all in all a pretty good week - Victoria Busker Festival

So this was a pretty long week.  A very nondescript week at work - just a plugging a way.  Still it was nice to see some projects that I have been working on come to fruition. I started off the week in a bit of a down mood since a couple of pounds that I lost have found me again.  So I have mostly been behaving in my eating.  On monday I did something really special.  That is the day I usually take the bus to work - in the afternoon it was so nice I decided than rather doing a 45 minute bus ride home I would walk.  It is only about five km so it took me just over an hour and I really really liked it.

Marla and I went downtown on Monday night to take in the Victoria International Busker's festival.  We saw Sharon Mahoney at the Re/Max Ship's Point stage.  She is an ultra Canadian show that was more annoying than apologetic.  We took a walk up Government street and watched a marimba band and a couple of other little acts on the street.  Our last act of the night was Victor Rubilar.  He did a very good and very funny act on the lawn of the Empress.

Best of all was that we had lunch from the rood trucks.  There was a Mexican Truck, Pig the BBQ place was there, a spot called Bonnie's Grill (Marla really liked their fries) and a hot dog truck.  There was also a Greek Food Place left over from folkfest.  I found that the people in the trucks were very good at helping me find bariatric alternatives.  In some cases, like the perogy place  - I just had the children's meal.  But over all it worked out good.

The next night we were back again.  Marla wanted more of her fries but we found that a small fries order was more than enough for her.  I opted to bring a tomato and stuff from home.  All was well.


On Tuesday we returned and watched The Checkerboard Guy who was a total hoot.  He is a very funny BC guy who reminds me of a vaudeville act. Following him was Les Vitamines.  They are a pair of very athletic gymnasts and clowns from Quebec City.  I really liked their show.  The things they could do with a balance ball was amazing. 

We watched Jessica Arpin whose show was only so-so.  It had a few good moments but mostly it was kind of dull.  It picked up a whole lot when we watched the next act Les Walkyries.  They are a three girl gymnast and fire act.  Waay too much story and not enough tricks but pacing is depends on the energy from the crowd.  We found our limit for the shows is only about two hours so we packed it in.

Thursday night was exercise night so we didn't make it downtown but we were back on Friday.  Apart from getting a super parking spot we missed the six pm show so we took some time to go through the night market.  Not much new at the market.  So we got some food and went over to the Harbour Air stage to wait for the next show.  It was the Rock and Roll Magic Brian.  He had a good idea and a good accent but his magic show belonged at a children's birthday party.  We were freezing so we left the harbour and walked  up to Bastion Square.  There we saw the end of Miss Australia.  By far this was the worst show of the festival - it was just weird.  Finally we went to Government Street and found a piece of the curb to watch Fraser Hooper.  He was more of the silent clown only using whistles and chirps but he did very well especially with children.  His best part was that one of his 'helpers' was a little 3'6" Darth Vader.

All in all - a pretty good week.

Work, work, work

This week was totally focused on working at the college. The highlight was my walk up Mt. Tolmie. I did this walk a year ago and it took me an hour. I did it on Tuesday and it took 28 minutes. Okay so I did run a bit of it but it was mostly just a nice brisk walk. On the way up I came nose to nose with a deer who was nibbling behind a bush. He was not emamoured at me as I was at him. He just turned and dissappeared quietly behind a bush. I think it is nice not to be so focused on everything that one could just turn and close themselves to the things that do not matter.
It was a glorious day and wonderful walk. My fitbit said that I climbed 14 stories. So it made for a good day which I hope I can repeat often.

Last job for a while

I am still catching up, so today's writing is about last Wednesday.  I like Wednesdays, I work at Interurban campus so my focus is different.  Literally different this week because I was out shooting images of the totem in the courtyard to update our photobank.  

Then I was off to the Dr. for my allergy shot.  And I have the evenings all to myself - a nice walk with the dog, some photos, catching up with my cleaning chores, or just goofing off.  Tonight I had to work but it was good work.  My call for the theater was for 8:30pm but it got pushed back to 9pm.  Which was kind of nice.  I was down at the theater early so I could find a parking place.  There was one right by the courthouse so that was cool.  Then the light was perfect for shooting at the Cathedral so I stopped by and caught some nice images. 

