My Trip Out West

A couple of months ago, I was thinking about the people we know living out west.  Lisa and Elana had just moved to Vancouver.  My friend Tony had been in Seattle for a few years, as had Phil and Morgan.  I thought it'd be nice to have a vacation out there and visit both cities and all those friends.  Then, a few days later, my boss told me about the American Meteorological Society conference in Seattle and that we ought to go, and that was that.

One thing for sure, I didn't want to fly directly to Seattle because I didn't want to expose myself to the TSA's abusive practices.  My plan was to fly to Vancouver on Friday, hang out with Lisa and Elana over the weekend, and then take the train down to Seattle.  Unfortunately on Thursday afternoon I got a call that Lisa's mother was about to pass away, and that they had to hurry back to Toronto.

I was able to reschedule my flight to Sunday morning--early Sunday morning.

The view from my first flight on the trip.

But that also meant I would do all the traveling--from St. John's to Vancouver then down to Seattle--in one day, 22 hours of straight travel.  Several things made the trip easier, though.  I made the trip across the continent in only two flights.  I had exit-row or bulkhead seats for all of my flights.  And on the plane, I was able to watch most of the NFC championship game.  It was a long day, but it could have been worse.

In Seattle, I only had one chance to get together with Phil.  Unfortunately on that day, he injured his eye pruning some grape vines.  (What a wino!)  So we weren't able to get together.

I wasn't able to get together with Morgan either; she was sick that week.  When I told her where I was staying, she said my hotel was right in her neighborhood.  I thought it might have been a few blocks to a few miles from her place.  No, when I stepped out of the hotel and looked to my right, hers was the first building I saw.  I walked by it several times a day, yet strangely we didn't get together.  Ah well.

I was able to get together with Tony, though.

Tony, after I said, "Smile."

On Tuesday, he took me to a bar with 100+ beers on tap.  Then Thursday night, we went to the Science Fiction Museum, where they had a Battlestar Galactica exhibit.  You can see my slide show of the exhibit here.

The Sci Fi Museum's exhibit of the Tree of Life from Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, a film I highly recommend.

After the museum, we did some old-school bar hopping in a cool Seattle neighborhood whose name escapes me due to the old-school bar hopping.  We had a great visit.

In Seattle, a single of Bailey's in a regular tumbler.

(Let me now point out how impressed I was by the generosity of the Seattle bartenders.  Having grown accustomed to Canadian pours, I ordered a double whiskey; I got a full tumbler of booze.  Canucks, I love ya, but this is one area the Americans have over you.)

The view from the train.

As I've documented, the next morning did not go well, yet that had little to do with the night before.  Fortunately, Elana was able to pick me up at the train station.  Sadly, Lisa's mother did pass away that week, and she'd stayed in Toronto to attend to family business.  Elana and I had a great visit, though, and it did involve alcohol.  It also involved an early flight the next morning as well.

BLOG FLASHBACK:  Previously on UITGWN, I described how the circumstances precipitating my marrying Nicole had involved a trip to Vancouver and Seattle.  While in Vancouver, Nicole and I had brunched in Havana, a cool restaurant.  So when Elana and I were bar-hopping in her cool neighborhood, I was shocked to see and recognize the place, which I'd all but forgotten.  "I've eaten there," I said, which surprised her because she'd just learned about the place.  At the end of the evening, I dragged her there for dessert, which means she watched me eat creme brulee' as we each had one last white Russian.

Havana.

After the border incident on my trip with Nicole, I had returned to Seattle without her and went to a neighborhood bar to drink my sorrows away.  The next morning, I woke up late, still a little drunk, and had to speed through the Seattle rain to return my rental car and make my flight.  Last week as I walked to the Sci Fi Museum, I walked past the place, the 5 Point Bar.

5 Point, a friendly bar worth photographing but not worth crossing the street for.

It was odd to have this trip out west echoing that momentous trip from several years ago.  END FLASHBACK


So on this trip, I saw 40% of the friends I'd planned on.  That's less than I'd hoped, but I enjoyed all my time with them.  I noticed, too, how booze figured prominently in this blog entry.  That's telling me something . . . my friends like to drink too much.


Now I will leave you with a slideshow of the winter wonderland that's befallen St. John's.  Click here.

