Walking in a winter wonderslush

It was snowing for most of the weekend and I was looking forward to walking from home to the climbing gym, thinking of the fresh air, the crisp snow, the muffled sounds of the city. I was looking forward to taking my camera on the walk to take pictures of Vancouver under a blanket of snow.

Yeah, right.

It was snowing for most of the weekend, but it all stopped around 2 p.m. today and then it turned to rain. Which is obviously more likely around this part of the country than snow, but still... Eeewww. My lovely walk to the gym was a wet one, but I did get to fully test my rainproof shoes. They were also puddle proof and slush proof. Dry feet make for a happy girl. My pants however did take a bit of time to dry.

I finished addressing the last set of comments on my MBA project from my supervisor and am now waiting for his OK to move on to the second reader. This is a big step, and one that brings me closer to being done with this important milestone.

I stayed home last night, part of dealing with a bit of a cold, and watched Paris Je T'aime. If you haven't seen this movie, you definitely want to rent it. It's not one movie, but 16 short films, five minutes each, shot all over 16 arrondissements in Paris. It's really impressive what kinds of stories can be told in five minutes when you have great actors and directors. All the movies touch on the concept of love, in one form or another. Rent it, you won't regret it.

Watching, reading

The luxury... renting movies and reading novels. LOL! Doesn't take much, doesn't it?

A few nights ago, I rented an excellent movie, The Last King of Scotland. The movie is based on the book of the same name and tells the story of Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, as seen by the fictional character of a young Scottish doctor who becomes Amin's personal physician. Forest Whitaker plays Amin and he does an amazing job of portraying an individual who is charismatic but scary, paranoid, hungry for power.

Last night, I rented Fast Food Nation, also based on a book. The movie would have probably been more interesting as a documentary (or shockumentary), but as a story, it made for a pretty thin plot and weak characters. I consider myself well-informed about the dubious practices of the factory farms in North America, so most of the movie showed me nothing new. The lessons could be extrapolated to the entire food industry. Mass production of cheap food means something's gotta give: nutritional value, manipulated food source (antibiotics, growth hormones in meat, GMOs), workers and producers who get paid close to nothing for their effort. Many, many reasons for switching to local, organic food instead.

I just finished a novel by Jodi Picoult called My Sister's Keeper and I would strongly recommend it as a summer read. This is the story of Anna, a thirteen-year old who grows up with a sick sister, Kate, who has a rare and aggressive form of leukemia. What is unique about Anna is that she was conceived with a little bit of help from science so she could be a perfect match as a donor for her sister. The book explores some of the ethical questions around genetic engineering and whether or not it is right for parents to expose one child to potentially dangerous medical procedures so another child can be saved. The story is told from the point of view of the mother, father, Anna, Kate, their brother Jesse, as well as a few other characters. Not great literature, but a touching story, right until the end.

Many shades of green

My calf muscles are still stiff from the six-hour hike Joanne and I did yesterday on the Diez Vistas Trail at Buntzen Lake. Joanne is training for her trip to hike Mount Kilimanjaro in August and I was more than happy to join her. The beauty of the Diez Vistas Trail is the many (10!) viewpoints along the hike. I'd say we came across probably five of these viewpoints, and three of those did not have much of a view because of the low clouds. Oh well, if you wait for the clear and sunny day to do anything outdoors, you'll end up staying at home!

I have to admit that hiking in misty, cool weather is very pleasant, my lungs were quite content with the bowl of fresh air and it didn't feel hot, even on the way up. We couldn't stop for very long, mostly because the black flies were too happy to snack along with (on) us.

I posted a few picture of the day here.

Last night, I watched Spiderman 3 with Rafael, Kookie and Irene. The movie was OK, some fight scenes were too busy for my poor tired brain to follow, but generally, the outcome was better than I had expected, given all the bad reviews.

Day off

Being focused on the important stuff means that certain items remain unaddressed week after week. Sometimes, you need to break this cycle and get them off your plate. That sometimes was yesterday.

Even though I took Friday off, I was up early because I had so many things to do. I had an electrician coming in at 8 to fix my neon light fixture in the kitchen. Turns out two of the contacts were broken. Now I can see what I'm cooking again!

I then went for a short run along the seawall since it was sunny outside, and spent the rest of the morning cleaning up and sorting paperwork.

In the afternoon, I had an appointment at the bank to renew my mortgage. Mortgage rates went up 0.2% yesterday, but I had spoken to the personal banking specialist the day before and he agreed to give me a special on the five-year fixed rate mortgage. Instead of 6.84% which is the posted rate, or even 5.78% which is the bank's current special, I am getting 5.25%. It's not the 4.1% rate I negotiated the first time around, but it's fairly good given current rates. I was working with a very young banker who was apparently eager to make sure I was going to keep all my financial services with his bank. He changed my personal line of credit to a homeowner line of credit (2% less interest) and got rid of the banking fees on my checking account as long as I have my mortgage with them. He also ordered cheques on my behalf ('cause the format is changing and I still had the old ones) for free.

I call this one hour well spent!

I made myself a nice dinner (a hearty stew, appropriate now that the weather was cooling down and it was starting to rain) and watched Volver with Penélope Cruz. I enjoyed Volver, the movie is warm and includes many charming characters. Reminded me that Spain was still on my list of places to visit one day.

It was a quiet weekend, yes

With one sister mending a broken foot and the other trying to catch up sleep, our weekend in Banff wasn't very exciting. However, it was some quality time spent with Annie. Some pictures can be found here.

Things I learned about Banff while visiting for the weekend:

• You can't flag a cab using the universal waving of hands. At least the four cabs that drove by us didn't seem to understand. All had their light on.
• Elks are large animals that you probably don't want to approach. We saw several of them, fortunately, from within a car or the shuttle. Sorry, no pictures.
• It's dry, very dry in Banff. Dry and dusty.
• The average age of visitors in Banff is 18-24, and over 50.
• You can't live in Banff unless you work there. Something about the place being a National Park. Pfft!
• Australians like to work in Canadian ski resorts, not just at Whistler.
• Alberta is one big rock. And the tourist shops will try to sell you little pieces of it. Pretty.
• The sales tax in Alberta is only 6.5%. More shopping.

We had fun, managed to get my school work done while Annie was translating what she learned over the week into an action plan for work. We went out for dinner and beers in a cute Irish pub last night, then headed over to the movie theatre to see 300. Although the movie is violent, it was artistic violence, a little bit along the lines of Kill Bill. Still a bit gory. I didn't know the entire movie was shot in Montreal, in front of a blue screen. I liked it.

On the way back to Vancouver, the flight attendant told us that the weather was calling for light sprinkles and clouded skies. When I saw my soaked suitcase drop onto the conveyor, I knew exactly how sprinkly it was. So much for taking the bus back home.

Et si j'écrivais parfois en français?

Reste à voir comment Blogger va vous communiquer les accents... Un essai court, au cas où le message en prend pour son rhume :-)

Bon film ce soir, pas très joyeux, mais c'est un peu normal. Difficile de trouver de rire quand il s'agit du Rwanda. Vous avez probablement deviné, il s'agit du film Un dimanche à Kigali avec Luc Picard et la très belle Fatou N'Diaye (non pas Rwandaise, mais Sénégalaise, qui vit en France depuis qu'elle a huit ans). C'était bien tourné, on y parlait de l'histoire des gens qui ont vécu le génocide, de ceux qui l'ont exécuté. Pas facile de constater comment un être humain peut changer du jour au lendemain, sous une influence démoniaque.

Bon, on y va. Souhaitez bonne chance aux accents!

Weeeeee

My suitcase is packed, my dishes and laundry are done, my place is relatively clean, I'm relatively clean, all I need now is to sleep and make it to the airport in time. I even checked in already, so no trying to convince me that a $200 voucher is going to make me take the next plane. I know the flight is going to be overbooked, I just know it ;)

I also managed to see Casino Royal today, it was a good Bond movie, less gadgets, more intensity. I think I like Daniel Craig as 007.

I don't think I can watch another movie...

Four in three days in possibly a record for me. Now I'm ready to go back to work. I rented Water (from Deepa Metha), Lord of War (with Nicolas Cage), Walk the Line (about Johnny Black) and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The best was Water, followed closely by Harry Potter... I didn't care much for Walk the Line.

Buckley's is now my new best friend, although it doesn't make it taste any better. I'll bring a daytime bottle to work, with cough drops, and a water bottle. The goal is to not completely annoy everyone working around me. Here's to hoping.