Raincharm’s Weblog

The day started with a few tasks to finish.
And the internet in Ashlan’s apartment took a hike.
So we ended up hiking to a nearby school building with wi-fi.

Finally off on the bus to downtown.
Crowded buses are the norm. We are getting better at finding our way to the places where handholds are better. And we got onto the Canada Line, new underground train – also packed to the gills.

The Cauldron

The Olympic Cauldron - Gretzky was here

The Crowds

The crowds

Two in the crowd

Jay & Carl & the flame

The Rings

The Olympic Rings

The Steam Clock in Gas Town

Gas Town Steam Clock

St. Paul’s Hospital

The Monolith telling us we are either at the UBC Hockey arena or Home, or both.

Home on the left, Hockey to the right

Early Day 3

Very early. As in 2 AM, when little one decided to come home before her friends.
Except that she had forgotten one small thing – her room key.
So, we got one of those early morning phone calls. Except that the phone was not in reach, and Carl decided it wasn’t one of our phones at all and that we should ignore the phone. But I finally managed to struggle off of the bed, and got the phone on the second call.

Sleeping quarters

Two phone calls and one hour later I was able to buzz little one into the room and finally fall back asleep.

 Not so early, Day 3.

Ashlan slept in a bit.
Carl & I went over to the fields next to Thunderbird Arena and I ran a mile, give or take, slowly. Then we walked around campus and found a Starbucks and a Post Office.
Ashlan called to see where we were. Checking up on her old folks – kind of cute.
Showers and lunch and we set out again.

Mid Day 3

Down to the beach.
I do mean down. 470 steps.
The reward, a beautiful sandy beach. (Clothing optional, and yes there were a few taking advantage)
Unlike many of the beaches around Seattle, it was not windy, and rather warm.
Carl & Ashlan played catch – baseball, and later football.
I soaked in the sun, almost took off my sweater, but that is as far as I considered going.
After a while we climbed back up the steps, and across campus.

Carl & Ashlan have a catch

Ashlan & Jay - Winter in the northwest

Evening Day 3

We decided on dinner and a movie for our evening entertainment.
Right as we had picked a restaurant phones rang with contact from Seattle friends fresh out of a curling match.
We rendezvoused at Hell’s Kitchen for dinner.
Traded tales of the games and Vancouver in general.
After too short a time they left for another match.
We traded Hell’s Kitchen for Scoops and frozen yogurt, foosball and Guess Who?
Finally time for the movie – Crazy Heart.
A really good movie. I seem to be seeing a lot of film with music as the central theme lately, but that is OK with me.
The last bit was the ride home. We have been riding the bus to get places. Friday night in Vancouver is a jumping time. The buses were all packed, and we packed in with the rest of the city.

Back to early morning – when Ashlan was attempting to get home, sans keys, at least one bus passed her by because it was too full. Seattle and Vancouver are often compared. The widespread size of the city and much larger population are easy to see. Less obvious, until you are one the ground, is the use of the transit system. They have buses, the new underground Canada Line and the Skytrain. Our week here is definitely a skewed perspective, but there have been no buses that stayed empty for long.

Yesterday – 1st Women’s hockey game.
Slovakia 3 – Switzerland 5
It was a very evenly matched game. Lots of hustle.
Met a family in line for water, coffee and a beer that gave me a line on where to find the red Canadian Olympic mittens.

I had wanted a pair of the red mittens since I saw them a week ago.
Of course I have generally cold hands, so mittens hold a special place.
When we got into town the buzz was they were hard to find. Places with mittens would only have small or extra-large, etc. One of Ashlan’s friends had gotten hers in Victoria. Even on-line they were being shown as out-of-stock. So, off to Zeller’s in search of the elusive hand-warmers.

Then back to UBC for a Vera’s burger, and on to see USA vs Finland.
A raucous crowd. We were seated four rows up from the goal corner. Great view of the Finland goal for 2 periods (where most of the action was). The final score was USA 6 – Finland 0. But they had some good chances, including a penalty shot. The row in front of us was full of college kids from the University of Wisconsin, including an American cheesehead. Apparently 7 of the USA women’s team players and the coach are from UW. It was a fun game and we got to wave our flag a bit.

After the game we walked down to the grocery store and came home to make dinner. Men’s figure skating, a bit of skeleton and Canada Men’s hockey accompanied our meal. Ashlan then decided she needed some “alone” time and took off with a few of her friends to go join the thousands in downtown Vancouver. I am fine with hanging out and not doing much tonight. Kind of tired.

THE Red Mittens

Vancouver 2010 - USA, USA, USA, USA

Badger, er USA Women's Hockey Team Fans

We are here.
Beautiful train ride, lots of waterfowl and sun.
Men with machine guns and uniformed dogs accompanied us on the train.
(I have no idea what is going on with format, so just go with the flow)

Torch to start our experience.

