Snow, and more

Byoliveridley

Yikes, my last few posts have been, shall we say “bitter”? Enough of that, how about some boring pictures. Not that I take too many! But, it’s all pictures and no thinking/analysis in this post.

It’s been 4 weeks to the day I arrived in Victoria and the weather’s been completely and utterly whacked out. We had snow on Friday…

Snow

Snow

Of course, it was too warm for the snow to stick, just came down for about half an hour or so and cleared right away, followed by sun an hour later. Up in Nanaimo, they got 25cm of snow. Toronto, on the other hand, was in shorts, poetic justice, my local acquaintances tell me because us islanders usually rub our wonderful weather in every other Canadian’s face. But, it isn’t really that cold, just not warm. And the crazy instability has its pluses. Did I ever mention that 4 days in a row, I saw some spectacular rainbows on the way back from work, to the point that I was getting a little blase about it? This place is all about micro climates. It will be sunny in Victoria, and as I drive towards Sidney to work, passing Elk Lake, the temperature drops significantly and there’s always more cloud and rain. Then Sidney has it’s own thing going on, could be cloudy, never know. So, always pack a raincoat and a layer or two!

Anyway, went to Thetis Lake this Sunday for a leisurely hike around the lake with a few acquaintances. As usual, beautiful. Spring is here, and it was really interesting to see all the blooming flowers interspersed with patches of snow. Yep, snow and flowers, a little unusual (didn’t take any pictures of flowers, unfortunately).

It’s also the greenest time on the year because it’s been raining all winter and also getting warmer in the last few weeks, so everything’s alive and the evergreens are, well, very green. As it warms up more and the rain goes away, it apparently gets a lot browner. Also saw a bald eagle encircling the parking lot, that’s probably the fourth or fifth one I’ve seen here.

Some random pictures of the lake. The upper trail goes uphill immediately and leads to some beautiful vistas overlooking the lake. I don’t think my cellphone camera does it any justice, looks like I might have to invest in a real camera soon.

Thetis Lake

That’s it, I guess. Enough of the pictures. I am going to be hiking every weekend from now on, there are so many trails, This website actually rates quite a few of them by difficulty, ought to keep me busy for a year or two!

Back to bitter in a bit, and some environmental posts later. Meanwhile, looks like the the ol’ chief finally made it out of Gaul (if you don’t get it, click the link!)

Similar Posts

  • A Year in BC

    Byoliveridley

    Or at least, it was when I started this post, now it’s almost 13 months!

    •  It is still beautiful, breathtakingly so
    •  We feel more settled for some reason, even though it is a new place
    •  Definitely more relaxed than I’ve ever been, which is saying a lot
    •  The cat is getting fatter, wait, that’s always been true
    •  Making friends is not easy in a non-university setting, but I’ve managed
    •  Fresh start, new habits, new zeal/drive, new person, not so much!
    •  The cable/cellphone/internet services make me long for the states. Rude monopolists abound and there is no competition/innovation.
    •  The “establishment” is very strong here, and the news media is very deferential
    •  Our famous social safety net is fraying, but it does not have the American charity/philanthropic base to replace the funding cuts
    •  We think we are an environmental leader, we are not and it is getting worse
    •  I worry that we are making no efforts to transition to the 21st century
    •  I still follow Carolina basketball, Go Heels!
    •  Facebook has made it very easy to keep in touch, given I am a terrible phone caller
    •  I still do not get hockey, did I mention I do not like fights?
    •  Let’s just say I’ve gone DIY on alcohol
    •  The BC Liberals are anything, but!
    •  Victoria feels like a slightly more urban Chapel Hill-Carrboro, but needs a Weaver Street Market.
    • Blogging has gotten non-existent, for a number of reasons.

