Not the usual "Car of Your Dreams" dream

Years ago, before I had much sense, I traded a ’72 Beetle for a 1940 Buick 4-door sedan that was not in running condition. It still ranks among one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made. Fortunately that stinkin' Buick is long gone now.

Last night I dreamt about my parents driving that car, still the same burgundy red with silver roof, but fully restored, and in coupe format instead of 4-door sedan.

They were just leaving a large family gathering at a church. It seems to have been a gathering in their honour. I rushed outside to get a ride with them, and in passing declined a ride from someone that was going to the same place they were leaving for. I got to the car only to realize that there was no room for me in the car because the back seat was folded down flat for my Dad’s collapsed wheelchair. That in itself was strange because he always pulled it into the car to store it folded but upright, immediately behind the driver’s seat.

I was left standing in the parking lot as both cars left and I had no ride.

Kitchen Update 2

I must say, it’s quite fascinating to watch the progression of this kitchen renovation (even more so since I’m not doing any of the heavy lifting!). But I’ve found that it’s easier to track the changes focusing on one wall at a time, especially for those that have never been in our kitchen.

I’ve always liked progression photography, where one can view events unfolding over time, happening at the same location. A really good example I’ve seen is a series of photos depicting the controlled implosion of the Georgia Medical/Dental building that occurred at least a decade ago (probably longer). They are on display in my dentist’s office. Since I’m a photography enthusiast, it makes those semi-annual check-ups at little easier to endure. I’m a bit of a dentophobe.

Recently on another blog, I’ve been following past and present photos of locations in Vancouver. An archival photo is posted along with a current shot of the same location. Sometimes it’s hard to tell that the two locations are indeed the same. Most of the time, at least one heritage building is present to anchor the scene. What I find interesting is the tree growth over the time period.

A few years ago I bought an old framed photograph of the Lions Gate Bridge in a second-hand store. It’s one of those old black & white’s that was hand coloured. The whole North Shore that is visible in the photo is all trees. The Guinness family built the bridge initially to entice development of its newly acquired land, essentially the British Properties in West Vancouver.

I’ve tried a couple of times to take the same shot as it exists today, but as of yet I’m not satisfied enough with my attempts to display my past and present views of the bridge.

But I will show you one wall of our kitchen, past to current states. The first scene is, of course, anchored by our trusty carpentry spaniel, Shelby.

Kitchen reno update

The kitchen is progressing nicely. All the plaster has now been removed from the walls. We decided to keep the ceiling plaster intact in order not to trigger an avalanche of fine particulates of insulation.












Have you ever gotten insulation down the back of your shirt? It’s not even a little bit fun.

A layer of new gypsum board will be fastened to the existing ceiling to give it a smooth new finish.

Today the electrical upgrading will begin. We’ll finally have more than one duplex plug-in per wall. Back in ’62 no one could have anticipated the average home-owner’s desire for kitchen gadgets. And lights! We’re adding much more brightness to the room. Ceiling pot lights, under-cabinet puck lights, and two hanging feature lamps over the island will eliminate those over-the-shoulder shadows. I mean, what were they thinking way back when, only installing one or two lights in the middle of the ceiling to illuminate the entire room?

Kitchen renovation

Our kitchen renovation began yesterday...after 6 years of planning and saving.

The photos give a sense of my labours on Sunday in final prep for our contractor to start work. I spent 9 hours clearing out the contents; some went into boxes placed in the dining room, and some went downstairs to our temporary kitchen set up in the laundry room. I lost track of the number of times I went up and down those stairs!

Later I'll post a "before picture" of the kitchen taken the day we took posession of the house back on Nov. 11, 2003.

Blowin' in the Wind

Have you seen the new wind turbine on the top of Grouse Mountain? Somehow I had my head in the sand and missed all the news stories leading up to its unveiling.

I was traveling to work on Skytrain one morning a couple of weeks ago, gazing at the local hills as I often do, when I spotted a tall white spire just East of the seasonally brown ski slope. The angle of the sun at that time of the morning was reflecting off the white paint bringing more attention to the tower than would normally be the case. That’s probably the reason I noticed it in the first place. It looked like the tip of a tent pole poking through the roof of a tent. I looked at for a few minutes, and as Brentwood station approached, I decided to get off there and see how close my digital telephoto lens would get.


That camera never ceases to amaze me. Not only did I get a much clearer view of the still unidentified spike, I also saw a construction crane beside it. I hadn’t seen the crane from the train platform. The image is a bit hazy, mostly from the atmosphere I would think, but the strength of the digital zoom is definitely space age.

As to what it actually was, I guessed it was either a communications tower or an extension of the chair lift. Not being a skier I really had no idea if a ski run existed in that location of the mountain or not.

The next day I was listening to my new favourite radio station, The Peak, when the host mentioned that the latest “green” technological wonder to hit Vancouver could be seen atop Grouse Mountain; a wind turbine. It’s supposed to provide up to 20% of Grouse’s electricity when it’s finished.

