Driving, Dozing and Dragonboys

The word of the week is calcite.

Sept 10 - Treehouse Village!

Oh, treehouses - you seemed so simple as a child. Get boards, nails and hammers, pick a tree and a few hours later, you had… a mess. Which was pretty much as far as my friends and I got, scavenging materials from nearby construction sites and borrowing tools from our dads. Those were the days.

Now I've discovered that there's an entire community of treehouse lovers( nuts? )in Costa Rica, calling themselves Finca Bella Vista. They are dedicated to living 'off the grid' as well as being respectful of their environment, both worthy goals in and of themselves BEFORE you get to the cool part: they ALL live in treehouses! In a forest, no less! Have a gander at their website and take pause to consider: would YOU move to Costa Rica if it meant you could live as fabulously as they do? I'm considering it - lightly.

Sept 11 - Remembrance

Eleven years since 9-11. The horror and shock have faded.

But the memory endures. As do the scars.

I ask: what has the world learned? And I can't come up with a good answer.

Still. After all this time.

Sept 12 - Dragonboy

I love animation, I really do. Ever since I was a little boy, I've always loved seeing animated stories in every form and from every source. There's something about animation, I think in that it can literally do ANYTHING and take you places that regular film can't; the newer CGI still needs to tell a story and not just be done for F/X sake alone. It's the story that keeps us entertained, and enriches us.

There's a great story in Dragonboy, a charming short tale about a boy in a play who discovers that he doesn't have to be a prince to win the fair damsel's heart. I love this short; it really tugs on all the right emotional heartstrings… especially the one where I, too, feel like I'm a boy again, in a dragon costume. Or at least, I could have been.

Sept 13 - Vancouver Trip!

Up early and out the door by 9am today to catch the bus to Swartz Bay to get the 11am ferry sailing. Why? Because I was going to Vancouver today! Last time I did it with little research as to the 'how' and I ended up paying more than I'd have liked; this time, I researched the heck out of it. Bus to ferry, ferry to Tsawwassen, bus to Skytrain by the airport, Skytrain to downtown Vancouver! Total cost was less than $50 round-trip for all the transportation combined; cheap!

The total travel time was a little under five hours, all with someone ELSE doing the driving, which was good as I still don't do well going over water( thanks, Dramamine! ). I picked a little café and recharged the battery on my new cell; I'm disappointed that it only lasted a little past lunch. However, the viewing from the café was spectacular through the windows and I happily people-watched from the patio until dinnertime.

The view of English Bay that evening. Incredible!
I love the two people sitting at the sun-trail's tip!

What perfect weather to be outside! Sunny and calm and in the low twenties; I met my friend and we went to English Bay to pick a place to grab some grub. We took up a sweet spot on the patio at Milestone's, the same as the last time I was there( the wait at the Cactus Club on the beach was insane )and the viewing was incredible. We ended up there for a few hours and caught the sunset pictured above; it was simply amazing and a good experience of what people living in Vancouver get to enjoy - weather permitting. After that, it was time for a few drinks at Earl's on Robson St which I'd passed by a few times when I was last in town and thought would be interesting. The wait staff were excellent and I'll be sure to stop in again whenever I'm next in town. Heck, we ended up with a 'mistake' plate of appetizers from the kitchen that were simply delicious, tasting all the better for being FREE!

It was just a great night all around.

Sept 14 - Sleep

Ergh… the problem with a late night is that sometimes it runs smack into an early morning, as it did today. I ended up with about 3.5 hours of sleep and I felt it all the way home, but unfortunately I wasn't able to nap on the ferry or on the bus; I'm just too uncomfortable to do that. I also tend to drool while sitting upright and snoozing, so be warned. I missed a bus in the AM and so I didn't get back home until 12pm, which was fine as I immediately flaked out for a solid four-hour napcrash. Thankfully, the people upstairs were out and I felt much more balanced when I awoke. I was able to get in a few solid hours of work on my manuscript in the evening and felt the better for it.

I've taken a small break from using my sleep tracking app on my phone, as my case still hasn't arrived. I'm not going to put my 'thin and light' SIII within range of flailing elbows each night until it's properly protected. I don't like losing all the data for consistency's sake, but there's no help for it until the case arrives. Soon.

Sept 15 - Cars

Having access to a vehicle of your own used to be one of the rites of passage to adulthood. Walking was too slow, the bus was too unreliable and riding a bike was only as good as the weather. Cars gave you freedom, and that was addictive... until you realized how MUCH your car was costing you for that freedom.

Cars are unreliable, expensive beasts that eat through your wallet with ease. I've had my fill... I *may* get a new-used one again in the future, but ONLY if I deem it *necessary* for a long-term job... or a family. Where I am now, physically and in life, I don't need one. Which I like a LOT. :-) Just being able to easily walk everywhere I need to and easily hop a bus to get anywhere else really makes my wallet happy - plus I never get stuck in traffic!

Sept 16 - Manuscript!

Since I was woken by the people upstairs at 3am and again at 6:30am, I thought I'd get a head start on my day. So I dug into my manuscript to badger it into shape, copying in the last few chapters and then spending the morning getting it all shipshape. It's not as easy as you think; there's always a LOT of errors in a first draft and even fixing things like a misspelled name takes careful work. Otherwise all you've done is add ANOTHER error. Ensuring it's all properly formatted, that chapter and scene breaks are all put in correctly and that you haven't copied one title over another or put a chapter out of place… there was a lot of work to tidy, but I got it all done a little before noon. After that I created an encrypted PDF that can ONLY be printed and not copied / edited / etc, which I sent out to my few lucky Beta Readers along with a fair number of questions for Feedback Purposes. Now THAT felt GOOD!

In the super-sunny afternoon I went over to take a gander at the inaugural Victoria Chalk Art Festival downtown. It was the PERFECT day for it: the sun was shining without a cloud in the sky! The main art piece inside the Bay Centre was impressive and almost finished by the time we got there( see below )and some of the other pieces were done by then outside. I have to say I was a little disappointed by the art on display, as only two of the dozen were 3D perspective work - the least of them all was still leaps beyond my own talents, but I had high expectations I suppose. They were creative and colourful and lovely for works that will be gone by tomorrow and I enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed the happy crowds of people that came out to see them. I hope they're back next year, bigger and better!

It's been an odd week: everything sort of steamrollered in a soft and cushy way to end up here on Sunday night, with the blog coming together rather easily in an hour or so. This week coming looks to be nothing BUT job searching every day, as I'm done the manuscript and there's nothing else major on my plate. Just the little things that I can attend to here and there as needed. That's a good feeling...