The Doom That Came to Cowtown

I got a late start due to lethargy and the assumption that the weather in Banff was going to be gloomy (weather report was saying it was only 5C). Drove down the highway with light traffic and the occasional sprinkling of rain. No assholes. Parked in the usual spot and bought some fudge.

I was going to go to Bison to try that rum cocktail I saw last time I was there, since I'd have many hours to sober up before driving home. They close at 2 after their Sunday brunch. I got there at 2:05. Alas. I then decided to walk to the Banff Springs hotel along the road. I wandered around the hotel briefly, then walked down the foot path to Waldhaus pub since I had a few hours to kill. Did part of my crossword, while enjoying a Hacker-Pschorr Weisse.  Given I had only eaten potato chips for lunch, the pint of beer hit me pretty hard.  I was tipsy and very happy.  The radio was playing lots of songs I liked, I was just feeling glad to be alive.  i thought briefly about how being alone while travelling often triggers my jerk-brain, but I just told it to fuck off and I was fine.

After finishing my beer, I left the pub and encountered a guy photographing the scenery.  He asked how to get to Bow Falls, and since it was easy, I told him.

That made me incredibly proud, given his accent identified him as being from the UK.  A place that is no stranger to beautiful vistas.

I walked to Bow Falls, then back to the bridge and opted to check out the Old Banff Graveyard.  Always a good place for quiet reflection.  Ultimately, I'm going to be cremated, but I wonder if it wouldn't be worthwhile to have a gravestone made, just so someone will look at it long after I'm gone and have them wonder about my life, like I wondered about the lives bracketed by the dates on all those tombstones.  I'll need to look into which rocks last the longest.  Oh, and a place to put it since my body won't be anywhere.

I walked up the pathway to the Banff Centre and was the first person to be seated at Three Ravens, which, as some friends pointed out online yesterday, ain't cheap.  But it is oh so good, and has the best view in Banff.

By this time the sun had come out, and I was facing right into it.  I donned my sunglasses and my server asked if I wanted to have the shades drawn.


Bread and custom butters was served. I had the duck breast with beats, followed up by a white chocolate mousse and a chocolate apertif.  Then I hiked back into Banff along the hidden corner lookout.

I was starting to feel quite sore from all the hiking, and would have loved rounding out the trip with a soak in the hot springs.  Alas, I'd forgotten my swim wear.  I opted to come home while I still had sunlight.  once again, traffic was light with no assholes.

In fact, the whole trip there weren't many people.  Banff only had a light scattering of tourists.  I suspect the gloomy weather (that went away once I got there) kept a lot of people away.  For me the weather was almost perfect.  I basically just wore a hoodie and was never hot or cold.  It was a goldilocks afternoon.

Facebook has a feature where it shows you stuff you posted on this day in years past. Turns out, the end of March, beginning of April is a popular time for me to go to Vancouver. There's no mystery to this - I often have vacation time I have to use or lose, and this is when my company's business year ends. So yay, a reason to visit; and yay, my vacation days have recycled.

Here's a recap:

Before I even got to Vancouver, on Tuesday night after my last day at work, I spent some time with thebrucie and Allison. We went to Craft for a four course meal with beer pairing put on by a local brewery. They were noteworthy for having a luau theme (so Bruce was happy), and an IPA that was actually super tasty - this is how they're supposed to taste.

Wednesday, I checked into The Burrard and took advantage of a special they had. I'm now the proud owner of nine (well, seven now) $25 Amex gift cards!

Being by myself I decided to go have a quiet dinner at Clubhouse Sushi, and then walk to the Rio to catch The Critical Hit Show (aka #DnDlive). It did not disappoint.

Related to the above, the performer I have a mild crush on, revealed she is about ten years older than I imagined! Also, that she was going to perform at a strip club for the first time the next evening.

Thursday, I didn't actually go to the strip club, mostly because going just to see a crush would be kinda creepy, and doing so by myself would be creepy as fuck. Instead, I opted to go to the Comedy Mix to see Sarah Tiana, who was pretty funny, as were the other three comics of the night. I need to go to comedy clubs more. It really is great value for the money.

Speaking of value for money, chicken fingers normally don't qualify. However, I ordered them at the Comedy Mix because I hadn't eaten any supper that night. When they arrived, the house lights had gone down, so I couldn't really see them. I could tell it was piled high on top of the french fries, making it seem huge. I resolved that I didn't really need to eat the french fries, so I'd stop when I got to them. Except there were no french fries - it was chicken fingers all the way to the bottom. By Grabthar's hammer... what a savings.