  • Tracking my mail

    Byoliveridley

    On the sidebar, you will find a new donut chart which is a simple cumulative count of the mail we get at home. The measurement started on the 19th of March, 2012, so not much data yet 🙂  Useful – Mail I will find useful (yes, including bills). Solicited – Mail I find marginally useful, but comes from organisations I support, so I guess it is okay? Junk – Well, you know it when you see it; RTS – Return to Sender, addressed to previous occupant. Canada Post charges quite a bit for mail forwarding, whereas the USPS does it free for a year, so people get better at updating addresses and not missing a couple. I have lived in my current place for 18 months now, still get mail for multiple different people.

    My Mail

    No particular reason to do this, I was just curious, and this article about the US postal service starting to solicit more direct mail (what most people regard as junk) customers just triggered me to post the results online. My perception is that the signal/noise ratio on my mail is very low, let’s see… The underlying data is in a simple google spreadsheet and the image is linked dynamically, so should always be current.

    Update: I don’t have a red dot on my mailbox, no particular reason, just supporting my economy and increasing the GDP, perhaps? More seriously, I would like a green dot campaign, where unsolicited mail is not welcome unless I place a green dot on my mail box for all unsolicited mail, and an amber dot for not-for profit, advocacy, political and generally non-commercial mail.

    Update:  Not tracking my mail any more, as you can see. It was remarkably stable at around 58-50% “junk”. Interesting…

    Featured image is of a letter box from Nepal, from flickr user manc72 used under a creative commons licence.

  • |

    War?

    Byoliveridley

    Way off topic, but war’s been on everyone’s mind of late, and the horribly devastating oil spill in Lebanon is but one example of the crazy devastation caused by war. An event that would be an international emergency by itself is only a footnote in the death of many innocent people, destruction of the happiness of entire communities and populations, not to mention all those blown up bridges, power plants and homes.

    Los Angeles Times: Why Good Countries Fight Dirty Wars

    The citizen-soldiers sent into the field by the United States or any other Western popular government are expected, by virtue of not so long ago having been free civilians themselves, to be more empathetic with the plight of the noncombatants with whom they come into contact. Certainly, brutal incidents like the My Lai massacre or the Abu Ghraib scandal occur from time to time, but they are widely viewed as cultural aberrations. This interpretation, however, is as simplistic as it is misleading. All too often the armies of modern democracies have tolerated and even initiated outrages against civilians, in manners uneasily close to those of their totalitarian and terrorist enemies. Israeli troops are currently demonstrating this fact in their response to the Hezbollah rocket offensive — a response most of the world community, according to recent polls, believes is taking an unacceptably disproportionate toll on Lebanese civilians. And there have been times when democratic leaders have been even more open about their brutal intentions: Speaking of the Allied bombing campaign during World War II that culminated in that consummate act of state terrorism, the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, Winston Churchill flatly stated that the objective was “to make the enemy burn and bleed in every way.”

    Excellent article, there really is no moral war, no just war, no holy war, no noble war, no happy war, no easy war, and there really should be no war other than a reluctantly fought, and limited war. There are no noble warriors, no heros, only real people doing things to their fellow human beings that are for the most part, unspeakable horrors. Anyone who tries to argue with me that their war is somehow different because of a host of reasons is not going to convince me.

    While history books can be cleansed to blind future generations to the actual costs of war on the people fighting it, and the damage that ensues, fighting affects everyone who fights significantly, and rarely for the better. Eventually, it dehumanizes you, how can you kill someone (except in close combat where there’s a clear survival motivation) except by dehumanizing them? You’d have to think that a whole neighborhood is somehow inhuman to drop a bomb on them that kills maybe one terrorist and 15 innocent humans.

    The history we learn has a lot to do with our willingness to tolerate this much war. The science lessons we get in school are a culmination of centuries of accumulated knowledge, the mathematics we learn goes back 10-15 centuries, we are taught to be self-critical, to learn from our mistakes, to think, yet the history we learn is pure propaganda, none of these edicts seem to apply. Being a “pacifist” has gone from normal to “loony coward fringe element” in a few years. Oh well…

  • Victoria, 7 Days Later

    Byoliveridley

    Well, it’s been an interesting and full week in Beautiful BC (the other BBC), I found a home:

    It has a nice view from the window

    and a not so nice view from the same window, which I shall not post because it gives away my location, you’re either going to have to email me or, god forbid, visit!
     
