I can understand why some people are such proponents of fresh, homemade bread! We'll have to try it again sometime, and maybe experiment with some different varieties. We'll let you know about any future bread adventures :)

-Sara

Family weekend - South of the border

Rob and I set off for a weekend adventure on Friday afternoon. After packing up our stuff and hopping in a Zipcar, I drove over to school to pick Rob up and we were on the road by 3:30 pm. Lots of traffic in the city and line ups at the border slowed us down, but we still made it to our hotel in Seattle at around 7:30 pm.

We decided to try to make the most of our visit, so even though it was raining we drove into the city and explored a little that night. We saw Pike Place Market (though it was already closed for the day), looked out over the waterfront, and then decided to stop in somewhere for a quick drink. After much deliberation, we stopped at SAM TASTE, the restaurant at the Seattle Art Museum. As we opened up the door though, we noticed the opening hours said it closed at 10 pm...it was 9:55. The host ushered us in anyway and assured us there was time. Let me just say that everything you could want in a restaurant was there...friendly service, great ambiance, subtle music, delicious food and drink, and all at amazingly reasonable prices! At a place like this, I figure you could expect to pay easily $20/person, for a main course...it was more like $10! We had already eaten dinner, so we just decided to share a dessert (7 different cookies to sample - Rob was happy!) and some cider. Just as our order arrived, the host/owner came over and told us he didn't want to waste what was left of an open champagne bottle...so then we got a free glass of champagne too! We left a big tip and a glowing comment card. And figured we would pass on the word here!

Saturday was the original reason for our visit - Rob was taking a 1 day course to be certified to teach Advanced Placement (AP) Statistics. I dropped him off at this huge high school first thing in the morning. Apparently, it was pretty decked out inside, with Smart Boards in all of the rooms, and fancy classroom layouts, etc. He had a full day there - 7:30 am to 3 pm - with lots of teachers from Washington state, breakfast and lunch included. Seems like it was a worthwhile course and a good thing to add to his resume too.

While Rob was in class, it rained...a lot...I'm told it was even a lot for Seattle. But I really wanted to go hiking, even in the rain. I found out about this small trailhead where I could hike up to Squak Mountain. I had some difficulty finding the small turnoff, but then spent 2 hours hiking up and around the mountain. When the sky started to get dark and I could hear the wind pick up in the tops of the trees, I made a beeline down the mountain. A storm did start up behind me, but I managed to make it out totally unscathed, escaping the storm, and was one happy camper!! Quite proud of how muddy I got. I managed to get some reading in at Starbucks to wait out the rain and wait for Rob to finish.

Saturday night was the start of the events with Rob's family. Dinner with Uncle Walter, Aunt Connie, and cousins Agnes and Mary. Connie cooked tons of delicious food and we were surrounded by amazing conversation. Lots of stories from Walter's childhood, and lots and lots of laughs.


As a last stop before leaving on Sunday morning, we got to see Aunt Mary. Aunt Mary is Walter's ex-wife, but Rob remembers a couple of visits with her when he was younger, and has some fond memories. He was really excited to reconnect and I was happy to meet her for the first time. We chatted and met her miniature ponies, dog, and goats, then went for a walk and some breakfast by the beautiful Lake Washington. After really interesting conversation, we picked up cousin Mary and got to spend 3 hours in the car with her on the drive back home.

After everything was said and done, we made it back home with fresh groceries in the fridge and all by 5pm. Now it's time to get ready for the week and take it easy after a tiring, fun-filled weekend!

-Sara

Giving thanks for a relaxing weekend

Our first Thanksgiving in Vancouver ! Here's a recap of our Thanksgiving long weekend.

On Friday, work ended early and I was home by 2pm. Sara and I took a walk to find food for Sunday's dinner - we found a 10 lbs (small) free-range turkey, pre-stuffed at The Meat Market on Fourth Ave near our house.
Saturday we took our bikes out to UBC. We tried loading our bikes on to the public bus - it was pretty easy, although the driver had to explain to us how it worked. Now we know, three easy steps: lower bike rack at front of bus, lift bike onto rack, lock in bike with yellow securing mechanism. We explored the campus, checking out the botanical gardens, buildings, Wreck Beach (beautiful ocean view!! but no one warned me about all the stairs! It was like Grouse Grind all over again), and the rose garden where we watched a marriage proposal take place. For dinner, we went over to our Vancouver mom's place (who's just become a grandma) for some delicious take-out Indian food.

Sunday we went to the gym in the morning, did some chores, and then started cooking for Thanksgiving dinner. Well, Sara did most of the cooking. She prepared a delicious (and impressively complete) Thanksgiving dinner - turkey, stuffing, peas, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, gravy, dinner rolls, salad. Sara's former work colleague joined us and brought the wine and pumpkin pie. Good food, good company. We finished off Sunday by taking a night time walk around Kits Point (our neighbourhood) admiring the beautiful (ginormous) houses, and view of the water.

Besides going to the gym, today (Monday) has been a big lounging day. We spent an hour and a half in Starbucks sipping drinks and reading, and otherwise just hanging around the house. That's our weekend!


-Rob

Family Dinner

Quick post, since it's time for me to get ready to for work tomorrow!

Just came back from eating sushi with my relatives - uncle Walter and first cousins Agnes and Mary. Walter and Agnes were in town for the night visiting Mary, who's started university up here. Unless I'm mistaken, it's the third occasion I've seen the three of them - once when I was around 11, once when I was 24, and now.

