Rain boots go with everything.

So it seems that winter has officially begun in Vancouver. The last 6 out of 7 days have been rainy.

On day 1 I wore my rain boots. On day 2 I wore my rain boots. On day 3 I was sick of wearing my rain boots, so I wore sneakers-- and my socks got wet. On day 4 I wore my rain boots.

It is now day 7, I sit in my office, with my legs tucked under my desk, wearing rain boots. I have decided that rain boots go with everything. Not because it's true, but because I have no choice. I have noticed that there are not nearly enough people in Vancouver wearing rain boots. I have further decided, that people in Vancouver don't complain about the rain nearly as much as they should. In fact light rain is considered a nice day....a nice day!??? B*llsh*t. Rain sucks. I would rather take a snowy day, with some frost bite on my nose just to see the sun. What's wrong with these people?

I should elaborate on why I think the rain sucks: For one, you can never style your hair properly. You have to buy a new umbrella every time you leave one behind, because it's just not cool to take someone else's. When I walk Bonsai, I have to wring him out like a towel when we get home, getting him to stand still means bribing him with treats, and now he's wet and fat. And lastly, no matter how much you try, no matter how many layers you wear, when it rains you always feel cold.

(Soggy) Case closed.

Can you turn a Frosty upside down?

We've officially joined the "weekend getaway" club. And we're hooked.

Our two night stay in Brentwood Bay was probably the best prize I've won...ever. Though the $100 gift certificate for Sears that I won when I was in grade 4 comes pretty close. (With inflation it would be worth like $50K today!)

Of course there were some down sides. The anxiety of leaving Bonsai for the weekend. The anxiety of waiting for the ferry and not knowing which sailing you'll be on. These are my personal anxieties of course, Raymond couldn't care less.

There was no need to worry as we arrived 3:30, got on the 4 o'clock ferry, and Bonsai was in good hands.

We arrived at Brentwood Bay Lodge & Spa at around 6:30pm on Friday. We were escorted to our gigantic room with our own private balcony which overlooked the pool and marina. There was not one single detail over looked. We had a fresh Lilly in our room, plush bathrobes, slippers, our own fireplace, and complimentary champagne! All to be enjoyed later.

We hurried off to dinner in Victoria at a great seafood restaurant called Nautical Nellies. We dined on Pan-fried oysters, crab truffle filet and a seafood trio. We saved exploring Victoria for the Sunday and headed back to our 5-star room!

Saturday morning we had kayaks booked for 10am. The day got off to a great start when the marina attendant showed us the ENORMOUS star fish that was hanging out under the dock. I know I'm a big fan of superlatives, but really, it was the biggest star fish you've ever seen. We headed off across the bay to an inlet that's surrounded by protected parks.


The bay was very calm, much calmer than Deep Cove, and the weather was so good we were tempted to just sit in the middle of the water and bask in the sun. We eventually made it to the inlet, where we were surrounded by schools of jelly fish,
hundreds of purple and speckled star fish and the occasional eagle fly-by. After kayaking, We had a quick lunch at the Lodge's pub and then headed out for our two hour wilderness boat trip with our Captain Rob. He knew more details about that bay area than I knew about all geography combined, so it was fun to listen. We relaxed the rest of the day, and ordered room service instead of going to the restaurant. We never ordered room service as a kid, so this was a huge treat for me. Ray and I shared a sushi platter and some ribs on the side, of course the ribs were "on the side".
We fell asleep watching Rain Man (have you ever noticed the cheesy 80's montage music that plays during the driving scenes??)

Sunday morning I had a deep tissue massage, which I'm sure we could rename the "so deep i hit bone massage" but I took it like any massage glut does!
We headed over to Victoria for lunch and shopping. We discovered this awesome fish & chips place right on the wharf, called Red Fish Blue Fish, it's like a kitchen built into an overturned pop can. The fish & chips, chowder and fish tacos were out of this world. I would highly recommend this place to anyone visiting Victoria.

