Nerd? Geek? or Dork?

I took a "Nerd? Geek? or Dork?" quiz, and it turns out I'm a nerd. What are you?

Hincks alert

My friend Adam the Astronomer is back in Chile again. Check out the link to his fifth online journal on the left side of this page. It contains tales of science and Chile. It's a good read.

His sister Emily has just taken a job at the University of Rennes in France. Her blog is also an amusing read, although it is a very different sort of blog! (Also see the link to the left.)

I recommend them both. See if you can note any differences or similarities between the two siblings.

It's newsletter time again!

I know I don't keep this blog up-to-date anymore, but I do still send out newsletters about my work at UrbanPromise three times per year if you want to keep in touch with my ministry work there.

You can get a paper copy to put on your fridge, or an enviro-friendly PDF. Just e-mail me your current address!

Also, you can always check the UrbanPromise website (especially my StreetLeader page) if you're looking for frequent updates and photos.

For those of you who are amused by cats

rain

Today it rained, and I am sad that summer is almost over, and that we are returning to the endless dark and gloom and wet that is winter in Vancouver.

Squirt

Behold my new best friend. I met her at the Aquarium on Saturday, and now I check up on her all the time. I call her Squirt.

....All together now!....

(please don't leave me hanging)

Happy Canada Day!

I celebrated Canada Day by taking my bike to work. You know, "doing my part" for this wonderful land.

Going to work is much easier as it is mostly downhill. This is nice because I don't really get very sweaty. But on the way home, the direction that brings me nearer to my shower, I do get rather sweaty.

Vancouver has established a good system of cycling routes which are direct paths through residential neighbourhoods. One of the factors that went into planning these routes was to choose paths with minimal ups and downs to ease cycling. Cars cannot take advantage of these alternate direct routes because there are frequent barriers (such as lovely planted boulevards) that force cars to turn left or right while permitting the much narrower bicycles to continue straight. Whenever these routes cross major roads, there are traffic lights with buttons installed right next to the curb for cyclists to push without having to dismount.

The result is that I took a route to work along streets I had never been down before. The slower speed of cycling and the lower stress of driving along quiet residential streets permits one to notice and appreciate the neighbourhoods much better than one would by zooming past on a major car route.

I took advantage of this slower pace, and stopped to buy lemonade from an honest-to-goodness lemonade stand run by kids on the side of the road. I felt like I was in a Norman Rockwell painting. They had a home-made sign and smudges of summer grime on their faces and everything.

To complete the day, Aaron and I went downtown to see the fireworks. I made a game of "commanding" the rockets when to explode. I think I got about 50% of them dead-on. It took awhile to get the hang of which rockets would explode sooner or later than my gut instinct said. But it was fun!

Person In Charge

I had to return something at Safeway yesterday, and the man behind the customer service desk had a nametag that said: "Trevor McSpadden - Person In Charge." I'm thinking the logic behind that kind of job title is that when some crazy lady decides she's going to throw a fit and demands to speak to someone in charge, they can bypass this kind of conversation:

Lady: "I demand to speak to someone in charge!"
Trevor: "That's me, ma'am. I'm the Assistant Shift Supervisor."
Lady: "Whatever! You're not really in charge! I want to speak to the manager!"
Trevor: "Well you see, I actually am the right person to talk to because at Safeway the manager on-duty is given the illustrious title of Assistant Shift Supervisor, so I am functioning as a manager while the real manager isn't on site. I assure you that I am fully capable of assisting you, even if I’m not the real manager.""
Lady: "Whatever! You're not really in charge! I want to speak to the manager!"

...and move right on to this conversation:

Lady: "I demand to speak to someone in charge!"
Trevor: "That's me, ma'am. As you can see on my name tag, I am the Person In Charge."
Lady: "Oh good, you'll be able to help me."

It's May...

...and the cherry blossom petals swirl around like the ocean as the traffic rushes by.

I'm headed back on the water!

In four weeks, I will be going on a weekend canoe trip! Or to be more precise, a Paddle-a-thon. On April 19-20 I will paddle down the Fraser river from Hope to Fort Langley. I will be raising money for the Camp Squeah bursary fund, which is given to post-secondary students who volunteer as staff at camp for the summer! So it's a very good cause.

I need to raise a minimum of $500, otherwise I can't go! So if anyone would like to support this marvellous cause, please let me know! I can give you tax receipts, too!

Please help! Thank you very much!

abandon ship

I was riding the bus home in the dark today. I worked until 8:00PM. I was seated in that twilight zone between the front and back doors that's not quite in the bright lights of the back of the bus, and not quite in the front area that's dark so that the driver can see properly. At each stop, all the lights go on so that the passengers can see their way out.

