Are you kidding me?

On my way back from work last night, I was caught in a hail storm. Fortunately, I had my umbrella, gloves, scarf, boots and winter jacket, pretty much dressed for whatever bizarre weather would be thrown at Vancouver. I did start the day with sunglasses on.

Heading to the bus stop, I walked by a guy with his little designer miniature dog on leash. The guy was wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. The dog was wearing a jacket. Only in Vancouver.

This morning, I woke up to this:

April 19 in Vancouver, people. Be scared, be very scared.

I guess it'll be a while until I plant my seedlings outside. Right now, even the hardy plants that spent the winter outdoors look fed up.

Eeewww, I mean... cool!

Wow. It feels like someone finally found the spring switch and turned it on this weekend. We were fortunate to get two days of sun and warm weather. I expect to see a few burnt faces tomorrow at work... people never learn.

I got myself a set of wheels yesterday (a Nissan Versa, cute little car, not much juice but at least it was barely sipping away at the gas) to visit my former boss (former from a long time ago) Lindsay. Obviously, having a car means running all the heavy-duty errands, like grocery shopping (cans) and picking up two worm composting bins from a friend in Kits.

I kinda scored on the composting. I few months back, I wrote about having to wait until April to take a course with the Vancouver Composting centre to get a bin, which meant no compost until the end of the summer. My friend's bins were already started, so I was hoping for a harvest within the next few weeks. I placed the bins downstairs in the garage, where it's dark and the temperature will stay fairly constant.

I didn't play much with the bins yesterday, as I was getting ready for dinner. It was a really nice drive to Anmore and an even nicer dinner with Lindsay, Geoff and Lucas (and Raven and Rosie, the dogs). I always love coming back to their house, this is where I stayed when I first moved to BC in 2002. They hosted me for a few weeks while my apartment was getting set up, offered a car to pick up miscellaneous items at IKEA, and invited me over at Christmas so I wouldn't be by myself. Fond memories indeed.

Today, I was on a mission: poke through the bins to see how much compost was ready to harvest. I can't bring the bins up to my balcony, they're too heavy to carry around. If it was harvest time, I intended to transfer most of the content to a bucket and then bring the bucket to the balcony, leaving it outside. The worms would crawl to the bottom, I could harvest the top soil in layers, until all was left was a bunch of worms ready to go back to a new bedding. It was a great plan.

Except that it didn't really work that way. I pulled the cover away from the first bin, mostly in the dark, and could hear the rustling of little critters. I used a flashlight to get a better idea of what was crawling around and boy, I wish I hadn't. The worms are fine, no problem, but the bugs? I read some literature online about worm composting and it's normal for other critters to set shop in there, but that many? Most were pill bugs, little grey bugs with a hard shell. I read that they chew through the hard stuff, very useful, but creepy.

It smelled a bit ripe in the bin, so I started poking around with a plastic garden fork to move the content around and discovered that a lot of food hadn't been eaten yet. Worms don't eat food immediately after you leave it in there, it takes a few days before the scraps get really gross and worm enticing. I guess my friend had a bag of apples that went bad, 'cause I saw several almost full apples in the bin. It really looked like there was enough food in there for another week. But the soil was really wet (the bins were left outside and we've had pretty rainy weather), and there was no bedding left, so I shredded a few sheets of newspaper and mixed it in, along with egg shells (to rebalance the acidity). I left the other bin untouched, the worms had enough food.

So, it will be another week (at least) until I can start keeping kitchen scraps in a container on the counter instead of throwing them in the trash. The bins are full of compost, but there was too much uneaten food to harvest. At least that's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

Windy

The wind is blowing so hard outside that I can feel the building swaying now and then. I am NOT kidding. Needless to say this is a perfect evening to stay home, do a bit of reading for school, and go to bed early.

Classes started again last week, my very last course of the program. I'm having a hard time getting back into the beat of things. Fortunately, the teacher seems interesting and not too dry. Hard to make Project Management really exciting, but at least he might make it helpful and somewhat practical, not all about theories. Since reading the PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge, from the Project Management Institute) is required for the course, I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and prepare myself for the PMP certification. Are you tired of reading acronyms yet? I haven't even started!!

I went shopping with Sarah on Saturday and bought myself a brand new pair of ski boots. They are very shiny. I'll have the entire weekend to try them out, as both Sarah and I are heading out to Big White for a few days on the slopes. We booked ourselves on an organized trip, leaving Friday afternoon from Vancouver and returning Sunday night. All inclusive, you bring energy and food (not necessarily in that order). Woot.

