September 24, 2004 by Gail
I signed for it about an hour ago, and I’m loading it up now.
I couldn’t get rid of the FedEx guy! He was coming on to me!
Is that geeky of me, or what??
A guy shows some interest, and I want to get rid of him so I can install applications on my new computer?!?!
Posted in Chez Gail (Vancouver), Unabashed Geekiness | 7 Comments
September 9, 2004 by Gail
Tonight while I was working at my computer, I caught a tree-filtered gleam of a gorgeous sunset. I grabbed the camera and managed to capture some rays of fading light on English Bay. The sun rises and sets every single day, I thought to myself. Yet, I keep looking out the window at the ocean, I keep taking photos, I keep trying to capture the moment, not wanting it to slip away into oblivion. I am always very easily impressed by nature. The ocean has the same mesmerising effect on me, and I am forever taking photos of mountains. I am surrounded by all of this, every day, and I never tire of it.
This is still one of my favourite sunset photos.
It was taken a few days into 1999, on a Dutch beach called Zaandvoort. I had just rung in the New Year on the Reeperbahn (the famous Red Light District of Hamburg) with Berit and Ansgar and went a bit overboard. From Germany I returned to Amsterdam (where I’d flown in on Christmas Day) to recover and meet up with Lucy, who was visiting me for a few days from England. Fedor, who was living in Hillegom at the time, drove us to Zaandvoort, where we frolicked in the sand, buffetted by a stiff January breeze. Every time I look at this photo, I remember that day. Feeling a bit rough (New Year’s Eve in Hamburg was quite the blur), but that beach and that sunset are burned into memory.
Technorati tags: sunset, Vancouver, Zaandvoort, The Netherlands, beach, English Bay
Posted in Ancient History, Chez Gail (Vancouver), film photography, Photography | No Comments
July 28, 2004 by Gail
It has “skin” on it… good enough for me.
I woke up at 5:30am with probably the second-worst cramp I have ever had, in my left calf. It was excruciating, and even though I tried to massage it out, it was so debilitating I could barely get out of bed to see if I could find something for it. The pain just kept coming in waves… I managed to locate a tube of some German stuff called Perskindol that either Christa or Iris or Daniela left… The only words on it in English are “Classic Gel” — which tells me absolutely squat about what it’s for. I get by with the French on it well enough, but I don’t know anything about the effectiveness of the product. I didn’t have anything else to try, so I gave it a go. It has these colourful flames on the tube, how can I go wrong? Ha!
It did make somewhat of a difference, and the scent wasn’t too nauseating. I managed to hobble over to the optometrist’s and back, then later last night I took to the pool for a while to tread water and get the leg moving without putting too much weight on it. By 10pm, it was good enough to walk across the Burrard Street Bridge to catch (speaking of heat) Fahrenheit 9/11 with Eliza. I was going to blog about it when I got home last night, but instead I discussed it with Socar and decided that was enough… there’s enough political commentary about it on the blogosphere.
Posted in Chez Gail (Vancouver) | 3 Comments
July 26, 2004 by Gail
Look at this! Wow! I was having a conversation with Dax, and turned left to see this out my window… I grabbed the camera to capture it, and sent him the photos. Gotta love technology, to be able to share a moment in a moment, with people thousands of miles away.
Posted in Chez Gail (Vancouver) | 4 Comments
July 19, 2004 by Gail
It happened at 1:01am, and I was working, but didn’t feel a thing. Danielle, who lives in northern BC, posted it immediately in the Vancouver Orkut community, but I couldn’t respond as I was in Orkut jail…
Earthquake in BC – Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland
I’ve felt two earthquakes since I moved to Vancouver in 1996. There have been others, but I was out of town when they occurred. The last time I felt one was during the day — I was working at my computer, and stuff was rattling on the shelves. Only one thing fell off, but I live on the fourth floor of a 32-storey building, so I’m certain the neighbours upstairs felt a bigger rattle. I think it was the earthquake that hit the Seattle area a few years ago — early 2001? The one I experienced before that happened in the middle of the night, and it felt like a light aircraft slammed into the side of my building… the bed vibrated so much on the parquet flooring that it moved a few inches… with me in it! I was just dozing off to sleep, and I had never felt an earthquake before, so I was spooked!
