Not To Be Trusted With Knives

I have just realized that I haven’t posted anything about my birthday – well, other than posting on Bethmas Eve. As it turns out, I was just having too much fun celebrating my 36th trip¹ around the sun to post anything!

On Friday night – i.e., on Bethmas itself – I got a group of friends together for dinner at Rogue on Broadway. Rogue has really excellent food and a fantastic beer selection – in fact, I had a sampler so that I could try 5 different kinds of beer! Best of all was the chance to spend my birthday with some great friends!

Yesterday – i.e., Bething Day – Devon and I went skiing at Cypress Mountain². Bething Day is the Bethmas equivalent of Boxing Day, which typically would mean shopping, but it’s my Bethmas and I’ll make up – and change – the rules as I go along if I want to. Skiing was lots of fun and made me ask myself, “Why the hell don’t I do this more often?”³

Given my renewed interest in skiing⁴, I decided it was high time to invest in some new ski wear, given that my current stuff is one zillion years old and not all that good for its stated purpose⁵. Since there was a sale on ski wear at Atmosphere in Metro-town – I knew this since Devon had gone there to get some ski pants prior to our trip to Cypress – I headed there today with the birthday money my mom had given me⁶. Unfortunately, this was the tail end of the sale and, thus, the pickings were slim. In fact, there was a grand total of one pair of small ski pants in the entire store⁷ and it was just a wee bit too snug to have been comfortable for skiing⁸. Oddly, a medium sized pair of the same brand (North Face) was giant – I probably could have fit two of me in them – so I’m really not sure what to do about that. Is there such a thing as size small-and-a-half⁹? Happily, though, I found a really Burton ski jacket at a great price, so I picked that up. I’m still on the hunt for a new pair of ski pants, but my jacket is black so I figure I can get any colour of pants and they will go with black.

In addition to all that fun, I also played a game of hockey today – which we won in OT! – and managed to do some reading for fun, a bit of homework, and some teaching. All in all, a pretty spectacular Bethmas weekend!

Image Credit: Posted by Stephan Mosel on Flickr.

1. Also known as 6². Because who doesn’t love a number that’s a perfect square? [↩]
2. I was originally thinking of going to Whistler but then I remembered that I haven’t been skiing in a while and even the last time I’d skiied, I was beginner level, so then I thought it might make more sense to start off with a local mountain. [↩]
3. On a related note: Mount Seymour has a deal where ladies can get a “free” lift ticket in exchange for a donation to the BC Cancer Foundation. If any ladies are up for skiing on a Monday night, let me know! (Except tomorrow, because I have a webinar I have to do for school). Similarly, Thursdays is Student Night at Seymour, lift tickets are $22 for students – so if any students are up for skiing on a Thursday night, let me know that too! [↩]
4. Translation: I hope to hit the slopes a few more times this year. [↩]
5. For example, my ski jacket doesn’t even have a hood! No hood = frozen Beth! [↩]
6. Thanks Mom! [↩]
7. Other than the ones that cost $300+, which I wasn’t willing to spend. Or the ones that are Spyder brand, because they have a freaking spider-shaped logo on them and I just *can’t* wear a pair of pants with a freaking spider on them. The salesguy clearly thought I was crazy when I told him this, but seriously. Spiders. GAH! [↩]
8. And I certainly would not have been able to fit long johns underneath for particularly cold days [↩]
9. Truthfully, I think it was just the different styles of the pants. If they’d had a medium in the style that I tried on small, it probably would have been fine, and vice versa for the pair that I tried on the medium. [↩]

Tags: awesomeness, Bething Day, Bethmas, food, friends, rampant consumerism, skiing

The weather forecasters claimed that while we would get some snow this morning, it was going to be rain by midday and thus the snow would be washed away by the time I had to drive home¹. Weather forecasters, as it turns out, are filthy, filthy liars.

Apparently when they built the new Port Mann Bridge, they didn’t test it for what happens when it snows. And apparently what happens when it snows is that giants chunk of ice fall off the bridge wires onto the cars on the bridge, shattering their windshields. Shattering windshields are generally considered to be a not good thing and during a snowstorm, doubly so. So they closed the Port Mann Bridge. Which made everyone on Earth head over to the Patullo Bridge, which is the bridge that I need to cross to get home from my office. Here, I drew you a map, since I have time to kill because, did I mention, I’m trapped in Surrey?

As you can see from Figure 1, I’m trapped in Surrey.

