van out

[jazzfish]

First Vancouver visit's down.

I successfully accomplished the tasks I'd set myself: passport, router replacement, zipper replacement on my heavy coat. Though the zipper's been replaced with a womens' zipper, so I'll get to learn how to use that. I saw a number of people, did some boardgaming, watched the first half of the third season of The Good Place and saw Spider-verse again. I went to work, I did a lot of biking and a lot of yoga. I overspent on restaurants; will have to fix that for next time.

Had a number of painful and unexpected transit memories come up while riding buses or trains. Those, I assume, will dull eventually.

The Airbnb I stayed in this time did alright. The pillows were flat, and I didn't practice my viola at all due to feeling deeply awkward hearing noises from both upstairs and the suite next door (they'd subdivided their basement into two suites, I think). But the location, 19th and Fraser, was pretty great.

I've missed Vancouver. Explicitly: I miss boardgaming, I miss easy (or at least easier) sociability, I miss the vague sense of connection and social-network. I also miss biking and yoga, and transit, and a variety of stores and such.

Social might be solvable, once I get my apartment in better order. Will see. Biking and yoga... I don't think there are solutions for those, not during snow (roughly: November through April).

And yesterday I rode the Skytrain from New West to Commercial at six in the evening, and got to watch an absolutely lovely sunset.

Comments

[okrablossom]

I enjoyed hearing you list all these happiness-making things :)

[jazzfish]

:)

[carbonel]

Zippers have gender?

[jazzfish]

They have handedness. I'm assuming that's a function of gender because men's and women's button-up shirts have the buttons on different sides.

[carbonel]

Still confused. Clothing is generally constructed to have a flap to protect the zipper, and that definitely has directionality. But zippers themselves -- at least every one I can remember sewing, which was quite a few once upon a time -- are vertically symmetric, and therefore have no handedness. I'm wondering if whoever replaced your zipper didn't think there was enough material left on the side where it originally was and had to use the other side instead.

[jazzfish]

*googles "parts of a zipper"*

Okay, so, on a coat where the zipper separates at the bottom (as opposed to, say, on a pair of pants where it doesn't), at the bottom one side has the "insertion pin" and the other side has the zipper pull and the "pin box." On almost every other zipper coat I own, the pull is on the right-hand side and the insertion pin is on the left. But when they replaced the zipper on this one, they put it in so that the pull's on the left and the insertion pin is on the right.

(I do own one lightweight jacket with the pull on the left, which I had forgotten about, although I do now remember it being awkward to zip up.)