To join or not to join......that is the Facebook question.

I think it was 2002 when a new no-smoking bylaw came into effect in Vancouver, banning smoking in pubs, clubs, cafes etc etc. As an ardent lifetime non-smoker, my immediate reaction was "Great, no more smoking in pubs....and a long-awaited end to enduring cigarette smoke in my face and coming home stinking like an ashtray!" Experiencing this new bylaw in practice however, I discovered one major social setback that I hadn't even considered. Before the bylaw, I would regularly enjoy a few beers with Vicky and/or friends, boyfriends etc in the comfort of the local hostelries, where we'd sit and chat, laugh and eat and drink amid the sporadic (and sometimes overwhelming) clouds of another round of cigarettes being shared. While I’ve always hated cigarette smoke - particularly having it blow in my face and the stench of it in my hair and on my clothes - there was nonetheless something oddly comforting about it. Nostalgic even. As the evening progressed the smoke over a few beers would bother me less, mainly because, at the pub, it was all just part and parcel of a couple of hours socializing. What was I going to do, not go out because of the cigarette smell? But it wasn't until it was banished by Big Brother's Bylaw, that I fully appreciated just how much cigarette smells also symbolized the aroma of hanging out with friends, or family, relaxing, laughing, having serious conversations or simply idle banter about the mundane and the ridiculous.

Once the bylaw had its new stranglehold and Vancouver’s Fun Police no doubt patted themselves on the back for their latest ‘victory’, I couldn’t help noticing that it suddenly felt like everyone was actually smoker - maybe they had been all along, but while they stayed seated at the table, you actually got beyond noticing it any more. So I was about half way into my first pint when I found myself suddenly abandoned, waving goodbye to the smokers, who - banished to the outside now - huddled together for a group nicotine hug on the sidewalk, passing the lighter among them and tossing their heads back as they savoured that first puff. With their common thread of being antisocial ‘delinquents’, sent outside to continue their disgusting habit - I confess I watched them with a certain amount of envy that mingled with a strange sense of social awkwardness. Left behind at the empty table, I felt instantly recognizable as a non-smoking goody-two-shoes. 'They' had all the air of being the in-crowd, bonding and making new friends amid their swirls of chatter and cigarette smoke. Meanwhile, I caught myself, an instant Billy no-mates, now scrutinizing the condensation as it ran down my beer glass or staring at every cobweb, paint chip, dusty picture frame and torn beer mat or focusing on the menu even when I wasn’t the least bit hungry. If the desired effect of this new bylaw was to deter people from smoking, then it was failing pretty miserably in my book. It almost made me want to start! - just so I could be part of the mini crowd that gathered out on the patio or in front of the door, laughing and chatting come rain or shine.

So where am I going with all this??? Ahh yes, Facebook (aka Crackbook). It's something I've felt uncomfortable with from the start and those who know me have heard me belittle and grumble about it, having intentionally and stoically avoided it for as long as I can remember. (When the heck did it first start anyway?) And yet now basically everyone I know is on it. It seems that whenever we get together in person, they're already way ahead of me in conversation, laughing and sharing their latest insider knowledge about each other's lives. When I look blank or confess to being out of the loop, I get the ol’ “oh, you’re not on Facebook”. Heck, they even know stuff about me before I get chance to open my mouth. Lorne and I met up with friends for dinner recently and they were asking me what I thought of Port Townsend and commenting on the photos etc before I’d even breathed a word about it…..because they’d read it all on Lorne’s Facebook page several days ago already. (Since Lorne succumbed to the ‘cult’ last year already and he actually knows more about what Vicky, Mark and Graham are up to lately than I do!) Suddenly it seems everyone has all the ‘Breaking News’ on friends, neighbours, co-workers, relatives and relative strangers – from across the city, other countries, and even on other continents. Heck, for all I know, even from galaxies far, far away in as much as all this is alien to me.

