All these things that I have done

Day 1 - travel woes

Fri, 16 Dec 2016 13:48:05 GMT

So far, holiday going not quite according to plan. ( A tale of delays and me being sad )

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It's nearly time...

Sat, 10 Dec 2016 16:38:41 GMT

Have just spent far too long fiddling with a new journal style on Dreamwidth. I'd forgotten how oddly absorbing tinkering with CSS could be. It turned out to be just the level of engagement I was up for this afternoon, given that I am full of cold and feeling lazy.

Tomorrow, I will have to snap out of my lethargy to get things done because we're actually only 6 days away from our exciting adventure holiday! We're going to be spending seven days in Senegal, staying on a wildlife reserve where you can walk with the lions(!) and then flying to Paris where we're sharing an apartment with elyssa and stevieg over Christmas! I felt so inspired by the experience of winter sun on our Caribbean trip that we just sort of decided to go for this. It'll be the first time I've ever visited Africa and I think you could reasonably describe me as hella excited :) I have no idea what the net connection is likely to be like, but I'll try to post the odd update while we're away.

So now I just have to get through the last few days of term. Fortunately, I won't have to do too much in terms of teaching as we wind down, but given how coldy I feel at the moment, I probably couldn't cope if I did have to so that's just as well! Roll on next Friday!

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5 things about visiting Tofino

Sun, 09 Aug 2015 18:09:54 GMT

1) Tofino has almost no internet! Well, the place we were staying didn't have internet in our room (although I think they did in their main building), and only some of the eateries did and then not very reliably. Thus, I have been absent from the internet for several days. Did you break anything? I found this to be not serene and peaceful, but rather irritating and it tended if anything to make me more antisocial as I tried to get an internet connection while we were eating dinner instead of when I was on my own. Basically, internet is good.

2) On the other hand, what Tofino did have was BEARS!! Yes, I have been out on the BEAR boat and watched BEARS wandering along beaches turning over stones looking for crabs and other morsels. They were very charming creatures and quite happy to just ignore us even though we were very close - I guess being on the water meant that they treated us differently. We also saw a rock on the way back that was just a rock, and just a rock and then suddenly we got close enough to realise it was covered in seals.

3) We also spent a very pleasant afternoon in the Tofino botanical gardens, which were lovely. A short wander through some different plantings and some old growth woodland onto the sea shore to gaze across the mud flats (full of migrating birds at other times of the year, nice and peaceful now). There was a slight tendancy to whimsey in some of the points of interest along the self guided trail but it was a lovely place to spend an afternoon (and had actual working internet in the cafe!).

4) Tofino has no Tim Hortons. I am not sure if this means that it is not really in Canada. Probably. It does have the prettiest cat we have met in BC thought (note careful categorization, elyssa and stevieg!).

5) For this drive from and back to Victoria, we hired a convertible because I love driving with the top down. On the way out it was cloudy and fairly cold, and on the way back, it was pouring nearly all the way. Of a total drive time of around 6 hours, we managed to have the top down for a total of about half an hour. Still, I'd rather have it that way around than have the bear trip rained off, so I guess it all worked out ok.

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How many things make a post?

Tue, 04 Aug 2015 00:19:41 GMT

1) It's been really lovely seeing coalescent and yalovetz's 5 things posts over the last couple of weeks and has felt very old school internet. In a way, it's reminded me of the fact that I really got into journalling at a time when I wasn't living near my friends, or most of them, and so it was a sort of relaxed chat that we weren't having in other media and actually, there are still people who I'm friends with that I don't see and it could still be serving that purpose. That came out less pointful than I'd hoped! Anyway, I am reading and enjoying those posts, guys, even though I don't generally comment.

2) I also think that having more going on on my friends page make me more inclined to post things myself, so I'm going to cautiously try to up my frequency of posting again. Who knows whether this will lead to anything as this is precisely the time of year when I think "hey, yeah, I should totally do that, I've got loads of time!". By Christmas, who knows :)

3) I am actually still on holiday at the moment. We went to two firework displays in the last two nights and I'm sorry, Victoria, but Vancouver won that contest. You are currently winning the "sufficiently cool for walking around" one though, so don't feel bad :) I failed to take any photos of fireworks because I find it hard to watch firework displays and get good photos at the same time. We did do some cool things in Vancouver though, including visiting the Museum of Art, where there was an exhibition by Geoffrey Farmer, including this room of paper cutouts from The Readers Digest book of the Last Two Million Years:

4) Despite the above, I have been mostly doing work today because I am an enormous dork. I woke up this morning feeling in the mood and with ideas about stuff and a sense of wanting to start getting things down on paper - this happened last time we went on a long holiday and seems just to be a thing that happens. Sadly, I am missing a key resource available only on paper for one of the things but I have managed to be getting on with other things which is good. It also looks as if my new colleague does pretty detailed plans, so that's good to know for next year.

