Is that rude, or just end-of-term staring into the distance?

I was on the UBC campus yesterday on my way to an appointment when I stopped to have some coffee and lunch. (oooh, she stopped for coffee, that's unusual - I think she may have an addiction going here...) And I was wondering if a woman in the cafe was being rude, or just trying to avoid doing the term paper she was working on.

The front of the cafe had windows that could be fully opened up, and since it was such a gorgeous day they were wide open, so I sat at a table facing outside for the view. There were a few other occupied tables, most with a single person facing outside as well, but there was one woman at a single table who was facing inside.

And she was staring at all the people who were facing the other way. Or was she?

She had a very thick book with her - Don Quixote - and a lot of paper with hand written notes and a computer. Aha! I recognize that, it's a term paper in it's primeval form, on it's way to becoming an end-of-term must... finish... this... damned...paper assignment. I remember those!

So she probably wasn't staring at other people to be rude, she was just desperately trying to avoid the term paper!

I remember being a student. It was great to be able to reduce the world into something to stare at when trying to avoid term papers. But, when you leave school, you have to avoid staring at strangers in case they get upset and think it's a challenge they have to respond to... similar to why you don't stare into the eyes of predatory animals unless you want to be attacked by them.

But for now, in a cafe on campus (right beside a great pub... I love that campus, it would have been so much fun to study there) a student can get away with end-of-term staring into the distance, and at other people.

Life will get more complicated later, so she should enjoy it now! I envy the place she is at in life right now.

Did I just kill off an entire species?

Spring cleaning has started with a vengance in our home.

We have a large couch with feather-stuffed pillows. They can't be cleaned by calling in steam cleaners, the covers must be removed and then washed.

Oh... that's why the typical couch is not made with feathers these days. Removing the pillow cases (10 of them) leaves the place looking like a bird fight was staged here!

There are feathers everywhere!

There will be feathers everywhere for weeks! They worked their way out of the main pillow compartments into the areas between the pillow and the outter covering, which I needed to wash.

The feathers just don't all clean up! And where did that static cling come from?

So I washed the pillow cases in batches, twice. And I think I may have killed off an entire species.

I've seen TV programs that show pictures of microscopic animals that live in beds. They eat dead human skin that naturally comes off and stays on a bed. They look like finger prints with legs.

And I think there must have been some in the couch pillows. They've all been washed away now. I killed them off. I feel kinda guilty.

I've just watched a program on Stephen Hawkings which gave a useful size comparison. If you take a massively huge library stuffed with books, our galaxy would fit nicely inside one period (full stop) in one book. So in that case we're the microscopic ones... lets hope the galaxy doesn't need a wash!

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?