Spage is...

...in Vegas!

Spage is...

...preparing to travel with Brabe to enjoy two Dave Matthews Band shows at the MGM Grand Arena.

Tomorrow, we take Vegas by storm...a quiet, polite, apologetic Canadian storm.

Year 4

Today is the Fourth Anniversary of my first post.

Happy Birthday, Letters to Wookiee!

Flickr Update

I have spent many days and countless hours painstakingly selecting photographs (scrutinizing images and asking myself things like; which one of these 219 nearly identical shots of Parliament Hill best evokes in the viewer what it is I want interpreted?), creating titles, descriptions, and tags for each picture (sometimes resorting to series' with names like 'Boats' 'More Boats' 'Boats Again'), and all the while marvelling at how many different places I was lucky enough to visit in such a short period of time.


Please enjoy these recently created sets on my Flickr page:

Moncton & Halifax (Nov/08)
West Edmonton Mall (Oct/08)
Victoria & Ottawa (Oct/08)
Seattle (Sept/08)
Montreal (Sept/08)
San Francisco & Berkeley (Sept/08)
Montreal (April/08)
Seattle (April/08)
Ottawa (March/08)
Edmonton (Feb/08)
Edmonton (Jan/08)
Seattle (Sept/07)
San Francisco (Aug/07)
Seattle (May/06)
Tofino, Ahousaht, & Hesquiaht (March/06)
Victoria (Feb/06)
&
Photo Walking Tours

...plus...

See new additions to Life In Macro (now conveniently organized by date uploaded, with the most recent displayed first!)

...but wait, there's more!

A new collection that I have been compiling at an excruciatingly slow rate for several years:

The Broken Umbrella Series

Spage is...

...at the airport, waiting around baggage claim, curious about this guitar
case on carousel 5.

Spage is...

...eating a traditional native feast in the Nisga'a Hall in Prince Rupert,
having already enjoyed a performance of dancing, drumming, and singing.

Spage is...

...in Prince Rupert, British Columbia. And it's snowing. But the light is
doing beautiful work on the water, so that makes up for it.

Overheard at Starbucks

Two men in their mid-30's...

"Yeah, we've finally joined...whatever century we're in right now, and bought a computer and an ipod."

"Oh yeah? You liking it?"

"It's fun, we're busy copying all the CDs we have."

"Well, congratulations on joining the Now Generation!"

Value For Money

I just took a flight from Victoria to Vancouver. It cost roughly $550.
Total time in the air? 14 minutes.

Sometimes I'm jealous of Americans...but only for their dirt-cheap
airfares.

Declare Your Weapons

I just went through airport security and my bag was pulled aside for
secondary scrutiny. Not an unusual occurrence.

The security man asked me if I had an electronic items in my bag and I told
him there were a few different power cords. He pointed at the x-ray image
of my bag to an item and asked if it was an electronic device. When I saw
it, I suddenly realized that I had not unpacked my rather large Leatherman
multi-tool. I was crushed! I was going to have to watch them throw out my
awesome tools!

And I exclaimed, quite loudly, "Oh no! I completely forgot that was there!
It's my multi-tool! And I don't suppose there's anyway I can mail it home
is there?" The guy looked at me and smiled and said once more that they
thought it was electronics. I told him once more it wasn't. Then he said,
"Well...I'm just going to take a look, okay?" And he said it in a way that
I immediately read as him saying he wasn't going to expose the tool. So I
quieted back to see what he would do.

He did a quick explosives swab and then just said "Yep. Here you go." And
slid my bag to me. He was going to let it slide!

I thanked him muchly, grabbed my stuff, and headed to my gate before anyone
changed their minds. I have just boarded the plane with a multi-tool
equipped with, among many other things, a 6" knife and saw.

So there you have it. Want to bring weapons on board? Just tell them you
have them! If you're not covert, you must not be a threat!

Small Bites

Thank you Conservatives, for the return of Canada's National Debt Clock.

Take heart, that workaholic who keeps trying to outshine you at the office is going to get dementia.

Go Barack! Rescind! Rescind! Rescind! As many Bushy things as you can!

Conveniently buried at the bottom of this alarmist article about Russian bombers breaching Canadian airspace is the tidbit about how the bombers never entered Canadian airspace or broke any international rules.

Spage is...

...down at the beach enjoying the sun and views of downtown, mountains,
kite flyers, and happy dogs.

Spage is...

...at the University of British Columbia's Longhouse for Day Three of the
National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health's From Visions to
Actions: Social Determinants of Aboriginal Health Forum II.

Spage is...

...watching coldness waft over seafood at the Korean market with Wookiee.

Schmap Publishes Spage

A tiny triumph: Schmap Guides Ottawa has published one of my pictures in the Historical Background section here. It's the in the top right corner and is the view of the roof of the Library of Parliament, the Royal Alexandra Interprovincial Bridge over the Ottawa river to Gatineau, and Majors Hill Park as seen from the Peace Tower.

On a more recent trip, I took these pictures from Majors Hill Park looking back at Parliament Hill - a nice bookend to the Schmap picture, I think.