Plus (!), it’ll be crowned with an observation platform.

And no, for all of you fitness fanatic Grouse Grinders, you won’t have to climb a million stairs to reach the top. There will be an elevator to the observation deck.

How cool is that?

Sunrise

It’s that time of year again where the sun is blinding when I leave the house in the morning. It happened to me twice today (Sept. 11).

Since I’ve had this job (about 3 years now) and have been riding to the Skytrain station most mornings, I’ve been much more aware of how the sun arcs through the morning sky during its yearly cycle. Also, because I’m into photography a lot more in recent years (the convenience of digital), I’m more keenly aware of light in general.

I took a photo on January 30 from the back steps at the office in Burnaby that captured the intensity of the sunrise reflecting off the glass envelopes of the twin office towers at Metrotown. I’ve noticed since that the same reflection can’t be obtained at other times of the year.

This morning was the first time this year that the sun was exactly at the crest of the small hill on my street so that I couldn’t see the hill at all as I approached the stop sign. I had to use my hand to shield the entire top portion of the hill from view in order to see the hill at all. And forget about seeing oncoming traffic; it was impossible. I stopped and moved the palm of my hand in a circular pattern to see as much as I could before proceeding. That intersection in particular is notorious for glide-pasts. People seem to think that despite not having clear views in either direction due to parked cars that there’s barely a need to slow down, much less stop. Anyway, that’s fuel for a rant; I’m getting off topic.

The same situation presented itself again (the blinding sun, not people ignoring a stop sign) a few minutes later at the bottom of Keith Drive where it intersects E. 7th Avenue. I turn there to go to the Clarke Drive Skytrain station most mornings. It’s a longer hill at that point so it wasn’t quite as problematic to see oncoming traffic.

What’s interesting to me is the fact that by Monday (three days from now) the sun’s arc will have shifted a few degrees South, just enough to eliminate that glaring condition, and corresponding photo op, at those hills at that particular time in the morning.

(I’m posting this blog post late because it took me 10 more days to get the right photo of the scene that I describe in the post. And the scene I did capture was 5 blocks South of the street I live on. That illustrates how far the sun has marched South in only 10 days.)

That’s the beauty of living at this latitude. Not only do we get all forms of precipitation and cloud cover, we also get a wide array of sunlight scenarios. My wife works with a guy from Cuba, and he tells me that the sun doesn’t have nearly so much of an arc in that region of the world. The temperature stays relatively constant all year, and the hours of daylight don’t change much. I’d never really thought about that before, but of course, it makes sense. The closer you get to the equator, the smaller the sun’s arc will be.

Despite the allure of wearing shorts and sandals year round at Cuba’s latitude, I wouldn’t trade it for the wide variety photo ops in Vancouver.

Orbits

I was walking Shelby this evening and watching the early evening sky, thinking, “Wouldn’t it be interesting if I happened to see the International Space Station fly overhead again?”

Then, as if I'd willed it to happen, it gently glided past overhead. I’ve seen it three times now completely by accident. Now I can say there is definitely a pattern in terms of the time of day it passes overhead; early evening.

The first time I saw it was at the Summer Sessions concert at Ambleside, and the second time was while I was standing in my backyard waiting for my dog. Tonight I noticed another pattern; its navigation through the stars. At Ambleside I was a bit disoriented in terms of where exactly North was located, partly because I don’t live on the North Shore, and partly because we were in the park and I had no roads with which to locate myself. At the time I judged the ISS to be moving from NW to SE.

A few days later when viewing the ISS from my backyard, it was definitely more West to East. It passed just South of the handle of the Big Dipper, then seemed to run parallel to E. 33rd Avenue until it faded quite quickly from view as the Sun set on the much higher Space Station orbit. After seeing the West to East arc I seconded-guessed myself for a moment and thought I’d been wrong about the trajectory of the Ambleside fly-past.

But way back when, I do remember that I thought I was wrong once, but alas, I was mistaken. :-)

Upon seeing the ISS fly over yet again this evening, I can now say with surety that its arc was different from the 33rd Avenue parallel of a couple of nights ago. I first noticed it at 8:20 p.m. PDT; a small bright orb devoid of blinking aircraft lights traveling at a very uniform pace. (That thing must get phenomenal gas mileage, doing steady 'double nickels' down the interstellar interstate. The ultimate cruise control.) It approached the tip of the Big Dipper’s handle, but by then it was already heading off that bearing. It seemed to crest right over our back deck and it finally vanished from my view between two massive Cedar trees two properties to my South.

Theory proven; it’s orbit isn’t static. It’s changing.

One more thing I noticed tonight was that another smaller, dimmer satellite was leading the ISS across the sky, as if it was a tugboat pulling a freighter, tethered by an unseen thread.

The weather is supposed to be clear for the next 7 days according to the most recent forecast so I’m going to try to remember to watch for the Space Station each evening at around 8:15 or so. I want to see how the orbit evolves.