We made a reservation for the 6pm ferry, so no anxiety this time. I treated myself to a Frosty on the way home from Wendy's and tried to convince Ray it was just like a Blizzard, you can flip the cup upside down and it won't drip.

Turns out, you can't.

Happy Birthday Kelly!

I know that you think at the ripe old age of 24 you no longer need to celebrate because you are now on the "old" side of age instead of the "young" side. But besides the knitting and the sipping hot water, you are the most youthful person I know!! So I hope you have a wonderfully carefree and YOUTHFUL day, and I hope you enjoy your imported Birthday treats. You don't know how many people's hands I had to slap to make sure they reached you safely.

A little birthday quote I have dedicated to you from Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

LOVE YOU!

Stolen doesn't feel as good as in Toronto

Yesterday two bad things happened.

First the scooter was towed away while I was at work. Something about parking it on a sidewalk... I mean it was a wide sidewalk, what's their freakin problem!?

Second, Ray's back tire was stolen off his bike. Right in front of our building, with all the security "presence", and video cameras, it was just jacked. The other two bikes had all of their tires. It's just not fair.

Of course I was the last person to drive either of the two-wheelers.

This created a series of emotions, disbelief, anger, a sense of violation...aaand back to anger. Anger at the crack addicts for needing to steal things to get money to buy more crack, at the security guards who are really nice, but provided absolutely no security, and for all the rich people who live around us who probably wouldn't even care that their $300 bike was damaged and violated because they can just drive their BMW X6's over to the bike store and buy a new one tomorrow.

But most of all it made me miss Toronto. Because even when your stuff gets stolen or towed, you at least have a drunk sister to laugh about it with, or more people to complain about it to. And someone willing to give you a ride around Scarborough when all your wheels are gone.

Driving...Vancouver...Crazy

At last...we have a car.

Bad news for so many reasons-- #1 reason: $1.45/L for gas.

Good news for Bonsai who now gets to go with us everywhere, since we could not get him to fit, as hard as we tried, on the scooter.

Ultimately having a car gives you freedom, the freedom to spend more money. Our excursion on Sunday to buy car wash detergent quickly turned into a Costco run, and grocery shopping. No detergent was bought, no car was washed, and over $100 was spent. Another good thing about having a car in Vancouver, you get to do a lot more out of town trips, i.e. hiking in North Van or canoeing in Deep Cove. If you don't enjoy outdoor things, then, well you're screwed. You have to pay for parking everywhere, even at the grocery store. And often times when you drive somewhere, your 2003 Corolla looks like a piece of pooh next to the 2008 Audis, Mercedes and Maserati's that are parked next to you. But at least you know that when your car gets dinged in the $1/hr Safeway parking lot, it costs the Benz next to you a lot more to get fixed!

Our beautiful non-long July 1st weekend

What could be more disappointing than July 1st falling on a Tuesday? It throws off our national flow. There really is no point to being Canadian if you don’t get your mandatory 4 LONG weekends in summer to enjoy the beautiful outdoors.
So we were short-changed this one-- I forgive you Gregorian calendar for this injustice. And will take my month of three pay cheques (October 2008 is the next one) in place of a true July 1 long weekend.

This technically wasn’t my first long weekend in Vancouver, but again, it wasn’t a long weekend! The weather was hot and sunny, totally unlike Vancouver, but totally welcomed. On Friday evening Ray and I kicked off our non-long weekend with a trip to Costco…yes you heard right. But we quickly redeemed ourselves with a sunset stroll to Jericho beach. We saw wild bunny rabbits, kids getting caught drinking in public. It was a riot. We capped the night off passing out in front of the TV.

