Ahhh Lint Remover...

...good, ole lint remover. A roll of sticky paper perfect for removing cat hair from clothing, furniture and just about anything else. But can there be anything else wonderful about the stuff? According to Wellington (the cat), yes!

It makes a wonderful cat toy. I'm not sure what's in the stuff, but it's something that Wellington loves, (and that Tiki could care less about).

Whenever I a discard a used piece, I will find it later outside of the garbage can. So I take it away from Welly, hide it deeper in the garbage, yet it somehow makes it way back out again.

Yes Wellington has a thing for lint remover... and cutips. Used, waxy, yellow cutips, which I find discarded all over our apartment.

I love animals, don't you?

...to Whitehorse

This year's annual vacation was a bit different from past years. Instead of hopping on a plane and heading South (or East), we hopped in the car and headed due North. Destination: [the rest of] BC, the Yukon, and Alaska.


Instead of boring you with all the details (of which I am fast forgetting), I will cover where we went, what we saw, and some other highlights. But just be warned, once I start writing, I may go into details anyway...


Our first day goal was to make it from Vancouver to Barkerville. Which we did. Sort of. We drove up through the Fraser Canyon, planning to take Hwy 99 on the way down (mother nature had other plans though). We made it all the way to Barkerville, and stopped in Wells (just west of Barkerville) to find somewhere to stay. Turns out for the first time ever there were no vacancies due to four reunions taking place that weekend. It was late, I was tired, hungry, and getting really grumpy. We had dinner in Wells, and made the drive back to Quesnel.



The next morning we got up, drove back to Barkerville, did the tour, drove back to Quesnel and finally started heading north towards Prince George, and on to our next destination Ft. Nelson. We managed to make it as far as Chetwynd, and spent the night in the Chainsaw Carving Capital of BC (or was it the world?) and dined at one of the many Chinese-Western diners.


Our third day was probably the shortest traveling day of the whole trip. We cut up through Hudson's Hope and popped onto the Alaska Hwy, just north of Ft. St. John. I was promised lots of Moose on this leg of the trip, at least that what the signs kept telling me... but I didn't see one. We arrived in Ft. Nelson after only a few hours on the road, and spent the afternoon, evening, and stayed over night with an old friend of mine I hadn't seen in ten years. It was a fun visit!


The next day we decided to drive all the way from Ft. Nelson to Whitehorse. A 12-hour driving day, with a nice break at the hot springs in Liard Provincial Park - nature's hot tub! It was awesome, and difficult to get back in the car!

We pulled into Whitehorse around 11PM... and it was still light out. Welcome to the land of the Midnight Sun. I have to say, I was not overly impressed with Whitehorse. I expected it to be more like, well, Dawson City. I don't think our first hour in Whitehorse set a good tone either: We went to Boston Pizza for dinner. Not our first choice, but given the time of night, and what was available, it was our best choice. We walked into the restaurant around 11:15 PM. We both know this for a fact, because that's what time it was when we got out of the car. We were told they stopped seating people at 11:30. We decided not to make a stink about it and left. Strike one for Whitehorse. We settled on a gourmet meal at Timmy Ho's. I ordered a egg salad on brown bread. They only had chicken salad left. Strike two. And they only had white bread. Strike three. The donut options were very limited, but I managed to get a chocolate one. Which Colin accidentally ate. He offered me his donut, but it was maple, and I hate maple... I just wanted to cry at this point. And get the hell out of Whitehorse. But we stayed for a couple of days. We walked around the city, and along the Yukon River; we visited the Beringia Interpretive Centre; and visited Muktuk Adventures, a kennel just west of Whitehorse with a 120 dogs who run the Yukon Quest. This visit somewhat redeemed Whitehorse. We had the opportunity to visit with the dogs and pups, and learned all about mushing.

We left Whitehorse and made our way to Dawson, the heart of the Klondike Gold Rush. Now this was a fun town. Dawson is home to literary greats Pierre Burton and Robert Service. And Jack London spent a lot of time there too. We visited a couple of museums, took a walking tour, visited Dredge #4, and panned for gold. We also spent the evening at Diamond Tooth Gerties - the thing to do in Dawson. But we never got the guts up to 'drink the toe.'

We left Dawson after a few days, and continued West. We drove the Top of the World Highway (aptly named) into Alaska and visited Chicken (named for all the ptarmigans in the area) and Tok. We only spent half a day or so there, so we headed back into Canada via Beaver Creek and spent the night in Haines Juction. The following day we began heading South, and found ourselves in Skagway, Alaska. This was our first time camping on the trip, and it was cold and poured with rain. And our site was merelt feet away fromt the train tracks.... But despite the weather, and being woken up by trains at 5 am, Skagway was a neat place, and the perfect bookend for our trip to Dawson. This is were the trek to Dawson began: in Skagway (Whitepass) and Dyea (Chilcoot Trail) - now a ghost town enveloped by a forest.