They buzzed our apartment around 7:30pm and after a brief tour we walked up to a good sushi place on Fourth. After extensive menu study, we ordered a variety of selections and some white wine. We wrapped up some two hours later, mostly because the food was a bit slow coming and we ordered a couple rounds, but it was a blessing as we had more time to talk. The whole night felt like family, in a good way. We walked the three back to their car around 9:45pm.

-Rob

Pitch and Putt

This weekend, Sara and I didn't have many chores on the list (the way all weekends should be). So Saturday morning we had the luxury of deciding what we wanted to do with our day. First, we went to the library where Sara took out some books. Next, we went to Starbucks for an hour and a half (a regular place for us to spend time relaxing) - Sara started one of her books and I read the paper. Then home for lunch - grilled cheese and lentil soup.











After lunch, we biked to Stanley Park from our house for the first time. It was a pleasant ride - Vancouver is very bike friendly. There's about 5 minutes from our house to Burrard St bridge where we need to cycle on the road (which I hate!) but the ride across the bridge and to the park is all along scenic bike paths. The ride took us about 25 minutes.

At Stanley Park, we locked our bikes up outside Pitch and Putt. It's like golf, just smaller. There are 18 holes, each one between 50 and 100 yards long. We each rented one putter and one wedge, and each bought a ball and tee and off we went. Actually, we had to wait a while in line on the first hole, but after that we'd only wait a few minutes at each hole while the people in front of us finished up. And there was a nice mother and son that were behind us that we chatted with throughout the holes as well. After some adjustments during the initial holes, we both were able to tee off quite well and sink a lot of single/double bogies. You can see Sara's professional swinging position in the pic below-left and her ball in flight in the pic below-right. The "hole" game turned out to be a lot of fun.

-Rob

Shakespeare in Vancouver

Sara and I left the house around 11 AM today and walked 20 minutes through nice neighbourhoods and green parks until we arrived at some white tents - Bard on the Beach, the annual summer Shakespeare festival. We didn't have tickets and the play was sold out (the second last showing for the season), but luckily we waited around and bought some tickets from people that didn't show up.

The show was excellent! We had both read the play plot summary ahead of time., which really let us enjoy the play (otherwise I'd have had a hard time following). The acting was great, and the second half of the play was quite amusing. The show ran from 1 - 3pm, with a 20 minute intermission.

After the show, we walked back home, appreciating the sunny weather. We've been very lucky with weather since we got here.

Tomorrow, we have breakfast plans with Brandon M - my roommate from a summer program I attended in 2001. Then in the afternoon we're off to SFU Burnaby to visit my first cousin Mary Jo who's started first-year university there.

-Rob

Camping at Chekamus Lake

Sara and I spent Friday night getting ready for our first BC camping trip. Sara did a fantastic job preparing some delicious meals and organizing our supplies.

Saturday morning we drove north out of Vancouver along the the sea-to-sky highway towards Whistler. The view along the highway is spectacular: sharp cliffs rise high above one side of the road, the other displays panoramic views of mountains and sea.

We arrived at Garabaldi Provincial Park parking lot around 10am and hiked 3 km to Chekamus Lake camp grounds. The temperature was cool, perfect for hiking. The trail was through the trees, but we could hear the rushing Chekamus river for most of the hike.

When we arrived at the Chekamus Lake, we picked our camp site and set up. We hiked around for another 2 hours before settling down at camp to eat dinner and later, watch the stars.



The next morning, we woke up early to watch the sun rise. It took longer than we thought, so we ended up making breakfast and starting to pack up by the time the sun cast light on our camp site.

We finished taking down our tent, packing our bags, and hiking back along the 3 km trail to the parking lot. It was a beautiful, relaxing, successful trip.
-Rob

Our new home

No big adventures since we posted last weekend, but many small ones. We bought ourselves some very affordable bikes from Canadian Tire last week and have been riding them around the city. Lots of hills, but there are some really nice trails. We're almost done putting everything away in our new home. And in the meantime had a great visitor come stay with us for a while.

Jason Goldlist (a friend from McKinsey) stayed with us for a few nights. He's moving to Vancouver from Toronto for 6 months as part of the Vanoc Olympics team. Starting tomorrow he's going to be helping them with their venue operations. It was great to have him here and fun to have the tables turn so quickly, where we were helping him find a place to live and get settled into the city. He found a nice new apartment building in Gastown and along with a couple roommates, is now in the process of funishing the place. It looks amazing as is though, so I'm sure it'll be even better when we go visit!! :)

Since many of you won't be able to get out to the West Coast for a while still, and since things are starting to settle down here (and we finally have internet at home!), I thought I would post a few pictures of our new home. I'll try to take some pics of our neighbourhood soon, which is really the selling point here, but thought I would start inside for this post.

So here's a tour of our new home for those interested.

This is part of the living room that we've sort of divided up into smaller spaces. What you can't see off to the left is our TV and DVD set-up.










Another part of the living room - our little library/sitting area.











And the last space in our living room - the office.












Our eating area/dining room.












Our kitchen. Still some things here that need putting away.


















Large front hall closet for storage. We've got a smaller one right by the front door too. Sorry about the reflection off my running jacket!! Good for being seen in the dark tho.
















Entry way. Again, still some putting away to be done here.














Our bathroom from a couple of angles.


























Our bedroom from a couple of angles.
***

Soon to come - a tour of our neighbourhood!
-Sara