For the first month I dog-sat two raucous Irish setters who barked incessantly and drove the neighbours mental while their owners were in England. During my lunch break I’d have to race down to the house to walk them and sometimes I’d have to chase them in the woods to get them to come back. They never listened to me! It was a tough gig, the dogsitting. I was also quite isolated and my mobile phone had spotty reception and mostly no reception at all. I missed seeing my friends in Vancouver whenever I wanted and it bugged me that I couldn’t call them except from the house landline. With all the free time I suddenly had, I spent it at the gym — that’s about the last time I was a dedicated gym rat.

On the upside, the house was new and spacious (I had the whole lower floor to myself) and there was a great beach below the house. I spent a lot of time down there with the dogs:

One day I happened to have my camera with me and encountered the biggest jellyfish washed up on shore that I’d ever seen. This thing was so enormous I preferred to believe it was an alien life form that hurtled to earth and went SPLAT. You can see a dog paw print for scale.

I also lived in another house after this one, but I’ll save that for another day when I’ve got more time… I’ll leave you with a picture of me taken by my friend Marc on a camping trip less than a year before these pics. That was one of the best camping trips ever… and now looking at these old film scans I’m really missing the scenery of BC!

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July 22, 2003
Chez Gail, Beach Avenue, Vancouver

Something bizarre happened when I was in New York City at the end of September. I was enjoying a Magners with JimmyOK and LarimdaME at an Irish pub in SoHo when Jimmy turned to me and said, “I met you years ago.”

“Really?” I said. I mentally scanned back to early trips to NYC in 2000 and 2002, and I couldn’t recall meeting him. My facial recognition skills have always been above par, but maybe the last year has taken its toll on my faculties.

I was flummoxed. Could it have been abroad? He has family living in Europe, did we meet in Amsterdam? I’ve been there four times. Finally I broke down and asked, “Where???”

“Through Ramon Stoppelenburg,” he said. “I’d been following Ramon’s travels and when I saw your photo on Flickr, I said, ‘I know her!’ Ramon stayed at your place, and I’d invited him to stay at mine, but he never came to the U.S.”

The backstory is that a Dutch guy named Ramon Stoppelenburg travelled the world for free from May 2001 – July 2003 through his website called LetMeStayForaDay.com. (The website is still active as of this writing.) I don’t remember how I found his site, but I sent him an invitation and he stayed with me for a few days in February (by that time the “a Day” part was found to be rather unsustainable) at the beginning of his Canadian tour and passed through in July at the end of the trip.

February 21, 2003
February 22, 2003
February 23, 2003
July 22, 2003

Steve Savage of TheSavageFiles.com also stayed at my place in 2003, and between their websites, I gave up the idea of anonymity on the internet. My name was out there. (Nearly four years later, I can tell you it didn’t matter. You know what’s worse? Putting your name in a prize draw at the shopping mall and getting junk mail and telemarketing calls forever. At least on the internet there are spam filters.)

When I found this mock interview video clip to upload to YouTube (it was previously hosted on my SFU webspace, which is now defunct), I remembered some of my conversation with Ramon that day and how he felt about reaching the end of his travels through the website. It’s been several years now since that afternoon, but for some reason his words stuck with me. Ramon write a bit about it on his homepage:

I know some people can be very happy with one job in a lifetime, but I didn’t see me travel the way I did for a very long time. I am even surprised that it took me so long!

When I just finished this project in August 2003 I was very bitter about it all. I did not want to think about it and for once not care about a website.

Fortunately things went better with me. Nowadays I look back much more happier about the amazing feat I have accomplished.

- Ramon Stoppelenburg, LetMeStayForADay.com

Interesting how perspectives change, given enough time.

I told Jimmy that I had one other connection to Ramon, that is he invited me to Orkut.com back in January 2004, and that was where I met David. In a huge twist of irony, David was invited to Orkut by his first girlfriend from high school. (The ironic part is a whole other story.)