2008 is going to be the year of getting back into skiing, I can feel it. Marc might visit at the end of the month, to test his skiing legs in Whistler. Mount Seymour has free skiing on Monday nights for girls, you only need to pick up a voucher at a local store and make a donation to the BC Cancer Foundation.

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.

Fitting the pieces of the puzzle

My last three days were spent in a workshop on sustainability reporting, stakeholder engagements and assurance. After reading about these topics all semester for my project, my head was filled with disconnected concepts and my own interpretation of what all the theory meant. After the workshop, the pieces of the puzzle are finally fitting together and I was able to learn about real-life applications of these concepts. Nothing short of impressive.

Now, I get to digest all this new information and review a few sections in my project report. My lack of experience made me connect dots too quickly and state grand conclusions that are not as black and white as I initially thought. My project report will be available online after it's been verified and approved, and will be searchable like so many other academic papers. The workshop has increased my confidence in what I am about to publish: it might actually be sound and useful information :-)

I'm enjoying the cold snap in Vancouver. We've seen ground frost every morning and the temperature never increases over two-digits. I prefer this to rain, although if you ask me to pick between -20 and rain, I'll probably vote for the wet weather. The cooler temperatures mean that we've received quite a bit of snow on the mountains. Whistler is already open. I'll see if I can manage a ski trip once the semester is over, it would be nice to play in the snow.

Thunder

I seem to be set on weekly posts. Until December, it just might have to do, I can't seem to find the time to write during the week.

Every Friday, I have this little routine that helps my body and my mind break away from the week and get nicely settled into the weekend. Before I head home, I pick up some sushi and a movie, or a few episodes of a TV series. Then, I go home, don't answer the phone, eat yummy rolls in front of the TV. Last night was no exception, except I had to do everything under the pouring rain. It's OK, I mean I know once I get home, everything comes off and is hung to dry while I slip into comfy and warm clothes. But still, I rained so hard, my jeans were wet up to the knees and there were rivers rushing down pretty much everywhere in the streets. I guess the storm drains can just take so much.

While I was enjoying a Dragon roll and about to find out if Meredith Grey was really dead, I saw this flash of light outside. "No", I thought, "impossible!" And then the loud crack of thunder shook the building. So amazing.

Back East, lightening and thunder are common. Summer storms are very dramatic, the explode almost without warning and then leave after dumping large quantities of rain all over. Here, we never get thunder. In the (almost) five years that I've been here, I think I heard thunder twice. We get rain, days and days of rain, but it's not often a sudden downpour mixed with heavy winds. Well, we did get that last year and look what happened...

I love big storms. When they happen in the summer, they usually help clear muggy and heavy warm air, bring in a welcomed breeze and soak parched gardens.

We've had lots of rain here in Vancouver this week, but I count myself lucky. Twice when I was walking back from the climbing gym (about 30 minutes), I barely got a drizzle even though we had seen heavy rain all day. It rained mainly when I was at work. Rain is also a good motivator to spend the weekend working on my applied project. I started sending sections for review by my supervisor. So far, he seems to think that I'm on the right track and I'm discovering really interesting things.

Hot summer!

It must be July. Yup, it's sunny and hot in Vancouver, really quite lovely. Might not be so great when I play beach volleyball tomorrow, but otherwise, who am I to complain.

Hallelujah! I finally have a passport. It only took, what, four months? Even though I hadn't really planned to travel anywhere, I felt so naked. What if I had to travel? I know!

I'm spending lots of time these days on my final project for one course, and preparing to possibly start my final MBA project in the fall. I don't have classes in September and was originally thinking I should take a semester off. Recently, I was wondering if that would be a good idea, taking a long break and having to go back to school in January. If I can find a project (hence the mad research work these days) and get it approved by August 10, I'm going to put my head down and stay in school instead. At least I won't have any evening classes.

If this plan works, I would have only one course left in January and could graduate early. Not bad.

What is Vancouver talking about these days?

Take a wild guess... I'll give you a few hints: gusts of 90-100 km/h, accumulation in centimeters (not millimeters), bridges closed, parks closed, trees uprooted, and many, many more.

Trees continue to fall in Stanley Park and the Lions Gate Bridge was closed at rush hour on Tuesday. I looked out my window yesterday it was raining, I walked to school in a hail storm, it was snowing during class (and throughout the night), more people had no electricity last night... I'm telling you, the busiest people on TV these days are the weather presenters.

It snowed pretty much on and off all day, and is snowing again as we speak. They are never going to be able to inflate the BC Place roof again, it's going to be a big snow cone :-)

In the weather forecast for tomorrow: high minus 1, low minus 7, wind chill minus 16 in the morning.

Welcome to the West Coast.

