So where am I now?

This is the question I asked myself several times today as I wandered through the SFU Burnaby campus. I think I went through several buildings, but the all looked the same. They WERE all the same. They were all the same 1960s, Cold War, we're expecting a nuclear bomb to explode overhead at any time now, concrete bomb-shelter bunkers.

Someone kindly pointed out a triangle on the wall inside one building that specified N. There are apparently also E, S, and W. Compass points! I thought it was a warning of some chemicals being stored, although I couldn't remember which chemical N was.

And all of the floor tiles were coming loose. And all the displayed art was monochromatic. And I only saw 2 places to get coffee, and they were from the same company (not Starbucks, oddly).

And the millions of stairs!! This campus is openly hostile to people with handicaps who can't do stairs.

Oh how I longed for my old UofA campus. Where you could give people directions by saying “It's the red brick building” or “It's the building with the ornate pillars” or “It's the building that looks like a turtle” or “It's the big yellow building”. You didn't get lost in a sea of gray concrete and stairs at the UofA, every building has it's own character and charm. (And it helps if you're stumbling home after a few drinks to know where you are by the different buildings. Yep, my place is just a few more steps, around the corner from the blue building... so much easier.)

The SFU Burnaby campus is used by a lot of science fiction TV and Movie shows. Those futuristic places where everyone wears gray, no one wears any colour, and even the most far flung places in the universe have millions of damned STAIRS!

I've heard people will either love or hate the SFU Burnaby campus, no neutral positions are taken. I will go with the latter position.

Wouldn't a map of coffee shops on the SFU campus make sense?

I'm studying a map of the SFU Burnaby map because I will be at a conference there next week – yep, on top of a mountain in the middle of... air, lots of air... we wouldn't want to be distracted by anything interesting now would we?

So I'm looking for a place on campus to sit and have some coffee.

I will be doing a trial run of the route tomorrow morning and, after a long bus ride, I'm going to want some coffee. So I'm looking at various maps from the SFU website – mostly pretty maps, not much useful detail here. I have one map up that has icons for all of the... phones... on campus. Uhuh, I can see students needing phones, those students who don't have cell phones anyway... all 2 of them.

So a useful place on all University campuses to sit and consume coffee while taking in the view is the Student's Union Building (SUB). From a quick search on “Students Union Building” on the SFU website... they don't have one.?!? They are debating whether they need one. Answer: Yes, you do, build one now, join all the other Universities, be normal! So I have to look elsewhere for coffee.

In – or near – a city like Vancouver, wouldn't it make sense to have a map of campus with all of the coffee shops on it? Yes, I am assuming there are such things on the SFU campus. I can't imagine getting a degree without coffee for fuel, I drank mountains of it when I was getting my degree at the UofA.

Instead of the little phone icons, couldn't they replace them with coffee bean icons for all the coffee shops? Wouldn't that be useful?

So I will cross my fingers and go up the mountain tomorrow to see if they have any coffee. Not an expedition I expected to make...

Will Crows chase any bird?

While we were in Parksville (on the East coast of Vancouver Island) a couple of weeks ago I witnessed a great display of bird flight while sitting on a bench by the beach. A Bald Eagle was being chased by a Crow.

The fight was not that involved – there was no contact between the birds. The Bald Eagle looked a bit bored. The Crow seemed to be having fun. But when they came within a few feet of where I was sitting the sheer size of the Bald Eagle - and those amazing talons!!! - was awesome! This may be one of those fish stories where the fish gets bigger with each telling of the story, but I swear that bird was as big as me!

I didn't get my camera out in time to take a picture, and I'm still kicking myself for that. My spouse has some good pictures of the Bald Eagles we saw on our trip on his Flickr website.

So a couple of days ago I was sitting in a park in downtown Vancouver, close to home, when I saw a miniature version of the same in-flight battle: a Crow was chasing a Seagull. Neither of them were awesome or huge, and again the Crow seemed to be pestering and playing with the Seagull.

So will Crows chase any bird just for the fun of it?

I thought that the Crow in Parksville was trying to scare the Bald Eagle away from the Crow's nest. Bald Eagles are willing to eat anything, including small birds, so it may have been trying to eat Crow. (No, not admitting humiliation, not that kind of eating crow! Eating the little baby birds.)

But maybe not. Maybe the Crow was just pestering the Bald Eagle for exercise. Just chasing another bird because it likes chasing other birds!