Finally I went back stage to watch the Lyal Lovett concert.  Lovett is rather shy so I just found a crate off stage in the wings.  Lovett's show was like is should have been behind the WSM Microphone on the Grand Ole Opry stage.  Lots of guitars, mandolins, strong drum line and great music.  A cross between Oh Brother Where Art Thou and Buddy Holly.  I really enjoyed the show.  I ended up sitting by one of the backup singers and just pleased with seeing the show.

It was a fairly fast strike of the show with a fairly big crew.  I like being fit enough to hump about gear and equipment and aside from a big cut I got on my arm all was well.

I got home about 1am and immediately fell asleep then it was up for work early in the morning - I had a 8am meeting at Lansdowne.

Thursday was a great day - I felt good all day and in the evening at the gym I ran four sets of three minutes at over 5mph each.  This is huge - I was running!  Not lumbering or wogging or fast hustling out right running.  It felt great!

looking backwards with Bill Maher

So last Saturday (July 7) I started the day out pretty nice with a walk with Gerry and Chris down along the water front.  It is nice seeing Gerry as he can really see how much I have lost.  Chris although keeps me going.  I owe a lot to him for being around and keeping me motivated.  It was a beautiful morning for a walk and we all had a great time.

Afterwards Marla and I went down to Sauce for lunch.  I was hungry enough that I could eat the full chicken appy order - four small pieces of chicken breast in an ailoli sauce.  And that was pushing it a bit.  Still well nourished and ready to roll we went over to Sound Advice to pick up Marla's car.  Its security system was acting up and needed to be replaced.  They did a really good job but it also cost $100 more than we expected.  Apparently the old one wasn't installed that well either.

So in the evening it was time to go back to work.  Tonight was Bill Maher down at the Royal Theater.  I was on spotlight and had a good time doing the show.  He did a funny show but I don't think it was worth the price they were scalping tickets for - $200.

The next day Marla and I went down to catch the end of the Pride Week Parade.  It worked out pretty nice where we saw the end of the parade route and were really close to the Pride Festival.  We checked out a few of the booths but soon had to go as it was time to see Gerry and Jan before they return to Federal Way.  We had a nice lunch at the Swiftsure and then Marla and I toddled off to check out the provincial museum.  We took a bunch of touristy photos and had a wonderful time in the sunlight.  I made sure to get a picture in front of the Empress.

We had a really nice walk through the museum.  I was amazed that Marla liked the Dinosaur exhibit.  We actually went to see the Photos of the Queen but it kind of sucked.  So that wrapped up a pretty good weekend.  I write more about the rest of the week a little later.

Blake

great baseball weekend

Thursday June 28, 2012

This was one of our get out of town weekends. I had the Thursday through Tuesday's off and there was a definite need for a road trip.

I may complain about the price of BC Ferries but never complain about the view. However, today we elected to be a little different. Instead of heading out to Swartz Bay and crossing through Active Pass to Tswassen we drove up to Naniamo and left from Depature Bay. It made for a really nice drive. We were on the Queen of Colquitlum which is no where near as nice as the super ferries but on the other hand we didn't spend a bunch on the buffet and instead had a White Spot burger in the cafeteria. We ended up sitting beside a nice retired couple who told us the joys of being a senior with neat little benefits.

So we drove through the city and found our way over the Lions Gate bridge which is getting narrower and narrower or so it feels. City traffic wasn't too bad, either that or I am becoming extremely patient which I think Marla would dispute. Still we found our way to the River Rock Resort in Richmond. I was a little bummed that the Night Market wasn't on tonight; it is only on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays but we still had a great time staying in. For some reason I was fiddling around on youtube and found a whole bunch of interviews done with James Garner. So it was a treat playing all them for Marla.

The view from our room at the River Rock Hotel

The River Rock is a nice place to stay and it has some things that we just love to have happen. The first is the story of Rory the dog. We used to have a bearded collie rescue dog named Rory but sadly he passed away. He had a wonderful long life in our happy home. So a few years later we were in Value Village and found a sweet little stuffed dog whom we decided should be the guard dog for our car. The only challenge is that when we stay a places like the River Rock we tend to freak out the valets when we grab the dog and toss him casually into the trunk for safe keeping.

This time we checked into the room and they gave us an upgrade to a suite. The issue was when the bellhop took us up to our room we ended up on the wrong side of the hotel with no marina view. One of the reasons we stay here is because of the marina view. So our very efficient bellhop called the front desk and had us transferred to the right side.