After Skagway we headed back towards Whitehorse (yee haw!) and begin to work our way back to BC. This time we headed down the Stewart-Cassier Hwy with Stewart/Hyder as our next destination. We dined in Dease Lake and spent the night in Bell II. We arrived in Stewart the next day, and got a good glimpse of Bear Glacier. When then crossed the only unmanned border aournd into Hyder, Alaska - a ghost town for all intensive purposes, even though there are a few live souls kicking around.

We visited the state park to see the Grizzly Bears. We paid $5 each to get in. Stayed for 45 minutes. Saw nothing, decided to head back to the car. Saw a grizz walking down the street...

We then began climbing our way up to Salmon Glacier, crossing back into Canada. Salmon Glacier is the largest glacier in the world accessible by road, and the fifth largest glacier in the world. It was something else.

We returned to the State Park (since we could still use our passes), and this time got to see a grizz enjoying a tasty salmon dinner and frolicking in the water. A couple of my favourite past times...

After our day in Stewart/Hyder we made our way to Prince Rupert - the warmest and driest part of our trip - oh the irony. We passed through Terrace, birth place of Colin and spent the night in Rupert. The next day we drove around, visited a museum, and decided to start heading east towards Prince George. We stopped in Terrace for lunch. It was strange for both of us, sitting eating our lunch and thinking this is where Colin is from. He was around one when his family moved to Richmond, and had only been back to Terrace a couple of times when we was very young.

We called a good friend of ours who returns home to Vanderhoof every summer for a visit, and it turned out he just arrived back home. We met up with Adam and his dad in Burns Lake and spent August 1st (our ten year anniversary) fishing... on a boat on Babine Lake. We spent our first date on a boat, but instead of fishing, we were watching fireworks. But a perfectly fitting way to spend the anniversary of our first decade together. And I caught my first fish ever - a nice, juicy lake trout.

We spent the evening at Adam's family farm, and enjoyed a crazy game of Gin. The next day we toured the farm and made our way home. But we had to return through the Canyon instead of passing through Lilooet and down the Sea-to-Sky because of a massive rock slide the essentially shut down the highway between Vancouver and White Rock.

The Highway 99 re-opened half an hour after we returned home...

Trudeau's Law

My return from DC was a bit of a gong show. The flight from DC to Montreal was somewhat interesting. I'm convinced my pilot was drunk. The plane was bouncing up and down, and shaking from side to side, and there wasn't much cloud cover. And twice, it felt like the pilot literally slammed on the breaks. It was like he was thinking, 'oh shit, I supposed to start my descent better slow this plane down.' The second time, I think he just about overshot Trudeau Airport!



Just to give you some background, I have never re-entered Canada through any airport other than YVR. So for the first time in my life I had to clear customs, pick up my luggage, drop it off, clear security again, and finally get on the plane.



When I entered the customs hall the first thing that went through my mind was Oh Shit! I have never see line-ups like it before, but I had no choice and I ventured down the stairs (it's the same layout as YVR). I saw there was a special line for connecting flights, that pretty much took me to the front of the line-up. Next problem: there were only a couple of people in front of me, but I don't think they were Canadian, and the custom officers kept asking tonnes of questions. So I started to panic again. I had about 90 minutes to make my flight. Finally it's my turn, the customs officer scans my passport, and boom, his computer crashes. He's frantically trying to reboot, and I can't go anywhere until it's working again. So he asked me the usual questions, and we got to chatting. He felt really bad and embarrassed about the whole thing. Finally, it started working and I could continue on.



Of course my bag was already on the carousel, so I grabbed it, handed in my customs card, dropped my bag off - the easiest part of the process, and headed to my gate, with ample time. Get to security... you can guess where this is going. Massive line-up, chaos, etc. But the line is moving, so I keep calm. Of course they stick me in the worst possible line-up. There was a woman with two small children who was trying to smuggle something through. So security pulled her aside, but it takes a few minutes before they send a new guard to our line-up.



The woman in front of me starts telling me how she's missed a few flights due to Montreal security... perhaps it wasn't the airport's fault though... the guards repeatedly told us to take all liquids out of our bag and make sure they're in the little baggie, etc. This woman WAITS until she is about to put her bag through, and then begins to pull out all her liquids and shove them in a bag. I had few choice words for her, but thought it best to keep my mouth closed.

Of course, my gate was at the very end of the hall. I couldn't even see it when I first passed through security. Let's just say I got my exercise. Finally I made it some time to spare - my flight was delayed!

And that's Trudeau's, err, I mean, Murphy's Law.

From the Whitehouse...

Most of my July was not spent in the office. In fact, I only worked six days the entire month. I don't think I've had time of like that since university.