My shitty morning

This morning, I:

• Realized I'd left the book I bought last night in Tony's car, which is my fault.  But when I tried to call him, for the first time ever, got his answering machine.
• Tried to check into tomorrow's flight on West Jet and got jerked around by the web site, constantly getting conflicting information.  A simple web site outage would have been disappointing; that was infuriating.  I still don't know if I'm checked in.
• Had the worst taxi ride of my life.  Here's how you know your taxi driver sucks--he sits for a five count once the light has turned green and cars have passed him.  The guy was argumentative, slow, and took an absurd route to my two-mile destination.  Thank Christ I had the sense not to tip him.  My parting words to him were "Fuck off."
• Because I was flustered and running late, I missed that Tony had tried to bring my book to the train station.  (What a mensch.)
• Found a large, obnoxious party jamming up the boarding of the train.
• Once uderway, I bought breakfast at the dining car and tried to mellow out.  Once settled back in my seat, I discovered I'd failed to get a spoon and had to march back to the dining car for one.
• I started playing on-line poker and hit a royal flush, the best hand possible.  I've played thousands of games and never even seen a royal flush before, and this morning I got one.  Then shortly after that, I got disconnected from the game and lost.
• In Everett, Washington, the train picked up three, cap-wearing douchebags who've sat across the aisle from me.  They showed up with a case of Coors Light in the train; it was 8:30 am.  Now I get to hear their fat-girl jokes and crying-stripper stories. 

Douchebags on a train, the right-most one being the douchiest.

And I have yet to go through Canadian customs.

Update:  Douchebag #1 cracks his first Coors at 9:52 am.

Update #2:  I guess I jinxed myself with my Canadian customs comment, because naturally, I got pulled aside coming through customs, even though I'm a Canadian permanent resident, have a Canadian driver's license, and a Canadian health card.

I'm now mellowing out at Lisa and Elana's.

A Tale of Two Days in My City

Wednesday was only the second sunny day we've had in 2011.  Fortunately, Nicole and I had the good sense to take time to appreciate it on my lunch break.  We went to the top of Signal Hill and enjoyed the view.

It was good that we enjoyed that beautiful Wednesday, because this was Thursday.

Over a foot of snow fell on Thursday.

 The cold wasn't so bad, but getting around was a scary proposition.  St. John's is full of steep hills that don't make for great driving conditions when covered in snow.  In fact, on Thursday, a snow plow plowed into two cars parked on my street (which is very steep). 

When I moved here, my transportation plan for the winter was to live in downtown and have practically everything we need within walking distance (check!) and take the bus to work (no check).  For several months now, the bus drivers have been on strike.  And while I'm sympathetic to the union, I can't help but feel like they've overplayed their hand.  The strike's going on this long has trained people to get along without them and perhaps demonstrated that they're not that valuable.  Drivers, cut a deal and get back to work!

But back to the snow--I had the good fortune of putting my Firebird in storage before all of it hit.  But the guy storing it lives just out of town at an elevation even higher than Signal Hill, so there was some snow at his place.  When I got out, here's what I saw.

My size-12 boot print among the moose prints.

Moose prints.  First, I was impressed with the sight of them, how smooth and round their edges were and how nearly symmetrical they were.  Then once the mechanic confirmed it, I was impressed that I had correctly identified them in the first place.  

The snow's still lingering for now, though fortunately, it's not falling like it was on Thursday.  And really the cold's not bad either.  Now that things have settled down, I'm enjoying it.

 

A Great Time in Toronto

So after visiting Nicole's parents in Midland, we went down to Toronto for a few days.  While living in the city was a bit of a grind, we had a great time, simply hanging out there and visiting friends.

First we went to our favorite Toronto bar, the Communist's Daughter, to hang out with our favorite bartender, Michael Louis Johnson.

The Communist's Daughter, which was once Narare' Snack Bar

There, as always, we got into an interesting discussion, during which I met a visiting journalist Michael DiGregorio.  DiGregorio was there to write about the death of a local bicyclist and cycling in the city in general, a subject near and dear to my heart.  So we had a fascinating conversation.  He told me about a recent documentary, Scapper, he did which I'd also love to see.  Here's the trailer for it.


The next day, Nicole and I bounced around Queen Street West during the day and saw "Fair Game" at the Bloor that night.

On our last day in Toronto, we were able visit with several of our friends--John and Ann, Derek and Linda--as we had a delicious meal at le Papillion.  Linda's brother, Jed, was there, and later our friend Michelle joined us at Derek's house.  Here's a typical segment of our goings-on there:


As is always the case with such visits, we didn't get to see everyone we would have liked.  So if we missed you, we hope to catch you next time.  And we found that, refreshingly, Toronto is a much easier city to visit than it is to live in. 

This time off has been good; contrary to my intentions, I haven't touched my worked since Christmas Eve.  But tomorrow, I go back to work, and I'm looking forward to it.

A Cinematic Holiday Season

I'm going to blog about the holiday trip as a whole, but first, I've got to talk about some of the movies I've seen this season.

