Well Traveled Art

Finally! Mary, I can post a photo of the lovely painting you gave me, now hanging up on the wall of my room here in California:

So why do I say finally? Well, in addition to this being a lovely forest painting, in now has a bit of a story behind it....

So Mary left this painting for me in Edmonton, when she had to make a move from there to Winnipeg. Phil hung on to the painting for me, then brought it over to Sue & Brock's place when we had dinner together there one night. I wrapped it up in plastic, and took it with me on the plane back to California the next day.

I got on my first flight, the Edmonton-Vancouver leg of the journey, and placed the painting at the front of the plane, where you keep suits and guitars and things, for safe keeping. When I got off the second leg of the flight in San Francisco, I felt "hmmmm, I should be carrying something else.... OH NO!!!!" The painting was on the plane in Vancouver still!

Turns out there's no phone # to call to report lost items with Air Canada, there's just this web form. So I filled it out, and thought that I'd never hear anything about the painting ever again, and I'd never be able to speak of this to Mary. Eternal shame! This was the first week in June.

BUT THEN! I got a call from an Air Canada representative in Montreal at the end of July, and he informed me that they'd found the painting, it was safe in Montreal, and they'd send it on a flight out to San Fran for me! Hooray! And then a week later, the painting arrived. I was busy hosting Aussies and then going camping, so I said I'd pick it up the day I arrived back from Cascades. After some misunderstandings on that day and another trip out to SFO, I am now the proud owner of a well-traveled Hocaliuk Original.

Thanks Mary!

Edmonton bathroom graffiti

Phil also had a graffiti post on his blog recently. Edmonton has some high quality graffiti man.

Wedding venues

Part of my trip back to Ontario in June was to check out wedding venues with Sue, and they only thing important enough to take a photo of on my phone was the geese at Waterloo Park. Where the photos may be done, so there was a reason!

"Mini"

I made a couple trips back to Canada back in June, as I thought I had a job and could afford it, and also didn't know what I was doing with my life. Gah. Anyways, I had an awesome visit with Rob and Tara when I was there.

Start of the story: Sue and I both went home for Lucy's grad, and I stayed for about a week. When my friend Johnson heard I was around, he said "oh! I'm getting married in Toronto on Monday! would you like to come?" So I did! It was most excellent. And then I crashed with Rob and Tara that night.

We had a great catch-up. I got to meet the newest addition to the Markides-Deighan family, little Katie. We all went out for dinner, then had margaritas and watched Win Win on a Monday night. Great start to the week. Tara and I took Maggie and Katie to the park the next day and had a lovely time before I had to catch the bus back to Waterloo.

Rob & Tara also have a couple of dachshounds, one of which is name Finnigan, or "Mini" as Maggie calls him. Maggie really really loves Mini. I had to stop her from poking him in the eye once. Here is a pic of her lavishing her affection on poor Mini:

Poor Mini!

Trophies

Super old, but this is Rishi's birthday present from Matthew, in all its glory back at our old house:

Towel Art!

If you ever open a B&B or hotel, this is the proper way to arrange the bath towels, just so's you know:

Visitors!

My former students Kalai & Leroy were out here for a visit. This is us, on the bike car of the last CalTrain home after a night in the City. Good times.

Hidden secret places

My friend Mary organized a day of hiking and board games on Labour Day Monday, and it was a low key fun way to spend a day. We went hiking in the Los Trancos Open Space Preserve, which follows a section of the San Andreas fault. We climbed some huge old oak trees, and found a secret Buddha temple thing in a cleft in some rocks that we climbed up:

Hurray for exploring!

Leroy bought Rishi and I the "Game of Thrones" board game as a thank-you to us for letting him crash on our couch for over 3 weeks when he moved out here. We played it at the pub, along with Settlers, Scrabble, and Ticket to Ride. A great day.

Back to default work

Sorry for the lack of updates. It's been an interesting time out here in California. Regular roller coaster of stuff with job hunting, house hunting, journal paper publishing, and the like. So for starts, this is what I'm doing while waiting to start my next engineering job: babysitting! I'm actually really excited about this. Myca is the 10 week old daughter of some post-doc friends of mine who'd like to get back in the lab. And as I'm unemployed for 2 more weeks, I'm helping to make that happen.

Here's Myca!