Saturday morning Ray went to his highly anticipated ping-pong tournament. I took Bonsai for a 2 hour walk to the doggy beach, he has become quite the seasoned swimmer! The hot sun was too much for him to bare, so I finally took him home to pass out in the cool condo. The ping pong tournament was a success, Ray made it past 8 round robin games to the playoffs, but lost to a little Chinese boy, a little Chinese girl and an old Chinese lady. Needless to say we took our non-Chinese behinds far away from there. Afternoon naps. Yummy dinner at Memphis Blues BBQ House, the best pulled pork I’ve ever had. Next we scootered off to the Grand daddy of gelato places. Over 200 flavours! I sampled garlic, and balsamic, both exactly what you would expect them to taste like, but finally decided on Bailey’s Chocolate cheesecake. Again, we capped the night off passed out in front of the TV.

Sunday morning, bright and early we headed off to Squamish to hike the Stawamus Chief. It was perfect weather for the hike, 2 hours later we arrived at Third peak, for a panoramic view of the Sunshine coast and the surrounding mountains. After 2 PB & J sandwiches and Ray finally calmed down from being chased by a chipmunk we began the nasty descent. It was actually harder to climb downhill than up. Had a yummy home cooked dinner of Szechuan fish stir fry and then went to the Jazz festival. A musician who had extensively studied, get this-- Cuban music of Romania and Bulgaria???--was performing, he was amazing. Who knew?! And guess what? We capped the night off passed out in front of the TV!

Happy Canada Day!

My first 48 hours in Vancouver

So it's official: I'm never moving again! It has to be the most exhausting thing on earth.

Our flight left on Monday evening without a hitch. Of course we were the only two people on the flight who had 2 suit cases each, with "heavy" tags on them! We arrived in Vancouver at around midnight, took a cab to Ray's old place and began packing. We went to bed at 3:30 a.m. and woke up at 7 a.m. to finish packing. Went to our new place to do the move-in inspection. Our real estate agent was over half an hour late, and Ray started to freak out that he was a fake agent and he took his money and there was no condo to rent. It was really funny. I just played with all the dogs that walked by, I think that more than half the tenants in our building have dogs...very exciting!

After the inspection, we went to the Uhaul rental office to pick up the truck. We discovered these cool Balkan snacks called "Smoki" which were like peanut butter flavoured Cheetos...of course Ray found them. We had to wait till 12:30 to use the elevator, so we packed a few last minute things. This is the point where I ran down to go grab a couple of boxes and...wait for it... LOCKED THE TRUCK KEYS IN THE TRUCK! I know what you're all thinking, what a Raymond thing to do. But it was all me. So basically we had to wait an hour for the stupid towing company to come open the door for us, which pushed our whole day back by one hour. In typical Danila and Ray fashion, we were late for everything.

Other than that, the move went off without any problems. Our first meal in our new place was two meat lover pizzas from Domino's, yummmm.

Ray had to go to work this morning. I called the Vancouver Province/Sun supervisor who had asked me to come in as soon as I was in town. So at 1:30 I had my interview, and at about 2:30 I was offered the job. So Danila is now officially employed in Vancouver!! I start on Monday. The walk is only a half hour, and the office is right on the harbour to North Vancouver, it's stunning.

Tonight I cooked my first meal in our new place, tofu stir-fry, at Raymond's request!! We went on a half hour scooter ride to play indoor soccer with his rec league, and now we're back home, unpacking some more.

48 fabulous hours, and now all I want is to sleep!

Memoirs of a first walk

Yesterday was Bonsai's first official walk around the neighbourhood. Because he hasn't had all his vaccinations yet, I had to be swift and scoop him up in case we encountered any other 4-legged canines with sniffing my Bonsai's bum on their mind. The walk began with Bonsai going beserk the minute we stepped off my front lawn, he was in sensory overload! A few meters down the street, and he started chasing the leaves down the street, so cute! After realizing he they weren't alive or tasty, he resorted to dragging an old soggy newspaper around. He had some difficulty walking in a straight line (I stepped on his toe by accident). He also kept getting tangled in his leash and looked like he was doing a 3-legged race. He tried to chase some kids who were walking home from school, i'm always amazed that anyone, even kids, could be scared of a puppy!! Halfway through our walk, we also encountered our first fire hydrant, which Bonsai was terrified of. He wouldn't go near it. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before my Bonsai pees his heart out all over it!