Burrito West Blog

Sometimes having tracking info for a package you're waiting for is annoying. Like when you watch it go from Alaska to Tennessee.... which meant it went right over its destination and will take several days to make its way back here.  That's frustrating.

I took the new camera to work last week to try and test it out a bit (hard to test it at home since it's dark).  You can enjoy my view from work with me now:

1. I think I'm mostly better.  The coughing fits have been reduced to a regular cough. But I do feel like someone kicked me in the ribs recently, which is weird. I don't recall sustaining any rib-related injuries. Also, I go to bed at 10pm and get up at 7:30 and am still exhausted, I'm blaming that on lingering illness.  But all, in all, better, I'd say. Yay!

2. More Argentine tango last night at our private lesson. Peter had an epiphany and said "oh, I have to not think about what I'm doing and think about just her" which was the most lovely thing I've heard in 3 years of dancing. :)  It's the realization that it's not about doing a particular movement as much as it is him doing what it takes to get me to do what he wants/needs.  Guys have a hard job in dancing - they have to think about the step we're going to do, plan ahead, navigate the dance floor, do the step themselves, and make sure they're getting the girl to do the right thing (without pushing, but with a proper lead).  Peter is constantly amazed by how little movement on his part it requires to get his partner to take a step (has to be the right movement!). It is part of the magic of dance - with a small twist of the hips he can make me pivot, with a shift in weight he can make me take a step; it really doesn't take much.  In other dances there are patterns, so when the lead starts something I recognize, I can do it on my own for the next few steps, which means he can slack off on leading me because I know what to do. In Argentine tango - I have no idea what is coming from one step to the next, so I have to wait for the lead - which means, he HAS to lead me properly.  It's a wonderful challenge.  So be very impressed if you ever see people doing Argentine tango!

3. Work is crazy busy. It stresses me out because I worry I'm being spread too thin to do a good job. I hate not doing a good job.

4. It snowed in Vancouver and is -4 today (-10 with windchill).  This is VERY cold for us. I realized yesterday, when preparing to walk to work, that I no longer have proper winter boots. I guess that makes me a true Vancouverite - I'm completely unprepared for real winter weather.

I've been meaning to get a photograph of this for years.  This is one of Bernoulli's favorite places to hang out - scarfed over someone's shoulders.  He'll lay up there and purr for a very long time, until your neck gives out under his 15lb weight. But he's super soft and warm and it's quite nice, really. 

Also - these are photos from my new camera (the one I won!). A Nikon Coolpix L120. So far, I'm liking it - especially since it seems to take good pictures in low light, which we have a lot of here in Vancouver in winter. The 20x optical zoom is also pretty special. :)

In dance Peter and I are still working on Foxtrot. That's one beast of a dance to learn, fyi. But we're starting to get it, which is awesome.  We've also been dabbling a bit in Argentine Tango, which is the ultimate dance for lead-follow because there isn't really any pattern, it's all freestyle and if you don't have a good lead-follow relationship, it's just not going to work, at all.  really, not at all.

In our early days of dance we looked at videos of real dancers, to see what all this stuff was supposed to look like, and we came across this terrible-quality video of an amazing, magical tango. At the time we didn't realize it was Argentine Tango, but it was always, in our minds, the perfect example of the kind of dance we were interested in: it's not flashy with big moves, it's just technically amazing and showcases such a perfect conversation between two dance partners.  I find it mezmerizing.



Not to dimish the lead - but I think the magic here is on Natacha Poberaj's part. Watch her footwork, it's perfect. You don't even need to know anything about dance to appreciate the precision with which she moves.

Here's another, better quality video of another routine that's a bit flashier, but still has the same qualities.


Obviously Peter and I aren't here yet, but we're having a lot of fun on the road.

Whatever bug I had on Boxing Day, that mostly went away, seems to have come back.  Most annoying is the dry, hacking cough that makes me miss taking deep, uninterrupted breaths.  Ah breathing, how I took you for granted!

I've been working from home to avoid spewing germs all over my poor co-workers. Working from home is nice in that I have the company of cats, but weird in that it makes me feel like a hermit since I sit at my desk all day and don't leave the apartment until after dark, if at all.

Enough complaining. To amuse you all while I suffer another coughing fit - I'm posting more photos from my past.   One is me as a young'un - look how innocent I appear!


In the second one I'm slaughtering a poor girl in a fencing tournament in Wisconsin. For some reason I have 21 photos of me fencing this girl (and no photos of me fencing others, but I swear, I had matches with grownups too).  Good for her for taking up a sport that's not common among girls her age, but I was way more experienced and did her in pretty quickly from what I recall.  I love how enthralled the scorekeeper lady is by my fencing talents.

I miss fencing. Not as much as I currently miss breathing, but close.

Peter and I bought a scanner off craigslist so we could... well, scan stuff, obviously.  We got a high resolution photo scanner so we can archive our photos properly.  I've started what will be a very loooong task of scanning our 2 boxes of print photos (and culling them as I go).

I'm finding some funny stuff - evidence of some very bad hair and fashion choices in my past. Growing up in the 80s makes it hard to look back without cringing.  Anyway, my photo collection starts in university really, when I moved out of home, but there was one little pile of random photos from my childhood, including this one of my sister and I enjoying popsicles in the park... I'm pretty sure I remember that balloon sweater.  It's these old photos that are most interesting to me, partly because my childhood photo albums have been lost, so these random photos are all I've got, and partly because I have so few memories of my childhood. I don't remember much pre jr. high, to be honest. I remember general impression, bits and pieces... but it seems like I should remember more, that most people remember more.  In any case, it makes looking at photos interesting - I get to study them for evidence of who I was at the time.  Looking at photos of me in high school is just painful, however, I remember all that just fine, thanks! 

You'll notice I'm not posting any awkward photos here for your amusement... because I'm not looking to share that with the information superhighway. That information will stay safely tucked away on my hard drive.

Dudes, I won another contest!!! I almost feel bad for winning so many good contests, like I'm hogging them or something. You all should start entering, really!

This one was for a London Drugs prize pack that includes an iPod dock stereo, a Nikon digital camera (21x optical zoom baby!), perfume, and strangely, an indoor/outdoor surveillance camera (with night vision capabilities?).  Cool!!!  When the prize arrives, it's going to be like a late christmas!

Usually I just win books, dvds, or tickets to movies - these wins I don't even mention here. But every now and then, a big prize arrives, and it's pretty fun. Seriously, go put your name in the draw for some stuff. Your best odds are with your local entertainment newspaper - they get tons of tickets to local shows to give away, you're bound to win a night out eventually.

I feel like I've won in another way - since Peter and I made a reservation on Thursday to go to the Cellar Jazz club to see Ali Milner, my newest favorite singer, live!  I think it's going to be lovely - a small venue, a fabulous talent, a night out with my Peter - great way to start 2012.

Rather than whine about being sick, how about some photos of my kool-aid yarn dyeing experiment?  This is grape and cherry, and just for the record, you need a fair bit of kool-aid to dye this much yarn (8 packs of cherry, 10 of grape)!

Still, I'm pleased - nice vibrant colours.  I have more of this yarn to dye, but I think I'll wait until I start a project and see how much I need of what colour.

So being sick when there isn't anyone at home to dote on you (or help clean up the disaster state you make of the apartment), isn't awesome.  And this is a weird flu (I'm assuming flu) - started with a sore neck and mild cough but I felt fine otherwise. Then 8 hours after that I was on the couch trying not to move my head.  The muscle ache is really annoying!  Well, it's all annoying.

Can you tell I don't get sick much?  How do people do this?  It sucks.  All the parents with kids that have a revolving door for illnesses, I don't know how you survive.

Anyway, I'm better enough now that I can at least watch movies.

Hope everyone had a lovely holiday! 

I have been well taken care of by my friends over the past few days, and have spent many wonderful evenings in great company, for which I am very very grateful!

Testing the new blog format....

Okay - I've had the urge to wipe out my website for a while, thought I'd just leave up the blog and simplify.  Will take some getting used to, this new blog template. Needs customization, that's for sure.  For example, this font feels huge to me, does it look huge to you?

Results of the test dyeing with Kool-aid.... one yarn took the colour really well, the others had mixed results (means some synthetic fibres). very interesting & super easy.

Now to try the trickier bit where I try to dye a large quantity of yarn and get it to all come out the same colour....

So the downside to having a smoking hot young dance instructor teach your cha-cha group class? She can move her body in amazing ways that just... aren't replicable by mere mortals! She's amazing and makes it look so effortless.  Makes you realize how much more there is to learn. Partly inspiring, partly crushing. ;)
[This is not my instructor, but it's a great example of the kind of cha cha my instructor does.]

Tonight I'm off to my first Hanukkah party ever! I vaguely recall playing with dreidels in school once as we learned about various non-christmas holidays, but that's about all the experience I have with Hanukkah.

In honour of the season, I hereby post this photo of Bernoulli as a kitten, inside our christmas tree.  He took one look at the tree and ran straight up it, it was priceless.

I dropped Peter off at the airport today, which was weird. I've got plans for the next few days, to ensure I leave the house and don't turn into a hermit, starting with some dance classes tonight. 

On my way home from the airport, I picked up some Kool-aid, because apparently it's good for dyeing yarn with (doesn't that make you want to go drink some? ugh), and I've got way too much white yarn. So, we'll be trying some yarn dyeing this weekend, hopefully!

Today was my last day of work for 2011!  Yay!

Peter and have an inherent incompatibility when it comes to the holidays (I say  holidays rather than christmas because I'm not into the christ and figure I'm doing the pagan/secular version).  Anyway, the problem is this: Peter prefers to ignore the holidays right until the last minute, and then have a big day and enjoy the week or two after. I feel very strongly that once the holiday is over, it's over - and trying to celebrate it after the fact is just... weird, and I can't do it. Things are made worse this year by the fact that Peter is going to Poland with his family for Christmas (they're catholic so it's capital 'C', full meal deal Christmas), and he'll be crazy busy with work right until he leaves. He's thinking we can celebrate when he gets back, but - see point above about how that doesn't work for me. So that's kind of a drag, but, you can't have everything!

Anyway, I'll be on my own for the holidays, which will be an interesting experiment.  My friends have been fabulous and I have offers to join several family dinners, so I'm pretty sure I can keep myself occupied.  We'll see how it goes!

Unrelated and random: I've never purchased a set of towels in my life. I went away to university with 1 towel, then my mom bought me a set, then Peter and I combined our university-era towel collections, then we got hand me downs from Peter's family when we moved to Vancouver. So we have a hodge-podge of rather old towels (many of which are pink even though I hate pink).  Out of the blue the other day, Peter and I bought a set of fabulous bamboo-cotton towels at a mad discount. Seriously, they're awesome.  I'm very much looking forward to dropping off our very old towels at the animal shelter and never seeing them again.

Sometimes it's good to spend money on yourself.

We've been participating in an extra dance class every week for the past few weeks at our studio. It's the owner of the studio teaching a special salsa course. I love salsa and the owner of the studio both, so this is pretty fantastic. It means that our weekly schedule is Tuesdays: private lesson & studio party, Wednesdays: 2 group classes, Thursdays: special salsa group class. This means I miss a lot of time cuddling with cats and crafting in my cozy apartment and I instead spend a lot of time at the dance studio. But I feel like we've been dancing long enough that we're at a point where it's super fun. It was always fun, but in the early days that fun would be laced with
frustration at not being able to do more, or follow stuff, or turn correctly. Now, I feel like my base is solid enough that I can really enjoy myself in any situation; I'm picking up new things faster, I'm
starting to spin properly, I can follow better, etc. It's fun!

This post is neither here nor there but to share my happiness with dancing. And to say that learning new skills is awesome - especially if you stick with it long enough to get good. We've still got loads to
learn and improve, don't get me wrong, but we're having fun.

Now I just need to travel back in time to the 40s/50's when supper clubs with proper dancing still existed.

I've been in the process of becoming a volunteer at the Vancouver SPCA for... a while now. I think a combination of them being buried in applications and changing their protocols meant they stopped taking any new volunteers for a while.  Anyway, slowly I'm getting through the steps (workshops, training, criminal record check). Today was another day. I got home from the shelter and smothered my cats with love. It kills me to see those cats in cages. This will be the first shelter I've ever volunteered in where some cats are in cages all day long. All the other shelters I've volunteered at had the cats in communal rooms where they could run around (maybe putting the cats in cages for the night shift when no one is around). So this will be different. Also, the poor SPCA is in an old old building. I'm surprised they aren't fundraising for a replacement facility, they sure could use it. But I guess they need all their fundraising just to operate what they've got. So really, they need a wealthy person to donate a new facility for them!

Now I'm home and have Bernoulli on my lap; he's purring and wonderfully warm and soft. If only I could rescue them all.

Random.
Things that may be confusing to people who do not live in Vancouver:

these are all different places:
West End - this is a neighbourhood (area) near downtown Vancouver
West Vancouver - this is a different municipality than Vancouver (as are the City of North Vancouver, and the District of North Vancouver)
West side of Vancouver - this is a general geographic area in Vancouver that includes neighbourhoods like West Point Grey

Busy weekend!  I went out to a lovely dinner on Saturday with some ladies from the dance studio - part of a civilized stagette for one of them. Then we went to a club on Granville St.  Yup, a club. Stood in line, got ID'd by the bouncer, the whole deal. Had drinks spilled on me, got bounced around on the dance floor (and off the dance floor) by the MOB because it was insanely crowded. It was fun in a hilarious kind of way. At least the club we went to had a full range of people - from teeny-boppers up through adults - some of the girls even had pants on. (The current trend among the youth today is to not wear pants while clubbing - they go out in a shirt and call it a dress.)

I got home from the club at 3:30am.  Took a nap, then headed out at 8:30 to do a day long craft fair. The craft fair was fabulous and I sold a pile of stuff, which is always satisfying. After the fair I was off to dinner with more lovely friends. Fortunately for me, and my desire to sleep, this group of friends did not desire to go clubbing. :)

Anyway - I recommend all the people in their 30s go clubbing every now and then - I think it gets more hilarious as you get older... it's just, kind of silly really.

Did I just make a bunch of necklaces?

Yes, I did indeed!

Details on the craft blog!

I wonder what it's like to live in a place with medieval, windy streets and historic architecture everywhere. I wonder if you get used to it and stop finding it charming and just find it annoying (you probably dream of straight streets). 

And where do they put all the modern infrastructure of today? Phone lines? Cable lines? Separated storm water and sewer pipes.  Our engineers like roads to be at least, oh, 20m wide so they can fit in all the under-street utilities in separate areas... then I arrive in Europe to these narrow streets and life seems to carry on.

Edited a few more Latvia photos... am missing Riga, which seems weird. Maybe I miss being a lady of leisure.

On Tuesday, I got to go do another photoshoot with cats.... except this time it was mostly KITTENS!

It's been a long time since I've been around kittens, and having seven 5-week old ones running around was seriously cute overload. It was awesome.

And, Ben took more fabulous photos!  Don't these photos make you want to adopt them all?  I think Ben and I both want to quit our jobs and photograph cats full time.

 

Today at work I got to go tour a recycling sorting facility!  No, really, this is cool.

Since I've been doing stuff on waste diversion at work, I jumped at the chance to go on the tour and see how this stuff gets done in the real world. The guys in the Solid Waste department seemed somewhat surprised that I wanted to go, but it was neat, I'm glad I did. It's a new, state of the art automated sorting system. So all your recyclable containers that go in your blue bin go to a facility like this (or maybe one less fancy and less automated), and somehow the stuff all gets separated.  It's quite the operation. It involves magnets, air density separators, optical scanners, and a whole lot of conveyor belts.

And it forces me to tell you three things:

1. Do not. ever. put plastic bags in your recycling bin. ever.  I know it's convenient to put your containers in a bag and then toss them in the bin with the bag, but don't do it. really. seriously. They muck up ALL the machinery. There aren't words to convey what an immense headache they cause. There's no easy way to separate them out and they just get everywhere. Aside from actually gumming up the machinery, they contaminate the separated materials which makes it hard to market the recyclables. And if no one wants the recyclables, then it didn't do much good for you to recycle it, the city to pick it up, and the facility to try to separate it. All that effort wasted because of some stupid plastic bag. (you should be using reusable shopping bags anyhow, then you won't have this issue at all!)

So really, seriously: no plastic bags. Please.

2. Make a point of buying products with post-consumer recycled content. Please. It doesn't do a lot of good to recycle your used stuff if you don't help create a market for the material!  Do you buy paper towels with post-consumer recycled content? Did you know you can buy paper towels made of 100% post-consumer recycled content and it's just as good as stuff made from virgin forests that were cut down to make your disposable wipes?  Why do we allow forests to be cut down when we could be reusing our own materials?! This drives me bonkers. There shouldn't even be any paper towel on the shelf made from anything other than post-consumer materials.  Ditto for toilet paper and aluminum foil and many many other products.  Please take the time to seek out these products. I understand the markets for recyclable materials tanked a few years ago, meaning it's hard to find anyone who wants to buy the material (and the ones that do pay very little). Some (most?) of the materials get shipped overseas - which has a ridiculous carbon footprint and is silly because clearly we use enough material our own selves to eat up all the recyclables.

3. Please rinse out your containers. Have some pity on the facilities that store, sort, and process your materials.

Sorry for the PSA - but it's so easy for people to avoid thinking about this stuff, and it's rather important! In any case, yay for recycling! Let's do more and do better!

I may have won another contest recently.

It may have been for more craft supplies.

You'll have to go to the craft blog to find out.

http://baremaked.blogspot.com/2011/10/winning.html

Since I can't foster or adopt any more animals, I've been trying to think of other ways I can help animal rescue groups with their work.  One way was roping my friend and talented photographer into the pet portrait business. And by business, I mean he does it for free. He seems to be enjoying it too, which is great and I'm gleefully working to book us more photo shoots with other rescue groups (I'm the helper - I wiggle the cat toys/treats).  He's also offering to do personal pet portraits for people in exchange for a promise of a donation to the BC SPCA - which is AWESOME*.

