Well we've been blessed with a gorgeous autumn so far. I've never seen a sunnier September and October in Vancouver. But I knew it couldn't last. The rain started yesterday and today its pouring. My heart goes out to all those little kiddies out there with their awesome, well-planned Halloween costumes that are about to be covered up by parkas and rain-jackets. I join in the communal whine of "Awe Mum!".

Luckily our Halloween plans are not too affected by the weather. As going out drinking and dancing isn't in the flight plan these days, a trip to the one of the awesome local club gigs is out. However, our good friends Rena and Elwood have invited us over to watch B-movies and play Rock Band 2. And they live in a house so I can totally give candy to the trick or treaters who brave the elements.

And using this photo to segue from Halloween, I am happy to announce that I have culled and edited through most of my photos from our European Holiday this past spring. Part One includes Paris and Dusseldorf. Promise to have the UK shots up shortly.

I just found out: oatmeal. Liquidy enough to really get in there fast and solidy enough to really make a sticky mess.

This is probably not news to the viewing several out there, but I'm excited to announce our foray into the world of parenthood. I'm just on the cusp of my 20th week of pregnancy, hence my relatively limited posting over the past few months. Making a baby is exhausting; a full day of work just drains me to the point where eating dinner and sitting on the couch are barely manageable when I get home. And nausea and dizziness have firmly hung on to be dragged into my second trimester as well. Still, we couldn't be happier.

This morning we had our second ultrasound. Little baby looks good and far more baby-like than he/she did on the 13 week ultrasound. I'm already getting little kicks, punches and pokes in my belly. Even daddy got a to feel one last week.

I'm trying not to worry too much about all the upcoming trials and tribulations. As we live in a tiny one bedroom, we'll have to move either before or shortly after the bub arrives. Also, a year of reduced income.

Ironically, this little bub will be a Canadian citizen before Jai or I. Dual-citizen at birth; nice one.

Anyway, expect this blog to be slightly more baby-focused in the next little while. Still, I will keep the geek quotient up with stuff like this.

I've always thought my ability to judge measurements by eye has always been pretty good. Turns out, I was right. The eyeballing game is awesome in its simplicity. Though I have always considered myself math inept, I've always had an aptitude for guessing measurements that are real. My best score for one run through is 1.91, but the game has you run through three times and then averages your score, so my best so far is 2.59 (which got me into the top 10 out of the last 500 games). Maybe I should have been an architect?

Try it!

The xbox 360 owners out there know what we're talking about.

I hate microsoft.

Nyac, the Vancouver Aquarium youtube star and 20 year-old survivor of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill passed away today. I'm very sad. Who will Milo hold hands with now?

So I have finally been bitten by the knitting bug. I resisted it for so long; trying to stick to my resolve of not picking it up simple because it's cool again. But after some of the great gals I work with organised a "loopy lunch" to sit and knit or train n00bs like me, I thought I'd give it a go. So Nicole patiently taught me how to cast on and now I'm knitting. So far its not actually anything than a serious of uneven rows with the odd dropped stitch, but soon I'll be knitting real things. I'm looking forward to buying my first pair of bamboo needles and picking some brightly coloured yarns.

Haven't posted in a while, lots of mostly ups and few downs happening in RL at the moment. However, I just had to post this. One of my favourite blogs is passiveaggresivenotes.com , and today they features this beautiful sample:


The only thing that could top this off is if this cake makes it onto another one of my favourite blogs, cakewrecks.blogspot.com.

Today is the first day of the school year. As I battle with the hordes of students to catch a bus to my on-campus job, I am once again shocked to see how young first-years are these days. I swear they must be 12 years-old. The campus is full of wide-eyed yungin's looking lost and confused. The frats are busy attempting to recruit impressionable young men outside the Student Union Building.

And while there is technically 19 days of summer left, autumn is definitely in the air and the leaves are already turning.

This post is a little viral in that I stole the idea from Jen, who stole the idea from pinsandthimbles . A writing exercise where you write 25 things you love in specific details. It reminds me of the opening moments of the film Amelie, where the narrator outlines what Amelie and her family "aime".

My list:

1. I love cuddling with Jaime.
2. I love listening to the sound of the wind blowing through the trees.
3. I love eating eggs benedict on a lazy Sunday morning.
4. I love listening to the sound of crisp, red leaves swishing around my feet on a cold, sunny autumn morning.
5. I love the smell of a fresh Christmas tree.
6. I love listening to crunch of snow beneath my feet in a world blanketed with snow.
7. I love sitting in a big comfy chair with a good book on a rainy day.
8. I love the infectious sound of Jaime giggling.
9. I love arriving off a flight to be met at the arrivals hall by the smiling faces of friends and family.
10. I love watching cats chase laser pointers.
11. I love the sound of rain landing on our tent when we're safe and warm inside.
12. I love pulling the caps off all the jars in our spice rack and smelling the rich spices.
13. I love sitting round a campfire chatting with good friends.
14. I love that in French my husband's name means "I Love".
15. I love walking on a white, powdery-sand beach in the sun.
16. I love the satisfying "click-thunk" noise SLR cameras make when you take a photo.
17. I love warm toast with butter and Vegemite.
18. I love my mum's roast chicken dinners.
19. I love floating on water.
20. I love the smell of bergamot in a really good cuppa earl grey tea.
21. I love watching the scenery go by when travelling by train.
22. I love when something makes me have a really good belly laugh.
23. I love the sound of a well-played cello echoing through my heart.
24. I love the costumed children, the smell of firecrackers, and the pure cold and dark of Halloween night.
25. I love being caught up in the moment.

