I interviewed for another permanent part-time position at the library's downtown branch. Got word yesterday that I didn't get it. On the other hand, I felt a lot better going into this one than previously. I think I'm improving quite a bit with each succesive interview, so it's only a matter of time before I get some regular position somewhere. After all, I've been doing the auxiliary clerk thing for less that a year at this point. (This is me trying to remain positive about the whole thing. I figure that if I fret too much about not getting a particular position, it'll put me off my game when the next one rolls around. Gotta keep the "Little Clerk That Could" mentality.)

On my way into work yesterday, I walked past a guy who resembled a puffy, slovenly, declining-years Joe Don Baker. So, really, Joe Don Baker at any given point in his adult life.

"Go ahead on."

DISTURBING LIBRARY FINDS #3

Lynn suggested this one:



Where Willy Went... by Nicholas Allan. It is, as the cover notes, "the big story of a little sperm".

Now, don't get me wrong. I have no problem with teaching youngsters about the facts of life. (You see, you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have... wait a minute. Since when do "bad" and "have" rhyme?) The contents are the book are pretty inoffensive and does a decent if simplistic job of explaining the facts to the sprogs. But...

Where Willy went? Where Willy went?! Is that a wise name to be using in this context? I know they were going for alliteration but, come on!

And the poor girl born in our tale, saddled with the name... Edna. I can only presume this name was chosen because of the 99.9% likelyhood that it wouldn't match the name of any young girl reading the book. The name only reminds me of that old recurring sketch on "SCTV", Ted and Edna Boil's Organ Emporium". "Isn't that right, Tex?" "That's right, Edna!"

But the icing on the cake... oh, dear god, I hope that's icing... the icing on the cake is the dedication (which does not appear until the end of the book). "To Rod Stewart." The hell?! Rod Stewart?! Rod "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" Stewart? Where did that come from? I... I... ... I got nothin'. That's just too bizarre for me to come up with a witty comment...

Where was I? Right, checking into the Vancouver Delta Suites. Niiiiiice place. We checked in with the assistance of the extremely enthusiastic Alison. Along with our keys, we received... a cookie. A pleasantly warm chocolate chip cookie. Each. Lynn and I looked at each other with looks that probably said, "Holy cow! They gave a cookie! A pleasantly warm chocolate chip cookie! Each!" Needless to say, this instantly become our favourite hotel ever.

Our suite turned out to be a corner suite, which meant big windows giving us a view of the city pretty much any direction we chose to face. (I'm not good with heights, yet this didn't bother me. Well, unless I did something really stupid, like press my face right up against the window. Which is something I tried to avoid doing. Duh.)

After getting settled in, we headed out for dinner at Shabusen on Burrard, where much sushi and Korean BBQ was consumed. Yum!

We took a few shots of some gargoyles and other architectural bits on the way there:




And the Vancouver Olympic countdown clock:



Yep, that's a clock all right. ... Okay.

On the way back it poured. We did have an umbrella but we were still pretty wet by the time we made it back to the hotel. Some passing employee spotted us approaching and leapt to help us through the door. Once back in our room, we discovered there was only one robe in the room. Calling down to the front desk produced an extra robe at our door after about, oh, a little more than a minute.

The rest of the evening was spent lounging on the comfy, king-size bed, in our robes watching a little TV. Oh, yeah, we were roughin' it. Late in the evening, we were feeling a wee bit peckish. "Oh, look, 24-hour room service. May we have a fruit and cheese platter, please? Oh, thank you for bringing that to our room. Here's a little something for your trouble. Time to scarf!"



That would be brie event number 1. Eating our lovely fruit and cheese platter in bed.

Tell me why anyone would ever voluntarily go camping for a holiday when this is available?

After a very nice night's sleep, we headed down for breakfast at the hotel's restaurant, Millennium. Brie event #2 happened when I order a large, yummy omelette with ham and cheese.

We checked out a little later (man, we scored on the Easter special - our total bill, with taxes, phone call charges and our room service was less than half the room's normal base rate). A little shopping at Pacific Centre and a little wandering around led us to:



The Vancouver Art Gallery. We decided, sure, what the heck. I rather liked the Acting the Part: Photography as Theatre exhibit and Lynn enjoyed the collection of Vancouver photographs by Fred Herzog. We were both left underwhelmed by the Huang Yong Ping retrospective, though. It was that weird, kind of pretentious art that everybody likes to pretend they understand but don't really. You know you're in trouble when the exhibits materials, instead of reading "watercolour on canvas" or "silver nitrate photograph", contain... "lion feces". Um, yeah.

