Just like that...

Yesterday was my last day at work. After three years working with the same company, I finally said my goodbyes, packed my personal belongings and made it out the front door without my access card. It doesn't feel weird yet, but it will on Monday when I wake up and think "is it nice out? should I go climbing?"

:-)

It was a short day, something I was really happy with since Annie and I had gone to bed around 1 a.m. the night before. She flew in Thursday morning and I met her at Christ Church Cathedral downtown for a concert by Cuban pianist extraordinaire Ernán López-Nussa. What a musician! After the concert, we were invited to a house party at George's place in Point Grey (Annie is taking George's place at Festival Vancouver starting in September). The party was lovely, we ate hamburgers on the patio, had wine, and chatted with a bunch of people involved with or participating in Festival Vancouver. The impromptu jam session in the living room was phenomenal, musicians who never played together improvising a few jazz tunes like it's second nature. So much fun.

Last night was my birthday dinner with friends (pictures here). I wanted to have it while Annie was in town, and a few people couldn't make it on Saturday, so we settled for Friday. We ate at Monk McQueen's, always a favourite for fresh seafood and one of the most impressive patios in the city. Especially on a hot summer evening, when the sky is turning all kinds of pastel colors as the sun is setting, and you are sitting by the water while sailboats float by. We arrived at 7:30, only made it to our table by 8:15, but I think we closed the restaurant. Afterwards, we popped in next door at a pub that recently re-opened as a more upscale bar. Once again, another fabulous venue with a large patio over the marina. After closing the bar (it's located in a residential area, so the closing time is 1 a.m.), we headed back home, both Annie and I were tired and I had to get up early to volunteer at Dress for Success. So much fun!!!

Tonight we have another concert at the Chan Centre: the Ju Percussion Group from Taiwan. I can't wait.

Hurray for the long weekend!

If everything had gone according to plan, I would be in Whistler this morning, not at home on the computer typing this post. However, the plan to head up to Whistler was derailed (along with the actual railroad) by a massive rock slide on the Sea-to-Sky highway. If you've ever been to Vancouver and made the trip to Whistler, you'd know that there's one highway connecting the two and that highway is built along a rocky cliff. The rock slide happened on Tuesday night and probably won't be cleared until Monday. The alternative is a seven hour car drive (going to Whistler normally takes 90 minutes), to which we obviously said "no". So I'm staying in Vancouver instead.

There's been a lot of speculation and fear mongering about the slide. What if this was to happen during the Olympics? Could it have been triggered by the construction being done in the area (to expand the highway to two lanes each way)? Could the fact that 40,000 people (in addition to a whole lot of heavy equipment) made the trip to and from last weekend for the Pemberton music festival? Who knows. But hopefully the chance of this repeating itself is slim. When boulders the size of small houses come crashing down, the damage is immense.

Last night, I went out for dinner with Sarah. We headed out to Denman street at Café de Paris, a little French restaurant neither of us had tried. It was a delicious meal, we had terrine de lapin as a starter, then I had osso bucco and Sarah ordered the duck. Yum. After dinner, we took a cab to Granville, as the evening was still young and it wasn't cold or raining outside. We ended up at Republic. Fortunately, we arrived early enough to avoid the lineups and cover charge, and we were allowed to keep our jackets ('cause paying $5 each for coat check seems silly). We sat upstairs and ordered a couple of drinks: one martini and one gin&tonic... $17! Wow. Really expensive, it's not as if we were ordering premium brands. The music in the early part of the evening was good, mainly house. We stepped out around 10:30 to get some fresh air before going back in to dance. Unfortunately, by the time we made it to the dance floor, there was a new DJ spinning and both his choice of music and mixing abilities were terrible. There was no dancing to this crap, most people seemed pretty happy just to bob along ('cause I can't call what they were doing "dancing"), but c'mon. Give me something to work with. We gave the new DJ a chance to improve and headed to the bar for a couple of shots of vodka and RedBull. $20! What?? This wasn't Grey Goose and nectar of some exotic fruit, it was cheap vodka and a sugar/caffeine drink. The music never improved, so we left.