The point of all this, other than the need for some kind of flowchart for my life, is that the intersection of lives and experiences is

1. accompanied with varying degrees of risk (i.e., fear of strangers), and
2. resultant in outcomes we won’t know for years, or maybe will never fully realise.

Last week someone asked me about when I met David, which later led me to admit, “If I had not bought that plane ticket and met David when I did, I’d… never have met him at all.”

While I edited this videoclip I thought, “Thanks, Ramon.”

Technorati tags: gailontheweb, gailatlarge, Ramon Stoppelenburg, videoclip, interview, worldwideweb, travel, life, Flickr, LetMeStayForADay.com

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I’ve come to dread Tuesdays. Why? Because we’ve been given bad news three Tuesdays out of the past six. I don’t want any more bad news, but I can’t prevent it any more than I can stop Tuesday from happening.

Tonight I’ve been going over my photo library, uploading random shots from the past few months into Flickr. It’s a welcome distraction from today’s news, coupled with yesterday’s scare. I do what I can, which is frustratingly little in the face of things.

I took this photo back in July, in Vancouver’s English Bay. There’s a spit of land that juts out into the ocean, and people often sit on the benches or rocks to watch the sun set over the mountains and ocean of West Vancouver.

When I first moved to Beach Avenue, I used to eat dinner by the balcony and watch the sun set almost every day in the late spring and summer. I never tired of it. I lived in that apartment for nearly seven years, and took many sunset photos from that balcony after buying my first digital camera in 2002.

If there’s one thing a person can count on, if nothing else, it’s a sunset.

Technorati tags: digital photography, sunset, Vancouver, English Bay

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The most excruciating one I did detail last week, but there have been more.

I had this idea to create a postcard that served multiple purposes:

- wish our friends and families a Happy New Year
- inform people that I’m moving and my new address
- show photos of ourselves, the plane, Hugh the cat, venues, the rings, etc.
- give preliminary information about the wedding (dates, venues)

That’s a LOT of information to cram into a postcard, let me tell you!! David and I collaborated on the design, as we did with the rings.

I wanted to wait a bit for people to receive the postcard, but then I realised that most of the recipients don’t know this blog exists, and those who do probably have it by now.

I took all of the photographs, except for the plane (David, who took that photo?), and he took the one of Tripp House. I haven’t seen Tripp House yet, only the photographs David e-mailed to me. David Photoshopped the pictures into the layout, and formatted it for my Canon photo printer. I printed the cards out, and sat in cafes and wrote, wrote, wrote… until my hand felt like it was going to fall off and I had shooting pains in my right shoulder. After I’d posted them all, I went through the list and counted 70 postcards, and of those, 5 of them were full-fledged letters… that’s the problem when you’re behind in correspondence — there’s simply too much to say!! I’m usually pretty good with keeping in touch with people, but I was feeling guilty over Christmas, receiving cards from people with photos of their kids I’d neglected to send congratulatory birth announcements for, people who I’d been meaning to inform that I’m engaged, people who got married, people who had “just” moved into their new house half a year ago! I had a stack of cards I’d purchased just for those occasions, for those people, sitting on a shelf that is no longer here because my furniture’s all been moved. So of course I had to root around for them, so that I could include this postcard and give them the full allotment of news. For anyone who’s received a postcard from me, it’s well-known I fill up every bit of white space available, so writing 70 postcards means writer’s cramp!!

Another project I’ve been working on is burning my entire music collection to my PowerBook and then copying them to my iPod. (It’s what inspired me to create that movie of the kids’ puppet show, because I’d come across a CD single I’d purchased while living in the U.K. of a song used in one of my favourite Guiness adverts, Guaglione by the Perez Prado Orchestra.) So far I’m on stack four of six CDs, but it’s a fairly passive process, not the painful one that is re-uploading archived photos, formatting, and fixing bad code.