Maybe us monkeys, err, sorry, people, make too much of animal behaviour. It may not be all life-and-death struggles. The other animals on this planet may have a sense of play as well.

What would you do with 100 traffic cones?

You've seen them everywhere. Bright orange traffic cones placed in areas that someone doesn't want you to drive or walk in. Do you ever wish you had your own set of traffic cones?

You could put them in a parking space you particularly like as you left it, so you could get the same spot the next day.

You could put them in your neighbor's parking space because they do such a bad job at parking, you just want to be rid of them for a while.

You could put them in the open field of a local park in a strange circular pattern and claim it was crop-circle aliens annoyed that there were no crops to play with, so they collected traffic cones and brought them to the field.

Or if you were really adventurous, you could block off one lane of the Burrard Street Bridge in Vancouver, all the way from the South end to just over the hump in the middle of the bridge. And then you could have lunch, on the road, on the hump of the bridge where the view is the best. I swear this is what a group of road workers were doing a couple of days ago. They had at least 100 traffic cones lined up, and at the end of the line of cones were two road-work trucks, and between them: guys having a break, enjoying the view. Traffic was minimal, so it wasn't a big deal, it was just something that made you wonder: Should you be annoyed, or jealous?

What is the difference between a Crow and a Raven?

Two all-black birds, both inhabiting the West coast of North America – the common crow inhabiting all of North America – how can you tell which species you are looking at?

I just stumbled across the answer to that question last weekend!

I was walking in a park in downtown Vancouver about 3 weeks ago and I heard what I thought was someone talking excitedly in a language I didn't recognize. I looked around to see who it was, but there were no people close to me in the park! I followed the voice to a light post. Sitting on top of the light post was a black bird. I stared at the bird, and yes, it was the bird talking! It was all black, so it wasn't a parrot. It had a puffed up throat, which looked odd for a crow. I wondered if it had swallowed something odd that was making the noise, but it seemed to be a happy bird. It was doing quite a good impression of a laughing human actually!

Then last weekend I was reading a book on birds of BC, and I found the answer: I saw a Raven! In downtown Vancouver!

This bird is often found on first-nation totem poles, and it has a long history along the Pacific coast. It is known as the “trickster” bird because it does mimic human speech. And I saw one! I'm jazzed!

Oops! Did I just kill my plants?

Sad to say, battle plant may be compromised.

We went away for a week, and I didn't want the plants to dry out, so I gave them lots of water before we left. Too much water.

When we returned, I had a colony of mould growing on the surface of the soil. I've removed the mould as best I could, but I removed some of the plants too. I'm not sure if they will recover.

When you display a Mohawk hair style what do you do for a living?

Beyond spending a great deal of time putting various products in your hair to keep it standing straight up, what do you do for a living when you have a Mohawk? Mothers everywhere ask their children this when they come home with the shave-the-sides to leave a broom-on-the-head, stripe-up-the-middle, colourful-blue-bristles-from-the-brows-to-the-top-of-the-backbone hair display. But there ARE adults who proudly display their skulls with this Mohawk stripe to the world. So what do they do for a living? They can't all be in punk bands.

Last night we got a clue to this mystery.

The construction workers working on the outside of our building have been filling a dumpster outside our building with their debris. This dumpster was taken away and replaced by an empty one last night.

A yellow truck with an empty dumpster pulled into the alley. Carefully, but not so quietly, the empty dumpster was dumped in the middle of the alley – an argument may have started between someone trying to drive a car down the alley, but the driver who got out of the truck sported the ever-feared tuft-on-top Mohawk and car drivers found another route to take for the next half hour. The noise caught our attention so we watched the event.

The truck driver skillfully backed the truck up to the filled dumpster, with the truck bed angled up at about 45 degrees, and got out to prepare the dumpster. He jumped into the dumpster to flatten down and rearrange the contents, then he jumped out and got out a cover for the dumpster. After tightening the cover, he hooked the winch on the truck bed to the dumpster. Getting back into the truck cab he drove ahead a few meters, dragging the dumpster behind – yes, you can see the mark on the pavement from this, but there are other older marks, so what's one more. He then jumped out of the truck and unhooked the dumpster. He jumped back into the truck and skillfully angled it to the front of the empty dumpster. He then even more skillfully positioned the empty dumpster into the place where the full dumpster had been – in one shot – he got out to check the placement, and it was spot on, so he unhooked the dumpster. He then jumped back in the truck and angled it in front of the full dumpster, jumped out, hooked the full dumpster and then loaded it up onto the truck bed which lowered from the 45 degrees to a flat surface. After securing the load, he jumped in the truck and drove off. It had been a masterful performance of skill and choreography.