I'll say it started with Tron: Legacy.  When I saw the original, I was taken with its personification of programs within the computer world, and I've always loved any decent sci-fi film.  This one is decent, but that's all.  As is often the case, the filmmakers clearly gave more thought to the 3D effects than any rigorous conceptualization of the world they were creating.  There are a few interesting ideas, though, and Jeff Bridges was excellent.

Then it was Christmas day and time for my annual watching of Bad Santa.  The film does not disappoint. 

It's more than just a bunch of off-color jokes though.  By tearing down the artifice and sanctimony surrounding the holiday, it shows us what the holiday is actually about, sharing time with people who care about each other.  That, and--"Fuck me, Santa.  Fuck me, Santa.  Fuck me, Santa."

Then we went to Toronto and the Bloor Cinema, a great repatory theater in a wonderful old building.  The place is enormous; the balcony alone would be a large theater in and of itself.  In fact, the balcony has its own nicely appointed lobby.

A corner of the Bloor's lobby to its balcony.

 (Two years ago, we watched Obama's Inauguration there, and you can see coverage of that in this video, starting at the 8:24 mark.  It gives a sense of the theater, including some footage of Nicole and myself.)


This time at the Bloor, we saw Fair Game, which told the story of how Dick Cheney outed covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame.  It also stunningly puts the lie to the oft-quoted meme, "The intelligence community got it wrong."  No, the intelligence community did not get it wrong; Dick Cheney actively worked to fabricate bullshit to start that fatuous war.  The performances by Naomi Watts and Sean Penn are excellent; I cannot recommend the film enough.


On the plane I got to see the documentary Inside Job.  It is to the 2008 financial crisis what Fair Game is to the Iraq War.  It calls people out on their bullshit.  It was so refreshing to see the filmmaker interviewing people from Goldman Sachs and Bush's financial team.  They'd frequently try to drop misinformation, and the filmmaker, who was actually knew about the subject, would call them out on it.  Watch this movie.


Then, still on the plane, I got to see Howl with James Franco playing Allen Ginsberg.  The film alternates between an interpretive animation over Franco's reading of the poem, a re-enactment of Lawrence Ferlenghetti's obsenity prosecution for publishing the poem, a re-enactment of a long interview of Ginsberg, and biographical episodes.  Unfortunately, I only got to watch about half the film before they threw me off the plane, so I really want to see the rest.


Last night, back in St. John's, we saw True Grit.  I'd seen the original.  This one is much better.  And Jeff Bridges is great.

Today we plan to see Black Swan.  And I still want to see the Fighter and the King's Speech.  I said it's a cinematic holiday season.

(Don't go see "The Tourist."  It's not right that Angelina Jolie cheated another mannequin out of a paying gig.)

Merry Boxing Day, a Better New Year, and Belated Christmas

The Georgian Bay at Midland, Ontario.

Like last year, Nicole and I are spending Christmas at her parents' place in Midland.  Her mother lives to cook, so you can't go wrong.  It's been a relaxing, enjoyable time.

Unfortunately though, this is as close as I'm going to get to sending a Christmas card.  This year I just had too many papers to push; Christmas cards simply weren't . . . in the cards.  But I hope all of you had a good one.

For me this is the first time I've taken any time off since I started my job, time that is needed.  Since starting, I've unleashed my inner workaholic, often working through weekends and holidays.  It's also good to be in Ontario.  Sure, Ontario is colder staying just below freezing, while St. John's has had an atypical winter often as warm as 8 degrees Celsius.  Nevertheless, the weather is better in Ontario, as St. John's has been hit with two solid weeks of driving rain.  (By "solid" I mean 196 uninterrupted hours of.)

On Monday, we're going down to Toronto to hang out and visit friends.

Visitor #2 and other events

This week I had the pleasure of my second visitor to Newfoundland, Dr. Sukanta Basu.

Sukanta was my favorite professor during the Wind Energy program at Texas Tech.  I had some good teachers at Texas Tech and one not so good one, but it's no understatement to say Sukanta's training made an enormous difference in my program.  This week he came to St. John's, because my company hired him as a consultant, training me and a co-worker further and advising us on our wind forecasting project.  We worked really hard but also got to hang out and get to know each other better.  So it was a great experience.

The view from my front porch.

This week we got hit with our first snow that hung around for any length of time.  The onset of heavy snow has been a concern, because I need to get the Firebird in storage beforehand.  Of course, I needed to get it registered here before that.  So that meant a lengthy, tedious process of importing, getting inspections and insurance, and finally getting both cars registered.  Friday, at long last, I put the Newfie plates on my cars.  I'm now done with lionshare of bullshit regarding car ownership.

Tomorrow I'm off to Montreal for even more training with Environment Canada.  I'm looking forward to gaining even more skills, and I'm looking forward to spending time in the city.  It should be great.