Showing posts with label Vancouver sky. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vancouver sky. Show all posts

Thursday, November 2, 2023

Skywatch Friday - First Post in November

Hi friends and fellow bloggers,

It's the first Friday post in this new month of November. I wish all of you a pleasant month despite the chaos and horrors on the world stage. May each of you have the strength and fortitude and joy you need to live each day. 

This month I'm sharing a number of night shots. I don't have fancy camera equipment and I'm still learning how to take a good night shot with the new phone camera.  Some of these are okay but I'll need more practice. If only I could have patience to read up on 'how'.

I was able to get these night photos because we've had about a week of very cold, dry weather. We are back to rain as of yesterday. When it's raining the sky is usually not clear. 

I'm joining in with Skywatch Friday. Enjoy your Friday and the coming weekend.

 







Friday, March 10, 2023

Warm & Cold

Hello friends and fellow bloggers,

I hope you are all well. Today I want to share photos I took on Wednesday. The day started off sunny and warmish. I went to the community plot in the late afternoon (first photo) and by the time I left it had turned cold. 


In this photo you can see how bright and beautiful the sky was before it began to cloud over. Today is now Friday and it was very cold when I returned home from a late outing. It's supposed to start raining soon and I expect we'll have unsettled weather for the rest of this month which is the norm. I'm glad I went to put the compost in the garden on Wednesday because I sure wouldn't feel like doing it now.


Thank you for stopping by.
I'm joining in with Skywatch Friday

Friday, January 13, 2023

Skywatch Friday ~ January 12, 2023

 





Where I live the sky is generally gray over the winter months. Every now and then we have a break; the sky will clear and the sun will shine. It reminds us that spring will soon arrive. We had such a day on Wednesday.

Joining in with Skywatch Friday this week.