Friday, I hung out with stephtopia in the afternoon, inadvertantly filling my hat with soft drinks (wet. sticky. I've felt it before), baked a cake at Port Wood before everyone got home, and then went to the Burrard Pub with Jonathan, garething, and othelianna.

Saturday, Rosie and I went thrift shopping in North Vancouver. I figured, if we were going to do this, we should go somewhere farther afield, so it would be unique to both of us. Nope. She's been to every thrift store in the lower mainland it seems. Among our travels we also went to Filmgo sales, which is a thrift store that caters to professional props people, though they will sell to anyone. I found a Chinese Apothecary cabinet (basically a medium sized cabinet with 33 drawers in it), but didn't buy it.

Back at Port Wood, I prepared for Gareth and Steph's anniversary by icing the cake I'd baked the night before. Freeze your cake, it makes icing it way simpler! A little fudgy - I probably over mixed it. I'll need to work on that for the next iteration.

It was also the Sins Against God and Humanity Potluck party that Steph planned in my honour. Basically, all those weird and horrible recipes from the distant past you've always wanted to try? We tried them. I made Spam Musubi. Steph made Bologna Stew. Rosie made Twix Salad, Here's the thing about those recipes - they're actually damn tasty. Not terribly good for you, but if I was health conscious, I wouldn't have drank all that rum.

Speaking of which, Bumbu Rum is probably the best sip-it-neat rum I've ever had! Definitely picking up a bottle soon. Drinking did happen, but there was so much food, and drinking was at a sufficiently slow pace, that no one actually got drunk. Tipsy, sure, but not drunk. Next time, less unfortunate food, more cocktails.

The night required cheese, so I made them all watch The Nice Guys.

About the only real problem of the trip is that I ended up not getting on my bus because I assumed I was getting on a different bus and didn't actually read the instructions Google Maps gave me. And it was sufficiently late when I left the party that the 2 Km walk to Burquitlam station was less time.

Sunday I hung out with Rosie some more, but we did spend a plesant two hours at Dutch Wooden Shoe enjoying pancakes and the company of Steph and somejauntypolka!

I also remembered an incident where I waited too long to buy a set of drawers from Consignment Gallery and regretted it. I resolved to buy that apothecary cabinet. About two weeks ago I emptied my penny jar and got enough money to pay for the cabinet. That's exactly the sort of thing I like doing with that "found" money. It gets to live at Port Wood until I can get my car out there this summer.

And now I'm actually planning that summer trip. A full week in Vancouver next time, I think. This time was, as is the way of the spring trips, too short.

I was out at the Calgary Farmers' Market yesterday with some friends, and I noticed when you walked into the NE entrance, there's a store off to the side selling a lot of tweed-based men's wear (according to the market's map, it's not actually a part of the market). They also appeared to be selling some random Christmas stuff in the White Christmas Village mode. Among the things they had was a mailbox.

Here's the thing though, it looked like the mailboxes that Canada Post uses in historical neighbourhoods. I.e. anachronistic, but still real. I had some postcards that I needed to drop, so I tossed them in the slot.

thebrucie watched this and said, "I don't think this is a real mailbox."

We look closer and at the bottom, below the very Canada Post-like list of pickup times, was a website URL (which I didn't commit to memory) indicating they make models, and that this wasn't real.

Once we realized this, there was some good nature ribbing about my throwing a pair of post cards away by accident. In my defence, it really did look real, and the store had placed this model in the lobby, rather than inside their store.

I tried to open it and failed, so I went into the store looking for an employee.

"How may I help you sir?"
"Do you guys own this mailbox?"
"Yes, we do."
"Well, I mistook it for a real one, and I need you to unlock it so I can grab the mail I just threw in by accident."

The fellow also tries to open it, initially failing. He then confessed that he wasn't sure if there was a key for the lock. He fiddled with it a little more and finally the door popped open. It wasn't locked (the keyhole was just for show), the magnet that held the door shut was just really powerful.

There, at the top of a pile of other mail, were my two postcards. I grabbed them and thanked the guy for his help. I left to walk into the market proper, looking back briefly to see the guy holding a big wad of mail in his hands and an expression of now-what-do-I-do on his face. I'm just happy I wasn't the only one who had done this. I do wonder how long that faux mailbox was sitting there though. It looked like at least twenty letters - all waiting patiently for a postie who was never going to come.

You'll be happy to know (especially if your name is Sue or Jenny) that the postcards made their way into a proper mailbox later that day.

*** One Week Later***

I went to a Thanksgiving get together with my family yesterday. It was at my aunt's place, which is tiny, so we were mostly in the living room.