So here's the thing......having lived a good 36 years without smoking a single cigarette, I suddenly discovered (while honeymooning in Cuba) that good cigars are really quite outstanding.......and having spent my whole life adamantly swearing off and never touching a single drop of Scotch/Whisky, Lorne helped introduce me to its wonderful and broad range of exquisite tastes and I can’t wait to take this new-found knowledge and appreciation on a few 'educative' distillery tours.

Could it be ... the time has come the Walrus said.....for me to venture into the dark and long-snarked-about territory of the Facebook world???? Is that the Fat Facebook Lady I hear singing...or rather, chanting…"One of us.......one of us.......one of us........”?

Besides, I guess I have no excuse any longer, because as Graham carefully pointed out (in a note on Lorne’s ‘Wall’), they even make keyboards for my Doomlord-size hands these days.

I Love Lucy...and I miss her every day.

"Grief is like the ocean; it comes in waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim." (Vicki Harrison)

My little Lucy, what a treasure. I want to feel the softness of her fur and her wet nose against my cheek. I miss her gentle spazziness and stomping gait that always made us laugh. I miss her loving cuddles that made everything else simply float away. It's not right that there's an empty space in the corner window where she'd stretch out and look so content, soaking up the sun. It hurts so much that she's not here to climb on my lap the moment I sit down or trying to snuggle into my legs and somehow make herself extra-heavy when I try to move her. Whenever I look to the armchair, I catch myself still expecting (hoping) to see her there.
My thoughts turn to her every day and even though I try not to think about the painful emptiness of losing her, I'm nonetheless still fighting back tears when she's not there to come home to at the end of the day. I feel blessed to have had the privilege of sharing over 11 years of my life with her. She was my emotional support in good times and bad, my comfort, my faith and my unconditional friend and companion. From the moment she won my heart (advertized as a 'special needs cat' needing a new home) she was my soft and furry 'work in progress' as I worked with her through her nervousness, her fears, the unknown traumas that evidently marked her early years, the nightmares that sent her running from a deep sleep and her fear of brooms, vacuums and angry voices. By all accounts she was a bit of an emotional train wreck when I adopted her in 1998 and I devoted myself to nurturing her emotional and physical well-being, helping her grow and winning her trust - for which I was rewarded every day with her unwavering love and warmth, her wonderfully adorable nature and all her delightfully endearing quirky twitchy, stumbly and thumpy spazziness that made her so unique....and just so 'Lucy'. The little cat who'd come flying out of nowhere and onto the bed, diving and sliding around under the sheets as we tried to put on new linens or burying herself among the warm laundry, fresh from the tumble dryer, before we even had chance to fold it. The little cat who couldn't meow properly (except for occasional trips to the vet) but who managed a squeak of enthusiastic anticpation whenever she thought a treat or plate of food was coming her way.

Admittedly, when Lorne first moved in, I was more worried that Lucy would not handle it at all and might retreat into her former shy and anxious self - but Lorne showed just as much caring, patience and love for her and all her spazziness - that he was able to finally win her trust too, to the point she loved cuddling and laying on him just as much as with me. She even surprised us both by accomodating the invasion of three new cats that Lorne brought with him into our home.

In this picture (taken with my iphone, hence the blurriness) she'd been nosing around in a bag of stuff we'd just bought and managed to get the handle around her neck till she proudly sported the bag like a superhero cape. (Thankfully she came out of this better than she did shortly after I adopted her, when she did the very same thing nosing around in a bag of potted plants I'd just purchased. At that time she freaked out when she lifted her head and, feeling the weight of the bag handle around her neck, proceeded to run in circles at 60mph around & around my apartment, sending soil, petals and bashed up pansies and african violets right across the room.)

Little by little Lucy flourished and gained confidence, agility (gradually ceasing to overshoot furniture or fall flat on her face), her personality blossomed and she shared her endless charm with us all (even if she initially ran off and hid under the duvet from most people.)