Saturday, July 23, 2022

A Hot Day in July

Thanks for stopping by. I'm a bit late for Skywatch Friday but here we go. It was a rather hot day and the sky had nary a cloud.

 ~~~

On Friday, dear hubby and I took a far flung city tour on several different train routes of the sky train system.  I'd never been on these routes and I thought it would be a great way for Jonah to get an overview of the city and for me to get an idea of where I can get to on these routes. 


We set out on our city safari after fortifying ourselves with a large breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast.  Have a look at our intended routes by viewing the map of the city's train system. 

We started our journey on the Expo line shown in dark blue on the map.  It's the oldest line of the Sky Train rapid transit system and is called the Expo Line after the 1986 World Exposition held in Vancouver. It was built to help move people around the city during the World Fair. Several other train lines have been added to the city's transit system since then and I have used the Expo line to the downtown and the train to the airport.  I've never taken the train out to the suburbs of Surrey or to Coquitlam.  I've never had a reason to go out to these suburbs but recently a good friend moved out to Coquitlam and she would like me to visit her. 

 

 

We decided to go as far as the train will take us so we followed the Expo Line (blue) out to King George station.  We didn't get off there just looked around and I was pleasantly surprised to see that a college and a satellite office of the Simon Fraser University are located just steps from the station. That's good to know.  It was a rather hot day and the train we were on for the first leg of the journey to King George Station in Surrey took about 1 hour. With the rocking motion Jonah fell asleep. On our return journey he stood up so he could view everything out the windows.





After that we got back onto the Expo Line and travelled north then west to Columbia station.  There we transferred to go east and north to Production Way-University.  Once there we transferred to the Millennium Line (yellow) and went all the way to Lafarge Lake-Douglas.  This is the last stop on this train route.  I enjoyed seeing the  fountain and the pretty flowers after making the short walk from the train stop.

 




This man was walking 5 dogs at once.


I've been wanting to go to this man made lake for awhile now. At Christmas they have a light display and so maybe next Christmas I will get there. It also seems to be a place where more and more festivals are happening too.  DH and I enjoyed the quiet and the scenery and made loose plans to pack a lunch and refreshments and head out there to spend the day enjoying the tranquility one day. I was wondering what all the tents are for just beyond the water. Apparently a Caribbean Festival starts on Saturday for the weekend. I'm sure it will be a much busier place this weekend.

Thanks for dropping by!





Friday, July 15, 2022

Skywatch Friday

 Hello friends and fellow bloggers,

It's been awhile since I posted for Skywatch Friday so these are a few of the sky photos over the past several weeks. These photos were all taken over the months of June and July. Enjoy and thank you for stopping by!














Roof top of the city's central (main) library






Friday, March 11, 2022

A Busy Week and Some Beautiful Skies

It's been a very busy week and I'm looking forward to a bit of rest over the weekend. It was also a very beautiful week weather wise with some fabulous skies.




 

I completed reading the next books a little quicker than I wanted because two of them were due at the library. They could not be renewed due to their tremendous popularity. I love using my library but sometimes it's difficult to read popular books when there are long wait lists for them.  If there is no wait list for a book, the library has increased renewal options to three times (9 weeks) rather than two (6 weeks).  I'm very happy about that.




The Dressmakers of Auschwitz introduced me to a new angle on the Holocaust.  Apparently there were many Jewish women who toiled and sewed for the wives and women who were part of the Nazi regime.  The author of the book painstakingly pieced together the story of these women and paid homage to their contributions to war resistance efforts. It was not an easy task since the Nazis burned a lot of the incriminating evidence when they realized they had lost the war.  This is definitely a very eye opening and interesting book which goes into considerable detail about the textile operations at Auschwitz.

 

 

The Man Who Died Twice is a very engaging book. It is a complicated murder mystery and I guess it is book #2 of a two part (to date) series. I didn't read book #1 and I think this book stands on it's own. It is described in part as a humorous book but it isn't "split a gut" or "laugh out loud" funny. Subtle humour is sprinkled throughout to balance the numerous murders. I understand that Steven Spielberg is turning this book into a major motion picture.

 

Wish You Were Here is another excellent read. I am surprised I enjoyed this book so much after reading several negative reviews. The book was written after the author's experience in contracting Covid-19 and it  deals with what a patient experiences after contracting and surviving Covid and having been put on a ventilator.  Perhaps it is too soon for most people to appreciate such a book but I was very engaged in the story line throughout.

The storytelling is top notch and besides the great story telling, I was very interested in the topic of lucid dreaming that many Covid survivors experience. Another tidbit I picked up from the book is the concept of generational trauma. This is a new to me concept,  having only just heard about it in the past month or two.  It is only mentioned in the novel and not discussed in any detail.

Apparently the Japanese have done research on the idea of generational trauma. The subject piques my interest due to the recent findings of several massive child burial plots at multiple Indian Residential School sites in Canada. The intergenerational trauma suffered by many residential school survivors is of keen interest to me and one I hope to learn more about.  I'm interested in better understanding the lingering affects of trauma, not just on the person directly traumatized but also on their descendants.

Besides reading, I recently enjoyed dinner out at a vintage restaurant (pictured below). Don't you love the individual booth jukeboxes? The play list is full of old hits and I often dance in my seat when I hear the songs start up.  It's fun!

I've also been busy this week with health issues, both mine and my "baby" brother's.   He had his second eye surgery on Wednesday.  He has now completed two eye surgeries and things seem to have gone successfully though it will take a few more days healing.  As for me, I finally have the 'go ahead' to do some treatments on my neck and back which are suffering after the accident I had in late September.  There are numerous reasons why the treatments didn't happen sooner. I won't go into details. It is good timing now for things to move forward since I'm currently experiencing a lot of neck and back issues.  As for my ear, I've been told that the hole or tear in the drum has miraculously healed itself. I don't know how it happened but the specialist said that once the ear canal environment is made more healthy, holes or tears can sometimes heal on their own. Just to be sure that things remain that way, I have a follow up appointment in 3 months. One thing she did tell me after reviewing the CT scan more closely is that it looks like I had a fracture in the back of my jaw. I'm not surprised because the impact I had was very significant. I also had the fracture in my cheek area. I'm not sure that it is fully healed but it looks a lot better. My cheek doesn't exactly look normal but the surgeon and I have agreed that I won't be moving ahead on any facial surgery due to possible complications, primarily infections.

I made another trip to the library to pick up a few more books. I forgot to get a photo of two other books I have in my stack so I actually have 6 books on the go.  That's a little too much for me. I wasn't going to read much this year and I'll reach my very modest target when I finish the current book,"Burke's Law:  A Life in Hockey" by Brian Burke.  Brian Burke is well known in the hockey field but I only heard of him when he married a local journalist, Jennifer Mather.  I think he met her after he was hired as the Director of Hockey Operations for the Vancouver Canucks. I'm not fully sure because I didn't get to that part of the story yet. I only know they married and lived here for awhile before moving to the USA (they are now divorced).  I only follow hockey a bit here and there but I am finding the book, and the man, very interesting.  The book is full of interesting hockey history too.

I will still be limiting my reading this year so I can focus on a few other things.  First I need to complete the current stack of books I'm reading.


Joining in with Skywatch Friday this week. Thank you for stopping by!


 

It Was a Spectacular Day! ~ Skywatch

Hello friends and fellow bloggers, It was a spectacular, sunny day where I live. It's still rather chilly from my point of view but the ...