Finally!

Remember a couple weeks ago when I was waiting for my camera? Ok I finally got a call from Purolator the other day saying they had my camera at their office in Richmond because I wasn't home when they delivered it so now I had to pick it up. I was so happy I didn't care that picking it up meant driving from West Vancouver to Richmond at 5:30pm on the day before a long weekend. They closed at 7:30 so I had plenty of time.

Well, thanks to a very busy Lion's Gate Bridge and an accident on the Oak Street Bridge, which made Granville a parking lot between 41st and 71st, I made it to the Purolator office at 7:05. I didn't even care it took me that long.

So I picked it up and I'm not the proud owner of a Pentax Optio T10, which may or may not take great pictures (I don't know yet), but I do know it's got a microphone and a sweet 3.5 inch LCD display.... about twice the size of the display on my old camera.


This is it.... I put my watch in there to show the size... it's pretty small, at least compared to my old camera.


And here's the LCD... it's powered on in this pic so it's showing... uh.... the sofa and a speaker I guess...


After I picked it up I went to the Richmond Fitness World and then took a couple pictures a couple blocks away from the gym. And I don't know Richmond that well but I'm pretty sure this is the Dunsmuir bridge. And whatever bridge it is, this is a little offshoot of the north arm of the Fraser River, just before it hits the ocean. It was almost dark and the battery wasn't charged so I didn't have time to figure out night mode, but yeah, these are the first two pics.... there will be a lot more coming in the next... while. I wanted to say the next few days, but that probably won't happen. Maybe it will. I don't know.

I hate birds

I do. I hate 'em. Why? It's a long story, and it all started last week when I got a car and a job. Here's the short version:

The Job: I got a call from the museum I've worked at for the past few summers and they asked me to come back. Which is GREAT because I was starting to need something to do, and the money doesn't hurt either. It's not a law related job, but I'm going to have a lot of law related jobs starting next year and this gives me one more chance to use my history degree. Kind of. Even though I'm not really using it in my actual work, museums are all about history. So that's indirect use of my history degree I think.

The Car: I sold my truck two years ago, which was the summer before I started law school. The plan was to wait til I was finished school and then buy another car. But I couldn't wait that long. I've lived without one for 2 years, and I can't do it anymore. It's actually not bad living without a car in Vancouver, but it seems like I have to leave the city for something every week, and that's when not having a car sucks. So I got a new Mazda 3, and I haven't taken any pictures of it yet but it looks exactly like this, except it's red:



So now I've got a car and a job. Ok back to the birds... I hate them because I park my car at the museum, and they literally bomb the crap out of it. I'm not totally sure why they do it, but they're the same museum birds that tried to kill me last summer. Ok I don't know if they were actually trying to kill me, but they started swooping at me one day in a Hitchcockesque kind of way. And now they're dive bombing my car.

Seriously. I parked it at the museum Wednesday without a speck of dirt on it. When I came out at lunch it was covered. Covered, as in about ten big splatters that looked like some of those birds had explosive diarrhea. I had to take it through the car wash after work and pay eight bucks to get it all cleaned up. It hasn't been that bad since, but this afternoon they'd been at it again.

I'm parking behind the building from now on. This means war.

Catching up...

The thing about blogging is, when I have time to do it, I have nothing to say. I guess that's because I'm doing nothing and hence I have time. When stuff starts happening, I don't have time and the blog suffers. That's just the way it is. But here's an attempt to start catching up on what's going on with me these days...

My parents bought a new 50 inch LCD high def TV a couple weeks ago... a move inspired by the world cup. And although I experienced blinding jealousy for a while, they gave me their old TV, so it all worked out pretty okay for me too. Their *old* TV, by the way, is only 6 months old. So compared to MY old TV, which was about 12 years old, this TV is brand spanking new.

Surprisingly though, one new TV brought with it a lot of change. The original plan was simple:

1. Remove original TV
2. Replace with new TV
3. View programming

Easy right? Well, I ran into problems at 1. I had a TV stand for my old TV, which was a lot smaller than the one I was getting. So I measured the stand and realized the new TV would be hanging off a couple inches in each direction. Not a good idea, especially in that corner of the room where the floor slopes a bit... the thought of the TV going face first into the corner of the coffee table was not good, so I decided to get a new stand.

So I went to Ikea and got a new stand. I figured I should get something that holds all the other equipment too, so I could ditch the 80s stereo cabinet that had been holding everything. I got it home, built it... which is the best part about buying furniture at Ikea... and moved it into place...