Flags and the Olympic Athletes Village

Athletes Village

Crowd waiting for Hockey at Thunderbird Arena, this is across from Ashlan’s apartment, and where we will spend time tonight.

Thunderbird Arena

Time to get ready for our first event! Exciting.
Women’s hockey – Switzerland vs. Slovakia

Meetings stem to stern. Literally, almost. 8 AM until 6:45 PM.

There were a few minutes here and there during the day. Even took a walk at lunch – needed to get out in the air.
Between work, pre-sale Mariner ticket orders, figuring coverages for the next week, and meetings – it has been a long day. 

There is a buzz in the air that the Mariners may have it together this year. We can buy before the peasants, and instead of the normal 2 or 3 people who take advantage of early offers, there are 9 or 10. And they all had 2 days to get information to me because we only got the information on Friday. Big league, my eye. (We really had 1 week, except I won’t be around to take orders)

Now we are down to last packing. Ride is arranged for tomorrow AM. The train is sold out, so we want to be in line early. Can’t wait to see Ashlan.

We have made great progress on getting the clothes packed. It always feels good to know what you can fit.
Even took an hour to hunt down a request from our northern Olympic correspondent.
Now for the things that are not soft and squishy.

Is sounds like it is pretty fun to be in Vancouver right now. Lots to do and things to see.
Ashlan is getting acquainted with travel around town so we should have a good tour guide.

I worked today, and have a really full day tomorrow.
Carl, on the other hand, is already on vacation.
He has spent his time doing some cleaning and shuffling of stuff around the house.
I am almost in the mood for spring cleaning.

Well, it is finally here.
The day we have all been waiting for.
The last non-work day before a vacation!

My plans for the day are – work (because that always needs to be done before you leave), pack, try to finish taxes. I will be happy with two out of three. At a bare minimum laundry will be done for packing. Work needs to happen, and taxes still have a month or two, although I am so close to completion it would be a shame to wait.

My focus on the vacation was such that I really had not factored in Valentines Day, or Presidents Day for that matter. It just dawned on me that a lot of people were taking little trips on Thursday, and then my powerful brain put it all together.

Now we are giving a nod to Valentines.
Carl had at least two of his charges go to Paint the Town and make heart shaped trivets for their families.
Our celebration is a bit of a fall back to probably my best gift to Carl ever.

How do you celebrate?

First  things first – HAPPY BIRTHDAY JANE!

Jane - summer 09 - Ann Arbor hosts the 3-Day

No – Jane is not 884 years old. Because if she was I would be 889, and that is just not true.

Part 2: What is different about this picture?

Vincent Wydown

Wired from a combination of coffee and cinnamon roll.
I have been staying away from the morning sugar bombs.
But, it was a co-workers’ birthday, and a different co-worker made homemade cinnamon rolls.
They were warm.
What can I say, I was weak.
I did take a smallish one.

So a bit later I am suddenly a bit jittery. Useless energy that is harder to harness in a good direction.
I have been trying to balance out with yogurt and other foods I brought with me so I don’t crash.

I read somewhere in the past few days that sugar making kids wild is unsubstantiated, a myth.
Since I can feel what it does to me, I have to believe it is also affecting smaller bodies.

For a different kind of wired I got an un-requested visit from IT, asking if I wanted a second monitor.
I frequently multi-task with several windows going at once, so this would probably be helpful.
I don’t usually try to get to the front of the line, and I did ask him if there was anyone else who needed it more – he said I did more of this type of thing than anyone else. [Actually, I think our finance manager may do as much or more, but she is faster on the Ctrl-Alt combinations.]
He is ordering two new workstations, and we have an extra monitor already, that matches my current monitor. So instead of ordering one workstation sans monitor, he will just get two complete stations and I get more screen space.

Woo-hoo.

I do. I do this at work, at home, and in my mind all the time.
But even us “professional” planners slip up, or lose track of the details – or maybe just forgot what decisions we made earlier.

I was discussing Olympic event ticketing with a friend who also has tickets. In trying to figure out if we would cross paths naturally anywhere I realized that we were not travelling the day before our first event, but the day of the first event.

Timing? It would probably work, check with our resident Vancouverite. Hmmm – not so sure of the cross town travel time during the Olympics. So change from mid-morning train-bus to early morning train-train. A few more hours to play with. And it helps that our domicile destination is across the street from the event. In fact it helped Ashlan’s entertainment plans for the night before. She thought she was going to have to deal with getting us into said domicile while she was trying to get to a concert, between keys, cards and codes it appears to be well guarded – especially against people that do not look like students.

It is down to the fun planning time. Currency, tickets in hand, travel options figured, ideas for non-event time. 1 week and counting.