So that's what you do when you display attitude and defiance of societal norms. You aren't an average construction worker who spends all day going up and down the sides of buildings drilling and making noise while talking about the sports you played on the weekend. You are a lone worker who dances through your work with skill and style, and an attitude that makes others leave you alone to do your job. Gee Mom, I think he wins!

Do I really want to know the construction workers that well?

Outside my window now, and for about the last year or so, there are construction workers working on my apartment building. Yes, a Vancouver condominium that needs repairs done on it from water damage, what a surprise! (Heavy on the sarcasm there, ALL buildings in Vancouver's West End neighborhood need repairs done on them due to water damage. No, we haven't had a flood or hurricane or any other natural disaster, we just live in a rain-forest area and no one can make a building that won't be damaged by the rain, which we get for six to seven months at a time. It's a soggy place.)

These construction workers talk a lot. They talk on the way up the outside of the building on the swing scaffold. They talk on the way down the outside of the building on the swing scaffold. They talk when not moving and the drilling momentarily stops (it's an occasional reprieve, they are replacing all of the tiles on every balcony, and drilling and refilling all of the joints between all of the wall panels out there).

The building walls are mostly glass, and they are also spending a lot of time replacing all of the caulking around every single glass pane. Glass is not a good sound barrier. So there is a looming shadow behind the blinds as the swing scaffold stops, they remove the old caulking, clean it out, and put new caulking on. This is not an engrossing task for them, they tend to talk the most when they are on the other side of this non-sound-proof glass.

It's a lot of talk about nothing in particular. Hockey is always a popular topic. Food – what should they have for lunch today. Games of various sorts. No debates about the dichotomy of good and evil, why don't humans have tails, or what is “colour” and is black a colour?

The problem is, I'm not trying to listen in. I really don't want to hear it. And I'd rather do my work without the chatter in the background. But I'm getting to know all about these men, and I don't want to. When I see them down in the lobby when we're all coincidently walking about, do I really need to be wondering which one had a great game of softball on the weekend? I'm going a bit nutty, and my ears hurt from listening to my Ipod all day! I'm beginning to think it would be quieter if I worked in an office building - at least it wouldn't be one conversation at a time going on! As a recent escapee from the corporate world, this makes me shudder!

Should I label seeds when I plant them?

In my second installment of battle plant, you can see from the May 2nd picture that both sets of seeds have sprouted. Well, if you look closely you can see the small ones, they are up, but they seem to be lagging behind the bigger ones.

So I'm wondering which is the mint and which is the bachelor buttons. I'm sure I'll find out soon enough, but perhaps I should have labeled them...

When was my birthday?

Yes, I tipped over into 42 at the beginning of this week. I can't honestly say I woke up and knew the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything - to which the answer is 42. Oh well. I will continue searching, maybe I will run into it later this year.

I will report that turning 42 is no where near as traumatic as turning 40. My spouse and I almost missed it actually, it was a non-event event. We are considering getting something for it, as a present, you see, but I haven't thought of anything I really want, nothing leaps out... I wonder if there is anywhere you can buy questions?

Will my housekeeper get a housekeeper?

Nothing grandiose or elite about it, I have a housekeeper who comes in to clean once a week. She's quick, efficient, and does in 3 hours what it would take me days to do, so it's a bargain. Now she is seriously considering getting a housekeeper for her own home.

Why would my housekeeper want to hire a housekeeper? It's not laziness. It's just easier for a person who has no personal attachment to a place, and the things in it, to clean it! There is no rearranging because this might work better over there. There are no thoughts about when this should be replaced because it's worn out. There is no finding something you had been looking for so you drop the cleaning and go off to do what you wanted to do with it. It's just stuff you clean, and then you move on.

The other aspect of the problem is that when my housekeeper works all day cleaning other people's homes, and then goes back to her own home, it's depressing that HER home is not clean. She's been cleaning all day! Everything should be clean, and it's not! That's just a mean occupational hazard for a naturally clean person.

I have encouraged her to do what may seem silly to others – get a housekeeper!