Where it came out so far I was only left with about an inch of clearance between the TV stand and the coffee table. Bad bad bad bad bad. So that pretty much messed up the rest of the day, and I think every piece of furniture in the livingroom was against every wall in the livingroom at some point. Big mess. Sometime during the whole debacle I realized that before I got the new stand, I had had the maximum amount of furniture I could have in a room that big. The new TV stand with its extra couple inches of depth threw everything into chaos and basically sent the camel into a body cast. That's right, it was the straw that broke the camel's back. The mess was monumental, comparable only to the day I moved in. Seriousy, it took me that whole day and part of the next to get everything cleaned up.

And one new TV basically made the livingroom go from this...

To this...

So yeah, a lot of work, but all worth it. And the coffee table? Now it's the TV stand in the bedroom that also holds the fan and the video games.

By the way, I sleep with a fan on every night. All year long. Is that normal? The noise drowns out other tenants, cars, and pretty much everything else...

Still No Camera

So... a week later... and still no camera. I phoned the day after it was supposed to get here and they told me it was going to be another 2 weeks because they were out of stock. Weak, I know. So I'm still waiting...

5:44

5:44. No camera. I'm a lot less impressed with their delivery prediction now.

3:52

still.... no.... camera...

2:46...

2:46... still no camera...

where's my camera where's my camera where's my camera

I used my airmiles to order a new digital camera four weeks ago today. They said to allow for three to four weeks delivery time and I did. I allowed three, and as of today, I've allowed four. But there's been a bit of impatience along the way... I phoned them last week, just to check up on it. They said it would be delivered today, and I was kind of impressed by that. I would expect them to know the dispatch date, but the delivery date? Impressive. Well... it's 1:31 and the camera still isn't here, so I'll wait for a buzz before getting too impressed.


I didn't even go to the gym this morning because I didn't want to miss them. And, because my chances of making it to the gym decrease dramatically after about noon, it's unlikely I'll be going at all now... but missing the gym will be worth it if the camera gets here today. And they said it would right? Yeah... not worried yet.

The Evil Lion’s Gate Bridge

I had lunch with a friend over in West Van the other day… and, because I’ve got some time on my hands these days, I thought I’d walk over there. Yeah I know, South Granville to West Van sounds like a long way, but really it was only about an hour forty-five. The main problem with walking to West Van is that there are two bridges to cross. The first one is the Granville Street Bridge. Big, yeah, but I’m used to it because it connects my neighborhood to downtown and I walk across it pretty often.

It’s the other bridge… The Lion’s Gate Bridge… which REALLY sucks to walk across. It’s an old bridge (1930s) so obviously it wasn’t built for the amount of traffic that uses it these days. There are only three lanes of traffic, which are backed up during rush hour, and a small space on each side for pedestrians and cyclists to share. Ok so the really bad part is that cyclists get the inside part, closest to the traffic, and pedestrians get the outside part, closest to the 13,832 foot drop from the bridge deck to the Burrard Inlet below. Ok maybe it’s not quite 13,832 feet, but it’s high. You know how some bridges are high, and other bridges are really high? Like so high that when you’re going across you think “wow this is a really high bridge”? Well this is one of those bridges that makes you think “wow this is a really high bridge.”

I don’t have a lot of phobias. I don’t mind small spaces… not scared of the dark… no problem with snakes and spiders. But I freaking hate heights. It’s a selective phobia… I love roller coasters and I have no problem flying at all. I would bungee jump too… so I guess if there’s some crazy thrill involved I can do it. But I hate just being high up for the sake of it. I remember I used to hate crossing the Granville Street Bridge too, but I got used to it and at least that bridge has a wide sidewalk.

No such luck on the Lion’s Gate. Small sidewalk, and it shakes when big trucks drive over it. So I was pretty unhappy. Actually, I was still recovering from seeing that guy jump off the Granville Street Bridge when I’d crossed it earlier. Ok he didn’t so much jump off the bridge as jump onto some scaffolding that was attached to the side of the bridge. And I could tell by his big reflective vest that he worked for the city so I knew he wasn’t doing anything crazy, but still. He just put a hand and a foot on the railing, swung the other leg over, and jumped from the bridge deck to the scaffolding. There were actually a few seconds where his feet wouldn’t have been touching anything at all. That is messed up.

So after that I was playing it safe. I rebelled a bit on the Lion’s Gate and walked on the inside, but there were no bikes that time of day so it was okay. And aside from a brief moment of terror when some workers who must have been directly underneath me started to jackhammer something, there were no incidents. I did stop to take this picture of the city and Stanley Park so you’d have an idea of how high the bridge is.

It’s not a great picture… instead of actually going over to the side of the bridge to take it, I just held the camera way above my head. Then I remembered that my camera has somewhat crappy video capabilities so I started it up and did a 360… here it is: