Dec. 21st, 2011

b'ham!

Dec. 21st, 2011 10:06 am
jazzfish: Jazz Fish: beret, sunglasses, saxophone (Default)
I can tell I'm adapting to Vancouver because the distinctions of "clear" and "partly cloudy" and "cloudy" no longer matter. There's only "bright" and "dim." Today, now that the sun has come up, is "bright."

I don't so much mind it getting dark at 4:30. That's kind of obnoxious but, eh, it's not like it was worth being outside in this weather anyway. It's getting up and going to work and watching sunrise at 8:30 that's starting to get to me. At least it's Sunreturn tomorrow.

On Sunday we popped down to Bellingham to ship Xmas packages and do a bit of US grocery shopping. (Jif peanut butter is curiously unavailable up here.) This trip involved enough awesome things that it's easier to just make a list, viz:
  • Driving around Stanley Park in the daytime.
  • The USPS, who only charged us $35 to move nearly eleven pounds of stuff 2500 miles in three days at Xmastime, and would have charged half that if we'd been a couple of days more on the ball.
  • USPS's Automated Postal Centres, especially on days when the Post Office is closed, because there's a) no line and b) no need to interact with a human being. (This, incidentally, is why I like self-checkout lines at grocery stores: not because it's any faster [it's not], but because I don't have to talk to the cashier.)
  • Stracciatella Lindt balls. Yow. Seriously, why did no one tell me about these sooner?
  • La Fiamma pizza followed by Mallard Ice Cream. I'd forgotten how delicious both of those things are.
  • The Nexus trusted-traveller card, which got us across the border in about five minutes while everyone else was backed up through Blaine. Best time-saving $50 I've spent all year.
  • And finally, driving around Stanley Park at night, except for the %&$ pink limo in front of us.
I like Bellingham. It's like Blacksburg, if B'burg were cooler and had a larger downtown. There was a brief period of time when I was considering living there and trying to find work in Vancouver. If things had fallen apart in a certain way, and $work hadn't been unexpectedly willing to deal with all the immigration stuff, it would have been a decent place to hole up for a couple of years. Much more than that and I expect the small-town-ness would have gotten to me in the same way it did in B'burg.



If you're wondering what the hell happened to the comment pages on LJ, well, they fixed them. In unrelated news, Dreamwidth has turned off invite codes through the end of the year, so if you were thinking about jumping on that particular bandwagon, now's a decent time. (Credit where it's due, LJ also claims to have fixed the problem with the layout I'm using where images would get cropped rather than expanding it, making it difficult to read comics.)



Late-breaking addition: last year's list of things I want is mostly still operative. I'm no longer in need of a good tattoo artist (at least until I hit whatever I determine to be my next milestone), and I found a Criterion copy of The Third Man last spring. Other than that, though.

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jazzfish: Jazz Fish: beret, sunglasses, saxophone (Default)
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Adventures in Mamboland

"Jazz Fish, a saxophone playing wanderer, finds himself in Mamboland at a critical phase in his life." --Howie Green, on his book Jazz Fish Zen

Yeah. That sounds about right.

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