The Ongoing Work Stoppage

So a while ago, JR asked for my current mailing address, which I duly gave, as JR has in the past mailed me fun things like comics and birthday cards and only that one time a human heart, which in his defence I think was meant for someone else.

And so today, after another loooong bus ride which left me feeling tired and grumpy and wondering when the heck I was ever going to find my own place, I come home to find this waiting for me:

A shiny Sansa Fuze mp3 player. Which, I discovered, is also loaded with some awesome music – there's a lot of loungey stuff, some Kleptones, and I think some Bollywood showtunes and other strange foreign sounds. It's a gift from JR, Steve and Valette to make the commute go more smoothly.

This shows me that (a) I should complain here on the Work Stoppage more often, but mostly (b) my friends are awesome. Thanks, guys!

Speaking of people I know, you may have heard me tell stories about my thesis supervisor back in Ottawa. Denis is, as we say in academia, a character. He is an outstanding scientist, and one of the only people in the world who does Mössbauer spectroscopy correctly. About the time I started my PhD, though, he started getting deeply into some fairly radical politics, and started making regular forays into bat country. The wikipedia page has a pretty good summary of his major antics.

He's now on the cusp of getting fired from the University, something that is supposed to be pretty hard for a tenured professor to do. He's just been interviewed by the CBC Radio's The Current about the situation – the podcast is here, and it's entertaining listening.

As I mentioned below, my current living arrangements have me busing two hours each way to UBC four days a week. This, as you can imagine, is not ideal, as it leaves very little non-work/non-bus/non-sleep hours to the day that I can devote to important things like watching terrible anime and not blogging. So this week I decided to bite the bullet train and take a couple extra days off in order to find an apartment closer to campus.

Today I went to look at the first one. All right, I still had to haul myself across the metrop by transit, but it was for a good cause, and Crappy Camera Phone 2 – who I think I'll just start referring to as "Carl" – came with me. And you know what that means, Internet – more low-res pictures for your enjoyment!

The area I was in today is extremely close to downtown V. proper, in the area known as Kitsilano. Kind of as reputation as the dwelling ground for yuppies, even more so than the rest of the west end. (It's the area I had Reaper & Helium Girl living in.) The apartment I looked at was not far from the HR MacMillan Planetarium, famous for, among other things, having its very own Siege Crab:

I popped in to the Planetarium itself, just to see what was going on. On the one hand, there is at least one show I suspect was playing the last time I was there in 1998. On the other hand, Laser Pink Floyd has been replaced by Laser Coldplay. But hey, there's an awesome crab!

Just behind the Planetarium is Vanier Park, where I went for a wander. Like many public parks, Vanier is decorated with some funky art. Carl and I decided to get a bit artistic ourselves:

(You can see better pictures of the funky art at the park website.) It reminded me so much of the holodeck on "Star Trek: The Next Generation", especially the episode where Data is playing Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty gains control of the holodeck arch and I'm just gonna stop right there before I implode in nerdliness.

So, anyway, the day's objective was accomplished, the weather was nice (don't let the clouds in the pictures fool you, it was actually clear and gorgeous most of the day), and I got to have a nice scenic ramble. One other photographic high point – the Skytrain dropped me off at the Burrard Street station, and in order to get to the apartment I was looking at (and the Planetarium and the Crab and the Park) I needed to cross the Burrard Street bridge over English Bay. Sure, I could've grabbed a bus – the same bus I'd take to UBC if I moved there, incidentally – but since it was nice, I decided to walk.

As I was crossing the bridge, I saw a doggy play group down on the beach below. One of them was a Scotty!

No, really it's a Scotty. Zoom in for me, Carl.

Right. Well, anyway. I love Scottish terriers – I had one named Edison when I was growing up, and my parents have had another one (named Buster) since. (Yes, I named my dog Edison. Hey, I was only ten at the time! If I'd known better, I'd have called him Tesla.) Now, the thing about Scotties is that while they have short little legs and are not, actually, very good runners, they believe that they are second only to the wind itself in terms of speed. The chap (or possibly chappette) in the blue jacket would throwe the ball, and all the dogs would tear after it – there were a couple of black labs, a black and white dog of some description, and something smaller than the Scotty and brown (you can see that one up closer to the water, looking a bit like driftwood). All of them, including the little brown thing, were lengths ahead of the Scotty, but the Scotty was giving it his best and appeared to be having a wonderful time. If it was all about spirit, he would've got the ball every time.

… just had one venti macchiato too many.