The only thing that hurts more than the thought of facing the days ahead without my little Lucy Love, is the stark emptiness I imagine of having lived my life for the past 11.5 years, had we never found one another. She was truly loved and unreservedly happy – an absolute blessing and a glowing ray of sunshine in my life. I am forever changed, blessed and spiritually enriched thru the privilege of sharing the precious time we had together. While it hurts like hell to have lost her so soon and so quickly (to an out of the blue diagnosis of stomach cancer just 6 weeks earlier - in mid-November), and my heart literally aches for missing her so much, I try to take comfort knowing that she was such a happy cat - she felt very loved and there's no doubt that she absolutely loved us just as much in return.

She took a little piece of my heart away with her and I don't think I'll ever stop missing her but I'm truly thankful for having her be such a wonderful part of my life. I love Lucy....(aka Lu-lu, Loopy-Lu, Spaz, Lucy Button, Lucy-Luv-Love, ...etc.) and she is very, very missed.

Lucy: 1996 (?) to Dec. 28, 2009.

And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. Kahlil Gibran

Earth - by Martha Jablonski-Jones

I bought a painting today :-) This one, called 'Earth', by Martha Jablonski Jones. I met up with my friend, Astra, a couple of weeks ago for brunch at a funky little pub 'The Whip' a few blocks from home. It was the first time I'd eaten there in ages and while I was chatting away I couldn't help noticing the artwork around the place, especially this image - on the back wall about 8ft behind Astra's right shoulder.

Taking the theme of the electric power lines and poles that are seen in alleys everywhere around Vancouver (including some of the less scenic areas), Martha describes her 'Electric' series as "Animism meets Hydro! Power and all its metaphors, as symbolized by city hydro structures. The balance of power between the man-made and the elemental; living forces of the invisibles" where each painting features these recurring 'characters' in diverse eye-catching, intriguing and sometimes whimsical settings - hinting at a secret life in things we see as commonplace. The painting I bought is also named "Elements: Land". I love the colours and the air of everything blending seamlessly with nature. It makes me think of sitting on a balcony and watching to the world go by at the end of a lazy, hot summer's day.

Today was the last day of Martha's show at The Whip and it was a pleasure to meet her when I went to collect the painting this evening. There are some incredible artists in Vancouver and I'm perfectly happy with this choice....now I just have to figure out where the heck I'm going to hang it.


(Another local artist I really like is Ryan Heshka and I still kick myself for not buying one of his funky retro-comic-book-hero type pieces a few years ago when Vicky and I met him at a fairly small show by several local designers and artists. I think that was part of my push to buy today's painting.)

Bronwyn and River

So in the blur of the past few months, I realize I have some photos of Bronwyn and River that I should forward and, now that I have this blog, I guess I could put them here too. Albeit I'm still familiarizing myself with the technical wizardry of my new Nikon camera body, I have taken a few snapshots that capture the humour and spontaneity of being around Bronwyn and River. I love their energy and curiosity and their intrigue of things that I've long-since taken for granted without even really meaning to.

Nothing like being around children to give you a reality check on what matters and what is really just 'stuff' - not to mention their brutal honesty at times. In spending time with them, and in seeing all the postings on Vicky's blog, they bring me back down to earth with a more honest sense of what matters and how to take pleasure in the moments that go to make up each day. A welcome respite from the all-consuming work stuff that often occupies my mind much more than I'd like.

Anyhow, here are some photos that make me smile when I look at them - I love River's crazy Albert Einstein hair and Bronwyn's perplexed curiosity of just about everything. It's so much fun exploring the world through their eyes.

(Unfortunately I haven't tried photoshop for getting rid of red-eye yet, but it's among the many things on my to-do list. I know, I know...you can do it in-camera, but have you ever tried to get excited kids to sit still while the pre-flash flash blinks away at them and not end up getting them with their eyes closed? That said, in an attempt to better capture such moments, I've just signed myself up for yet another photography class at Focal Point, this time a Wednesday night class on "The Natural Portrait" starting April 7th. Who knows, maybe I'll even (finally) get around to taking the family photos that Vicky has been asking me to do for....well, ...ages!)

