Category: Canada

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Back From The Fruit Of B.C.

I am a good driver... What a great, little getaway.

I get a feeling that running away like we did to the Okanagan[wiki. def.] would be a cliche thing to do for some Vancouverites, but there is no way that we are not going to do trips like this again. You can see how people flock to the valley for summertime vacations, even more so for those family holidays that your mom and dad dragged you along to. Miniture golf courses, beaches, B&B’s, real golf courses, hotel after hotel, and huge homes on the shores that one can only dream of ever owning.

Kelowna is a great community. However, it’s a city with two faces. Off-season and on-season. It seems like all of the hotels are hiring right now, the phrase “for the coming season” being key. To me, it’s a bit like the Wisconsin Dells[wiki. def.], but Kelowna has it beat for sure. I don’t think you can check out as many attractions as you can back in the states. At the same time, I don’t think that is why people flock there.

Crusing down Highway 5...The drive to get there and back was a treat for myself. I have this ongoing love of road trips, and Rebecca couldn’t be a better companion for that. With both of our iPods, we had plenty of tunes to make up for the lack of radio stations between populated areas. We took a different route there than we did back, so I got to see a lot of the mountainside between destinations. It could have been the fact that we set out early on Friday, but I said very little the whole way there, my head turned out the passenger side window with the hope that I might get to see a bear. No luck. Continue reading “Back From The Fruit Of B.C.”

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Adventures in Canadian Wine Country

Heading off to the Okanagan [wiki. def.] to get away for the weekend. For me, it’ll be a chance to explore more of the interior of British Columbia. I’m unsure as to what to expect from the mountain passes in terms of driving the route to get there, but it’s going to be a pretty fun experience.

Rebecca and I on wine tours? I think it’s a recipie for neat things to happen. I’d say disaster, but I know it’s going to be a good time. Makes disaster seem like such a lackluster word, eh?

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We Goin’ to See Some of Them There Rock Shows

In every budget, you have to make room for something recreational. Rock and roll is that for Rebecca and I. And boy howdy, we have quite the calendar of events lining up for us.

South is going to be exciting. I recently heard that they had some sort of song on The O.C. some time ago, so this puts the potential turnout at the show even greater. I still have hopes that it’ll be a good show. April 20th at the Red Room on Richards.

Mates of State are coming to town on April 21st, and I picked up tickets for that last week. The Plaza Club should be an interesting place to check them out, being the last place I saw them was at Gabes back in Iowa City. Tony Pierce had an article about them on Buzznet. They will also be making an appearance at Cochella, and I’d like to be there as well. Turns out there is more to Pierce than just a crazy blogger, or at least I was impressed.

Scored tickets to Snow Patrol on June 14th at the Commodore Ballroom. It was an early bird special that we jumped on, but it’s exciting to be seeing another show there, the first and last one that I caught being Matthew Good.

Lots of rock goodness going on in this city, and this isn’t nearly half of it. I just don’t have enough time to blog about it all right now, but the point is that we have tickets to check out these shows!

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Hello, Fat Cat

Fat CatYou see some interesting things while wandering around the west end in Vancouver.

That is a fat, old cat. Probably the size of two soccer balls, and cool as can be.

I couldn’t tell if it was guarding the store or just hanging out. Either way, he never looked at us once. Just kept staring out the door.

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Coffee-grinder-aphobia

Coffee Bean MachineWe finally made it through the award winning coffee from the Clubside Breakfast Time folks this week. When you’re out, you need more.

We wandered over to Capers on Robson St. last night, thinking that we’d go for more organic stuff because we really loved the one pound of Olympia Coffee Roasting Co. beans, fair trade and organic goodness. Although, the beans were a slight issue, but I found that a blender works for grinding them. I also found that I might have ruined the blender.

Anyway, we hunted down the coffee section and found that they pretty much had only whole bean coffee, aside from one brand that we couldn’t tell much about other than it was just coffee. Dark, medium, or what? These things matter.

Finally, after a half hour of looking at various, organic brands and almost giving up to head to the grocery store to buy already ground coffee, we watched some random woman go throught the process of grinding beans with the machine in the store. After learning what we could through the corners of our eyes, we gave it a shot.

Capers Coffee GrinderLow and behold, it freaking worked! For so long I have feared making a complete idiot of myself using the in store coffee grinder, worrying that I would send beans everywhere or a big pile of grounds on the floor. That’s not to say that we didn’t have some issues, but once we actually got the machine to give us our beans, the grinding was pretty easy after that.

Vancouverites love their coffee. I’m slowly becoming one of them, but it all works out in the end. I’m getting more and more Vancouverites to love margaritas. Poncho’s ain’t half bad either.

