Stroller Post

This photo was taken in the elevator at the Burrard Skytrain Station. We had nothing else to do but wait, as it is possibly one of the slowest elevators in all of Vancouver.

Seriously, it takes several minutes to go from the lower level to street level (4 levels, no stops).

As you can see, we tend to use the stroller in 'convertible mode' instead of fully zipping it up and enclosing Louise. This serves two purposes - one, she likes it better, and two, I can reach down to pet her, or distract her from barking at cars (usually the latter).

Water features in the rain

Living in Vancouver has us walking in the rain quite frequently. While a walk in the sun is usually preferred, Louise usually doesn't care one little bit. The only real exception to this would be if she found it to be too cold, or she had a serious case of the lazies.

If you look closely in this photo, you can see that Louise is in fact, quite wet at this point. Even so, she was careful not to fall in while posing in this local water feature. She had to hop across about 4 of these concrete pads to get to her current position.

Earlier in the walk we came across some Canada geese and their young. The parents were all hissy and protective (understandably), so we didn't get any good pictures of that. Just some blurry ones as one of the parents decided to run at us with its wings outstretched. Dang I wish that one wasn't such a blur. For the record, we were walking along a path that brought us near the geese. We weren't trying to approach them, although that's what the goose apparently thought. Louise was pretty good and did not bark at all. I think she clued in that it was a parent protecting its young so the whole situation was acceptable to her.

Crazy posters and windy days

Okay, I just had to upload this picture. I could see it from my boss's window and could already see the crazy in it. At lunch time I stepped out to grab a photo. The pug with an afro kind of reminds me of when the Rock did that one movie with one. I don't know why.

But enough of the crazy posters. On the weekend I had Louise out for another walk along English Bay and the wind had really picked up. You can see in the photo that the water is a dirtier shade of brown instead of the usual blue or green. That, and the waves are being whipped by the wind to the point where we actually had some sea foam in places. I haven't seen that since being on the east coast. Somehow, all those tulips survived and were not blown out of their roots. Other than the wind, it was actually quite a nice day and when we went out later to celebratemother's day (by having sushi at Shabusen) we had to dress quite a bit warmer.

All in all, it was a pretty darned good day.

Lunch with the boys

Louise and I went for a walk along the new developments close to the office the other day, and when we did, she met with some of the construction workers having their lunch.

It was not easy getting her to leave alone a bunch of men with food in their hands.

They all enjoyed her company and thought she was funny, so no harm was done. At least she didn't try jumping up on them or go over the top with her begging skills.

Same spot at night, wide awake

While out walking Louise tonight I thought it might be fun to take another photo of the same spot as last time, this time at night. I had to really play with this photo in Gimp in order to tone down the yellow light and to draw out any other colour at all.

Perhaps there are some photo editing wizards out there who know better about these things but every time I desaturate a colour I find it difficult to then bump up the other colours. The one exception in this photo was the red from the rose bush behind Louise. I guess that colour was distinct enough that the photo editor could work with it. What I would have really liked was to bump up the green from the flower stems though.

At any rate, Louise didn't mind me fussing with the camera - this was near the end of our walk and she was only too happy to sit on the bench until I was ready to continue on home.