driving-o-rama

So, I was planning on continuing my public-transit-oriented lifestyle and possibly branching out into cycling, despite the fact that I can now drive myself (and a limited number of passengers) wherever and whenever I want. Let me tell you about my first full day of having my N-license.

It was my turn to make community lunch for my co-workers, so I had two big casserole dishes of moussaka and a bag full of salad ingredients to take to work. Needless to say, this was not going to work on the bus, and Aaron didn't feel like driving me, so I had to take the car to work all by myself.

Next, stuff happened and plans changed and I ended up driving all by myself to Surrey where I had to do work stuff. This involved driving over the oh-so-scary Pattullo bridge, just days after reading how it is the deadliest bridge in British Columbia. (Read this article from today's paper titled "It's a death bridge" for more info...basically, it's too narrow for four lanes, and there's no median, and there's a curve where people tend to drive into oncoming traffic instead of staying in their itsy-bitsy lane.) This was a 45-minute drive in rush hour traffic.

Then, while in Surrey, I was asked spur-of-the-moment to drive a teenager to the store to pick up some forgotten dinner ingredients. So now I had a 15-year-old kid whose life to risk alongside mine. Did I mention that by this time it was foggy as all heck out there?

After the Surrey stuff was done, I had to drive a co-worker back to Vancouver, over the death bridge, in the dark, in the fog. I think she was nervous, but she's usually nervous about all sorts of stuff, so it's not like it was me, but it still made me nervous to have her being nervous about my driving.

Finally, at the end of my 12-hour workday all I had to do was drive home. I drove about 60km today, all by myself, in scary conditions. And I thought that having a license wouldn't change anything...

small and large

Yesterday I saw a teensy weensy bird. I think it was a nuthatch or something. It made me think of Aaron because he likes birds.

On the bus last night, there was a fat little girl, maybe age 4 or 5, and she was verrrrry sleepy. I decided that the couple she was with were her grandparents, because they seemed to be paying lots of special attention to the girl in a way that jaded parents usually do not. When they woke the girl up because she was falling over too much, she brightened up considerably quickly. The three of them had some sort of a conversation in Spanish, and I could tell that the girl was probably pretty intelligent. I decided that I liked the cute little fat girl.

This morning I passed my first driving test. I'll have to take another one in two years before this is all over.

bluntness - is the truth really so ugly?

I spent some time with one of my teenagers today. Throughout the conversation I was shocked at how she actually seemed to prefer and enjoy many unhealthy lifestyle choices. I guess I didn't think people like this actually existed.

Teen: "I like buying my lunch, I don't like bringing lunch from home."
Me: "Oh yeah? What's your favourite lunch to buy?"
Teen: "New York Fries!"
Me: "I like buying subs. You can have meat and vegetables and cheese, and together with the bun that's all four food groups!"
Teen: "When I have subs, I get lots of meat and cheese and no vegetables. And then I get them to heat it up and melt the cheese."
Me: "You don't like vegetables?"
Teen: "Nope, not really!"

...Later...

Me: "It's such a beautiful day! I love it when the sun comes out and I get to be outside."
Teen: "People keep saying that. I don't really like to be outside."
Me: "No?"
Teen: "No, I'd rather be inside, sitting in front of my flat screen TV!"
(Yes, this is a verbatim quote.)

Part of the picture that you may be missing is that this teen has some developmental disabilities, and so she tends not to conform to a lot of our social behaviour expectations. Most people would probably censor their preferences based on their knowledge of healthy lifestyles, or at least express some guilt about their unhealthy preferences. Not so with our teenaged friend. She was blunt to the point of being incredulous that anyone would think her preferences to be unusual or odd.

Maybe a lot of teens really do prefer greasy food and hate vegetables. Maybe they really do prefer indoor TV to a walk in the oh-so-rare Vancouver sunshine. Maybe it takes someone with few social inhibitions to just come out and say it. But I sure hope that this one teen is a rare exception. What's not to like about vegetables and sunshine?

fractals

To continue the theme of my last post, let me link you to pictures of a coloured Mandelbrot set. This is one of the math things that we talked about last weekend. The Mandelbrot set is a relatively simple kind of equation that produces the very pretty pictures you see in the link above. The idea with fractals such as the Mandelbrot set is that as you zoom in to inspect the tinier details, you start to see the original larger pattern (or parts of it) repeated in miniature. And then you can keep on zooming in infinitely and more and more patterns show up, but you'll always find something recognizeable from the larger picture. It's like so much classical music with its themes and variances and familiar parts that are nonetheless different from the first time you hear it. Except fractals are infinitely detailed, the composition is never over, you can't zoom in to a point where the resolution sucks, you'll just keep discovering more and more intricate beauty.