Ever gone through your music collection in its entirety? It’s wacky. First of all, you’ll come across music you won’t even remember having, let alone buying. I have a fair number of compilations, and I found about a dozen songs that cut across them. I know it’s been a long time since I’ve gone through my music, because it’s been a long time since I’ve made a CD for a friend, something I used to do with some regularity. Except most of the time I did it the hard way — CD to tape, because I only acquired a CD burner a few years ago, when the office bought one for my home machine. (Remember the days of tape-to-tape compilations? OUCH! Or, even worse — making my own tapes off RADIO broadcasts in grade school… DOUBLE OUCH!!!)

Actually, I did make a CD for a friend a year ago, but since it was a cat theme, I trawled the music download sites instead of my music collection for the songs I wanted — I knew I didn’t have many (any?) cat-themed songs. Cat Stevens, that’s about it. Oh, and Tom Jones’ What’s New Pussycat? I wanted to copy my entire music collection so I won’t care so much if the CDs get damaged in shipping, or I can leave them with a friend to take with me on a later trip. I can also use the music to make more iMovies, for friends or for web publishing. It’s definitely one of the more pleasurable projects.

One of the things I like to buy when I’m in a foreign country is local music. Or, at least music that is available there and new to me. I find prices in Europe and even the U.S. (with the exchange rate), a lot more expensive than in Vancouver (sometimes 3x), so I try to be selective. Which is not easy when you don’t know what you’re buying and there aren’t any listening stations, but part of the excitement is finding great music that I wouldn’t know about otherwise. So yes, it’s definitely worth archiving my music collection, I keep telling myself after I import CD after CD into iTunes. It does bring back a lot of memories and I wouldn’t know where to start trying to make a mental inventory of it all!

Thankfully, four years ago I spent three whole days in my apartment organising my photo collection. My word, was that ever a project. I don’t think I left the apartment those three days; I was surrounded by hills and vales of photographs. One day I’ll scan them all, but at least they’re in some semblance of order now. If I’d had to do that this month, I would’ve started crying!

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I was tempted to buy jalapeno and cream cheese poppers (see food post, two previous), but I had french fries with my sandwich today instead!

I’m going to miss that corner store. Well, it’s not really on the corner, but it’s very close and very convenient. It also has a decent selection of films, as convenience stores go (at least when it’s not snowing) — I’ve rented lots of independent movies there. The neighbourhood in Pennsylvania has no corner store — the closest store is at the bottom of the hill (there’s no shoulder for pedestrians), across a highway. See here for an aerial pic. Maybe I should get flourescent tape for my coat, or one of those blinking lights so I can be seen at night? How naff! I’ll look like one of those crossing guards at school!

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Oy! What’s with the snow!

I just returned from lunch with my friend Tom, and we had our share of sliding around downtown in his new Subaru. We slid around Burrard Street, and we slid down Thurlow Street to Beach Avenue. On the way down, there was a Honda that sidled none-too-gently up against a FedEx truck, much to the irritation of the FedEx driver.

I was feeling a bit of loss today, as I handed over my plants to Tom. One of them was a tree that I’d rescued from the garbage and repotted. It thrived to the point where I had to prune it, very reluctantly, after it started to take over the living room. Another plant was a small tree I bought in its infancy not long after I moved in. I remember back in ’98 my friend Marc commented on how great it looked in its green, Vietnamese-style pot. The vine I’d acquired much, much later, but it had wound its way around the doorframe and made the area near the kitchen homier. Plants are living things, so it’s natural to get a bit attached to them after you’ve tended and watched them grow for years.

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More on the folly that is Vancouver with snow.

Technorati tags: snow, Vancouver, winter

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I haven’t moved in nearly 7 years, so I’ve accumulated more since I’ve been here than at probably any other time in my life. It’s the longest I’ve ever lived in one place, and I’ve

– bought a few things
– acquired more than a few things from other people who’ve stayed at Hotel Gail
– and, on occasion, still find things I never realised I had… probably more remnants from other people.

