Apple Fest!

Arggg... don't you hate it when you write a big long post out and then accidentally refresh the page or something and have to retype it?  I do.

Today was the Apple Festival at UBC Botanical Gardens!  The roommate and I went, stopping first at MIX Bakery in West Point Grey (I had a sour cream coffee cake and apple cider) before heading to brave the crowds.  The fest was awesome!  They had over 60 varieties of apples for sale (but some were sold out by the time we got there) and a number of them were from ancient varieties and one was even just recently discovered in nearby Crawston, BC!  We picked up 4 bags, a bag of Elstar and Honeycrisp for immediate enjoyment, some Belle de Boskoop for baking/cookies (apple pie anyone?) and a bag of Gloster to eat after Christmas... they need to ripen for a couple of months after picking.  

Also, in case the 2 or 3 people who read this didn't already know, I have a job!  I'm working in a local coffee shop as a part-time baker, part-time till person.  It's been great so far, I'm definitely enjoying the shop and getting to know the people who work there.  They have made me feel so welcome from the first time I met them all, and I am definitely looking forward to the next few months of getting to know them

So I guess thats about it...  just mostly been working and enjoying Vancouver!!

Beautiful British Columbia

Vikings, pilgrims and kings... oh my!

It's been awhile since I've posted.  To make a long story short, I went for a job I really wanted... gave it a lot of me, and I've just been feeling exhausted since I didn't get it.  What king of person with 5 years experience goes for an entry level job anyway?  But this isn't about that, or what I've been doing in the past few weeks.  I went to Whistler, which was awesome, so maybe I will post about that later. 

I stumbled across ancestry.com today, and to be honest, I got pretty addicted.  I decided to see how far back I could "trace" my genealogy (though the hints function) before it runs out.  I thought I ran into that with a guy named John Peryns from Somerset, England born in 1401, but it turns out we have a much more interesting history when I hit the Scottish branch of the family.

Finding links to the past through other people's family trees was pretty difficult once I got out of the family I knew, sometimes there would just be a first name or last name and a date of birth.  No place or date of death or much else.  But that all changed when I stumbled upon a man by the name of Carnegie in late 14th century Scotland.  I figure that since he's probably THE Carnegie's ancestor somehow, that someone really researched this.  The trees/records became pretty precise, with the actual day of some of the people's deaths.

Currently, I have discovered 5 castles (Dindonald, Dundaff, Rosslyn, Montrose, and Inchmurrin), four Earldoms (including Fergus, Lord of Galloway, via his possible marriage to an illegitimate daughter of King Henry I of England),  and a whole slew of history. Who knew??  I'm not related to General McClellan, but this is so much cooler.

The entire Fergus storyline fascinates me... according to wikipedia his orgins are kind of a mystery, so I am going to say what my family tree tells me.  His father is Gudrod (Godfred) Cronan from the Isle of Man (who died in Iceland in 1095) and his mother is Maria Haardraada Haraldsdatter from Norway.  And his wife, which the tree names Elizabeth of England, is the illegitimate (?) daughter of King Henry I Beauclerc of England (William the Conqueror's son) and Matilda, Princess of Scotland.  Anyone else confused?  I am... here's a picture to help (if its too little try clicking on it):

So according to Ancestry.com, not only do I share a 10th great grandmother with John F. Kennedy, but I am descended from royalty! After discovering all this, I gave up on seeing how far back I could go.  A king has ancestors to infinity (and so does the legend of Fergus for that matter).  But do I stop looking?  Of course not... I dig a little deeper, and see that there is a lot of activity from the Norweigans pre-1100.  Which, as we all should know, is the viking era, which explains why their is a Norse in Scotland and someone ending up in Iceland.  I delved a bit more into the royalty as well, but if you're truly interested in that there are plenty of history books for that.

I think thats enough digging for the night... the oldest date I could find was right at about 1000 AD, because before that, they just didn't worry about the dates.  Its pretty late now, but be patient with me, I will update again eventually!

NO INTERNET

Internet is out in my building, LAME!  So I am sitting at Starbucks with my two free hours checking emails and drinking coffee.  The internet has been out since last night, so I'm not sure when it'll be working again!

Tasty transfat free food!

Yesterday when I went to the grocery store, I discovered it was customer appreciation day and got 10% off my total purchases!

I talk about the grocery store, because I've been noticing that everything I've been cooking tastes so good!  I know its not because I'm an outstanding chef or anything, because that would be rather sudden, but rather the ingredients used just taste that much better up here.  There aren't transfats in anything and most of the fruits and veggies are extremely fresh.  I love it!  Eventually I will learn to cook better and faster, but for now I am just enjoying how tasty everything is!

That's all I wanted to comment on for now.

"This is the interactive part of the flight..."