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Delayed Reaction To The Junos

I have always been familiar with the Juno Awards. 2006 has been the first time I have been able to actually see them. Prior to now, it was always entertainment reports that briefly mentioned that they happened with limited details of who won some of the awards.
For those of you that are unaware, these are Canada’s music awards. These go out to the top music acts of the nation. In fact, this year saw Brian Adams get inducted to the hall of fame. That turned out to be a pretty huge affair, almost the highlight of the night. Some would say that Nickleback was bigger, but I’d rather stick a pencil in my eye.

Overall, I was kind of let down by the whole event. Broken Social Scene‘s performance was pretty cool. And Michael Buble is bound to be the next big crooner, good for him, hope he has fun with that.

The big let down stems from one of those awards that Buble walked away with. Right after the whole acceptance speech, in the commercial break that followed, there was an ad for his latest album. It said something to the effect of “get the album that won the 2006 Juno Award for album of the year…” In the speech he just gave shortly before that, he was all surprised and astounded that he won. Continue reading “Delayed Reaction To The Junos”

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Can You Predict the Weather In Vancouver?

For the past few days, the forecast has been bleak and drab. The reality has been the exact opposite. Lots of sunshine and fairly warm temperatures. I’m not going to be wearing shorts and flip flops anytime soon. I’m not going to complain either.

I’ve basically come to not trust the forecasts anymore. Things can change in an instant, but that change usually sticks around for the period of a day. At least that’s what I’m starting to understand.

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I’m Signed Up For the Sun Run

Rebecca got us all hooked up for the Sun Run coming up on April 23. We’ve been doing our best to get her on a good running schedule, but her years of doing sports in high school seem to be getting her back on track pretty quickly. I am about ready to fall asleep as I write this because we were up at six this morning for a near 4km route.

For myself, it shouldn’t be too horrible, but I’m still going to train. I run about four to six days a week, alternating between long and short routes. On average, I’d say I run about 8km every day that I head out. That takes me about 30-40 minutes to complete. 10km for the Sun Run should be a nice challange, and I’ve never been in anything like this before.

I’ve found that people don’t like running with me because I either have too fast of pace or enjoy hills a little too much. I blame my brother Mike for this. He ran me into the ground when I was about to start football my sophomore year of high school, but I learned how to handle hills that way. And for those canucks out there reading this, that would be grade 10.

I’m looking forward to the Sun Run. Shortly after that, on May 26, we are looking to do the Run For Light. That’s a 4.3km course, but at night. And with glow sticks!

Time for bed now though. I’m beat. Also doing a long route tomorrow morning to keep with the training. Would like to do the Seawall as that is just over a 10km route, but we saw that they are doing construction on the side just down from Coal Harbor, from now till May. Might have to come up with a better route to train with.

Might have to try some of that music Don Deeley was talking about and see if it’s any good for keeping the pace.

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Spending Sunday in Fort Langley

Planet Java's ceilingThere isn’t a whole lot in Fort Langley, but sometimes that’s just what you need. A place where there isn’t a lot of hustle and bustle to get away from the city for a while. We were able to check it out a little more than just the drive through that I have experienced before. And if you are driving through, that doesn’t take too long.

Needless to say, it’s a small town with some character. Reminds me a lot of the small towns from where I grew up, but I think it’s a lot harder to get soy in your lattes back home than it is in Fort Langley. Even though there isn’t a Starbucks or Blenz in sight of downtown, there certainly is no shortage of coffee related establishments. You’ll have to wander past the numerous antique shops to get to them.

Autographed Tori Spelling photo at Planet JavaYou can tell that the town gets more traffic in the summer. People head out from the city to do the exact same thing that we did on Sunday. And if you do get the chance to get there, check out the little 50’s diner for a bite to eat, Planet Java 50’s Soda Fountain Café. They don’t do fries as a side to your sandwich of choice. The potato salad is just as good though, perhaps even better than the fried alternative. And it still tastes good for at least two to three hours after. How can you beat that?

And there have been movies film in this little downtown area as well. What kind of B.C. town would this be if it wasn’t used as a film set? It’s getting to the point where the game is spotting the place that has yet to be in a movie.

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The Amber Alert System in British Columbia

I was unaware until this week that BC has its own Amber Alert System in place. I found out about it due to an alert that was issued and resulted in locating the child, fortunately, without harm. I’ve read other accounts where people caught news of the alert flashing on bus signs. That’s pretty impressive. This goes a little beyond the usual highway signs and news outlets that I’m familiar with, but it makes so much sense. You can declare this one a success.

My brushes with the Iowa Amber Alert System gives me some insight on this. My chief engineer back at WSUI/KSUI, Jim Davies, was one of the main guys getting the Amber Alert to work through the Iowa Emergency Alert System (EAS). This stuff doesn’t simply work from the start. It takes a lot of work and testing to make all the information flow correctly, not to mention the politics of what constitutes an alert or not.  Have to give my congrats to BC for this one working so well.