Tuesday, February 8, 2011

A colourful greeting

When you arrive at Nanaimo's not-quite-yet-but-maybe-one-day International Airport, you will soon be greeted with a huge mural of life in and around The Harbour City.

My friend Cecile (her website is included with friends and family links below) has been commissioned to do the mural and is shown here happily up to her ears in spattered paint.  You can check out the progress of this fantastic mural here.

Cecile's Dutch heritage is showing .. note the Amsterdam logo on her paints.

A Pooh Kind of Day

Blustery.  Breezy.  Windy.  Gusty.  All words that don't quite allow for how much the wind whipped and tangled my hair as I walked around Nanaimo streets today, camera in hand, trying to get some shots that didn't have random strands of somewhat reddish curls adorning them. 

Leaning out over the railing to get a picture of the Yacht Club, I was struck by the wind driving the water near the walkway.  Maybe more telling is the fact that there isn't a single sail to be seen on the water.  I think there was a "small craft warning" on the waters today, Environment Canada's BC equivalent of Alberta's "heavy snowfall" warnings.  Weather advisories out here tend to do with heavy rain or wind, so "gale force winds" would equate to 'blizzard conditions." 

And you thought this website wasn't an educational tool.


As I was parking my car, I noted something that will most certainly make me seem the landlubber I pretend not to be when I'm around my cool lived-beside-the-ocean-all-my-life friends.  These are garages for boats, something which assuredly has a more nautical term I don't know.  But ... look at that.  Damn!  Now that's a business to get into.   Ten years ago, Bruce was paying a couple of hundred bucks a month to park a monstrosity of a classic car in spot that took at least an hour and half to drive to.  Can you imagine the revenue here in a completely convenient location?  Oh.  Em. Gee.


In Calgary today, it was -16° and snowing.  Here, it was 14°, sunny and windy as a spring day in Lethbridge.  Any of you want to swap your snowshovel for a very dishevelled hairdo?

Thursday, February 3, 2011

It was just this way ...

When Sandy and Melvin met. Or at least, I imagine it this way.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

To shoo or not to shoo ...

No, he most certainly doesn't belong on the bathroom towels .. the clean, cat-hair-free towels in the visitor washroom.  But  .. you gotta admit, the oversized cat sqeezing his way onto this shelf for a nap is adorable.

Bruce laughed when he saw the picture and told me Mr. Tippy's been doing that since he was a kitten.  ...  *sigh*