Still Here. Let's Get Caught Up

First off, to my read­ers, apolo­gies for the long gap in post­ings. I can’t offer much in the way of excuses, except to say that I think I needed a bit of a vaca­tion from writ­ing. I’m appar­ently not the only one who found this to be the case. Two Van­cou­ver blogs that I fol­low, and are on the blogroll at the right have also been posted to spo­rad­i­cally in recent days. Maybe it’s some­thing in the weather; It is get­ting awfully nice these days, and the rainy weeks that forced all of us inside and behind our key­boards are past.
There have been sev­eral items in the past weeks that prob­a­bly would have ben­e­fited from a few words about them, which I’ll take note of here:

• The death of my old iPod and my urge to get a new one imme­di­ately (heck, the only thing I’ve ever replaced faster has been an umbrella!)
• My spiffy new iPod that does video, and now holds an entire sea­son of Fire­fly which I pur­chased from the iTunes Music Store to keep me enter­tained on bus trips out to SFU on Burn­aby Moun­tain for Game­lan rehearsals until the fall, if I’ve cal­cu­lated correctly.
• A new, multi-year con­struc­tion project that Pam and I once again find our­selves in the mid­dle of, which has diverted all of the Vancouver’s bus routes that I reg­u­larly take and is in the process of dig­ging up the cen­tre of town. Unlike Boston’s Big Dig, which I always hated, this incon­ve­nience promises a reward in the end. The Big Dig was just another stu­pid high­way in a tun­nel dug under the city. I may have been on it half a dozen times before we left. The Canada Line, which is hope­fully going to be done before the 2010 Olympics is a mass tran­sit line to Rich­mond and the Air­port this time. Let’s hope it works out as well as I hope it does, and that I’ll actu­ally end up using it!
• Sev­eral nice din­ners at home and at restau­rants. At the pub­lic mar­ket, we dis­cov­ered Kiwi berries, which I can best describe as a sort of cross between kiwis and con­cord grapes (with­out the tough skin, hair or seeds). I con­cocted a nice glaze for Salmon out of a com­bi­na­tion of Wild Blue­berry Jam, soy sauce, sherry (or Marsala) and dash of Canola oil. I have deter­mined that I pre­fer Pink Salmon to Coho, Chi­nook, Sock­eye or Chum, although I’m still not quite sure. We finally had a light din­ner at the charm­ing and gemütlich ‘Café S’il Vout Plaît’ down­town as well as the hip Rag­noli restau­rant and mar­ket (part of Vij just up the hill from us on Granville Street) where you can get some of the tasti­est ‘Indian fusion’ cui­sine in the city, either to eat at the café tables or to take home for your fridge or freezer. How great is that?
• A cou­ple upcom­ing con­certs on June 3 by the Game­lan both up at SFU and in a pri­vate home in East Van­cou­ver. We’re hav­ing rehearsals both on Tues­day nights and Sun­day after­noons to get ready. I’m still new with the group, but I’m learn­ing a lot.
• Pam has come back from a 5-day busi­ness trip to an STC Con­ven­tion Las Vegas, which she felt was well worth the trou­ble, despite the ever-present clouds of cig­a­rette smoke and gen­eral cul­ture shock she had to deal with. Dur­ing that time I held down the fort, but missed her, and I seemed to be con­stantly late for every­thing and every­where dur­ing her absence.
• We’re com­ing up on our nine-month anniver­sary of our move here in two days. Not all that sig­nif­i­cant, but it’s great to reflect on what we’ve both done in interim, but enough of that; there’ll be time for a yearly wrap-up in my mid-July entry.

OK, that should bring you some­what up-to-date. I’ll try to post more fre­quently from here on out, at least for a while. Blog vaca­tion (Blog­ca­tion?) is over.