When the workday ended, the word on the street traffic radio was that with the Port Mann closed, the Patullo was backed up and it was taking about an hour to get across the bridge. Usually it takes me about 20 minutes to get from my office to home. Not being a fan of sitting in traffic, I decided to do a bit of shopping to wait out the traffic². When I was done my shopping however, the word on the street traffic radio was that it was now taking *two* hours to get across the bridge. So I did what any traffic hating person would do – I got me some Indian take-out and headed back to my office. My office has a heater, the Internet, and ready access to chocolate and tea. If you are going to be stranded somewhere, those things make it a little more palatable.

OK, I’ve just checked in with Google Maps traffic and traffic radio and both are telling me that cars are actually getting across the Patullo now, so I think I’ll venture out. Wish me luck!

1. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – snow belongs on ski hills and in my last name and nowhere else. [↩]
2. I also had a WagJag coupon for the Le Chateau Outlet, which is right beside my office, that expired today, so that kind of worked out well. [↩]

Tags: snowmaggedon, traffic, trapped

Got my flu shot at work today. One of the benefits of working in Public Health is that every fall a nurse pops her head in my office and say “Who wants a flu shot?”

If you don’t happen to be so lucky as to work in a Public Health Unit or have a flu shot clinic set up at your workplace, you you can check out the BC Flu Clinic Locator

Tags: flu shot, health, immunizations

Since the conference that I’ve been at this week is in Vancouver, I’ve been taking Skytrain. And I have to tell you, I so much prefer taking Skytrain to work instead of driving! I can read and drink my coffee and not have to worry about terrible drivers like I do when I’m driving!

Granted, it’s been beautiful and sunny these past two days, so it’s been great to walk between the Skytrain Station and the conference hotel – a little bit of exercise that fits nicely into my day! – and it wouldn’t be quite the same if it were cold and rainy. But still – better than driving. Also, the trip home this afternoon was in peak rush hour so I was sardined into the train so tightly I couldn’t even get my textbook out of my bag to read. But still – beats driving!

Tomorrow is the last day of the conference and since I have to go out to UBC afterwards, I’m driving instead of Skytraining it¹. Driving into Vancouver during morning rush hour is craptacular, so I’ll probably go in extra early to avoid the traffic and work at a coffee shop until the conference starts. Because if I have to be sitting around, I’d rather sit around a coffee shop and get work done than sit in traffic!

But never fear, I have to go to Vancouver both on Thursday night and on Saturday, so my transit pass will continue to get a workout

1. As getting home from UBC afterwards would take one million years if I were taking transit. [↩]

Tags: Skytrain, transit, Vancouver

I seem to have developed a thing for obscure soda pops. It all started a few months ago when Devon and I happened upon a hole-in-the-wall convenience store with a sign that says, “We sell American pop”¹. And when we went in, they had all sorts of pop that you usually can’t get here in Canada, like this Antioxidant Diet Cherry 7Up:

It has antioxidants, so that makes it healthy!

A few weeks later, Devon and I went to the Taco Shack, where he tried some Sioux City Root Beer, which might be the best tasting root beer ever made. Which then set Devon off on a hunt for where we could buy this miracle drink – as going all the way to the Taco Shack² seems like a lot of effort to get a bottle of pop. I’ll spare you the details of the hunt, but it turned out that they sell Sioux City at the Donald’s Market at the New West Quay, which is like 5 seconds from our place.

This is the Sioux City Sarsaparilla, which is different than the Sioux City Root Beer³, though I’m not sure how since the subtitle on this bottle is “The granddaddy of all root beers.”

But not only do they sell the Sioux City, they also sell all sorts of other crazy delicious microbrew pops. Like Boylan’s Birch Beer:

Birch Beer – not quite as good as spruce beer – my personal favourite tree-flavoured pop – but still pretty damn delicious!

And Bedford’s Creme Beer, which I totally bought because it made me think of my good friend, Dr. Bedford⁴:

And Pig Iron Cola, which I bought because how could I not? It’s got a pig on it!

Devon insisted on buying this one because it has a pretty girl on it and he’s a pervert it’s imported:

And then I insisted on buying Cock n’Bull ginger beer, which (a) I intend to use to make a Dark ‘n’ Stormy and (b) it has a cock and a bull on it:

And then there is the creme de la creme, the piece de resistance, the je ne sais quoi, and various other French phrases I’m sure: MacFuddy’s Pepper Elixer.

