Some things are Great

Some great things:

1. I enrolled in a four-month pastry course here at the Pacific Culinary Institute. I will get a pastry diploma. Imagine that.
2. When I was in grade eight, two new girls enrolled in our school; Tania was from Australia, and Gillian was from New Zealand. They were both gorgeous. Our “local girls” paled in comparison to their other worldliness. And they both loved our art classes as much as I did.
   
   I became friends with both of them. I followed Tania’s history and even spoke to her a few times over the years, but I never knew what became of Gillian and she never attended our reunions. Never, that is, until yesterday when 30+ members of our West Van Secondary grads of ’65 met for lunch.
   
   I could not stop telling her how I had idolized her. Perhaps that is why she drove me home. She loves plants, we have friends in common and she’s still a dynamic and alluring woman. But … our local girls are her peers now—in fact, they shine. I made lots of dates for lunch.
3. A lovely woman named Jennifer McLeod was also at the lunch. She came with her friend, Beth Chrysler. I think because Jennifer’s (fabulous) mother was out grade six teacher, I felt particularly close to her and I was so excited to see her yesterday I actually kissed her hands.
   
   She asked if I would sit for lunch with her and Beth. I, of course, felt honored to do so and when I sat down for lunch, I felt like the luckiest man in the world. Across from me was Leah: radiant, warm and welcoming. To her right were Gillian and our mutual friend, Wendy.
   
   Across from Wendy: Betsy, my friend BFF John’s former girlfriend. And between Betsy and me was Jennifer; Beth was on my right. I felt like iron pyrite amongst gemstones.
4. I have asthma and bronchiectasis. That second one is a doozy. It’s a killer, so I am monitored with CT scans and pulmonary biopsies and, of course, its protocol to share the results of my regular tests with me. I hate the feedback part. It’s often depressing.
   
   This time, however, there was no deterioration from the previous bi-annual test. That is a first. The advancement of the disease is slowing down thanks to the treatment regimen prescribed by my docs. Woo hoo.

A photo dump to celebrate (click to enlarge):

A Summer Day in Winter

Get a coffee and come back to look at this post. There are a lot of photos with lots of detail.  Relax and click on the first image and then use your arrow key to scroll through the rest of the photos. I took all of them today on my walk along the seawall.

Winter can be beautiful in Vancouver—especially on a warm day (15°) right after a series of storms. I was only wearing a t-shirt and had to keep my rain coat open to stay cool. It was an treat today; there was barely a soul on the wall.

Can you see the water dripping down?
The earth was overflowing everywhere after the recent
storms. There were many waterfalls along the seawall.

That root is almost purple.

I love the composition of this shot. I love the little
islands of moss and the subtle lushness of the colours.

See the fly?

I hav a feeling a series of photos of puddles coming on.

I'm sure this is a member of the Daphne family.
It is very fragrant; stunning in winter.

Signs of Spring already!

Stormy Weather

It's been a very wet Fall. After the most dramatic summer drought in Vancouver's history, this is welcome and odd.

Vancouver has a reputation for rain. Just as polar peoples are understood to have many, many words for snow to describe its many forms, true Vancouverites know that it does not always rain here because for us, rain is falling water that lasts for hours. We mostly get showers, but for the past week almost, we have had rain.

So I stay home, comfy and warm, reading, baking, fussing with my aquarium and Netflixing.

I have a sixty-gallon aquarium and it has a lot of things in it that are there to eat the algae that builds up on plan leaves. Amongst my arsenal of algae eaters are shrimp—most are dull brown and quite large shrimp but recently I got a bunch of tiny coloured shrimp like the red one pictured above. Its a cohort of little algae eaters that really do a great job on the long grass that covers the floor of the tank.

Without a parent to teach me cooking, my gastronomic history begins very poorly. Almost everything I ate came out of a can. My absent father left cupboard full of tinned food for me to heat and serve myself for all my dinners beginning at roughly age nine. Our housekeeper made me sandwiches for lunch, but someone taught me how to make French Toast. I had forgotten that, so this morning, I made myself a glorious retro breakfast. It was so good in my mouth and in my mind.

Susan grew up down the street from me. We have never lost touch and so I was not surprised to get an email from her—we have a grad reunion lunch coming up tomorrow—but I was surprised by what she said. She found out grade four teacher, Miss Polischuk, whom we both greatly admired.

Susan found an inspiring article about our Miss Polischuk, Alice, who became Mrs. Judson Wilcox. Alice and Judson Sr. had one son who was born with a birth defect. The surgeons corrected the problem but warned Alice and her husband that Judson Jr. would never walk.

Alice would have none of that and the newspaper article Susan found recounts her victory with Judson Jr. who works and lives relatively independently in a group home.

I wrote to the journalist, hoping that through her, Susan and I can relay our thanks for her work with us so many decades ago. We loved her. You can see why in the tailoring of her clothes in this picture. I am circled in red, right beside her.

Click to enlarge.