Today was undoubtedly the nicest weather I’ve biked to school in since moving to BC (I didn’t have to come to campus last week). It’s like 20 degrees and sunny.
The Dubious Monk
chinese curses since twenty aught two
Tag Archives: sun
sun and sea
It’s funny how all my writing on here is about going for walks down to the water. Sorry. You’ll just have to deal with it I guess because this is my first summer in Vancouver and I’m a fan.
This morning I went down to English Bay to do a bit of reading in the sun and went further East than usual where there’s a large inukshuk and benches on a small finger of rock sticking out into the water. Most of the places I’ve been sitting to watch the water are set quite a ways back from the beach, which gives a nice view, but out at this point it sounded like you were at the ocean. There was a woman sitting on one of the benches (apparently) meditating away, and it would be hard to pick a better spot. Other people were slackrope walking and there were teams of dragonboat-ish canoeists out on the water.
I feel a bit of urgency in enjoying all of this because I’m one of those new librarians who can leave the lower mainland to find work. I’ve been applying in places where the ocean will be a dim memory. Even if I manage to stay here, I’ll probably move to a different (cheaper-rent) area, since chances are I won’t be making much money, and the water won’t be right out the door any more.
sunday in the sun, everywhenelse very shady
I had been worried before starting five-days-a-week work. Only two days off each week? I would likely die. How would I ever get anything done? Doesn’t everything close at five pm just when I’d be done? The madness of it all. But it’s kind of working out. Having only two days focuses your time off a bit more. You feel a bit more justified sleeping till 11:30 when you only have the rare chance to do so.
And then Sunday after a slow waking up Holly and I found a place out of the wind and in the sun and we sat and read a newspaper and wrote and talked about jobsearching and it was kind of great.
When Holly arrived she wasn’t a big fan of the king-single sized bed our apartment was equipped with. I mean, we both fit in the bed, but there wasn’t a lot of (read: any) sprawl-room. Our landlord didn’t have a double bed for us, so we decided to get one ourselves. We saw a mattress in an alley, asked at the building it was leaning against and learned it had been left there by “some feral” out in the rain and it was nothing we wanted. A couple of days later a mattress appeared outside the building two doors down from the apartment. It was out there not a huge amount of time, seemed uninfested with bugs and it made its way into our room (we left a note, just in case it wasn’t being thrown out).
Last night we hung around a streetcorner in Chinatown waiting to buy an espresso machine from a guy in a tricked out Mazda who said he was “selling it for his mom.” It came in a paper bag, and the milk steamer hadn’t been cleaned, but apparently this is the way we roll.