I actually bought a bottle of this at the convenience store that I mentioned at the start of this posting – though happily they sell it at Donald’s Market too – solely because the label was hilarious. I didn’t actually expect it to taste good, but figured it was worth the money for the 24 hours of good luck:

Infused with Luck. 12 oz for 24 hours of Favourable Outcomes⁵.

Cures Timidness and Satisfies the Daring. Because anyone who knows me knows that I suffer from timidness.

But then it turned out to be one of the most delicious things I’ve ever put in my mouth! It’s sort of like Dr. Pepper, which I love, but one billion times better.

In conclusion, the discovery of all these delicious pops with enticing labels does not bode well for my plan to lose all the weight I gained since starting school.

1. Or something to that effect. [↩]
2. Incidentally, the Taco Shack also makes crazy delicious tacos. [↩]
3. I seem to have neglected to take a photo of the bottle of Sioux City Root Beer. [↩]
4. Dr. Bedford, we need to set up a phone date! I miss you! [↩]
5. Can any say Felix Felicis?? [↩]

As you know from my constant yammering about it, I’m training to run the Victoria Half Marathon and my IT band is not happy about it. I had to run 18 km today – my second last long run before the actual race – and since the hilliness of New Westminster seems to be what’s being kicking my ITB’s ass, I decided that I should trek out to my old non-hilly stomping grounds to do this one. So I headed off to Vancouver to do a nice seaside run along the seawall that runs along the south side of False Creek, starting a bit east of the Cambie Bridge and going all the way to Jericho beach – and back! My knee definitely wasn’t 100%, but it was better than it has been the last few weeks¹.

What wasn’t as successful, though, was my Runkeeper app. As I’ve mentioned before, I use the Runkeeper app on my iPhone which uses GPS/cell phone towers to track my runs; it periodically notifies you of things like how far you’ve run and how fast you’ve run while you are running by having a voice come over your headphones with said information. I usually set mine to notify me ever 2 km, but since this run was an 18 km one where I wanted to run 9 km (i.e., an odd number of kilometers) out and then turn around and do 9 km back, I set mine to notify me every 1 km instead. And it worked just fine until about 12 km, after which it went totally insane and told me every minute or so that I’d just done another kilometer. Now, as much as I’d like to, I really don’t run a kilometer in a minute. And its really super annoying to be trying to listen to your music and enjoy your run when a voice pops up every minute and a half telling you such lies. It also *completely* defeats the purpose of helping you set your pace when you have no idea how far you’ve run or what your pace is.

Essentially what’s happening is that the GPS/cell phone tower tracking is getting confused and thinks that I’m somewhere that I’m not and then finds where I actually am and thinks that I’ve run that distance in a split second. Here’s a section of the map it produced with its idea of where I’d run:

I can assure you that I did not, in fact, go for a swim through False Creek at breakneck speeds.

Notice that my pace is completely reasonable and consistent until about kilometer 12, at which point it goes apeshit.

I’ve had this issue on a few runs recently, but I thought it was because I was out in remote – and presumably cell phone tower-less -areas of Vancouver Island or because I was running under the Skytrain and my iPhone couldn’t “see” the satellites/cell phone towers properly. But this is a route that I’ve run many, many times in the past without incident². What I also don’t get is why it was able to track my run along this route just fine on the way out, but on the way back along *the exact same route*, it suddenly can’t see the satellites/cell phone towers properly. Can any tech nerds explain this to me – or, even better, tell me how to make it work?

For the record, here is the section of that route as I actually ran it:

1. This is probably also due in part to the magic of the foam roller! [↩]
2. Or with one incident like this on a run, not dozens of screw ups [↩]

Tags: Geekery, RunKeeper, running, sports, Vancouver

After a long day of class today¹, I rewarded myself by buying a foam roller² and then dinner at La Bell Patate, a Québécois restaurant on Davie Street. I had bought a Social Shopper (i.e., fake Groupon) deal for 2 poutine and 2 hotdogs at L.B.P., a place that I had only heard of when I’d Googled around to try to find if you can buy spruce beer anywhere in Vancouver.

The hotdogs – or “steamies” as they are called there (all dressed with sauerkraut and onions and mustard) – were nothing to write home about. Then again, I never had steamies when I was in Montreal as a kid like I did Montreal smoked meat or spruce beer, so I don’t have any nostalgia associated with it. But the poutine was divine:

And they did, in fact, have my beloved spruce beer!

It was even better than the stuff I had picked up the last time I was in Montreal. At least 87% more sprucey!

