Author: gfox (old content)

Regularly Rough

I almost don’t need an alarm clock any more. My daughter regularly started yelling Mum at 6:30 on the dot. Normally this isn’t a problem, but last night I was up late due to a double header at Ulti. Whenever I play late, I rarely sleep well. So, add up a crappy sleep, less than normal, toss in Amy waking at 6 needing to pee, then wide awake and ready for the day at 6:30 and you get one parent that was having a rough morning.

Thankfully I had a 2 hour nap this afternoon that was quite refreshing.

Telus Ridiculous

I know it will never happen, but I would love it if Telus could explain something to me.

I pay $30 a month for 1GB of data for my smartphone.

I also pay $7 a month for caller id.

The data transfer for caller id is absolutely negligible for Telus, yet they charge me 1/4 the price of a GB of data? That doesn’t make any sense. I also know it is not difficult for them to turn on caller id. It took the guy 30 seconds to add it to my account and it was active immediately.

I guess the differential is due to the value of the service, but this seems a little ridiculous to me.

Arranged Return

Sox and I had a little vacation. After everything that happened at the end of March, Sox was going to surprise me with a two night stay at our favourite cabin at Point No Point. Unfortunately they were pretty booked up and we wouldn’t have been able to get in until September.

Instead, when we heard David Usher was coming to Vancouver, we booked a trip to Vancouver and arranged my Mom to watch the kids. The concert then got cancelled, but we chose to go anyway.

We headed over on Thursday afternoon. The ferry ride was interesting too since it was full of people heading over for an Iron Maiden concert. Great people watching on that boat. In Van we checked in at the Metropolitan and figured out what we wanted to do.

Thursday night we headed out for all you can eat sushi at Shabusen. It was a cool restaurant that also does Korean BBQ. You actually cook it yourself at your own table. Each table had a mini BBQ pit set into it. The sushi was good and we definitely ate our fill. After dinner we walked for a bit, then took in a movie (Iron Man 2).

Friday we had a quick bite of breakfast then wandered around doing some clothes shopping. Sox had more luck than I, but I still managed a few new pairs of shorts, and some shirts.

Lunch was some awesome panini’s at a coffee shop close to the hotel. An afternoon swim and then it was dinner. We walked down to Gastown and had dinner at Steamworks. We had the fish tacos appy that was amazing, and my burger was excellent. Lots of cheese, sauce, and toppings. We walked a little in Gastown then went back to the hotel Later in the evening we went down to the hotel restaurant for dessert. Wow, it was awesome.

Saturday we packed up and went down to Granville Island for breakfast and some more shopping. Then it was off to the ferry and a return home.

The great thing about going when we did was that today felt like a bonus day on the weekend. We had a weekend in Vancouver, but one more additional day before work was perfect.

Run Free

We’re looking after Digger, a friends black lab for a few days. We’ve known Digger all his life and he used to come to the Voice Mob office since he was a pup. Digger and Yoshi were great friends. Once they worked out their dominance issues, they played well together and got along famously.

Having Digger around is causing me to think about Yoshi a lot. I am missing him so much these days. The more reminders, the more I think about him. No reminders and it is one of those out of sight out of mind.

Seeing Digger on the beach today reminded me of some of the great times Yoshi had on the beach. Long Beach was a favourite of Yoshi’s. He could run and run and run with no boundaries and the most perfect sand ever. Running with his tongue flapping about is such a great memory of Yoshi. He always seemed happiest when he could get out and run like crazy.

When KaptainK (Diggers owner) got married, it was a surprise wedding. Her daughter, and her fiance’s kids were there, and so were Sox and I (before we had kids). The wedding was gorgeous. It was supposed to be on the beach, but we ended up at a house overlooking the ocean in Ucluelet. We were camping that weekend and were leaving the day of the wedding. We packed the truck up and drove to Ucluelet for the wedding. We left Yoshi in the truck with the rear slider window open. After the wedding we were going to head to the location for the pictures, and as I opened the front door, there was Yoshi. For the first time ever he had got himself out the rear window. Not only that, but then he walked across all our camping gear and jumped out of the truck! Thankfully he hadn’t gone far.

The day wasn’t done for him though. It turned out to be a sunny day and the pictures were being taken down on one of the beaches. The beach was a couple minute walk from the parking lot and we couldn’t leave Yoshi in the truck, especially after he escaped from the truck once. We took him on his flippy leash down to the beach and tied him up to a log. We left him in the shade and walked a ways away to have some pictures taken.

A short while later Yoshi broke his leash and came running at us in full gallop with a huge smile on his face. I could just that he was thinking “I’m free, I’m free” and he galloped at full speed with his tongue flapping around. As mad as I was, I could see how happy he was to be free.

I love these memories.

Connected Vision

Last night I had a bit of a rude awakening. I woke and headed to the bathroom for a pee. I was only a couple steps out of the bedroom when WHAM, my head connected with the linen closet door that had opened all on its own (I wonder if the cat had a role in that). The door was at a 45 degree angle to the hall and I managed to connect right with the edge.

I woke Sue with the noise (sorry about that), and it took me a couple minutes to work the stars out of my vision. Back in bed it took me a while to get back to sleep.

When I got up in the morning, I saw a small scrape on my forehead where I hit the door. Mental note: close the linen closet door all the way when I am done.

Model Destroyer

The coolest thing we saw and did last weekend was the model boat show. These models were extremely detailed. I can’t imagine how many hours went into creating them. Elliot was spellbound by them and loved sitting next to the pond watching them drive around in the water. Amy enjoyed them as well, but not to the extent of Elliot.

I had lots of fun with my camera, a polarizer, and some decent lighting to make some interesting shots.

This sailboat was actually wind driven. There was no motor on this one.

This next ship was a model of a Canadian destroyer.  Some cool features: two spinning radar dishes, a Sea King helicopter whose rotor blades could spin, and the turret on the front not only turned, but also had a 35 shot magazine and could fire pellets!

I think my favourite was this aircraft carrier. Very detailed and lots of fun to take pictures of.

This working sub could actually dive below the surface and motor around a bit. I wondered how he controlled it underwater since radio waves don’t travel so well through it.


Midway Draw

After dark a friend and I wandered down to the midway to take some night shots. I was surprised at the lack of people at the midway this year. I seem to recall it being packed until closing on previous years. Perhaps there was just too much going on around town to draw a big crowd.

The octopus ride made for some fun once it got moving. Long shutter, small aperture, low iso, lots of blurry goodness.

I like the simplicity of bokeh shots, so I tried that out for a bit. There were quite a few throwaways, but I had a couple I liked.


Review Short

One of the things that was happening as part of the international fleet review was a performance by the Snowbirds. We heard where they would be performing and thought that Cairn park close to our house would be a decent place to view them.

Now we have seen them many times before and love our Snowbirds, but this year I was disappointed by the show. We were late getting to the park, and then we realized that there were going to be some trees in the way. Add on top of that the Snowbirds were performing down low, and we didn’t really see much. It also seemed rather short.

I still got a couple shots off though.