Somewhat not motivated to do my Christmas shopping

I blame the strong winds and the heavy rain. And malls. And the fact that it's pretty hard to find something original from Vancouver that you can't buy in Montreal. I've had four Christmases to exhaust options.

Yesterday, I was having dinner with my friend Craig. I hadn't seen him in six months. We walked from the restaurant to his place, he was offering to give me a lift back home. On the way there, I witnesses an insane display of Christmas lights on St-Paul's Hospital. OK, I've seen people go overboard with lights, I did use to live in Ville Emard after all, but nothing close to the massive display they have at the hospital. I'm going to drag Lara and Charles out to see this and I'll take some pictures. Simply unbelievable. While we're at it, maybe I'll also try to catch the Van Dusen Garden's Festival of Lights. I haven't seen this yearly display yet, it's supposed to be really pretty.

As long as it stops raining for an evening ;)

Sleep-Eat-Work-Eat-Work-Eat-Homework-Sleep

... and repeat!

This is the last stretch but boy it is hard! Fortunately, everything has to be handed in by 11:59 on December 8, so the semester is almost over. It's December 1 tomorrow? Yikes!

It snowed against last night and guess who shoveled the complex today? Nope, not me. NOBODY. Everything's melting and the weather is warming up, but it's a mess out there. Next year, we're hiring a contractor.

Pretty heavy!

Here are a few pictures of what my neighborhood looked like today, after getting 30 cm of snow. Sorry if some of them are dark, I took them early in the morning, just before stepping out to shovel the entire complex. Only took 1 hour 1/2 ;)

At least we can drink from the tap again :D


OMG!

Pretty

30 cm last night, another 10 today...

Books, computer, groceries, snow

Four words to describe my Saturday. Not much to say, except that I am making good progress on the business plan (our final assignment for both the Finance and Marketing class).

I thought I'd be smart today, avoid the rain (snow?) that they were announcing for Sunday and go grocery shopping. Well, you do not want to enter a grocery store on Saturday afternoon. Trust me on this one. It's not only having to deal with the fact that it's packed, that they left a few pallets (unpacked) that are blocking half of the isles, and that the woman in front of me is exchanging coupons for free wine glasses. It's having to deal with the guy behind me who is freaking out because the place is busy and the lineup at the cash is not moving. Honestly, I can deal with the rest. Him, he deserved to be smacked across the head.

And while I was walking back, navigating between rushed shoppers with my little red shopping cart, it started snowing. I should have stayed home.

One word

I spent a great evening last night with Gerri, Lara, Charles, and Joe (who joined us after dinner). Charles' birthday was last week, Gerri's is this week, since both Lara and I are dealing with the heavy workload of the end of the semester, we tried to celebrate both birthdays on the same night.

Everyone met at my place for a glass of wine, then we headed out to Relish. This is the second time I eat at this restaurant and both times have been quite pleasant. Relish has four menus, Casual North American, Asian, Mediterranean (mostly Italian), and West Coast Fine Dining. Usually, when restaurants try to master too many types of cuisine, they never really do any one of them really well. Relish is an exception. Their menu is also reasonably priced and they have a varied wine selection. We had a wonderful dinner.

Then, we headed out to George, our repeat spot for an after-dinner drinks. We didn't stay out late, both Lara and I were looking at busy days today.

Lara talked about a book she was reading where the author was using one word to describe cities/countries around the world (can't remember the reference, I'll let you know if I find it). So we started thinking about words for Canadian cities. Montreal was "sexy", Toronto was "ambitious", Quebec city was "charming"... when it came to Vancouver, Charles came up with the best word: proper. I think "proper" reflects well our view of Vancouver. Mind you, I think the choice of word depends on where you come from and where you've lived.

This said, I don't think that our little group can claim "properness", if that's indeed how one would describe Vancouver. We were asked twice last night if we were from out of town. Gerri has lived here for over ten years, I've been here for four. But apparently, we do not come across as Vancouverites. Because we typically switch very rapidly from French to English and then back to French, most people can guess that we all come from Montreal, although our waiter last night thought we were from Paris. I think this speaks at length to how nicely dressed we all were ;)

My one word for Vancouver these days: rainy. Today's storm means we're probably stuck boiling our water for another few days. The color of the water had greatly improved yesterday, but I'm afraid that today's heavy rain is going to once again fill the reservoir with all kinds of sediments.

This is the song I'm listening to: When the Night Feels My Song, Bedouin Soundclash.

Brown water

Ever heard of a "boil water" advisory that impacts 2 million residents? Me neither. Welcome to BC Lower Mainland. So low that the crazy rain of yesterday displaced any dirt we had lying around and dumped it in our watermains. Yup, brown water. Yum. What is that I hear outside? It's raining again? And on Sunday, another bad storm?