1. Macroeconomics, followed by a double dose of statistics, then managerial economics. That be *a lot* of math. [↩]
2. Which will be the subject of an upcoming blog posting [↩]

Tags: eating, food, La Belle Patate, spruce beer, Vancouver, yummy

Picture it! Me and Cath are at St. Augustine’s and I can’t decide what beer to have. No matter! I choose “the Paddle” – which is a wooden paddle on which they place 4 small glasses of your beers of choosing. Photographic evidence:

The beers I chose were:

• Unibroue, EPHEMERE APPLE
• Alameda Brewing Co, MAPLE MILD
• Storm Brewing, SCOTTISH HIGHLAND CREAM ALE
• Driftwood Brewery, WHITE BARK ALE

The apple one was quite an interesting taste. I wouldn’t want a whole pint of it, but a small glass was nice. The maple one was good, but I prefer Granville Island’s Kitsilano Maple Cream Ale. The other two were also solid choices, but nothing to write home about. I may or may not have followed up with a Central City Brewing Raspberry Wheat Ale.

Tags: beer, St. Augustine's, Vancouver

So, remember how I mentioned that Devon has some mad bartending skills? Well, he picked up those skills when he lived in the UK, where he just so happened to be a bartender. And while being a bartender in the UK, he also picked up a love of Blavod, a jet black vodka that is made and sold there. Ever since he’s moved back, he’s been trying to find it here, but to no avail¹. Until now. Because someone – who I think deserves the Girlfriend of the Year award – managed to track some down. In Port freaking Coquitlam!

The picture doesn’t really do it justice, because that could just be a black bottle. But trust me, it’s jet black vodka inside!

I was able to track this little puppy down because I have connections. By which I mean an Internet connection. And I used that Internet connection to email the Blavod people. And, as luck would have it, the Blavod people had quite recently struck a deal with a distributor in Vancouver and had even more recently just shipped some Blavod here! After some waiting for the Blavod to clear customs and then more waiting² because the BC Liquor Store through which I put my order kept saying that it wasn’t in the distributor’s warehouse (even though the distributor was all “uh, yeah, it is!”), the distributor put me in touch with a little liquor store in PoCo that had the goods!

So tonight after work, I told Devon that we were going on a little drive because I had a surprise for him! Because, did I mention?, Girlfriend of the Year AND I love theatrics! And off we went to the Select Liquor in Port Coquitlam, with Devon having no idea where I was taking him³ where I walked up to the vodka section, and there it was! I’d like to give props to the Select Liquor store, who actually carries this stuff, because wtf BC Liquor Store, who took my order several weeks ago and continues to tell me that their system says that the distributor doesn’t have any  Blavod in their warehouse when clearly it does? They only had about 9 bottles in stock though – and we bought 2 of them – so if you want to get some jet black vodka of your own, I suggest you go their posthaste!

Sadly, tonight is a Monday and I have a bucketload of studying to do this week⁴, so we couldn’t just dive into the bottles and start making drinks of awesomeness. So you’ll have to wait for a future blog posting where you actually get to see the Blavod in all it’s Blavodian goodness!

1. Well, other than that apparently you can buy it at some liquor store in Boston. You know, if you felt like driving 5,000+ km for a bottle of booze [↩]
2. And all through the waiting I kept saying to my sister “omg, when is the Blavod going to get heeeeerreeee??? Because I was dying to tell Devon that I’d found it, but I didn’t want to ruin the surprise! [↩]
3. Though he did not that we weren’t too far from the shooting range we went to on my birthday! [↩]
4. As I have two exams this weekend, plus a case memo due on Friday. [↩]

Tags: alcohol, BC, black vodka, Blavod, booze, Port Coquitlam, Select Liquor Store, Vancouver

Why do people insist on referring to all of the city of Vancouver as “downtown”?  I seem to have this equivalent of this conversation on a regular basis:

Me:                             Have you ever been to The Naam (or some other location in Vancouver that is not downtown) ?

Other Person:        No, I hardly ever go downtown.

Me:                            Oh, it’s not downtown. It’s in Kits.

Other Person:        ???

Then today, I saw this in an email from Groupon:

It’s called KITSILANO Laser and Spa Centre. Kitsilano is a neighbourhood in Vancouver that is *not* downtown.

There is a part of Vancouver – a very *small* part of Vanccouver, I might add – that is known as “downtown”. It’s written right on the map!

Here, I have annotated the map for you:

I trust this clears things up for everyone, yes?

</rant>

Tags: rant, Vancouver