Anyway, that's one thing.  The other thing I'm also excited about because it's going so much better than I hoped. My team at work moved into new offices recently, on the 7th floor.  The nearest food is down in the cafeteria in the basement or across the street in the mall. So if you need a snack, it's easily a 10-15 minute journey to get it. And people in my office are BUSY. So busy that they may not be able to squeeze in a 15 min break, no matter how much they've got the munchies. Sometimes you want a snack but don't want to break out of the mental space you're in by going on a journey.

So I cribbed an idea I saw in another office I work in - a snack basket for charity.  I supply snack items, charge higher than retail prices and all the profits go to charity. My co-workers get snacks close at hand, and we raise money for good causes!  The basket is located in a locked file cabinet where anyone can access it and it operates on the honour system. In the first month of operation, the basket made $40 in profit!!  It's not a huge number but for an office as small as ours, it's a lot!  And it's money that will go to charity that otherwise wouldn't have - and no one felt like they were hit up for charitable donations, they bought stuff they wanted to buy anyway. 

The only complaint I've had is that I've made it too easy and convenient to get chocolate bars! (I have healthier options in there too but we all go for the chocolate bars.)  My plan is to let a few months of profit stack up and then donate to Katie's Place Animal Shelter, then the next few months of profit will go to another animal rescue, etc.

I'm super happy to have found a few ways to help, though I still wish I could do more. To be honest, I wish I could be a foster home for kittens... *sigh* adorable, little rascally kittens who just need a home for a few months.  Maybe one day.

*If anyone in Vancouver wants to book him for a portrait, send me an email and I'll put you in touch. You should totally do this. One friend is booking him for a sneak photo shoot of someone else's dog as a Christmas present for them; money to charity + christmas present = double win.

One of the side effects of being a sustainability nut, especially one who researches/talks about waste diversion and recycling stuff much of the day, is that it's kind of hard to get rid of stuff. Like, you can't just toss stuff out. It's more like trips to the recycling depot and the computer reuse place and the charity shops. It's not hard work, just more time-consuming than a trip to the dumpster in the alley.

Peter and I booked off part of Saturday to make a bunch of these trips which were long overdue and at each stop we practically high fived each other with the excitement of finally being rid of STUFF, stuff that's been sitting around waiting for us to deal with it for ages.  Dropped off a computer and some laptops at the place that wipes and rebuilds them to be used by those in need? SWEET. Trip to the thrift shop to unload some clothes and other miscellaneous stuff: AWESOME. Trip to the cleaners with the pillows and bedding and drycleaning: FANTASTIC.

In the end, it didn't actually take us that long at all - we should have done it months ago. And it felt good to know that none of the stuff is headed to the landfill.  Even the one item we put next to our dumpster got taken away by someone within 5 minutes (which is why we put it next to, rather than in the dumpster).

Let this be your PSA to make the effort to recycle/donate your unwanted goods, since throwing our stuff in a hole in the ground and burying it, is not really dealing with our waste in a very responsible manner.

One of the other benefits to having fantastic urban plazas all over the place is that it makes for great places for festivals and markets. 

It so happened that the day Peter and I flew out of Riga, we went for one last walk around Old Town and discovered a large carrot festival going on - complete with a huge market.  There was live music, carrot sculptures, beer gardens, food (including spiral potatoes on a stick), bunnies and goats for the kids to pet. 

It was generally pretty awesome.   These photos show one plaza where the live music and beer was. The potato spiral was very tasty. There was a whole other square with the enormous market and another music stage.


A video for you - keep your eye out for the dancing carrot!

Tired of Riga photos yet?

Hope not, since I'm having great fun going through them and pulling out one at a time to share.

This one is a view from up top of the church tower which shows the many elements of old European city centres that I love (and am sad that can't be built into modern cities).  Like - covered markets, beer gardens/cafes, narrow windy streets that lead to surprises, beautifully restored buildings.  Streets for people instead of cars (cars are allowed, but the street isn't designed for them and if feels more comfortable as a result). I love that medieval builders didn't seem to care about straight lines - buildings curve and angle strangely for no apparent reason.


I spent a fair bit of time in Riga just sitting in public spaces. That's my favorite thing to do when I travel (at home too, but our public spaces aren't as nice).  I took this video from my spot on a bench in a lovely park, happened to catch a bunch of segway riders. Live music was an accordion player and a trumpet player just on the other side of the bridge, it was quite lovely. I get wistful just watching the video. Wish I could be a lady of leisure!