My First AF Birthday

Although today was my birth­day, I decided that I wouldn’t take the day off, and we’d cel­e­brate over the week­end. So, after break­fast with Pam (and a very cute card and her own Happy Birth­day wishes), I headed into work, equipped as usual. By this I mean, pre-iPhone nerd attire: On the left side of my waist, my Treo smart phone in its beat-up hol­ster. On my right, my iPod in its car­ry­ing case, white ear­phones draped over my shoul­der. Both are attached to my belt, and like some gun­slinger in the old West, I’m flanked by metal over each hip. Indeed, if I did have have an iPhone, I would have had only one device attached, but I’ll leave that for a future posting.

After I got to work, the lit­tle alarms on my Treo started.

I’ll back up. I’m on Face­book. It’s hard to find many peo­ple who aren’t these days, as even the most die-hard techno­phobes seem to have fun on the ser­vice. For a some­what extro­verted geek like yours truly, it’s a blast. There’s an option on Face­book to have the site send your cell phone a text mes­sage when some­one sends you a mes­sage or ‘writes on your wall’, a free text field on your own pro­file page of Face­book. Usu­ally I get 1 or 2 mes­sages a week, or per­haps a few more. Never enough to become a nui­sance, so I’ve kept this noti­fi­ca­tion set­ting on.

I had a busy day, with a few meet­ings and dead­lines to work toward. Nev­er­the­less, all day, every half hour or so, my Treo would vibrate (I set it on vibrate when at work so as not to inter­rupt meet­ings). About 30 friends sent me birth­day greet­ings of some sort via Face­book. While I’m not a Face­book junky as some peo­ple have admit­ted that they are (and I rarely check it at work), but even I had to admit that this was a bit unusual.

You might think that I would have been peeved by the steady stream of noti­fi­ca­tions from my hip, but I wasn’t. We all know that there are times that oth­ers think of us. Most of the time we don’t really know for sure. Our ears burn or some friend exclaims ‘I was just think­ing of you’, when you call them. But today, I knew that quite a few friends thought of me, per­haps for just a few min­utes or so, and wished me a Happy Birth­day. Some of them were back in Boston, some were in Japan or San Fran­cisco, and some were here in Van­cou­ver. I have to say that it was really kind of fun get­ting so many lit­tle shout-outs.

So today I expe­ri­enced my first ‘After Facebook’(AF) Birth­day, and it was kind of fun. And to all of those friends who sent me a mes­sage today, thanks. I’m think­ing of all of you, too.

The PNE and Labour Day Weekend

Last week­end, we paid another visit to the PNE, which is the ‘State Fair’ that is held yearly at the fair­grounds at the cor­ner of East Hast­ings and Bound­ary Road. It was our third time, so we knew mostly what we wanted to see and do. The new addi­tion of the Peking Acro­bats were a great new attrac­tion; you can’t but be impressed by some of their feats of strength and bal­ance, like the woman who did a per­fect hand­stand on top of 7 chairs stacked on top of each other, with the bot­tom chair perched on 4 Coke bot­tles. This year we arrived just as a calf had been born, and got to see the mother cow lick­ing the new­born. We didn’t stay long enough to see it take its first steps, but I’m told they always do within an hour or two. I always like tak­ing pic­tures of the ani­mals, even if the most exotic thing you typ­i­cally see is a Llama or Alpaca (and you can spy those along many roads in BC). We did see a Sow nurs­ing a lit­ter of piglets, but for­tu­nately none of them squealed. That needle-sharp pierc­ing cry is my first mem­ory, from the West Vir­ginia State Fair when I was per­haps 3 or 4 year’s old, and it has remained a sound that both­ers me to this day. We also saw the impres­sive Sand Sculp­ture con­test and the Card Stack­ing cham­pion, and even a ‘Human Foun­tain’ pow­ered by a bicy­cle pedal pump.

It was nice to have an extra week­end day, which is how this par­tic­u­lar hol­i­day often works out to be. On Sat­ur­day, Pam and I took a trip down to Cres­cent Beach in Sur­rey, and then the town of White Rock, and had a look at this charm­ing and colour­ful sea­side vil­lage. If this is where peo­ple are buy­ing up real estate like mad for retire­ment, I can see the attrac­tion. We had a tasty lunch (steamed mus­sels and salad for me, a Salmon burger and salad for Pam) and walked up and down the board­walk, tak­ing in the sun and sea. We went out to the pier and back, and gen­er­ally just hung around peo­ple and place-watching. Pam posed for a photo by the ‘White Rock’ (a Glacial deposit) that is now painted white (but is is very big, to be sure). It was nice not to be on a sched­ule for a change.

Later, we drove to Point Roberts, which we had also heard of but not seen until now. I have to say that it was a lit­tle depress­ing. Maybe even a lit­tle creepy. Point Roberts, for those who are not famil­iar, is a strange result of the Tsawwassen penin­sula of British Colum­bia extend­ing south, beyond the 49^th par­al­lel, cre­at­ing a small, iso­lated piece of the USA that you can only reach from Canada. Accord­ing to the Britishcolumbia.com Web­site:

Point Roberts is located on the extreme south­ern tip of the penin­sula that defines Bound­ary Bay’s west­ern shoreline. Vis­i­tors must cross the Canada-US bor­der on Point Roberts Road in Tsawwassen to enter or leave the tiny enclave. Except for a steep hill south of Maple Beach, explor­ing Point Roberts makes for a mostly level, 2-hour tour by bike. The roads blend into one another in a sim­ple rec­tan­gu­lar grid and are easy to fol­low. What­com County, Wash­ing­ton, of which Point Roberts is a part, main­tains Light­house Park, a delight­ful and often over­looked park at the extreme south­west­ern point of the main­land. From this windswept point, cyclists are rewarded with some of the best views on the entire Fraser Estu­ary: Haro Strait and the Strait of Juan de Fuca as well as the Strait of Geor­gia open up on three sides.

I don’t know about delight­ful and over­looked, but we did ven­ture into Light­house Park, and found it pretty grim and des­o­late, with tum­ble­down wood build­ings from the 1970s and a truly awful pub­lic toi­let. There were a few peo­ple there, but it was a big con­trast com­pared with the sunny, pop­u­lated world of White Rock. The views (a least to the south) were nice, although it had begun to get a bit over­cast by the time we got there.


Sun­day and today have been far less adven­tur­ous. We relaxed and did some errands yes­ter­day, before I made a Risotto with our beloved local Chanterelles, which are at their peak, as well as some amaz­ing Japan­ese mush­rooms from Granville Island includ­ing a big (expen­sive), aro­matic Mat­su­take mush­room, which is like a truf­fle in its com­plex­ity and rar­ity. Also made a Pump­kin cake, which we brought to Matt and Oana’s ‘movie night’ , where we had some of Matt’s excel­lent fish chow­der and saw Sta­lag 17, an old Billy Wilder WWII clas­sic that actu­ally came out after the war was over in 1953.