Bar in Vancouver are a hit and miss. I don't go out often, so I guess it's hard for me to know where's the good place to go on a Friday evening. Republic is clearly NOT the place. At least, if the music was awesome, I would have forgiven them for the price of drinks. I'll head back to Ginger 62 before going to Republic again. At Ginger, I remember getting a gin&tonic for $5.50, maybe $6. And the music is typically decent enough for dancing.

Happy long weekend

Did you enjoy a long, leisurely morning in bed, catching up on some reading? I sure did, and it was wonderful. The week was long and busy, so this was my reward. I think I was also fighting off a nasty bug, so far so good, but it had a way to drain my energy. A few more good night's sleep and I'll feel as fresh as a daffodil.

I heard a cute joke while at Yuk Yuk on Wednesday night. I somehow had entered a draw for six free tickets and won, so I brought together a few friends and we sat in a booth while listening to local comedians test some material. It wasn't all good, actually, a lot of it was terrible, but some had their moments. Here's the joke: if they didn't want people to download free music off the Internet, then why did they give it such a cool name? Piracy! Who wouldn't want to be a pirate? "I'll have me some of these great U2 songs, yarr." Unfortunately, most of the jokes were in poor taste, obviously lots were about sex, drugs (this is Vancouver). And somehow, you can't be a stand-up comedian unless you say "fuck" every second word. It impoverishes the dialog in my opinion.

I attended a fantastic presentation last night, but I'm not going to write about it here. Instead, I'm going to point you to my latest endeavor: Sustainability in Vancouver. I haven't advertised it yet, but I intend on sending an e-mail soon to individuals I know are interested in sustainability.

All FUSEd out

This city is in dire need of something different. How else would you explain people lining up for 40 minutes to spend their Friday night at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Don't get me wrong, I think the gallery had the right idea when they organized their first all-night FUSE event. Vancouver doesn't often see artistic events that combine a mix of traditional visual arts and live performance, with the opportunity to enjoy a drink and chat about art. I just hope we start seeing more of this.

I visited the gallery last night with Gerri and Lara. We saw the Monet to Dali exhibit, walked around and listened to a bit of music, but decided to switch gears when we discovered there was a lineup to have a drink at the lounge. Instead, we walked over to Granville and spent the rest of the evening at the Republic Lounge. Republic has an interesting concept, if you want to go to the club, you'll need to line up and pay a cover charge. If you just want to settle at the bar for a drink, you can avoid the cover, the wait, and head for their lounge. The music is the same, the lounge was a bit less crowded, perfect.

This weekend will be the first where I don't have to go to school to work on a team assignment. I'm done with the presentations and group paper, now I only need to focus on my individual assignment and a final exam.

Mainly clothes and food

I visited EPIC this afternoon, the sustainable living expo held in Vancouver. A friend from school and I picked up free tickets for the expo, and when it's pouring outside, I can't think of a better way to spend a Saturday. It was OK, mostly focus on organic food and organic/recycled clothing, which is nothing really new. There were the usual suspects, Capers, Toyota and their hybrid line, a couple of local publications, a few local organizations promoting sustainable living... I was hoping for many more green builders and green tech, something like a green condo development. One really cool product was these roof shingles made out of old tires, guaranteed for 50 years! That's twice the guarantee on a regular roof.

The expo was quite small, we spent about an hour in there and then headed out to Steamworks for a beer and something to eat. The place was packed, even at 3 p.m.! Some holiday was also prompting everyone to dress in green, go figure ;)

Now it's 7, I'll make myself dinner and start attacking one of my final assignments. Somehow, I don't feel like this end-of-semester is as crazy as the last one. No complaints, I guess I'm just waiting for the truckload of work to hit me and it hasn't. March 27 is the date we submit our last assignment, exams are already done... Not bad, not bad at all.