Tag Archives: blue jays

13.04.14 [Sunday]
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campbell river, sports, travel

time and work

Yesterday I watched a documentary about the Chinese artist/dissident Ai Weiwei. The scenes where he was in Chengdu made me miss China. Not that I was especially happy when I was living in China, but visiting China after my term was done? I loved it.

Maybe I just miss being on vacation. I know from Australia that working five days a week wears me down. After easter I was joking with some of my coworkers about how I could get used to that 3-day work week/4-day weekend cycle. But it wasn’t a joke exactly. I totally wish my job was a (predictable) part time one. Especially here in Campbell River where I do not need to be working as much as I do to pay my rent (as opposed to Vancouver or Sydney).

I mean, I like making enough money I don’t have to put off buying groceries till my paycheque comes in. I don’t want to make less per hour, just work less. Socking money away in a bank account is something I’ll appreciate eventually (when Aileen and I hit the trans-siberian for example), but for now it’s not exactly providing a huge amount of pleasure for me the way lazy long weekends do.

But I have vacation time coming, and I’m taking it in San Francisco. The Jays are playing two games against the Giants the first week of June and I’ll be there. I bought tickets yesterday and had to fight very hard to not spend hundreds of dollars on each one.

I got one seat behind the plate-ish along the home-3rd base line (which is my favourite place to watch a ballgame from even if it is thirty rows further up from where I’d get them at a Goldeyes game), and the other by the Giants bullpen lined up along the 2nd-3rd basepath. I’m hoping Lawrie’s back with the big club and isn’t injured so I can watch him do his thing fairly closely. It’s too bad about Reyes’ ankle injury.

Sometimes I think about my time here in Campbell River being something like my time in Wanzhou. When I do that it feels more manageable. I mean, I couldn’t possibly go to San Francisco for a week or Vancouver for a weekend from Wanzhou. And I made it through those years all right. But I worked a lot less as a mediocre teacher.

Sigh.

That’s my infrequent update on what is happening in my non-reading life. (For my reading life, as always check Librarianaut)

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12.04.09 [Monday]
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photography, sports, vancouver

i am a big fat dynamo

Today I did my taxes, got some more Lego out of storage, bought minor bits of recording equipment, dropped off my Emerald City film to be developed, got new passport pictures taken and purchased inner tubes for my bike (because I got a flat the other day coming home from school). That was all before 4pm and watching baseball (on TV in a bar).

The home opener for the Jays season was spoiled by our exceedingly handsome closer, who was unable to not blow the save. Le sigh. At least Colby Rasmus made an excellent diving catch and hit a triple (which, even though it’s illogical, is a feat I respect way more than a home run, no offense to Mister Bautista), and I watched the game in good company.

One of the things I really enjoyed about our Easter dinner yesterday was one of my friends being a little drunk and really wanting to take us all to a goth night. Her pitch to me was “Goth girls are all hot and they love librarians so you should completely come.” While I agree that goth girls are hot, and that their librarian preferences are probably a bit higher than the general population, I didn’t go to that part of the evening. And it turns out that was just as well, because the bar they ended up at was doing a lesbian night as opposed to goth, which would have hurt my chances for love far more than my lack of ink and paleness.

Remember how I talked about the cherry blossoms being awesome here? This is my fucking bus stop/skytrain station:
where i catch the bus
Spring here is great. I don’t care if you’ve already hit 20 degrees for weeks on end in Winnipeg because the planet is boiling.

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12.04.06 [Friday]
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school, travel, vancouver

opening week

My mom is off to France, heck, she might even be there soon, and I am done school for the term. Many of my classmates are now done school for good, which is a little weird. Weird that we don’t all finish together, I mean. I don’t have the great cathartic sighs of relief, since I’ve still got two and a third classes over the next four months. Plus doing interviews for a book we’re working on.

The good thing is that remaining a student leaves me able to work in Graduate Research Assistant positions over the next few months. I’ll hopefully be doing a bunch of video production work for one of my profs, and right now I’m doing a whack of content management stuff for SLAIS’ new MA in Children’s Literature website (which isn’t up yet).

The wonderful bit about this kind of work is that I can do it on my own with a baseball game on. The Jays have new uniforms and hey, maybe this is the year they’ll play meaningful September ball. I enjoyed the hell out of their first victory of the season yesterday, but really, I just like watching games.

I was looking at my history of being here in Vancouver and I noticed that this month till the summer classes begin is my first time I’ve really spent in Vancouver without school going on. I ran off to China and Australia at the ends of my previous semesters, so I’m going to have to remember that there isn’t any meeting with people in my classes that will just happen because I’m sitting in a chair near somewhere they are going. If I’m going to see my friends I have to contact them. Which will be difficult but I’ll do my best. It’s a time for hope.

