Balloons

I like this commercial. That is all.

Vancouver

Dharyll and I went up to Vancouver B.C. on Wednesday, spent the night and came home yesterday. It's about a four hour drive plus another hour (if you're lucky) trying to cross the border. This is us, waiting in line to get into Canada.

Caw Caw! Is he a Canadian or an American crow? I don't think he really cares all that much either way.

This is the bridge we crossed in Canada. It's pretty cool, and if I were an encyclopedia I'd tell you the name and the history of it, but I'm not. Instead I'll just post a pretty picture of it and let you do the grunt work if you feel the need.

We got to the hotel in Vancouver and ditched the car because I'm a nervous driver and we decided it was for the best. We walked to the transit center thing and rode the Canadian equivalent of the Max train thing in Portland into town. We walked and walked and walked and ate a falafel and walked some more.

We found the expo center and got some chai latte's to wash that crazy onion taste from the felafel's out of our mouths. It start to rain while we were order, and by the time we got outside it was pouring and then it started to hail and then it started to REALLY hail and then there where huge organ-shaking thunders and lightnings. We walked around under the overhang watching float planes land in the crazy weather until it cleared up a little.

The storm leaving.

This is a building that's still under construction. It looked neat so I thought I'd take a picture. It's going to have a killer view when it's finished. Right next to it and a little behind it in the picture there's the floating gas station where all the planes were filling up.

Dharyll showed me this crazy graffiti wall somewhere in Vancouver. Don't ask me where it is because I don't think I'll ever be able to find it again.

Van Gogh, graffiti style.

Tiger lady! Huzzah!

And then we went to China town.
The gate.
Big kitties.
A memorial statue for all of the railway workers. From far away it looks like they're flying so I thought it was a superhero statue. I guess it kind of is, if you want to think about it that way. Flying shovel man!

I just really liked these flowers.

Wooden gumby!
The second day we went to Granville Island. I really liked it, even more than Vancouver itself. There's something about a shanty town and a grisly murder in Granville's past, but I didn't want to read Wikipedia's page far enough to find out more. Today, there are cool buildings all over the place (I thought mom and dad might like some of them) and crepe stands. It's just a neat little place, especially when the weather gets a little less nippy than it was.
Cool building.

Cool building #2.
Cool building #3.

We decided to head home once my parking on Granville expired at 1:30. We got lost a little trying to find the highway. There's a crazy mix of stop lights and stop signs at intersections and since I'm notoriously not a good city driver, things were a little stressful. But neither of us died and I didn't hit any pedestrians so I think on the whole the driving part of the trip was a success. We got to the border, waited in line an hour and got to the customs point. The Canadian guard took our passports and asked us some things.

Canadian guard: where do you live?

Me: (I look at Dharyll) I live in Olympia and he lives in Beaverton.

Canadian guard: Why did you have to look at him? That was an easy question!

Me: Well, we live in two different places.

Canadian guard: How do you know each other?

Me: We're dating!?

Canadian guard: But you live in two different places, how do you know each other?

Dharyll: We met during Study abroad.

Canadian guard: I hope she wasn't the broad! (Dharyll and guard: laugh laugh laugh)

Me: Oh... hehe... that's funny (I get pretty red).

Canadian guard: Where did you study?

Me: Italy.

Canadian guard: What do you do for work?

Me: student.

Dharyll: student.

Canadian guard: Are you bringing anything back into the U.S. that you need to declare?

At this point I'm pretty flustered and sweaty. I kept thinking to myself, "No, you have nothing. There's nothing you need to declare." And then I hear myself saying,)

Me: Oh.. umm... I think we have a jar of peanut butter!

Canadian guard and Dharyll: Laugh laugh laugh. (hilarious, I assure you).

Me: Oh... whatever.

We get our passports back, I can stop panicking and I roll out of the Canadian customs booth. I hope that guard was saving up that "broad" joke just for something like this.

Anywho, we drove and drove and drove. We stopped by a cemetery in Seattle on the way down to see Bruce Lee's grave.

Three German guys were taking forever, monkeying around at his grave so I wandered away for a while. I liked this grave.
And here it is.
So that was our trip. Oh yeah, on the way back home we stopped at Trader Joe's just south of Seattle got some things, drove drove drove and then I realized that I forgot my chai tea mix, the one thing I stopped to get. So we stopped at another one right along the highway slightly further south. Well worth it.
Hey, we should go to Vancouver some time!

Bed Time Deary

Willow sleeps with Jessie in the new house. Here, she's put herself to bed at 9:30. I walked by and there she was, staring at me like I was invading her boudoir at an indecent hour.

Nightie Night, pup.

Knitting in the Name of Cuteness

Our friend Lisa sent me a website where you can either order or download knitting patterns. The proceeds go to the Four Corners Bunny website which deals in finding homes for rabbits in the four corners area. So not only are you getting some sweet mitten patterns (from New Mexico, of all places) but you're also helping some rabbit shelters out in the process.