    And it is in close proximity (5 minute walk) to the wonderful Beacon Hill Park.

    Once the weather gets better (Yes Virginia, long “rant” about the weather’s just up ahead, keep reading!), I look forward to running from home through Beacon Hill Park to the gorgeous seashore on Dallas Road, about a kilometer away (yes, I’ve gone metric).

    Not the greatest of photos, but it was rainy and foggy. Yes, you can’t really escape nature in this part of the world, even though Victoria’s dense and urban for its size, you turn the corner and suddenly, you’re in a park or on a waterfront.

    The weather, well, it’s crazy. Last Tuesday, or Wednesday, I can’t remember, I was at my local Y taking a tour before joining the gym and it was sunny when I entered, my gym guide points the sky out to me 15 minutes later from the 2nd floor of the gym (nice scenic view of beautiful church grounds from the treadmills, BTW) and lo and behold, hail! Apparently, every few years or so, one gets bad weather from Russia, damn them. But, he did say that if you don’t like the weather, just wait 15 minutes, and there it was, sunshine again. I step out after joining the gym and walk back to my funky inn, it starts raining, oh well, it rained 5 minutes then the sun came out, then 5 minutes later, sleet. It did not rain frogs, or cats or dogs, so I did not see everything, but still, way too much weather action in an hour. It is not warm yet, but it is not terribly cold either, always hovers above or around freezing at night, and gets warmer up to 8 degrees (45) in the day time. I am told that it will get warmer soon. Really does not matter, though, it’s still very nice and the people here pretend that the weather does not exist, so I am going to be one with the locals!

    In other good news, I found an excellent video store, Pic-a-Flic which is in Cook Street Village, just around the corner (literally) from where I live, nice little neighborhood, lots of “character”, which is sometimes problematic! I haven’t really hung out yet, except to go to a couple of bars and to watch Carolina games and the heartbreaking Davidson-Kansas game (why did the coach make the star of the team and its best shooter also bring the ball up the floor on the last play and make him create his own shot instead of setting up a play where he came off a screen to catch and shoot, his forte, I will never understand) at the Oak Bay Recreation Centre with a fellow Tarheel fan (born and brought up in Victoria!). I just happened to run into him in the bar of the inn I was at for a week and I happened to mention where I was from, he nearly jumped out of his skin! So, I guess that baby blue blood helps once in a while! GO HEELS!

    And yes, I started work as well, promises to be interesting, though it is a 35 minute commute, which is what you get for living in a cool neighborhood 🙂

    First impressions, well, it’s all very exciting and new, but I have the depressing habit of getting my routines going quickly, so I go to work, go to the gym, eat dinner, read blogs/novels/surf for a while, and the day’s done, so what’s changed? The drive to work’s much more scenic, the walk to the gym is much nicer, the country’s language, rhetoric, radio, everything is so much more in line with my values (CBC Vancouver occasionally makes NPR sound like Rush Limbaugh, I kid you not!). There are tons of organic markets, farmers’ markets (summer only), the produce is generally cheap, though packaged goods are expensive, Michael Pollan would approve!

    Victoria has its warts, there are burgeoning drug and homelessness issues that seem to be driven by income inequality and lack of affordable housing. The climate also attracts people seeking shelter from the brutal winter of the rest of Canada. I am reading and hearing that parts of downtown can be dangerous for cars, not people though.

    All in all, an eventful week, can’t believe it’s only been a week, I feel like i’ve been here a lot longer, but I’ve spent exactly 3 nights at my new place.

    More later, I might have exhausted all this personal blogging energy, probably back to regularly scheduled blogging soon.