So we got settled into our room and it was very nice as usual. It just took a while to get there. I like staying at the River Rock. They have the most comfortable beds of any hotel where we have stayed. The rooms are small but comfortable and the view is great. From our room we look out across the river where there is lots of barge and tug boat action. We can see across to the mountains past Vancouver and directly onto one of the runways of YVR airport. Every so often a plane flies over head to land and we are close enough to read the small print on the wings – well a bit of an exaggeration but we are pretty close.

We always book with Iprefer and this time was no different except that usually we get a bottle of wine with the room. Somebody must have figured it out because now the free gift is an appetizer from Lulu's or Curve. So now they are making bar money with the free appy. It was okay because we watched a bit of the Seattle ballgame on the big screen while we had our plate of wings. They were pretty good too.

We both slept pretty well in the big comfy bed and the next morning I was up for my walk. I did a good long hike through seedy Richmond. I checked out where the night market would be and then walked a bit along number 3 road. When I came back I went for another swim in the pool. The pool at the hotel is really nice. It is forest like and fairly warm. I didn't do the slide this time since my only urge was to enjoy the hot tub. After a shower I got Marla up and we hit the road for Seattle.

Friday June 29 – Richmond to Marysville

We are not really in a big hurry since Marysville is not that far away so we had a nice buffet breakfast at the River Rock. I am eating less and less all the time it seems. I got my two eggs but I basically ended up doing a deconstructed eggs benny. I 86ed the bread and had the ham, poached egg and a bit of Hollandaise sauce. It was good but frankly the poached eggs are fine. It was a good thing that the buffet is included in the meal since we definitely don't eat the value of the price. However I have come to the realization that I do not pay for the volume of the buffet as much as I do for the selection.

We were off on the road by 11am and toodling down to customs on highway 99. We have changed our usual route that now we prefer to go down through customs at the Peace Arch Crossing. The border crossing store is much nicer at Peace Arch and it is frankly equipped with better bathrooms. That's important because it is the difference between a clean nice place and freezing your bottom off. We continued down our trails and this time just zoomed through Bellingham and past the Skagit Valley Casino. We went straight to the Tulalip and our spot for the night.

Checking into the Tulalip was really easy. The valet took the car and we got a trainee bellhop to help our bellhop. They upgraded us to the tenth floor – another advantage of iPrefer.com as a place to book our rooms. We had a nice room that overlooked the pool and down towards Seattle. Of course it was cloudy and foggy so we didn't see anything. There was a strange looking collection of ram shackled huts back of the hotel off of the property. I thought it may have been strikers or something but it turned out that it was the residents of “Boom Town”. Boom Town as it happens is a collection of about seventy vendors of fireworks. The town is divided into five or six streets each one lined with about 15 vendor stalls. It is like the redneck America that we hear about in stories and comedy shows. Lots of muscle shirts, casual people whom you would associate with the carnival but really they were the nicest bunch of folks. All were very friendly, willing to talk even though they knew we were not buying anything. And the fireworks were amazing. Everything from small little ladyfingers to big shells and mortars were on sale. Some packages were as big as six feet high and four feet wide. They sold for a couple of hundreds of dollars and were quite amazing. Off to the side of the place was a field where people could blow off their booty. There was a constant boom of fireworks and the bright show that goes with them.

Our room was now normal for what we would expect from the Tulalip. It is very nice, comfortable and of course had Marla's' most favourite shower. We got settled in and then went out to go shopping at the Premium Outlet Center. The shopping wasn't so good. I saw some stuff that I liked but not enough to buy. We did find a really nice leather jacket for me at Wilson's but it turned out that it was not priced down so when we thought it would cost $80 it actually cost $260. So screw that. That pretty much established the theme for our trip which was “oh crap, well we will do something different.”

So rather than shopping at the outlet place we ended up going over to Fred Meyer's. I found the runners that I was looking for and at $30 felt much better about my purchase. We went back to the room and settle down for a while. The place was full of lots of ladies who came to see the Chippendale dancers. We got comfy in our room and siddled up to the window really close so we could see the battery of fireworks being fired off. They wrapped up the impromptu firework display at about 11pm but the bangs outside our window were replaced by the carnal thumping from the couple next door. The viagra must be working because they went on longer than the energizer bunny long into the morning.