Early July was spent in the US Capital. I was venturing over to Arlington, VA for the DPhiE Convention, so it just made sense to take the opportunity to visit DC while in the neighbourhood.

DC is quite a city, except for the people ... they make New Yorkers look like the politest people on earth. Despite its denizens however, it was a spectacular place to visit.

We stayed in an area called DuPont circle. This was a hip little neighbourhood which reminded us of the West End. It was home to some great restaurants, and the best frozen yoghurt you will ever have! We were eating dinner at this great pizza joint, and noticed all these people walking past with (what we though was) ice cream. We figured it had to be near the restaurant, and decided it would be a good idea for dessert.

Turns out it was right next door, and it wasn't ice cream, it was frozen yoghurt - literally!

You had three choices: plain, green tea, and pomegranate. And you had your choice of three toppings, with a variety to choose from. The yoghurt was delicious, and had a nice, tangy flavour - hence the name Tangy Sweet. It was such a popular place, the line-up was right out the door. It was also like that when we returned the next evening. Gotta have our Tangy Sweet.

Ok, there is more, much more to DC than rude people and damn good frozen yoghurt. Our first day in town we took an indoor tour around the city that included stops at: Capitol Hill, Ford Theatre, the White House visitors centre, and the Smithsonian (Aeronautical & Space Museum and the Native American Museum). Afterwards we ditched the tour and ventured over to the Library of Congress.

We ventured out of DC our second day, taking a boat cruise down the Potomac to Mount Vernon, George Washington's plantation. It was quite a spectacular place. We even saw were George and Martha are entombed, and George's wooden teeth.

After the jaunt to Mt. Vernon we returned to DC for some more touring. We walked the length between Captiol Hill and the Lincoln Memorial - 8 KM in 100 degree heat! We visited the WWII, Korean, and Vietnam war memorials, and the Lincoln memorial. By the end of the day we were very hungry, and more sweaty and dirty than any of us had been in our lives, which made things interesting come dinner time. We found a brew pub to have dinner at, but we swear they were going to refuse us service. They did let us in, but stuck us at the back of the restaurant - there was plenty of space up front... I have never taken such a satisfying shower in my life as I did that night.

For our final morning in DC we visited the Whitehouse. Normally foreign visitors have to sign up six months in advance through their embassies, but our sorority arranged the tour. It was a bit of a gong show... but all worked out in the end. I have to say, the secret service guys are some of the friendliest people around.

The White House was very opulent. It reminded me of a European palace. After our tour we returned to our hotel, checked out, and made our way to Virginia. We checked into the Convention hotel and looked into heading to the outlet mall. But it was too far away, and too expensive to get to, so we settled for the local mall: The Pentagon Mall. It was one of the most amazing shopping days of my life. I kept finding deal after deal, and everything fit. I went a little nuts in Banana Republic.

During Convention we had a free morning to do as we pleased, so we headed over to Arlington Cemetery. I can't even explain how immense it is. We saw the resting places of JFK and RFK, and watched the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier.

And that concluded our trip to DC, and DPhiE convention.

Where to Begin?

I wrote an entry just over a month ago, while I was in DC. It described my day out visiting the US capital, which is fast becoming a faint memory. As I went to post the blog, the time on the hotel computer ran out. So do I cram in two vacations, and six weeks worth of blogging into one post? I don't know. I'll see how it goes...

It's funny, since my return to Vancouver, it seems like everyone has disappeared. I'm assuming everyone is out of town, as is common at this time of year. It makes socializing hard, even though I really should take it easy this weekend, as I have not had a lazy weekend since, I don't know? Spring Break probably (and I'm not exaggerating)!

I had a couple of days after returning from our trip up North, to clean the apartment and do four, yes four loads of laundry. I didn't have a chance to vacuum upon returning from DC, so that was a must. Quite frankly, I was surprised the cats weren't hairless, since our bed spread had grown a thick layer of fur on it while we were away.

I've been spring cleaning the apartment, since Spring. I was hoping to really tackle the mess last weekend, but the social gods had other plans. Friday after work I raced home, caught some of the Olympic Opening Ceremony, and then it was off to what I swear was the longest game in CFL history, maybe football history! At least the Lions won.

Saturday I spent the whole day with my new nephew, Tobin, who is now 5 weeks old. We left our place at 11:30 am and didn't get home till 6:30 pm, at which point we turned around and headed out to Lisa and Andrew's for a evening of Olympics, games, and always good conversation.

Sunday I spent most of the day finishing my book for book club. I thought it was this coming weekend, not last weekend. I really enjoyed Guards! Guards! and hope to read more from the Terry Prachett's Discworld Series. I also spent Sunday running errands.

I finally started tackling the apartment this week. It is already looking a lot better. There are still a lot of items to sort through, but it's coming together now. Then I will be able to concentrate on my dancing and sorority volunteer work...

No rest for the wicked...