So check out that first link! You have to scroll down a few lines to find the place where you click the "next" to see a zoomed-in section of the fractal, but make sure you do because it is AWESOME. (If you feel lost, look at the smaller image below the big one to see where your zoomed-in picture was taken from.)

If you've never discovered the glory of God in math, this is your chance. It's amazing what kind of glorious, detailed beauty a relatively simple equation can produce! Surprise!

Here's a preview:

surprise!

This weekend, while Annemarie and Sam were visiting CMU, CMU visited me in the form of a big "portable CMU" event at my church.

My favourite session was with Tim Rogalsky, my old math prof. He talked about chaos theory and Pascal and Fibonacci spirals and nature, and it was great. My favourite tidbit was this thought: Mathematicians often just come up with a new idea of how math could be fun, and then they play with this idea in their heads for years without ever considering how it might be applicable to "the real world." Then, decades or centuries later, somebody discovers that this "useless" idea actually perfectly describes something in the real world that has existed since the beginning of time. The mathematicians had thought they were just inventing nifty games and puzzles and never knew they were inventing a formula that actually describes the way a huge flock of birds flies together.

Tim said he thinks this happens because we are made in the image of God the creator. Our innate ability to create mathematical ideas that later turn out to have been present in the world all along without our knowledge is because we are made the image of a the very same creator who created the world in the first place, so it makes sense that we create ideas that mirror God's ideas. To this I say: NEAT!!!

Also, Tim was invited to preach the sermon in church this morning, and a major theme in his sermon was "Surprise!" Before the service, he handed out colourful scarves to the children and youth (and I nabbed one too), and everytime he said the word "suprise" in his sermon, we were supposed to toss them up in the air. It was an ingenius way to keep the kids paying attention (that, and he had a big jar of candy sitting on the pulpit that he was going to hand out to kids who could tell him how many times he said "surprise" during his sermon), and it really conveyed the joy of "suprise!" without being disruptive because it was silent. At the end of his sermon, Tim closed his eyes and prayed, but I noticed that when he prayed the word "surprise", everyone was still silently throwing the scarves in the air, including me. The whole tossing colourful scarves thing got me totally overstimulated and I was giddy for about an hour after the service. It was marvellous fun!

new earthly posessions

On Friday, Aaron and I had a long date while we were waiting for the mechanics to fix the brakes on our car. During the course of this date, we bought fun stuff. I got a pair of those croc shoes to use as slippers when I'm at work, so as to protect my socks from the dog hair, dog drool, and tracked-in snow and dirt that find itself on the floor. It turns out you can buy these little thingies to stick in the holes of your crocs...Aaron insisted on buying me a little gecko. It now lives on my shoe, and it is fun. I also got the same store to order in a different pair of shoes in my size, so hopefully I'll replace my worn-out merrills by the end of the week.

Aaron found and bought a cute pair of everyday shoes as well. He doesn't like it that I call them cute, but that's just the first word that comes to mind. I suppose "funky" could work as well, but they're not crazy shoes or anything, so "cute" just works better.

I got a bellydancing scarf! It's black and has silver "coins" that jingle when you move. It's super-fun-tastic.

Also, we bought the game Quarto, which I played a lot in high school over my lunch hours. We bought it because we were looking for a 2-person game to play at home for when we don't feel like watching TV or playing computer games, and when we want to play games but none of our friends can come over. It's fun.

Oh, and now I've lost my watch. Hopefully it will turn up again soon.

sad and mad

First the "mad": Today I found out that once I pass my first driving test, I will have to wait two whole years until I can take the test for the full and final license. That's two years with a green N on my car! That really sucks! Anyway, hopefully I'll get rid of the red L this month and at least get started on my two-year N sentence. BC licensing is long and slow. In Ontario one could be done with graduated licensing in 16 months if you took driver's ed, and 2 years if you didn't. Here it is simply 3 years total, no exceptions.

The "sad": I have lost two scarves and one toque this winter, all three of them being favourites of mine. I am very sad. One scarf was a gift from my parents, one scarf was a gift from a friend, and my Toronto Maple Leafs toque was another gift from my parents (and my brothers had matching ones). Anyway, I suppose I should not be so attached to my earthly posessions. I can always get a new ones. But I'm still grieving a bit.

an epic tale of beast-wrestling

I saw a guy in full joging regalia, jogging down the street with a big jug of fabric softener in one hand and a big bottle of dish soap in the other.

I saw a firetruck getting a checkup. Did you know that the whole cab (like the seats and the floor and the dashboard and such) lean forward to expose the engine underneath?

I saw a girl walking down the street who looked like a sketch from a sewing pattern envelope, with the long legs and the crisp plaid jacket and all.

