Picture of a Picture

It's been a while since I last blogged; crazy-busy at work, short-staffed again this summer.

And a lot's happened too. But firstly, let me start off with, "Deutschland, das ist kaput!" From World Cup contention, that is. But at least I witnessed "the goal" that I can reflect upon for some time to come. Toni Kroos kicked a perfect shot from an almost last minute free kick to score at about 3 minutes into stoppage time to give Germany the win against Sweden. As luck would have it I also ended up being able to watch Germany's 3rd match, this time against South Korea. I was scheduled to conduct a building review in Nanaimo so I got to see the first half of the game while traveling on the ferry. Just as well I didn't get to see the second half.

This Canada Day weekend is quite far removed from last year's. We were in London England last year for Canada's 150th b-day. This year we were in Burnaby Lake Park. A photograph I submitted to Burnaby Lake Nature House was chosen to be displayed this weekend so we stopped in to see it.

Kinda corny to have a photo of a photo I guess, but my photos don't get chosen
for display too often.

The park was again full of geese, but at a month or two since my last visit the goslings are maturing rapidly. Still not to proud to accept handouts however. I got some good close-ups as many of the geese thought I was bending down low to feed them, not just photograph them.

We were probably pretty lucky not to get rained on this afternoon at Burnaby Lake.

Even the chipmunks were getting in on the free food action.

Other than the nature walk, it seems all we've done is eat this weekend; oh, and we jogged 9 km along Burrard Inlet's south shore on Saturday morning in a light rain.

This is part of the Trans-Canada Trail located along Burrard Inlet's south shore, just east of the Ironworkers' Memorial Bridge.

We were introduced to a cool new (to us) coffee shop called La Foret in south Burnaby last weekend, so we stopped by again this morning. It's a former autobody shop that has been very inventively transformed into a restaurant.

Massive wood glulam beams are exposed between generous skylights. This
provides greenhouse style lighting for banana trees in a central planter/seating
area.

I've only ever seen these gabion baskets (wire "bales" filled with rocks) used in an exterior setting, usually for retaining walls. It's very cool to see this system used indoors. It looks like a living wall will climb this portion soon.

Kaleo

And finally, last Saturday night we went to see Kaleo playing at the PNE amphitheatre outdoor stage. They're a bluesy new group from Iceland. We saw their show last year too at the Orpheum. It's been a very long time since we've seen an outdoor show. Dan Mangan opened and we haven't seen him live on stage since we attended a similar outdoor show during the 2010 Winter Olympics.