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10.05.10 [Monday]
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food, sports

cook flesh with fire

Getting the chance to barbecue is something I missed living in the condo. Reyn has a barbecue on the back deck though, so I’m getting back into practice.

Yesterday I was at my mom’s and I barbecued steaks and portobello mushrooms. The steaks had marinated in tequila and garlic for two days, and I grilled the mushrooms up with a raspberry vinaigrette and fresh rosemary. Both turned out pretty good. I always worry when cooking meat, since if I fuck it up it’s not me who has to suffer the eating of it.

While eating, my mom explained to Sri’s son that the steaks were marinated in booze because it was Mother’s Day and that’s how she wanted it. (He wasn’t a fan.) This led me off on a reminiscence about canoe trip steaks with Ernie and Dave’s uncles. I can’t remember if those steaks were actually soaking in whisky for four days of hiking or if they were just aging to perfection. Still the best damned pieces of meat ever.

The earlier part of Mother’s Day was spent watching the Jays win in style while Mom napped. Oh, and dressing the dog up to celebrate surviving cancer for a year. She got the shirt specially made since, surprisingly, it is hard to find a shirt for a dog (or infant, which is what she ended up buying because it was cheaper) that has “Cancer Survivor” preprinted onto it.

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09.08.02 [Sunday]
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sports, travel, winnipeg, 中国

six four three with a scoop

It seems like more people than I’ve ever noticed before went to Gimli for the Icelandic festival this year. Like there’s some strange signal calling people out there to partake in herring or pillaging whatever there is to witness at such a festival. A festival that’s sort of like Festival du Voyageur except not in the blinding cold. I hope there wasn’t something in the lake summoning all these folk for some ominous rite that ends in electricity, blood and drowning.

I’ve been studying Japanese recently. Just slowly putting the pieces of language together. I can sound things out with both the katakana and hiragana, though I’m not really worrying too much about pronunciation. I will be satisfied with a fragmentary collection of knowledge. At least for now.

Twenty-eight days till I leave for China. I’m working on figuring out what I’ll look forward to after that. One option is going to school again. That’d give me a good few months of putting together applications to keep busy. Anticipation of actually learning things again. This half-ass Japanese studying makes me realize how much I miss school. Learning shit is good stuff.

And the Jays game this afternoon was pretty good. Johnny Mac was in at short and started two double plays, one of which made me glad I get video highlights as well as the live radio feed. I’ve got no problem with Scutaro, but it’s nice to see the Prime Minister of Defence out there doing that thing he does.

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08.04.03 [Thursday]
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sports, tv

he was kind of hyper

Okay, I swear I won’t just turn this blog into a Read the Tao of Stieb! blog, but here’s another pointer to them because they’re talking about someone I know, Gareth Wheeler. I went to JSkool with him. Of course this note isn’t very flattering but still. I know people that are Torontocentric and on TV. The quote:

Gareth Wheeler can rest easy…there’s a “glimmer of hope” for V-Dub: We get the fact that the host of SunTV’s the Grill Room wants to elicit some sort of discussion. But starting off the discussion with Mike Wilner, the Drunk Jays Fans’ Stoeten and some random Sun writer by asking them “Is there a glimmer of hope for Vernon Wells?” exactly one game into the season was a little much. It was even funnier to see this conversation after the game, in which Wells went 3-for-4 with a homer, 2 RsBI and two runs scored. Is it just us, or does Gareth have all of the feral nervous energy of a ferret backed into a corner? Kudos go out to Stoeten for locking down the gig, and for resisting the impulse to reach across the table and shake some sense into the host, who trotted out just about every tired Toronto hockey-centric media cliché about the Jays and especially J.P..

I wonder how many of our graduating class are now employed by SunMedia? I know of two now.

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08.04.02 [Wednesday]
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games, sports

how did Giambi make that catch?

Oh baseball, how I’ve missed you. It’s too bad the Jays couldn’t hand the Yankees the loss on their historic final opening day in Yankee Stadium, but they didn’t entirely suck. That’s something. From the Tao of Stieb (a Jays blog I’m liking a lot more now that I don’t have 800 Spring Training reports to sift through because of my internet sabbatical): Sloppy grit doesn’t equal wins

Doc is an intense, angry man: Roy Halladay pitched last night as though it were Game 1 of the World Series. When things go wrong for Doc, we usually get the sense that he’s swearing at himself on the mound. Last night, though, he glared in at home plate umpire Gary Darling (who was ridiculously awful), swore at the bogus dimensions of Yankee Stadium (314 feet my ass), and generally looked as though he was about to scale the outside of the Empire State Building and swat away at fighter planes.

Reyn didn’t get my email cancelling Reign last night and he actually showed up. Craziness. I was in an okay enough state that I didn’t actually fall asleep while he was here, so that’s a plus. And we played an awesome game of Carcassonne with many lead changes and a dramatic ending.

And I slept normally, so I think my body thinks I’m back in CDT. Huzzah.

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