How cold does it get in the winter in Montreal again?

Kidding aside, I'm counting myself pretty lucky. A lot of people are assessing damage to their properties today (flooding, trees through living rooms and roofs), some on the North Shore can't even get to their homes because of potential landslides.

Rain, rain is falling down...

... trees are crashing against houses, winds are bringing down buildings, and serious waves have managed to cancel the ferry service for most of the day. A lot of people are having forced candlelight dinners tonight.

I, am still wearing my pajama top and worked from home today. The storm was announced yesterday and I wasn't planning to go out if I didn't have to. I know... I'm a wimp. A wimp with sometimes smart ideas :-)

Perks

Today, I really appreciated having a laptop and a VPN connection to work. It was brutal outside! I had already planned to work from home, our building was being inspected suite-by-suite to check the smoke and heat detectors. Great timing, as Vancouver (and most of the LowerMainland) was hit by heavy rain. I went to the corner store to grab some supplies for lunch and my pants were soaked almost to the knees. I WAS carrying an umbrella ;)

Sitting at my desk at home, it was just the same (access/speed) as sitting at the office. And I got a lot of work done :-)

Caliente!

Vancouver, for a city that is right by the water, usually has dry summers. Today, I actually heard someone mention the dreaded "humidex" in the forecast. It's 29, but it feels like 35... That's nothing like Kelowna (in the Okanagan) where it's 35, but feels like 40 today.

Needless to say: I'm melting. I wanted to go to the pool, but the sun is very strong and I want to avoid burning. I'll have to go for a stroll along the seawall tonight, to cool down.

This is a quiet weekend for me. Lara is in Montreal, Gerri is on the train, a few other friends have official "functions" (weddings, staggets, showers). I'm going to enjoy a bit of reading, maybe some salsa outdoors tomorrow afternoon, and hopefully a run in the morning, before the temperature turns unbearable. I'm going to sign up for the Fall Classic again this year, but I'll run the half marathon, not the 10k. Training starts tomorrow.

Hot, hot, hot!

A quick note while I cool down at home and before heading out again. Fred has been in Vancouver for two full days now and he's lovin' the weather :-) It's been really hot (low 30s), sunny, not a cloud in the sky. Yesterday was a drive up to Whistler, then a ride up the Gondola, and a chair ride up to the peak. Breathtaking views. Today, a long walk around Stanley Park and a ride up another gondola to visit Grouse Mountain. Tonight, maybe an ice-cream on the beach, watching the sunset... And tomorrow, more activities, Granville Island, maybe the art gallery after dinner, the beach in the afternoon? So much to do.

Unfortunately, I won't get to post any pictures until Fred goes back home and burns me a CD. His camera refuses to talk to my Canon software, even with the proper drivers installed. So you won't get to see Melissa with a bit of a tan (kidding, red's not a real tan).

:-)

Urban gardening

The weather people said that we would only get sun today, so I thought this was an excellent time to buy plants, soil, and work on my patio. I cleaned the patio not too long ago, with the intention of bringing in the new plants the following weekend, but somewhere in the middle, I went camping and ended up sick, so this was still on my to-do list.

Most garden centers (Home Depot, Rona) don't really cater to the condo population with small balconies. When you buy flowers, you get a flat with the same kind. It's hard to create original flower boxes with one or two kinds of plants. I did a bit of research and found a store called Art Knapp's Urban Gardener, where they sell planter starter kits. You get six little plants in a kit, enough for one flower box. I bought three kits, one for each flower box, some soil and fertilizer. And a tomato plant. I know, tomatoes need a lot of sun, but I'll try just this once.

My first flower box has a yellow theme: Supertunia Lemon Plume (Petunia hybrid), Laguna Sky Blue (Lobelia hybrid), and Margarita (Ipomoea batatas). My second flower box has a pink theme: Vanilla Butterfly (Argyranthemum), Intensia Lavender Glow (Phlox hybrid), Compact Pink Innocence (Nemesia fruticans), and Supertunia Lemon Plume, again (Petunia hybrid). My third flower box has no theme, it has all kinds of colors in there: Supertunia Royal Velvet (Petunia hybrid), Flying Colors Red (Diascia hybrid), and Solaire Yellow (Bidens ferulifolia).

I also bought a Clematis paniculata at the supermarket. It looked sad and I thought I'd try to save it from its ugly destiny.

Now I can say that my balcony looks a lot more inviting! Anyone up for a BBQ (you will need a car though, I think that my tank is almost empty)? I'll cook ;)

Here are some pictures...


Pink-themed flower box