Did more Vancouver residents turn off their lights for Earth Hour this year?

Last year I took a picture of Vancouver from out of our apartment during Earth Hour and it looked pretty much the same as it does every night. This year, there may have been a little less light, but I'm not sure people are getting it yet.

This news article shows the percentage reduction that communities around BC's lower mainland achieved last night.

The media are finally getting it. Last year it was almost a secret when Earth Hour was, and why it was. This year the local TV news actually mentioned it the Friday before it happened, so people could do something about it, rather than mentioning it briefly the Monday afterwards like they did last year!

But we still had glowing streets and people with every light in their apartments on during Earth Hour this year. Maybe next year...

What happens to sandbags after floods?

So the Red River once again is rising in Manitoba and the in states south of it, so once again the news is full of volunteer lines of people moving sandbags to places where they hope to stop the water from going into. But when the flood is over again, where do the sandbags go?

Oddly enough, you can get a ready answer to this question by just googling it! See this news item.

Or, this news item from last July describes how in the U.S. the people who lose their source of income after the flood can get temporary jobs removing the bags that were put in front of the restaurants they used to work at.

The bags are not burlap anymore, they are made up of a plastic that does degrade. After a "few weeks" of exposure to sun they will break down, so you could have a pile of sand on your hands if you don't work fast to remove them.

So you can reuse the sand for gardens, gritting the path in the winter, or mixing into concrete, but some of it does end up in landfill. Great, spend time and effort getting the sand out of the ground and into bags, then put it back in to confuse future archaeologists when they find layers of sand in the ancient dumps. "The ancient people seem to have been wiped out by a desert of sand that covered the planet around the year 2000 A.D."

Who would make their infant park?

Contemplate this sign, found on Vancouver Island, and you will find many questions come to mind.

Does the parent have such undeveloped parking skills that they could be labeled "infant" parkers?

Which parent is the worst parker, the female or the male?

What about same-sex partners with an infant, are they not allowed to park here?

What kind of parent would make their infant park? Can they even reach the pedals and the steering wheel at the same time? From the baby carrier in the back seat, no less!

This sign is similar to a handicapped parking sign. Does this mean an infant is a handicap? Do the physical abilities of the human adult decline to a point of handicap once procreation has been achieved?

Someone must have thought they were being nice to people with this sign, but were they really? Or were they just giving people a way to point out their inadequacies to the world with their choice of parking space?

Did I want that question answered?

On February 17 I pondered the question "What will collide next?" and considered submarines and space craft colliding in what one could consider a vast amount of space. They did that you know, I wasn't just making it up.

So today I read the news that 2 US navy vessels have collided in the Strait of Hormuz off the coasts of Iran, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. One ship spilled 90,000 litres of diesel fuel, the other's nuclear fuel was not disturbed (it would be a whole other set of news if the nuclear vessel blew up, wouldn't it?)

But I haven't been able to find any news stories about the environmental disaster that much spilled fuel would cause. If the spill was around North America, people would be flocking to the coast to help injured birds and other wildlife. Maybe all the wildlife around the oil producing area of the world is already dead. Or mutated to a point where it doesn't phase them. A sad thought any way you look at it.

So these 2 boats, one about 110 metres long, the other 210 metres long, patrolling an area reported to be 7.5 million square miles, or 12 billion square kilometres big collide in one of the narrow bits. They were both US boats this time, so no language barriers to blame, no metric versus American measurements to blame, just 2 little boats trying to defy physics and occupy the same space.

I don't dare ask what will collide next.

Isn't that called "loitering"?

So I was in a coffee shop this morning having a cup of coffee (yes, I do a lot of that), and there was a young Asian couple sitting beside me. The were talking and ... not having coffee. They were also ... not drinking anything else. They were also ... not eating anything. They were just sitting and talking.

So, is it just me, or isn't that called "loitering"?

This couple were there before I got there. I sat down and drank my coffee and read my magazine and got increasingly curious about when they were going to leave.

I remember working with people who couldn't even think about sitting down and enjoying their coffee, it was always something they grabbed and ran with. They were exhausting people who spent much of their lives convincing the world that they were desperately important and needed to run about and stick their noses into everything or nothing would ever get done. As if.

There was a lull in the couple's conversation. It was not in English, so I have no idea what they were talking about. I figured they were about to leave. They stayed sitting and apparently thought of something else to talk about.

I've worked with people who figured all the coffee shop was a stage, and they were on fire with their animated conversation. Entertaining, but spillage can be a problem here.

The couple's conversation was not very animated. I'm sure he was considering leaving, but she didn't seem to have any desire to go.