I went shopping for produce at one of the small grocers up the street. I bought an onion, a thing of garlic, a green pepper, a head of broccoli, a stick of celery, two carrots, and a bag of mini-potatoes. The bill was $3.22. I love buying produce from those guys!

And now for the epic tale of beast-wrestling:

The dog at work had a major spazz because of the windstorm that was going on. Wind makes her nervous. I figure she has an even greater hearing range with which to detect creepy howling and whistling noises that the wind makes. To cope with this hatred of wind, she keeps trying to escape outdoors (I know, it makes so much sense). Since people are constantly walking in and out of the front door, we had to shut her in our office so she wouldn't escape.

Once inside our office, she did not decide to hide under her owner's desk. No, she decided that my desk was the place to be. So she paced around by my elbows, tried to shove herself between me and my desk, drooled profusely on my socks, and headbutted me. We're talking about a German Shepherd and Black Lab mix here, so this is no small nuisance. Then, once the power went out and I had to give up my computer work, I did some filing. Finally, the dog was content to stand beneath my open filing drawer (and drool on my socks some more).

I didn't mention that this whole time, I kept having to leave and re-enter the office, which involved muscling the frantic dog away from the exit every time. My knee was wet from all the dog-snot and dog-slobber that had soaked through my cords after repeated headbutts. At one point I actually had to pin her head against the wall with my thigh in order to let someone else in the office.

Anyway, it was nuts, and that was my day.

blessed

These past few months, I have felt overwhelmed with how blessed Aaron and I are.

First of all, our relationship is great. This week I told Aaron that I'm pretty sure I love him twice as much this year than I did last year (and last year I married him, so that's a lot).

Also, we love our apartment, it is our home. A recent addition to our home is the final three knives and two pots from our wedding registry. I feel like now our kitchen is complete (at least in terms of knives and pots, and they are a significant part of any kitchen). They're all great quality, so they'll last us a lifetime and we'll never need to buy pots or knives ever again unless some drastic accident befalls them.

Also, I have a job that really suits my skills and experience, and it's a meaningful job too! And who could forget our wonderful families and friends? And the fact that we live in a relatively peaceful and prosperous country?

Sometimes I just don't know how to thank God properly for all these blessings. Just saying thank you doesn't feel like enough.

Dear Elliot

Hi Elliot. Did you know that I don't have your e-mail address? Maybe you could send it to me, my e-mail address is my first name -dot- my last name at gmail. (Forgive my paranoia at not typing it out properly.) Anyway, I know you read my blog so this is me sending you an e-mail alternative.

There's a question I've been meaning to ask you: How come Kingdom Halls never have windows?

That's all. Please post a comment or just e-mail me back.

strangers no more

I made a new friend on the bus today. He was in his late twenties, built big & heavy (although he didn't look overweight), with dark hair tucked under a black felt hat, and wearing a matching black felt coat. He was reading "Kafka for Beginners."

The only empty seat on the bus was beside him. As I sat down, he uncrossed his legs so that his shoe wouldn't rest against my leg, and said a quick, "Sorry." I replied with a simple "That's okay." And, just like that, we became friends. It was like the opposite of creepy man vibes.

Several stops later, he said, "Hey, those are really neat pants." (He was, of course, referring to my awesome pants of metal and straps...if you know me, you should know which ones I'm talking about.) So we had a quick chat about where I got them and why. Then we fell in to a non-awkward silence while we each continued to read our books.

When he got off, he said thank you to the bus driver (a peculiar habit of many Vancouverites), and then we made eye contact and gave each other a nod and a "Seeya!" and that was all. I like making friends on the bus!

first anniversary

Yesterday Aaron and I celebrated our first anniversary! It's neat, because it's a real honest-to-goodness wedding anniversary, not just a dating monthiversary or the anniversary of when we started dating.

Our celebrations were comfy and low-key. We both had to work, but after work we went to this pub that serves nifty tapas. We had scallops with lemon pepper and shredded squash, an Asian stirfy bowl thing, seared ahi tuna, and some really fun tofu that was sweet and spicy and came with lotus root chips. We had a fun and mildly flamboyant waiter, and we both agreed that if either of us were gay men, we would have a crush on him. At one point Aaron had to tell him, "One of these chopsticks is not like the other..." One was a black drinking straw (or "drawing tube") that matched the chopstick. Much silliness prevailed as Aaron made airplane noises while getting me to eat a piece of tofu, and I impersonated a sea serpent while drinking my water.

After dinner, we walked down the street and found an Italian espresso and gelato place. Half of the occupants were middle-aged or elderly Italian men. Everyone was watching the hockey game on a big TV that had without a doubt been primarily intended for watching the world cup of soccer/football. So we had gelato and watched the end of the game.

Then we went home and watched TV and reminisced about what all happened a year ago, and Aaron read more of The Hobbit to me as I fell asleep. It was a good day.