The TV was on CNN. There was only two stories on CNN that anyone cared about. Hurricane Matthew, and Donald Trump's "grab her by the pussy" tape. Specifically, Trump's "apology" about it that included his avowal that he was not going to quit the race under any circumstances.

"Oh god, yes. Please please please stay in the race. I can't wait to watch you singlehandedly destroy the Republican party, you misogynistic buffoon!", I say.

There's a pregnant pause in the room.

"Wow. This is really good turkey."
"Yes... and the stuffing is wonderful."
"I really like these devilled eggs."

And I think to myself. "Ok, don't discuss politics at Thanksgiving."

Later on, after everyone had left but me, my aunt brings it up and we have a laugh over it.

"There weren't any Trump supporters in the room were there?", I ask.
"Oh no. In fact, your cousins would have likely followed your rant with one of their own. They can't stand him."
"Good for them."

Alas, I have a bad habit of doing this. Sometimes it's when one of my pet rants gets poked. Sometimes I'm trying to be funny, and miscalculate into asshole. Still working on those.

My bike developed a flat on the way to work last week. This was the first time I'd used it since my trip. Managed to get halfway to work, then ended up walking the bike all the way back, and doing so angry because Shell has the poor taste to charge for air while simultaneously not having an air gauge you can borrow.

But I digress.

I wanted to switch the bike back to the original configuration without the Flykly Smart Wheel. I took it down to Bow Cycle and the charges kept adding up and up. By the time I'd left it with them, I was looking at $120 and not being too happy about it. Not necessarily rational, since I don't think they were ripping me off or anything. I just wasn't sure the bike was worth it.

They phoned me yesterday to say that they couldn't swap the original gear bak without a new, longer chain, and that that was going to cost another $40. I did a quick mental calculation and realized that the labour costs were now more than half the cost of an identical brand-new bike.

"Skip it. Just put the rear cargo rack on."

This morning, I got Gerry to drive me down to the shop so I could ride the bike back home, and he could take all the spare parts back in his car. It was a nice ride home. As predicted, I still had to push the bike up Home Road.

Will I get a second bike? Maybe next year. If I decide to get rid of the Flykly wheel, I'll just do it with a bike attached to it. In the meantime, it gets the commuting job done.

They only charged me $15 total for putting the rear rack on. Still, the only reason i had them do it was because I thought it required taking the rear wheel off. apparently, the Electra bikes already have points to attach a rack, and all you really need is a wrench and twenty minutes of time. I'd have known that if I'd bothered to read the instructions. Oh well, $15 was probably better than several months worth of procrastination.

And the flat rear tire? Apparently there was nothing wrong with it, and it held full pressure for the whole trip.

I have what I call "pee dreams". Basically, if my bladder is full in the middle of the night, my subconscious will try to tell me by making me want to go in my dream. However, I'm not actually able to go (being in bed in the waking world), so the dream plays out in a very frustrating way.

I'm usually in a large building like a shopping mall or similar complex, and I look for a bathroom. All of the bathrooms are unsuitable: They're either occupied, or they have no privacy, or they're broken. Imagine a crowded changing room there all the stalls have had their walls removed. Or the walls are only two feet high. I end up searching high and low for a proper bathroom, never to actually find one.

So I've been trying to spot these occurrences in the dream so that I can say "a two foot high stall divider in a room full of my bullies from junior high is an improbable occurrence - I must be dreaming. Time to wake up."

I almost succeeded last night. I thought "a wall of out-of-order urinals beside a public swimming pool is an improbable occurrence. It's like those pee dreams I have, except I'm awake. I'd better saddle up my velociraptor and look for another swimming pool."

Sigh. Almost there, brain. Almost there.

Had an odd conversation just now.

I had gotten a call from my Aunt J on Sunday night, but I couldn't return it until today. Getting any sort of call from a relative is always unsettling as I'm not close with any of them. To get an unsolicited call usually means someone has died, and Aunt J is the oldest living Cyr on my branch of the family.

Her son was in town to visit a girlfriend, and they ended up getting into a argument that resulted in the son, B, being outside in the snow for several hours with no money (which is atypical) and no real contacts. J called every number she had only to find...

My sister's number is no longer in service. Huh.

My Aunt S's number is no longer in service. Double huh.

She finally tried mine in a sort of Hail Mary pass, since my number used to be my Dad's number way back when, and maybe a relative still had it. She figured she was going to get my brother.

Naturally my phone was off, so all I got was the message.

Anyway, B had ended up walking and chatting with some guy, and the two of them came across a fellow bleeding in the street. They helped him and then ended up spending the night a police station making statements (and incidentally keeping warm). The next morning he contacted his girlfriend, who drove him to the airport for his flight back to BC. With no reconciliation, so who knows if he'll be back.