From what I could tell, everyone else in the coffee shop who had sat down before me was gone now, and I had just finished my coffee, so I got up to leave. But, really, I was still curious about the couple, so I hit the washroom before leaving. On my way out ... they were still there.

There are a lot of homeless people in downtown Vancouver. This couple was obviously not among them. The homeless people would probably love to have a comfy warm chair to sit in for hours and just talk without having to purchase coffee for the privilege. They would undoubtably be thrown out of the coffee shop for illegal loitering if they tried this. So why didn't this couple get thrown out? I'm not about to jump on a soap box and rail at social injustices, but shouldn't that couple have at least considered that what they were doing was not socially acceptable, if not a wee bit illegal?

Where is the most inappropriate place to applaud?

I'm going with a washroom for this one, a public washroom that is. It's the most inappropriate place to applaud. I didn't applaud, but I really felt I should.

No, it's not what you are thinking (and why are earth are you thinking that?).

The community centre where I take a Yoga class on Thursdays has a piano. This piano is well hidden. This piano is down a long hallway. On the way to this piano you will pass both men's and women's washrooms. They quite often leave the main doors to the washrooms propped open (helps with air movement).

So today I found myself in the washroom, listening to wonderful piano music. The person playing the piano really knew what they were doing. They played large portions of about 3 different pieces. Boy, that was a lot of notes. No, I'm not musical but I do appreciate great music, and that really was.

So I felt like applauding... and then caught myself. I didn't venture down the hallway to the piano room because I think it's a really tiny room, and I needed to get to my class, but I didn't want to interrupt.

So whoever was playing such wonderful music should find a better place to do it where more people can listen. What an odd place to keep the piano!

How much food can we freeze?

The multi-coloured and very pretty map of the street closures for downtown Vancouver during the 2010 Olympics is out, and what I want to know is: how much food can we freeze for this event?

See the pretty map.

Yes, we are right in the middle of the colourful lines of pedestrian only traffic and no parking and no driving roads. We don't actually leave the peninsula very often - everything we need is here really, but ... our weekly trip to Granville Island to obtain food will be impossible.

Yes, we do have your basic garden-variety grocery stores within walking distance of our home, we won't go hungry, but it's not the same. We like to make our own food from farm-fresh produce.

So this officially begins the year of finding recipes for food to freeze. Chili and soup are the obvious, but we need more...

Who wants a "Danger: Work in Progress" sign?

It may frequently actually mean "there's a guy with a bucket of soapy water hanging from a rope over your head", but wouldn't this be a great sign for everyone to have?

The weather has warmed up (a little bit) so the window washers are up the sides of the buildings in Vancouver again. That's gotta be a cold job on a cloudy day. They set up these great signs on the ground underneath where they are working.

Danger: Work in Progress

Wow, wouldn't that be a great sign to have? You could put it just inside the door to your workspace. It is ambiguous enough it could mean many things, like:

Don't bother me, I'm doing work and it could be dangerous to bug me.

Don't come in here if you don't want to work - that's what's happening in here!

Don't judge me now, I'm still a work in progress, I'm not done yet!

I'm working here, watch out world, there's something coming!

Or, I just stole a window cleaner's sign, so watch out when you're on the street, there's one missing!

Do yoga mats have built-in ash trays in Quebec?

We had a yoga guru over for dinner last night and the conversation was varied, but a lot of it was about yoga (surprise). The yoga guru was telling us that The Place To Be in the world for yoga was Southern California - no big surprise there. The surprise is: he thinks in Canada The Place To Be for yoga is either Toronto or Montreal - not Vancouver!

I lived in Toronto for 9 years. I escaped Toronto a decade ago, so my knowledge of the area may be old, but I just don't see it. There are no fit-focussed people or communities that stand out in my memory of Toronto. Just a lot of people walking about quickly underneath the buildings: getting off transit underground; walking through the underground tunnels to get to work; eating in food courts in the underground tunnels; and then walking back to transit underground at the end of their day. If they ever saw a window they just squinted and hurried by.

Not really a celebration of life and the wonders of your own body to be had in Toronto.

I've been to Montreal a couple of times. The one thing that comes immediately to mind from there is the huge number of stinky people sucking on cancer sticks. I have seen many people eating and smoking at the same time (a tricky thing to do if you aren't concentrating) and smoking everywhere by everyone in Montreal.

Unless yoga mats come with built-in ash trays for Montreal yoga practitioners, I don't see how that could be The Place To Be for yoga in Canada.

I think this idea is just the symptom of "the grass is greener over there" syndrome for the yoga guru. He has always lived in Vancouver. It's natural to think things are better somewhere else.

It's interesting how prevalent the "over there" pull is for people.