Posted in Chez Gail (Vancouver) | 4 Comments
July 12, 2004 by Gail
Got a bunch of stuff in the post recently, and being the photo junkie that I am, had to post them here. These days receiving any real mail through the post is a joy indeed!
From my #1 Mad Mate, Lucy, whose wedding I attended May 1 in England. I have to say, I was curious to find a soft, lumpy envelope come through the letterslot. I found a tiny t-shirt and a card… I don’t have any wine bottles at the moment, so I found a milk bottle and put the t-shirt on that. I found the note at the back of the shirt rather amusing: WARNING: THIS IS NOT A GARMENT.
I received a wedding invitation a week ago Friday from my friends Erich and Caroline, who are getting married next month. The invitation was addressed to “Gail & Stud”. I jokingly made an appeal in one of my Orkut communities for stud applications, which prompted some funny responses. I think one was even genuine. I think I would rather go alone and face the silly singleton questions than bring a stud along as a trophy companion, although the stud interviewing process in itself would be fun…
From my friend Claire, who visited Morocco recently. She says, “Things have changed, it’s getting better…” I’ve never been to Morocco, the closest I’ve been is Malaga, in the south of Spain, on my trip a couple of months ago, but it was always one of those places that seemed enchanting. I don’t know exactly where she went, but it would’ve been funny if she’d bumped into Steve Savage.
I’m not the only one who likes receiving postcards. Karl, who is one of the Orkut FCFGG Seattle-ites I met recently, also has a thing for postcards. I’ve got them all over my kitchen. It’s one of those little dead-end apartment kitchens, but with an amazing amount of storage and cupboard space, so I’ve covered them with postcards from friends and some I’ve accumulated over the years.
Technorati tags: mail, snail mail, invitation, post, postcards, gifts
Posted in Chez Gail (Vancouver), Friends, Singleton Life | 3 Comments
June 28, 2004 by Gail
My voting station is directly across the street from my building. It couldn’t be more than 20m from my front door.
Posted in Chez Gail (Vancouver), Politics + Economy | 2 Comments
June 17, 2004 by Gail
Hey Krisanne, we’ll do the photoshoot by the pool!
I took a pic a few minutes ago (click to enlarge). Behind the trees is the beach and English Bay… come on up, Seattle FCFGG people!
Posted in Chez Gail (Vancouver) | 2 Comments
June 6, 2004 by Gail
I took a break from my aforementioned Work Avoidance Behaviours to forage for food in the neighbourhood. What started out as a simple sandwich errand turned into a full-on grocery shop, complete with shower caddy. One left, at $1.49. Lucky me. Anyway, the food-foraging mission was to balance out the oversupply of condiments with Real FoodTM. I think you know what I’m talking about.
Looked in your fridge lately, people? Forget the mental inventory — trust me, it doesn’t work unless you just cleaned out your fridge. Go on, stick your nose in there and take a cursory inventory. Are there:
- half-filled bottles of sauces, eg. ketchup, HP, Worcestershire?
- packets of fast food condiments like vinegar, ketchup, mustard, or pseudo-salsa?
- tiny bottles of deli items such as capers, hot banana peppers, or chutney?
- salad dressings, eg. vinaigrette, diet/lite stuff that tastes horrible but you can’t bear to go to waste unless someone with less discerning tastes comes over who you can pawn it off to?
Yeah, I thought so.
I do things kinda backwards. For example, when I was last fiddling with this blog template, I had a look at the Haloscan commenting gallery, picked a decent commenting template, looked at the colour codes, applied them to my blog template, and — voilà! — it’s all done and everything matches. It seems this method is a good deal faster than previous attempts using a colour matching system that gave me the full spectrum of colour available to the naked eye. I just couldn’t bloody well make up my mind.