I was quite absorbed in my book, so I hadn't looked up until my neighbour wanted to get off and I needed to swing my knees around to let him out. At that moment, the lights went on, and something caught my eye under the seat in front of me. It was a little, ugly, paper mache boat that looked a lot like a coffin. I knew it was a boat because there were two little, ugly paddles lying next to it. They were made of cardboard paddle blades attached to popsicle sticks with masking tape. The paddles and the coffin-boat were painted brown.

I imagine that it had been part of a school project, maybe something on Canada's First Nations people and their canoes. I wondered if it was the prized creation of a young student, the glowing centerpiece of a shoebox diorama. Or perhaps it had been the half-hearted creation of an older student and deliberately abandoned once the required marks had been collected. Or even worse, what if the young student had forgotten it on the bus on her way to school, and had cried over its loss and the tragedy of having nothing to hand in after having worked so hard.

My neighbour got off the bus, the lights went out, and the bus moved on.

I love the new time

Daylight savings time sucks. Welcome to regular summer time! I love it because now it's still light when I get home. Daylight makes me feel energetic, like I still have time to do lots of things that I want to do before going to bed. Once dusk hits, all I want to do is huddle up on the couch with a book or something to watch, or maybe play computer games.

Hurray for evening daylight!

weekend away

We spent the weekend in Victoria with Aaron's family (2 parents, sister + brother-in-law, and us = 6 total). It was their treat to us for our birthdays/Christmas/Valentine's day. It was an awesome B&B with a famous breakfast (they made a whole cookbook about it), and it was also very relaxing and fun. This was our suite. I loved it! I like the fireplace.

In Victoria we walked around and saw the Empress hotel an did some shopping. Which brings me to my next link. They were on sale! So I bought them. I haven't owned a pair of "dress-up/dress-down" black shoes since I threw my Starbucks-dress-code shoes in the garbage on my last shift there one and a half years ago. So I figured I owed myself.

This post has been brought to you by all those who commented on my "I'm dead" post.

My latest internet addiction

I just...can't....stop.....

I'm not dead yet! ....wait...okay maybe...yeah.

Hello readers! It seems that this blog has passed its golden age of multiple posts per week. But that's okay. I'm not an aspiring writer, and I'm not a professional blogger, so it's not really that disappointing to me. For a while I felt very fulfilled by writing here, and now it just doesn't seem that important to me. But perhaps that's just another passing phase. Who knows?

So, welcome to "Die Stille im Lande II"!

I will not fully abandon this blog, rather, I will simply write here whenever I feel like it--no more, no less. I will feel no burdensome obligation to update, but I will also not eliminate this venue of expression. There will be no further need to check for weekly updates, but I would still appreciate it if you would check on a monthly basis. If you want to read more here, please leave comments! There is nothing quite so encouraging/inspiring as comments!

return to chile

I know some of you have enjoyed reading my friend Adam the Astronomer's web journal about his work in the Atacama desert of Chile. Well, I just popped over to his site for the first time in awhile and discovered that he spent 2 weeks there in December. Read about it.

my other brother is now also famous

You may recall that my youngest brother Karl made a wicked-awesome dance video on YouTube. Not to be outdone, my other brother Tobin has now made the national news by contributing a stunningly insightful commentary on one of this nation's most important cultural events. Watch the video!

return to the jungle

Hi everyone! I'm back from Winnipeg (where I was for much of the Christmas break), and now I'm into a crazy week or two of work, so I'll be updating you all some other time when I have the brain space for it.

Happy New Year!

scandals, virgins, birds and bees...Merry Christmas!

I attended the Peace Mennonite Church Christmas pageant this evening, and it really got me thinking...all these kids are participating in this story and discussing Mary's scandalous pregnancy onstage...how many of them understand exactly what the nature of the scandal is? How many of them went home from rehearsal this month and said, "Mommy, what does it matter that she wasn't married? What does a husband have to do with having a baby anyway? What's a virgin?"

The virgin birth must be a great conversation starter for many a parent looking to educate their children in the manner of birds and bees!

this post has nothing to do with Christmas

I was reading a news report on the death of Oscar Peterson, and there is a brief quote by Hazel McCallion, the mayor of Mississauga. Once again, I found myself exclaiming, "Oh my goodness, she's STILL the mayor of Mississauga?!?!"

Hazel McCallion is on of those people who really has no great significance in my life, but who shows up as this random blip on my radar from time to time. She piques my interest. To sum it up in a nutshell, she is 86 years old and has been the mayor of Mississauga since four years before I was born. Apparently she doesn't really need to campaign anymore, as in her most recent election (her 11th for mayor) she got 91% of the vote.

Upon reading her Wikipedia article today, I learned that she is also a devout Christian and that she has never been labeled a feminist. I think the next time someone asks me who I would have coffee with if I could pick anyone in the world, I will pick her.