It’s more than a trip down memory lane, it’s a pain in the ARSE, that’s what moving is. The only way I can keep from thinking of it as a pain in the arse is to take those trips down memory lane. It’s not just a simple move, though. I’m shipping my life across the continent, and across a border, so it’s much more complicated than changing my address and getting an amendment to my driver’s license. My sister-in-law has done the same thing, in reverse. She’s from a small town in Maine, while I’m going to a small town in Pennsylvania. But, they’re moving again, too — Allan and Cheryl and the five kidlets were accepted to a housing co-op in Cloverdale, a 4-bedroom, 2-bathroom unit. I’m really glad they were able to move into a HOUSE, finally. Not only do they need more space, the co-op is family-oriented, with a playground. It’s nowhere near a Skytrain station, so I’ll just have to use my car co-op while I’m visiting. Thank heavens for co-ops!!

Making address changes took part of Sunday, all day Monday, and a bit of Tuesday, with one account left to cancel — tenant’s insurance with BCAA, which I have to do by fax. I spent a LOT of time listening to ‘hold’ music, what fun. Some of the utilities were easy — eg. BC Hydro, which was a simple cancellation. Some were more complicated to change, like Primus, because I have two accounts with them, one for the mobile phone (I REFUSE to pay Telus Mobility’s long distance rates, so I use a Primus access number to bypass Telus), the other for the fax and phone number. I had to consolidate the accounts, change the plans, then change the address. I left the worst for last: Telus. I have Telus ADSL Enhanced, hosted on my fax line. I switched my landline over to Primus VoIP last year, which makes things easier because I can keep my Vancouver phone number, and my family and friends can continue using it. I’m transferring my Telus internet over to my Vancouver address up the street (Eliza’s), so I have a utility in my name in Vancouver. For a number of accounts, I don’t have the option of using anything but a Canadian address, but most I can reroute to Pennsylvania.

I’m also no longer an employee of my company, I’m a consultant. Which means I’ll have greatly reduced hours, and I’m in charge of my own expenses. This is my first foray into self-employment, but it’s probably the best time ever to do so — I’ve started a creative venture with a friend, and I need more development time. I also want to finish my degree, and this will allow me to do it without the rest of my hair going completely gray, or getting pulled out like it has been from 2001-2004.

So, the moving saga continues… at the moment I’m transferring my XP files to my Mac via a firewire drive that David borrowed from his office, but I have all sorts of Windows-based archives that must wait until I’ve configured Virtual PC properly, and installed the required XP files. Just the sort of late-night or early-morning activity that drives me to distraction, hence the blogging. More later, of course.

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Things are messier than I’d like to show, but this is the current state of my home office. I bought a BenQ 15-inch LCD panel on Sunday, to replace the massive 21-inch Sony CRT monitor that monopolised my table. This way I can access both the Powerbook and the desktop more easily. In typical Gail-unconventional-fashion, my laptop screen is bigger than my desktop screen, yes. By two inches, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is, in screen real estate terms.

Next week I’ll take a photo of my home office, in Pennsylvania. I’m sure it will be considerably neater!! I’m lugging some hardware with me, such as the wireless router and my VoIP gateway. This way my phone number will remain the same, and anyone who phones it will have no idea I’m actually 4,000kms away. The broadband phone just hooks up into any high-speed connection, and my Vancouver number is ported to it, so it will display that way in Caller ID, too.

I fly to New York bright and early on Saturday morning. I know I’ve been pretty sporadic with the blogging lately, but I assure you — details forthcoming!

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It started out as a clear day, then this thick fog rolled in, obscuring everything past the trees. It was no less than BIZARRE to see it roll in so fast, enveloping everything, then quickly dissipating. I managed to stop gawking long enough to snap a couple of shots as it started to vanish.

Technorati tags: fog, Vancouver, digital photography

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