Saturday June 30 – Marysville – Lynnwood

We had picked up some breakfast supplies at Freddies so it was a pretty simple meal. We decided that tonight rather than going to the theater and seeing Les Mis that we would catch another baseball game. Good thing too because the tickets were much cheaper. We picked some up off of stubhub and they were really nice seats third row of section 221 in the Terrace Lounge. It was Boston against Seattle and we were hoping for a good game. But first we had to secure our room for the night. It was still early but we decided to check into the Residence Inn in Lynnwood. I didn't want to rush too much so we left pretty early. As we were driving in Lynnwood we saw a Best Buy and since there was time I slipped in to pick up a FitBit.

It is a really cool pedometer and electronic toy. Hopefully it will also be a helpful motivator. Parking at Safeco is pretty steep - $30 but it is also very convenient. Since we were down early we went for supper at Pyramid Ales. I like Pyramid and had some really good calamari. Marla, god bless her, was trying to be adventurous and tried a BBQ chicken pizza. When the food came the pizza tasted differently. It tasted surprisingly like a Hawaiian. In fact it was a really good Ham and Pineapple pizza.

Turns out the waitress brought us the wrong pizza and so now we found we had two pizzas on our table. Really good thing because the adventurous pizza we had ordered really sucked. Our seats were great for the game except that we had a tv camera just in our view, it didn't block anything but we could see it. We were in the third row and it was fun. The game was long – 11 innings and Seattle won it at the end. So we all went home happy. On the way we made another stop at Freddies and picked up some dessert – cheesecakes.

We could have had a soak or a swim at the Residence Inn where we were staying but in truth we were just tuckered out.

July 1, Sunday, Safeco Field

The next day, Sunday, I went out for a nice long walk along the interurban trail. Along the way I found a Target store so I stopped in and picked up some baseball food (pistachios for me and sunflower seeds for Marla). My fitbit worked pretty good logging in about 10,000 steps on my walk alone. This time we already had a parking pass so we just zoomed into town. We didn't have time for another lunch at pyramid so instead we just did a little shopping in the Mariner's

Store. We got Marla a cute little Mariners top and found the way to our seats. This time we were in Section 219 which is a little further out than ours were the day before. Still they were really good seats and we enjoyed them. The nuts held off the hungries but I did need some protein so I tried out a $9 roast pork sandwich. Even without eating the bun it was pretty good. Food prices in Safeco are pretty outrageous; a hot dog is $6 a beer can cost $10. It is all good food though and eating at the ball park is part of the experience.

After the game, the Mariner's lost, we drove up highway 99 rather than taking I-5 yet again. It was nice driving through the collection of strip malls and auto dealers. It took a little longer but it was better than flying down the interstate. We found our way to a grocery store and picked up some cheesecake for dessert then we went over to the Lynnwood Outback restaurant. I was a little unsure of the place because it was in a mall rather than in a stand alone restaurant building but in the end it was pretty good. We had shrimp and rib eye steak. It was a little fatty but really good.

After we got back to the hotel we had an urge to have a hot tub but it turns out that they had to cement in the tubs as they could not be handicapped accessible. So no hot tub which was a bummer. Still we were tuckered out so we just had our cheesecake and relaxed for a while.

Monday, July 2

Lynnwood to home

I started my walk by going the other direction this time on the Interurban Trail in Lynnwood. It is a nice trail but it is nowhere nearly as nice as hiking around the Bothel Residence Inn. The Interurban trail goes along side the highway so there is a constant drone of traffic. Fitting with the theme of this trip we decided to come home a different way. This time we travelled to Anacortes Washington to catch the Washington State Ferry to Sidney BC. We did a quick stop at the Swimminomiish Casino which was all right. We won about $10 each but they didn’t have very good food service. So we moved onto the Anacortes Ferry terminal. We were there with our reservations about an hour and a half early so we had time to try out the gastronomic delights of the terminal. It was basically a hut and a bbq that made pretty good hamburgers.

We got onto the ferry and neither of us were too anxious to go up on deck so we stayed in the car and watched Pirates of the Caribbean III. Marla made the most out of her sleeping time and I checked out the occasional view of the pretty islands as we passed.

Soon we were home and all in all it was a very good weekend.