Bronwyn had so much fun with this gluey-sticky-jelly-like alien thing that I got Lorne at Hallowe'en....it's now matted in cat hair and other goobers and has even left a grease blob on the living room ceiling after we threw it hard to see if it would stick.


And here's River... being so angelic and wild-haired which he does so well:




And here's one I took last weekend when we made a trip to the park. He just loves being on the swing.


Of course it also makes me miss Thomas and Hannah, Edward and Gareth more - not forgetting William whom I have't even met yet. It's hard to think of them growing up so fast and so far away. Hopefully they won't all have left school and got their driver's license before I next see them!

'Daffodils' by William Wordsworth

Before they all disappear for another year and, as an ode to this being one of Dad's favourite poets and poems, I thought I'd post this classic by William Wordsworth

Daffodils
I wandered lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o'er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd
A host of dancing Daffodils;
Along the Lake, beneath the trees,
Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay
In such a laughing company:
I gazed and gazed but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.

William Wordsworth, 1804

Spring is in the air

After a horribly long week at work in which I reached a new all-time high in overtime hours, sitting glued to my computer (& my brutal office chair) from 8am straight through to 11:15pm, literally - except for just a couple of pee-breaks, I was allowed to take the day off on Friday. A small appeasement given the fact I'd already worked a full 40hr week in just 3 days and then still worked an 11hr day on Thursday - so I was pretty shattered, but thankfully my 'day off' also coincided with it being a beautiful, sunny spring day.

I started the day with a visit to the dentist to get a recently chipped tooth fixed (that'll teach me for trying to chew off my shackles), followed a somewhat embarrassingly drooly attempt at a coffee on my way to another ultra-sound bum massage chez the Chiropractor - who's convinced my problem is due to an overzealous muscle spasm that he can cure within a few sessions - and it actually does seem to be helping. Thankfully my chiro guy (someone Lorne's been seeing for years) has a great sense of humour....just as well really given the potential for extremely awkward and stilted chit-chat in a situation like that.

Anyhooo, since the mild weather is bringing out more blossoms and flowers each day, I grabbed my camera and went out for a while in the afternoon, just around the streets where we're living. I find it so relaxing to just lose myself behind the lens for a few hours and I'm quite pleased with the results - although I seriously have to start learning the names of more flowers. Simply identifying them as 'white flower', or 'pretty fuschia floral thingy' just isn't going to cut it. Of the few names that I do know, are magnolias - like these fine examples, which are currently in full party mode at the house right opposite ours.

And the cherry blossoms (Lorne's nemesis when it comes to allergies) which were so late getting started last year that they very nearly missed the annual Festival held in their honour - and might well be all but finished by the time we start this year's.




But these delicate white flowers (also a type of magnolia?) were my favourites and the late afternoon sun created perfect lighting.
I put these latest pics on my Flickr site and already received positive feedback.

Even tulips, which don't normally start until late April/early May, have already started popping up all around town, so I'm sure I'll have more photos to post in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, here are a couple more daffodil shots, just for good measure. They always remind me of Easter and.......aawwww crap, I just remembered today is probably Mother's Day in England. It's been so busy at work I've hardly been able to keep up with the days, weeks and months as they whizz right by my head. Happy (belated?) Mother's Day, Mum. Look, I got you flowers :-)

Huh?

Is it me, or is this just a bit of an oxymoron?

(Taken on the boardwalk at Port Townsend, W.A.)

Argufying and Grumbulating

I decided to use "Argufying and Grumbulating" for my 'why oh why' postings - a forum for a wee rant/Victor Meldrew moment about things that make me go 'Grrrrrrr'. The title is one of my favourite terms that my Dad made up. When we were kids, if he and my mum were about to leave us on our own for a while, he'd always recite the rules, "I don't want to hear of any kicking, fighting, scratching, biting, thumping, screaming, hair-pulling or argufying and grumbulating".