Along with that, I found out that my aunt is now a recent cancer survivor. I wished her good health moving forward and that was it. No one had died.

Still, that was a weird little adventure. I'm sorry I didn't get the call directly - I could have easily taken B in for the night and given him a ride the next day.

My mind wanders; sometimes it hits upon fantastic ideas that would be great for an SF story or RPG. Then my brain starts imagining the outcome of those fantastic ideas. Then those outcomes spawn more mundane concerns. Here's an example:

• What if all of our stuff just vanished, leaving us behind. Alien Space Bats fuck with us in a way similar to the Emberverse.
  
• Ugh. A lot of people in airplanes and high buildings are going to fall to their death.
  
• I wonder what the odds of that happening to me are?
  
• my office is on the ground floor - if I fall, it will be into the pit where my building's basement is.
  
• Wait... Does my building even have a basement? I imagine it does, but I've seen no evidence of that. There's no parking garage, no low windows, and no doors that lead down.

From post-apocalyptic scenario to wondering if my office has a basement... in seconds!

Day 2 started with some good news, wendy_licious wanted to buy my spare VIP pass! Yay, con buddy! A quick trip to her work to pass it off and I was off to Expo.

The first noteworthy thing is that Friday is not Thursday - there were a lot more people on the floor of the Roundup Centre today than yesterday - I was lulled into a false sense of security there.

A few patterns emerged. First, I tend to peer over everyone, not making eye-contact. Partially this is just taking advantage of my height to take everything in. The down side is that almost every person I've run into so far has basically had to walk up to me wave in my face. I literally did not see any of them while they were trying to get my attention.

Similarly, my hearing continues to be superhuman under conditions of no white noise, and absolute shit in the din of a crowded room, as evidenced by the people above who were yelling my name.

I also put together a few mental quirks while discussing my reluctance to talk to any of the artists/celebrities.

"I never know what to say. I can't just walk up to them and say 'I love your stuff', that's hardly original."
"Why do you need to be original - artists love having their work validated."
"Really?!? They don't find compliments to be profoundly embarassing?"
"Why would they think that?"
"I do."

All this while talking to someone I know at a booth that was right beside a web cartoonist I really like.

I managed to miss the Parade of Wonders (it was Downtown, and I had some weird notion that it would end at the Stampede Grounds). OTOH, there were so many people cosplaying at the event that you didn't need to see the parade.

Guests that I watched included Graham McTavish, the Queens of Darkness, and last minute guest, Neil Patrick Harris. All where really good guests. NPH in particular was entertaining as hell, even managing to not let Mayor Nenshi upstage him.

I'm really warming up to Expo, especially being a VIP. Definitely thinking about returning next year. Two more days - we'll see how they go, but I expect wonderful experiences and glittery rainbow unicorn farts.

About a month ago, JumpOn Flyways offered a trip to Vancouver on the Easter Weekend. The price was right ($124 each way), the timing was good (Thursday after work, until Monday evening), and if you got in quick enough, you could take $50 off the bill (I didn't). The catch is they use a crowdfunding model - if they don't fill about 75% of the round trip flight, the trip doesn't happen. Obviously, this trip happened.

The flight was spartan (no food service, so the flight attendants mostly gossiped with each other), and due to conflicts with (I think) the airport, we ended up having the flight rescheduled an hour and a half later. This put me in Vancouver just a wee bit too late on Thursday night to do anything social. I checked into my hotel and ended up have a cocktail, salad, and creme brûlée in the hotel lounge.

This morning I wandered around Coal Harbour briefly, then met garething, stephtopia, Ryanzilla, somejauntypolka, and CS for brunch at a really good diner on the edge of Gastown - Deacon's Corner.

Sadly, that was my last chance to see Steph this weekend as she had a previously scheduled trip to Edmonton that began this afternoon.

Afterward I hung out with Ryan some more, visiting Forerunners, The ComicShop, and Drexal Games. I also discovered that Ironhead Athletic had closed/moved to parts unknown. Drat. My current IronHead pullover is rapidly wearing out after five years of loving use and I was hoping to pick up a new one.

I walked back to my hotel after that, which was a bit of a hike (4th and Arbutus to Coal Harbour) and relaxed for a while before heading off to Kadoya Sushi for supper. They had one of the most delicious rolls I've ever eaten - the Maple roll (Salmon, Cream Cheese, Smoked Salmon, and an amazing sauce). Getting there did provide me with a brief moment of sadness - The Love Bucket was permanently closed.

And now I'm back in my hotel room writing. First LJ entry in quite some time.