Monday, February 7, 2022

A Few Scenes from Downtown

Hello friends, 

 

I hope you had a great start to your week. I had an appointment downtown so thought I'd share a few photos from my journey.  The weather was quite nice and I hope it will continue this week.



 

This old brick building is the north end of the St. Paul's Hospital downtown. A new hospital is being built in another part of the city but it won't be ready for a few years.

This brick building is an old apartment building. I love the older buildings though I realize they are not up to code. As I walked on some of the residential streets (no photos today), I noticed that a number of low rises or 3 storey walk ups are being demolished and high rises are going up. I guess it's inevitable especially since there is a critical housing shortage where I live. By the time all the new buildings are completed in this city there will probably be a glut of places to buy or rent. I hope it will also mean a down turn in prices because things are out of control these days and have been for some time when it comes to housing costs.

This street going toward the sky is called Davie Street. For years it was the hub of the gay community. However I think I read a few years ago that many of them have migrated to a nearby municipality called New Westminster. I believe the exodus was due to exorbitant housing prices. The hotel called Sandman Suites (the tower in the photo) is where I stayed for four months when I had fire damage to my home several years ago. I didn't mind the hotel because it was like an apartment with a living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom and insuite laundry. Sadly I never used the swimming pool or even ventured out very often. It was in the days of newly diagnosed illness and I was so tired all the time. I am not fully recovered but I have improved considerably.

 

These tall, black towers are a hotel called the Sheraton Wall Centre. I was only in one of them once for a conference many years ago. At the time they were the tallest buildings in the city but they have been overtaken by a place called Shangri-la and possibly by other buildings as well.



 I hope you enjoyed this little tour. Come back again soon.

The Weekend


I don't know where the weekend went. I thought I would have a lot of time to do things because I precooked meals on Thursday for the weekend and did a lot of housework as well. There are some household  jobs I dislike and I tackled 3 of them this weekend. I guess I must be in spring cleaning mode.

The range hood, filter and back of the stove were cleaned. I see I missed a few spots.

The vacuum canister was emptied and washed.

Sunday I also tackled cleaning part of the refrigerator. I dealt with spoiled items in one refrigerator crisper and rearranged things. I need to do another session perhaps later this week to bring everything up to par. The refrigerator is one thing I really don't look after too well. It's because I tend to overbuy and then don't make time to clean things out before hand. I also like a bargain so when I go grocery shopping I over buy. I'm trying to stop these bad habits by doing more meal planning and am having limited success. Eventually I may hit on the right balance.

Friday I stayed up far too late.  I was pleased with myself for getting so much done and decided to take advantage of that by staying up to watch television and read. To be honest, I didn't really enjoy myself because I was too tired.  My fatigue bled into Saturday and I did nothing except read a book. Thankfully today was back to a more or less normal.  I was able to do my daily Bible reading, lots of dishes, cleaned out a good part of the refrigerator, did a load of laundry and made some chicken-rice stew for Monday's meals. I also finished reading one of the books on my stack.  Soon the library will be letting me know that another 2 books are ready and after that I'll probably slow down in the reading department.  The days are getting lighter and brighter as long as it isn't raining.  I'm hoping to tackle some long awaited projects when the weather warms up and the light in the day starts earlier. I'm like a turtle when it comes to household or crafting projects but I enjoy the process.

One of the things I did on Friday was wait for my meat delivery. The ranch that delivered the meat is located almost 3 hours north of me and they delivered right to my front door. It's my first delivery from them and I was only able to get ground beef because that was all they had left besides ground pork.  I am pleased with the process so I'll see whether I'm able to order different cuts next time. It will really depend on cost, timing and room in the freezer. My freezer space is limited and it would need to be emptied to get one of their 'packages'. That makes it very tricky right now so we shall see how it goes.

For the first package of ground beef I made some roasted veggies, ground beef patties and salad. It's also the first time I've used rainbow carrots. Altogether it was a satisfying meal and the beef patty was filling so I only had one. The other one was saved for the next day lunch/snack.



I do have a sweet tooth so I made these blueberry muffins with a mix of unbleached flour and spelt flour. They are dark from spelt four but also because I accidentally dumped a lot of cinnamon in the batter. No worries though. The cinnamon spice is well past it's prime and the taste is quite weak. The muffins were just right.



If you have done the FlyLady system before and want to try it again I thought I'd provide a summary chart for you.  This might save you having to go look for it. Click on it to enlarge.



Thanks for stopping by!

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