So unfortunately my first theme makes you ask yourself - what kind of person does THIS to a dog?

This horribly neglected and death-defyingly emaciated dog, now named Trooper by the SPCA officers treating him, was handed in recently by a man who maintained he'd found the poor dog wandering along the highway. As it turns out, the guy is in fact the owner and had knowingly neglected him to this horrific and miserable state. Handing in this bag of bones with matted, feces encrusted fur is perhaps the only 'kind' thing he's ever done for this adorable golden retriever who currently weighs just a third of what should be his normal body weight - and less than the bag of dogfood they're now feeding him at the SCPA. Officers/vets had to shave off his fur because it was so matted and foul and underneath they found sores indicating he'd also be kept in a confined space for a long time.
I cannot for the life of me understand what kind of person knowingly lets an animal suffer in this way, in an ongoing state of unbelievable physical as well as emotional neglect. Vets are amazed he even survived at all in this state although a couple of days more and he most certainly would have died and you have to wonder if the owner would even have noticed.

Thankfully Trooper's now recovering and receiving lots of love and warmth with a caring foster parent via the SPCA - and he's even gaining a little weight. What a wonderfully loving and forgiving dog, despite the sad and absolutely unnecessary trauma he's endured for quite some time.

There's now a petition to make sure full charges are laid against his former owner. I vote we shove him into a birdcage and leave him to starve while he lies in his own filth. Oh wait....sound familiar?

Port Townsend, W.A.

Last weekend Lorne and I made a little trip over the US border to the cute Victorian seaport town of Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula.

From Vancouver it was a short drive over the border and then we decided to take the small ferry that runs from Keystone (near Whidbey Island) - it takes only 30 mins and drops your right into Port Townsend's harbour, just a short walk/drive to the Highstreet (Water Street, as it's known).

We stayed at The Palace Hotel a very 'quaint' and beautifully restored victorian hotel, that dates back 120 years (which is old by N.American standards) and was actually a brothel in mid 1920's. The hotel features 15 charming guest rooms and suites, each still bearing the name of one of the "girls". The rooms are a nice size with fantastic 14-foot ceilings. (We even had a stained glass ceiling in our bathroom.) Each room and the lobby areas are decorated with antiques, collectibles and oldy-worldy fixtures that retain the true character of the Victorian era and literally make you feel like you've stepped back in time.

Not feeling the need to have one of the larger rooms, we stayed in 7B Miss Sara and at just $89/nt it was pretty inexpensive too (although some rooms are only $59/nt). In some ways you might think it's a fuddy-duddy sort of place but there was something novel about staying in a museum piece, especially since everything in Vancouver feels so tall, new and fashionably swanky these days while the best of the city's old buildings remain sadly neglected in the poorest, drug-infested part of downtown.

The atmosphere in PT is friendly, low-key and laid back - I really liked that about it. They also brew some excellent local beers :-) I especially liked that part too. In fact, shortly after arriving, we found ourselves sinking a couple of delightful IPA's (India Pale Ale) and baking in the glorious sunshine on the ocean-view patio at Sirens.

There's a definite middle-class hippy vibe to PT - and some of the local clothes stores seemed geared towards an older social worker versus cruise ship crowd - but there's also a younger, grungey/thrift-store chic element that's like a comfy old couch - in fact we felt like complete 'Townies' the first night when we dressed up a little and went to the Water Street Brew House (pictured below) for some rather tasty beer. (Beers at a brew house, I guess I'm stating the obvious.)

Thankfully nobody really seemed to care and graciously resisted the urge to point and laugh at us - but for what it's worth we just about froze (high ceilings and no heat), so a holey aaron sweater and requisite bushy beard would definitely have helped keep us a little warmer in there - but the extra hoppy beers helped.(Just as well really, since I doubt I'd suit a beard, not least because I suspect it'd be ginger!)