We headed back to the SkyTrain station, stopping for a bite to eat in a handy food fair. We picked a Café Suprême (which we'd never heard of before) and... brie event #3 happened when I chose a ham and brie pannini. A ham and brie pannini... in a mall food court. Go fig.

We were right on time for the bus back to the ferry, then into town.

Despite working three evening shifts this week, I've felt fairly relaxed this week. I'm putting it down to all the brie.

Day one of our holiday was on Sunday, April 8. Lynn and I got up at the crack of dawn (or close to it, anyway) and headed downtown to board the bus that took us to the ferry, onto the ferry, then off the ferry to downtown Vancouver. We had a pleasant enough breakfast of scrambled eggs and meaty accompaniments on the ferry.

The bus station in Vancouver is only a brief walk from Science World, which was our first destination. The usual interactive sciencey stuff was available and fun was had with those. According to one exhibit, it turns out that Lynn has a much stronger grip than I do, but then I beat her at the wheelchair race simulation. The machine that lets you move a ball with your brain's theta waves was unfortunately not fuctioning, though.

There were two featured exhibits while we were there. One to do with the human body and its functions, another about chocolate. We were each given a Purdy's hegdehog chocolate when we paid for our tickets. Nice.

The chocolate exhibit was mostly displays about how chocolate is made, from cocao beans through to bar format.


The body exhibit had a lot of the usual ick, including displays of implants. Especially creepy was the artifical eye section, although the artificial hips and the like were more interesting. And then there was this:


A breast implant and a testicular implant together in the same box. Thus representing the two human body parts that men care about the most.

After a quick bite of lunch at the Science World's very noisy Triple O's by White Spot (note to self; holiday Sunday = insane amount of kids at Science World), we caught the end of the "LocoMotion" program, where a staff member demonstrates the laws of physics with folks from the audience. Here's the end of the "conservation of energy" demo:


After wrapping up at Science World, we caught the SkyTrain and headed off to the Vancouver Delta Suites, the nicest hotel we have ever stayed in. To read all about it, tune in next time...

BrieFest 2007! Seriously, I had more brie or meals containing brie over the last two days than I have had in, oh, the last two years.

For the Easter weekend, Lynn and I took a rare holiday trip. Just over to the mainland and just overnight, but man it was nice. Pictures were taken and over the next few days, I plan to recount our adventures.

Just... not tonight. Ironically, I need to wind down a bit from my holiday. Par for the course, really.

Oooooeeeeoooooooooooo! He's back (again)! And it's about time (again)!

Yep, with the episode "Smith and Jones", series three of my all-time favourite show, Doctor Who, premiered on the BBC last night (and was immediately bittorrented by us). With a new companion! (Sob... my Rose... she's really gone...) With a hospital on the Moon! With... talking bipedal rhinos? Um... Okay, sure, what the hell? Why not? A few random thoughts (and be warned, this'll be spoilery):

Martha Jones, the new companion. Okay, she's not Rose. No one could ever be Rose. But, you know, she'll do. She's a medical doctor (well, almost), that should come in useful. She certainly could use a break from her insane, always argueing family. And she's, well, if I need to describe her in one word, I'd pick "sensible". While her family bickers away, she's the calm in the middle of a storm. And when things go seriously pear-shaped at the hospital, she keeps the coolest head (next to the Doctor).

The Judoon. Possibly just a leeeetle close to the Sontarans. Fortunately, their motivations are plenty different. The Sontarans are all about combat and conquest. The Judoon are about enforcing rather extreme laws and sheer bloody-mindedness.

The Doctor. Well, he's the Doctor, isn't he? Gotta love this look:

One especially interesting character moment for him, though. When asked if he had a brother, he responds, "Not anymore." Oink? Where's that headed?

Ontological paradox alert!

The Doctor appears to Martha early in the episode, takes off his tie and says, "Like so? See?" Martha tells the Doctor about this later on. The Doctor travels back through time to prove he can do so and takes off his tie in front of her. So... where did the tie-removal idea come from? The Doctor took of his tie because, well, because he took off his tie. It's Bad Wolf all over again!

All in all, a very good episode to introduce a companion in.

He's back!