I'm back in Vancouver after spending the last weekend of the summer in the heart of oil country farther east.  One the hour plane ride from here to Edmonton, I got a beautiful view of the Lower Mainland and the Cascades, but the Rockies were covered in clouds.  This morning and the flight from Edmonton the Rockies were visible (and quite stunning) but all of Vancouver was under heavy cloud cover and rain.  Oh, the rain...

On the flight this morning was the only truly witty flight attendant I think I've ever had on board.  Usually there is the cheesy: "There may be fifty ways to leave your lover, but there are only 6 ways to leave this airplane."  However, there was none of that on this flight.  She had the entire plane cracking up and hanging on her every word.

While the flight attendant was definitely the best part of the flight this morning, something really odd (to me at least) did happen.  At one point she came on the PA and announced that the flight to Ottawa was ready to leave, however it was missing some of its passengers, so if you were heading to Ottawa then you needed to get off the plane.   I didn't realize that it was still possible to get on the wrong flight.  Although I was definitely proven wrong this morning.

I don't really have much to announce other than that... the weekend was spent mostly running errands-shopping at Costco, Ikea, Walmart, Home Depot--finding mexican food in Edmonton, cleaning D's room and watching lots of NCIS.  It was nice to spend some time with someone I have known longer than a couple weeks.  I got a really nice winter jacket, which I've reallllly been needing since I took all the other ones back.

And thats all I have for now... I will probably remember more later and come back with another blog, but for now I will work on uploading the few pictures I took of Vancouver and the mountains.

Double B Adventures (Bus and Bed)

Today I took the bus downtown to pick up my SIN number and get a library card. Now the most direct route for me to get downtown from the apartment I now live in, is via Hastings St. On Hastings resides the part of town known as "Skid Row," where the poorest of the poor "live." My mom and I walked down Hastings when we visited in July, but it wasn't anything what it looked like when we drove by today... there were hundreds of homeless people wandering the sidewalks in the small two block area where most of Skid Row is concentrated. But thats not my story, my story today is about what happened before we drove down that part of Hastings. It starts on the bus stop right before those two blocks, when two men separately got on the bus and sat down next to one another. Within minutes of the bus taking off from the stop, the man closest to the window shoved the one in the seat next to him onto the floor and yelling at him. The man on the floor gets up and the man by the window pushes him back down. While this is going on, the bus driver stops the bus, opens the door and yells at the man by the window to get off the bus. He starts making excuses but the bus driver says for him again to get off. People from the back of the bus start shouting at him to get off. Meanwhile, the man on the floor gets up and moves to the seat in front of me. The man by the window finally stands up and starts to leave, but before he gets off he comes over to where the other man is and pulls back his fist as though he were going to punch the guy. I'm sitting there staring in disbelief, thinking I should do something but I was genuinely scared of the large, seeming mentally retarded black man hauling off to punch the poor, also mentally retarded man sitting in front of me. So I did nothing. The guy in the chair blocked the first punch, so the man successfully tried another. I was so stunned, I didn't even know what to do, but the bus driver roared a final "GET OFF" and the man left.

The entire incident reminded me of when I took "Theories of Persuasion" and we studied something about people in large crowds being less likely to take action because they think (hope?) someone else will. I don't know if thats so much the deal, or rather a fear of the large, MR man who could target me next, but I just felt extremely guilty that I didn't just reach a hand out to help block. The blow largely missed the guy, he just had a small red spot on his cheek, and for the rest of his trip he kept apologizing to me, saying he did nothing wrong, he just sat down...

In any case, the bus didn't stop on Skid Row and the trip back was uneventful.

Now I am in my new apartment off Commercial Drive, which I love. The room itself is rather small, but I have two huge mirrors and a huge window which help the room feel bigger. I also have my own balcony and bathroom, which is super fantastic. And Molly has a parking spot (two actually) in the underground parking garage, she is extremely happy down there not having to worry about vandals and thieves. There is also a massive blackberry bush about a block and a half east, a couple days ago I went out and picked 4 cups of blackberries that Claire and I have been eating. They are so amazingly sweet and fresh, I've never had anything like them. There are so many neat shops down Commercial, I found a cute little Italian grocery I love and will frequent more often. I've actually discovered food is much cheaper at these little places than at large chains such as Safeway. Not only cheaper, but much tastier.

I've been watching craigslist for a bed frame for my air mattress, mostly because I can't stand sleeping on the floor, it drives me insane. Since I wasn't able to find anything cheaper than Ikea, I decided to head over there and get one for myself. It's a fantastic beautiful unfinished pine bed--I get a whiff of pine everytime I come into my room now--and it took me roughly 6 hours and 2 stripped screws to assemble, but I got it together. I also got some organizational boxes for my clothes and an on sale artist's dummy for decoration. And since I also went to the art store yesterday for some basic art supplies (so I can get some decoration in my room), the artist's dummy may come in handy for sketching people!

All in all, this has been an extremely interesting week, but I am glad that it is the weekend and I can start Monday on fully focusing on finding a job... I have already pulled a lot of ads from Craigslist I am going to respond to. It should be an interesting week!