On Saturday we took a spin out to the shores of the Dungeness Spit, the longest natural sand spit in the United States at 5.5 miles long, although we didn't walk the whole trail.

Overall Port Townsend came across as just a very easy-going place with eclectic taste and some decent restaurants. I'd highly recommend the Thai restaurant,Khu Larb, for dinner - plentiful and very tasty.

Breakfast wasn't part of the deal at our hotel and, perhaps being slow season, it was difficult to find a cafe that was open on Saturday morning, so we ended up at the family-run Salal Cafe (not pictured here) as recommended by our super-friendly hotel guy, Robert. While service (even getting seated) was slooooow and the staff seemed somewhat vacant (Gordon Ramsay would have had a field day about the servers standing around doing nothing while food sat waiting and stomachs ran on empty), once the food arrived it was delicious and definitely worth the wait, so it redeemed itself pretty nicely. Next day (since we had a ferry to catch) we decided to avoid the wait at the Salal and ate at The Patio Cafe instead - great service & tasty food and, had the weather not turned somewhat cloudy and cooler, we would have eaten on their lovely flowered patio.

After getting off the ferry on our way back home, we decided to take a drive through the cute little town of La Conner, Washington - I was hoping the surprisingly lovely spring weather we've had might allow for some great photo opps of La Conner's famous tulip fields but as it turns out - even though it is going to start 6 weeks earlier this year because of the weather - we were nonetheless still just a couple of weeks early. That said, back on the road heading out of La Conner we did come across a few endless fields of daffodils; a sea of vivid yellow that you could from miles away. Only as you got up closer could you notice their gentle division of even rows amid bright, sun-shiney yellow - which made the darkening cloudy day somewhat brighter.

And before we headed back over the border, we stocked up on more cheap and fabulous vegetarian groceries at Trader Joes. It's an 'awesome' store that a friend told us about a couple of months ago and we were like voracious kids in a discount candy store. Highly recommend stocking up here, even to the meat-eaters.

All in all, Port Townsend is an easy and inexpensive weekend away, but remember to dress casually!

And there you have it, a rather long-winded review of our little trip that's taken me all week to get around to writing.

Bigger...faster... Better?

You know how one lightbulb burns out and two more follow....then another and another? That's how it's been at our house lately but instead of lightbulbs it's been the internet, cable, the scanner, the wireless router and the computer monitor. One by one things seem to be reaching the end of their increasingly shortened technological lives. Hence why I haven't been able to post anything to this blog for over a week and even maintaining an internet connection long enough to add a couple of photos to my Flickr site proved to be quite an achievement and, as much as I hate to admit it, a source of some considerable frustration. Just yesterday, as I tried to view the photos I took on our trip to Port Townsend last weekend, we discovered the SD Card reader we've had only a few short years was never designed to handle anything larger than a 2GB camera card.....because they just didn't exist a couple of years ago.

So one by one we've replaced or upgraded things as they've failed.....but I always feel horribly guilty about it. Parts of some items can/will go for recycling but otherwise they're simply castaway additions to an ever-growing landfill problem. So quickly outdated, inadequate or no longer fit for their original purpose; now they simply serve as reminders of just how disposable all this 'stuff' is becoming. And as much as I try to be 'green' and hate wastefulness and consumerism, I'm evidently still caught in the spell of a technologically enhanced lifestyle. For all its advantages, I'm increasingly aware of - and uncomfortable with - the consequences. The bottom-line cost to the environment and that underlying sense of excess and wastefulness because we've become so spoiled (dare I say ruined) by immediacy, power and being permanently 'connected'.

So while I'm glad to be able to post again (since I'd only just got started), I feel a strong uneasiness about the extra 'stuff' it involves and all that we throw away.

If my Dad was still alive, he would no doubt have written many of his 'world-famous poems' on the matter, summing it up much more eloquently than I ....but instead this little quote will have to suffice:

Modern technology
Owes ecology
An apology.

Alan M. Eddison