I came across this artist's blog a few months ago. I love the simplicity of her pencil drawings. And the recurrent bee theme is awesome.


Link: Renee French

I'm testing out some polling applications. There is no write in vote, so if you choose "other", you can always vote in the comments.

Its been very hot lately. Today's high is supposed to be 34 degrees, which could set records for this area. All night I dreampt about Vegemite. For breakfast I had three pieces of toast with butter and vegemite and now my tummy is happy :)

Ok, I think now I have all the bugs sorted out of my new template. It should be working now, but if anyone finds any problems, please leave a comment about it. Cheers.


My new template is a tad problematic. Should have things sorted soon.

First off I'd like to go on record saying I don't agree with the modern Olympics. It seems like a tremendous waste of money that could go to helping a larger number of people. If the world still needs the Olympics, they should do it the old fashion way; men wrestling naked on the steps of the acropolis of Olympus.

But as is the way of my information addiction, I cannot help but absorb the news of the current Olympics. CGI fireworks, stand-in cuter-than-life singers and giant basketball players aside, one cannot miss the medal tally. Its nice to see smaller countries getting on the scoring board; Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and even Togo all have medals. Good for them. But know who's missing? Canada, that's who. Which wouldn't be quite so pathetic if it weren't for the fact that we will be hosting the Olympics in less than 18 months time.

Now I know what you're all saying, "that's the winter Olympics", which is true. Let's hope Canada can improve itself in that traditional forum. But considering 90% of the population of Canada lives within 200 km-wide strip in the SOUTH of the country, where everyone gets a pretty decent summer, and sports like soccer, swimming, and baseball are so popular, you would think we'd be able to pull in at least one medal.

If Canada doesn't pull it's socks up soon, it's going to look pretty lame.

I haven't really put much interest into paring down my inbox in my gmail account. The search function in good, and there is so much room it's not like I have to actively delete stuff. Still, last month Jaime managed to shame me into feeling that I shouldn't have 2800 emails sitting in my inbox. Though I have pretty good faith in the gmail search, I still don't like to just archive stuff without putting some label on it, so it took me a while, but I now have a paltry 27 emails in my inbox.

Last month I received my Climate Action Dividend from the British Columbia government. The idea is that the government slaps an extra tax on petrol and then pays everyone in the province a $100 bribe. Anyone with a vehicle then uses said cheque to pay for their more expensive petrol. But for those of us without cars, we can use it to make some kind of purchase that will benefit the environment.

So I decided to buy a bicycle. I can't really call it a benefit to the environment as I don't drive (dedicated victim of public transit) and will not be using this bike to commute. Not because UBC is a good 10km from my house, and it almost all up-hill, but rather because riding your bike in traffic is fucking dangerous! While I admire the hordes of folks who do it, I would never. While you might be in the right most of the time, car/truck is always going to win in head-to-head battle.

So my new noble stead is merely for getting some exercise. I have the benefit at the moment of living across the street from the beach. And the beginning of the seawall bicycle path. Which means almost ten kms of beach on one side and forest on the other. And while you have to watch for other cyclists, rollerbladers, skateboarders and pedestrians who don't understand the difference between walking path and cyclepath, there are no cars to deal with at all.

While my eco-bribe only covered 1/5th the cost of my bike, I am very happy to have a bike again. My old all-terrain mountain bike is moldering in my dad's garage in Canberra and according to him is not worth shipping over. My new one is super-comfy. Shocks on the front, shocks under the super-padded seat. My only regret is that I umm-and-awed too long and missed out on the 2008 model which was bright red. The 2009 was black and more expensive, but is comfortable to ride and that's the most important thing.

I'm wondering what other people's experiences have been like with Cuil (the new search engine created by a few ex-googlers). The first day I tried it I basically got a recurrent "our server is too busy" message, though I do like the minimalistic black home page. Today I actually managed to get some results. Having cuiled* "shanathalas", a name that so far only seems to be proprietry to me, I ended up with much different results than when I google that word. Google generally top rates this blog, and references to it, followed by a lot of my flickr pages. However cuil's top listings for "shanathalas" bring up references to my flickr photos, but not on flickr, but rather flickriver, a new flickr app. It shows no reference to my blog, but notes my existance on the blogrolls of metalmonkey and on other friend's blogs. So in other words, just random pulls, rather than any relevant listing.

Flickriver as an app is quite nice to look at, but then again, I think the same effect could be created by a dark background on the regular flickr site. I've been expecting a "make background black" button from the flickr folks for ages.

What do you think?

* I can't very well say "googled".

I read a lot of sustainability-themed blogs at the moment. While many of them are very good, sometimes they can leave one feeling more overwhelmed, frustrated and downright depressed with the state of the earth and the massive change it needs to save it. But this post today by No Impact Man really brought home a powerful yet simple message.

Hey All, just a heads up that I have got myself a new job. I'm still at UBC, but I have fallen back into the loving embrace of IT (read: get paid a decent wage). I will now be working for the Office of Learning Technology, as Applications User Support. I start on the 29th. Looking forward to it. While I will miss working in the Archaeology Lab, I know that the project I was on will end eventually and then I'd be out of work.