The Peace Gloves are my favorite. I might have to download the file. Plus the woman who created the pattern is named Nanette, which is awesome in my book.
I wish I knew a Nanette.

I'm also intrigued by the Glove Knitting book, also by Nanette.

Anyway, peruse at will. It's all for a good cause.

And here are some pictures of my buns (past and present).

Monty

Butters

Brick Walls and Waterfalls

... is a terrible song but we did go visit some waterfalls today so it seems mildly appropriate. Dharyll and I drove down the Columbia River Historic Highway which runs near mom and dad's house. We did a little hiking, listened to some music and saw some sturgeon.

The view of the Columbia Gorge from the Vista House.
Mossy guard rails along the highway. Back in 1908 there was no moss. But now there is. These must have aged since 1908.
This is..... probably Latourell falls. It might not be though. It's really hard to keep them straight since they all look like falling water.
ROCKS. I liked standing right up against them and watching water drops fall very slowly towards my face.
This is..... perhaps the same waterfall from earlier. I'm not sure. It had all this bright yellow moss or lichen on the rocks along the side of it. There's a little Dharyll in the corner, sort of like Where's Waldo.
Ok, this one is Horsetail falls. I know because I'm taking this picture from inside a cave behind the falls.
Ditto.
Same here.
This is a second water fall that comes off of Horestail falls further down by the parking lot.
STURGEON! We wound up at the Bonneville Dam fish hatchery. And they have STURGEON! And rainbow trout, but the sturgeon are ten times cooler. They can get up to 25 feet long and weigh more than 1,500 pounds.

I remember these guys from when I was little, they might even be the same fish.

Shot to the Face Film Festival

23 student films were shown at the Capital Theater in Olympia on Saturday, March 8th. I went and it was free fun. Some of the films were literally painful to watch, but a couple were really good. At the end of the night we got the chance to vote on which we liked the best and the one I voted for won. I found it on youtube today and thought I'd post it.

The contestants had to script, cast, film, edit and all of that within 72 hours. They also had it include a clock, a journey and first-person point-of-view in their films.

Here's the only other movie from the festival I could find. It was.... ok.

Warning, there's a wee bit of man-nudity.

Moooooovation!

Star moved today, and I helped! We picked up the Uhaul truck at 1 and then drove it back to the Glen to load up all her schmooze then drove it to her new house on Thomas street in west Oly.

Ben holding Lil' Hauler, one of Uhaul's two stuffed Uhaul trucks available for purchase at your nearest Uhaul establishment. The discovery of Lil' Hauler was a great start to a pretty good day of moving furniture.

The lawn gnomes in front of the Uhaul store on 4th Ave.
This one is special.
The Uhaul all packed up and in action with Star at the wheel. Don't worry, I was stopped when I took this so I'm not TOTALLY reckless when it comes to driving.
The front of Strizzles new house which is right across the street from a park and tennis courts. Way cool.
Maneuvering the Uhual into the parking area behind the house, a venture that really wasn't successful at all and ended in the mauling of a bush. Good times though.

Ok, so there's a story in all of this. It was just Ben, Star and I and we managed to wrangle everything into the Uhaul without incident. Star's new house, however, is a bit of an engineering conundrum. The staircase isn't to code, not in the least... and Star's new room is at the top of said stairs. Plus the door we'd been using to get furniture into the house opens up so that the door blocks the foot of the stairs so when you bring something in you have to squeeze in, turn around and close the door and then squeeze back onto the stairs which are super steep (see video below). Anyway, we had enough trouble trying to get her dresser up there when it became clear that the mattress was going to be an issue. In order to get it up these dubious stairs it was going to have to be bent double. Unfortunately this is a brand new mattress equipped with reasonably stiff springs, metal, etc. Ben took the door off it's hinges so that it would be a straight shot up the stairs.
Ben taking the hinges off.
And then we tried to get the mattress up.

And this is what happened.
And this is Ben's "puzzled, strained and stressed" face once it became clear that with our muscle power that mattress wasn't going anywhere. I think we got it to move about 3 inches in 30 minutes after lots of sweating, grunting and "Squeeze it Ben! PUSH!" It sounded like someone was going into labor, or a Lamaze class.

This is Star's "stressed, freaked out and tired" look. At one point she yelled up the stairs "What are we going to do Ben? This whole plan hinges on having the bed upstairs!"

Finally Johann (one of Star's new roommates) remembers that he has one of those cinching straps and got the idea that we could use it to help the mattress bend. After two tries we got it around and squeezed (it looked like it was wearing a corset and non too happy about it either) the mattress upstairs.
It sounded like a birth. "We did it!" "Oh you were so good Ben!" "Oh I'm so happy!" "I need a cigarette." It was almost a perfect Lifetime movie happy-ending script.

Here's a video of the house, the stuff and some of the pets (just some, not all).