So how this is related to refrigerated foodstuffs, you might ask, is this: I was standing in Supervalu on Davie St. a couple of hours ago, trying to figure out what to buy, and it occurred to me that the only way I’m going to reduce my stock of condiments besides either throwing the whole lot away (which is in direct conflict with my instinct to not waste anything), or giving it away (who on earth would take a half jar of American-style mustard? — not me!) is to buy food that I would actually use with those condiments. Now, I know what you’re going to say, and that’s a great big “DUH!!!!” But hey, this is easier said than than done when you’ve got stuff accumulated from:
- a number of overseas visitors who would rather have stuff shipped from back home than go without;
- overseas visitors who hired an RV to to tour BC and Alberta and left all leftover stuff behind from that fridge;
- ex-boyfriends with a penchant for buying family-size quantities of condiments from Costco;
- people who have stayed with me (or stayed here without me, even) and left stuff behind.
My fridge is one big condiment repository. Sometimes I’ll rummage around the kitchen cupboards and find things I didn’t buy but were put there by others, eg., the tube of Tomy mustard that Daniela brought from Liechtenstein, some Knorr powder from Switzerland left by Krista, capers that Iris bought (was it last year or the year before?) before heading back to Germany, barbecue sauce that Chris bought before returning to California… jeez, that stuff has really got to go — you know it’s time to do some spring cleaning when the barbecue sauce has outlasted the relationship, and the time passed is exponentially longer than the longevity of the relationship itself. (I’m cringing at the thought, yes I am.)
The Singleton’s Fridge. Full of condiments, vestiges of meal experiments gone awry, and a head-scratching mix of vegetarianism and carnivorous cravings. There are tetrapaks of soy milk next to bottles of organic cow’s milk. There are chickpea burgers next to barbecued spicy chicken wings. Beansprouts next to Bavarian sausages. And then there’s the freezer! There’s frozen yoghurt next to a tub of Oreo ice cream, neither of which were purchased by me. The bottle of Number 10 gin that’s in there is Matt’s replacement bottle for the one I bought at duty-free and he swigged while I was in Europe. I returned with a collection of W. & J. Graham’s port from the duty-free at Heathrow, because I simply could not be bothered to lug around any more stuff after Spain, but at least I don’t have to refrigerate it, otherwise it would be lost in the Big Black Hole that is my fridge.
Posted in Chez Gail (Vancouver), Randomage, Singleton Life | No Comments
May 9, 2004 by Gail
I’m back!!
Actually, my flight was half an hour early and I was out of Customs & Immigration, got my bags, then out the door by 3:40pm. Which is quite amazing since my flight wasn’t due in until 3:40, and I’d never spent so much time in the Immigration queue before — a pile of flights arrived all at once, so the entire area turned into a giant maze. The problem with being a half-hour early is that the people picking you up don’t know that, so you wait around for a while, anyway.
The weather was gorgeous coming in — I love coming home to sunshine, mountains, clean air, a waterfall at the airport, “welcome home” at the Immigration counter, and walking into my apartment with a view of the ocean… NOTHING in this world matches this.
Went to CinCin restaurant to pick up the keys from Matt, who I barely recognized with his shaved head and shaved face, took my parents to Samurai (where our total bill came to less than $20, not like the bill in London last night that was �235+, or around $600 Canadian!!), then home to crash and burn… spoke to my boss, who was in New York and phoned me on his way out to the airport, because I have a presentation to make in a matter of hours… don’t ask… this is my life — no stopping, no transition, just go from one thing to the other…
And boy, did I crash — I lay down on the couch looking at the ocean, and woke up at nearly 2am… what was supposed to be a little snooze turned into a full-on coma. If I’d have slept on the plane, I would’ve been OK, but I spent probably at least half of the 10 hour flight chatting to my one seatmate, who works for the Canadian military in bomb disposal — which makes for interesting conversation, as you can imagine.
So, around 2:30am after I woke up a bit, I started to download stuff off my flashcards, and Matt arrived. We poured drinks and put some of my French CDs on, and now it’s after 5am, and I haven’t started anything. He’s asleep now, and after a couple of glasses of wine and some gin I’m ready for bed again, but there is so much to do still… the birds are chirping, I’m buzzing, and will need a shower to wake up again and get energised for my morning of work.
Posted in Chez Gail (Vancouver), Travel | No Comments
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