Random Musings and Nicknacks

Have you ever wondered what Tea + Coffee would taste like? Guess what, I made one today and I can tell you right away it’s not bad at all.

I cut down my coffee intake from several cups to one cup recently. Normally I don’t drink coffee in the afternoon. During an ordinary day, I only drink coffee, tea or water. I’m not big fun of pops or juices even though there are plenty of them in the kitchen. I found those drinks are too sweet for my teeth (Tim can’t bear the thougths that I don’t take any advantage of available cokes ). So after one cup of coffee in the morning, the rest of day, my drinks would be either water or tea. Pretty boring, eh?! (more…)

Heard from Chris that Geoff has been promoted as VP of sales and marketing in his company. We’re very proud of him. Congratulations, Geoff! Best wishes for your continuing success in your new position!!

July seems to be a popular month for social events. We have recieved 2 invitations already. One is the dinner crusie on July 13th from GMI and another is BBQ on July 22 from Bycast. Tim has also been invited for the spare time summer camp. That is going to be in the first week of July. If I remeber correctly, we also have 3 family birthdays comming as well. Oh boy, we’re going to be busy..

This is a rant. Strong opinions follow.

The City of Vancouver hates bikes. Oh sure, they talk like they don’t “We believe so strongly you should bike that we are going to raise taxes on cars”, but closer examination shows that this is really just an excuse to raise taxes — they don’t believe what they are saying.

When you look at the actual actions the city takes, the signs they post and the laws they write it becomes obvious. I want to talk about things I run into regularly:

(more…)

Shot in our front yard garden after the rain. The flash was fired and ISO speed was 400.

Note: I know I would do a much better job if I had used tripod. I am still not used to tripod because it’s never there whenever I want to take pictures! A person like me needs a tripod that can walk by itself, follow her around and automatically set itself up whenever she is ready to take pictures…

It all started with the embarrassment of standing in a park, surrounded by other dog owners and hearing Ling yelling “Punky, FOOD!” to get his attention. I decided that it was time to formally teach Punky recall.

I have the time to do it — every morning before work Punky and I go on a 30 minute walk. It was quite easy to modify that to 15 minutes of training and 15 minutes of walk.

Recall training is actually pretty simple if you have the time. You tie 30 feet of rope to him, walk away, and yell “Punky, COME!” Then you repeat the command, haul him in using the rope, and reward him. Eventually he starts to respond on his own. We had actually tried this when he was 4 months old, but it was impossible to teach him recall when he shadowed you everywhere you went! Now he either wanders off on his own, or I can make him sit-stay while I walk away.

It has gone smoothly for a week, and he was starting to respond. Today we were setting up, and he spied his friend Tuska coming onto the field to chase a ball (she’s not usually there in the mornings). “Great,” I thought, “a distraction. The training will be more useful,” and I grabbed a tighter hold on the rope.

It turns out I had seriously underestimated the momentum a 55 lb dog can build while stretching out 30 feet of rope…

(more…)

After Chris showed me some great insects photos shot in south east Asia, I started to miss my childhood summer in China. Those days, the summer was not very hot; air was not polluted; and water was so clean: you could literally drink from any little creeks you ran into.

The great fun about summer was to catch insects. We(My brother and I) made our own insects catcher using spider webs. The spider web was very sticky and strong, if an insect hit the web, it would never able to escape. In summer holidays, after we finsihed our homework, my brother and I would be running around in the school’s playground catching dragflies, butterflies and flying moths… (more…)

Boy has it been an interesting weekend for weather. We’ve had two thunderstorms roll through here (not prairie level thunderstorms, mind you, just west coast style).

The last one came just as we were getting ready to take Punky out. We had heard the thunder rolling around — oddly Punky shows absolutely no reaction to thunder, if he’s sleeping he doesn’t even wake up — and figured we would get to the park before it really hit.

To check the status, I opened the door, and realized that although it was dry where we were, a block away was distinctly indistinct. Sure enough, 2 minutes later it was raining, hard. 2 minutes after that it started to hail and we told Punky he would have to wait to go outside.

We went to the backdoor to watch the hail (a rarity here) and Punky was still insistent on going outside. Cruel people that we are, we let him, and watched.

He got out from under the eaves, and the first hail hit him. (more…)

A little Flower

On the first day of summer,
My wish comes true.
I bloom into a little flower,
My pedals quiver with joy.

Standing by the roadside,
I am eagerly waiting…

When wind blows
and bird sing,
I hear your whisper,
Shall we dance, my love
Shall we dance?

–By Ling

Note: shot this photo in the Richmond Garden City park yesterday afternoon

Finally the rain stopped today for long enough that the vegetation dried out! (in Richmond only; apparently White Rock got rain until noon; but those savages deserve it).

So it was that I set out on my adventure … with one minor problem. The extension cord for the lawnmower was currently powering an XBox 360 upstairs, and it wasn’t worth my life to unplug that. No worries, the tree at the end of the driveway was looking ratty, and I could trim that until I had the opportunity to power my lawn mower (I briefly considered the reel mower, but it doesn’t work well in the front yard — there are too many obstacles).

So I grabbed the shears, and started by cutting the bottom of the tree to the right length, and even, and … I got 3/4 of the way around and bang — a pain in my arm I can’t even begin to describe. (more…)