5) Still very much looking forward to the next stage of our trip, which is a trip up to Tofino, with our lovely Victoria host aveleh, where we will be swimming in hot springs and going on a BEAR WATCHING boat trip! This will be awesome.

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Canada update

Mon, 27 Jul 2015 00:25:01 GMT

Hello world! Well, it's about one third of the way through our trip to Canada and we have finally found a hotel that gives decent wifi access! Both the past two places kept dropping my connection every 2 minutes or so - not ideal for browsing the modern web, as I'm sure you can imagine :) Still, we have been having a great time so far, only slightly hampered by some less than spectacular weather. We managed a couple of lovely days in Banff, during which I climbed an actual mountain! Check out the view from the top!

Unfortunately, this wasn't the Burgess Shale mountain, and we decided that the lack of ability to maintain our own pace meant that wasn't going to work that well for me so we went on the shorter GeoScience walk experience where we got to open up some shale and find actual trilobytes! Yes, I have found my very own trilobyte, which is pretty awesome. After Banff, we went on to Golden, on the Kicking Horse River, which was really nice, and we went to see the wolf sanctuary and the grizzly bear sanctuary! We've also seen elk grazing on the highway and three deer, one while walking and two while on the road, so the wildlife spotting is going pretty well so far. We had been planning to stop next in Kamloops, but the nice waitress we were chatting to in Golden suggested that we might enjoy wine country and so we have diverted down to Kelowna, where we have unfortunately brought the rain with us, but have managed to find a nice place to stay with the aformentioned quality wifi :)

By the way, I can't tell if these images are only showing up in preview because I'm logged into google, so if you can't see them, comment and tell me!

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CANADIALAND!

Fri, 02 Aug 2013 17:16:19 GMT

So, here we are in the colonial territories :) Seriously though, part one of the Canadialand holiday is almost complete. We had a ludicrously long Tuesday between getting up early to get the plane and then flying about 6 hours back but we managed enough cat naps on the way to enjoy a lovely evening with elyssa and stevieg, where we had steak, or rather STEAK, because much of Canada seems to invite excessive capitalisation, so far. It was seriously good steak though, and just what I needed after the anaemic plane food and enjoyed in excellent and convivial company. We then headed back to their current abode to stroke cats and play Cards Against Humanity. I won, which I think makes me the worst person there, right?

The next step was to start out across the Rockies. We had decided not to book rooms in advance for this stage of the trip, so that we could play things by ear a little. This meant that we had the flexibility to take the advice of the very friendly Canadian lady we met in the immigration queue and drive on up to Jaspar, rather than stopping in Banff. This was an extra couple of hours in the car, but boy were they impressive hours. There were MOUNTAINS, and more MOUNTAINS, and BLUE LAKES of ridiculous, unrealistic colour. We stopped for a wander around Bow Lake, which was pretty amazing - you could see the glacier making its way down the side of the mountain opposite. We had intended to take an evening walk but actually, once we were there and had eaten, I was pretty knackered so we just crashed out in our hotel.

Next came the other half of the Rockies drive, to Hope, a town I had picked purely based on driving distances as a sensible place to stop. We did consider stopping and doing a little trail walking on the way, but the midday sun dissuaded us and so we enjoyed the grandeur of the MOUNTAINS from the car this time. Once in Hope we had thought of walking a little trail there but by now we had arrived in rainy country. The mountain here is under an ominous wreath of misty cloud and when we couldn't figure out a way to safely walk from our motel to the trail head as the grass verge petered out, we decided to substitute a wander around town instead, which proved very enjoyable in its own way. We discovered that Hope has lots of motels in various states of seedy looking, closed down shops, masonic lodges (seriously, there was a whole block of them) and a surprising number of Chinese/Canadian restaurants, a cuisine we decided to pass over on this occasion in favour of a rather nice classy restaurant next door to our motel. There were also lots and lots of chainsaw carvings all over town, as we had just missed the annual chainsaw carving competition. These range from the banal to the frankly bizarre but the drizzle, the roaring river and the whole abandoned small town air definitely made for an interesting exploratory walk around before dinner. Also, I have decided based on this visit that the difference between a motel and a hotel is that you get a slightly bigger room.

Next we're off to Victoria where we have what looks like a very nice hotel room booked - each room has a name in this place and ours is the Reading Room! I'm trying to upload each day's photos to flickr as I go (otherwise I'll never get around to it) so if you like that sort of thing, check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyjo. Otherwise, I'm sure I'll post again once we're settled in Victoria.

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Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:01:55 GMT

Well, I have finally made it safely back from France. We had a somewhat ghastly journey home - we couldn't get onto the M40 because the exit from the M25 was closed and then when we diverted around the M4 to pick up the A404, we couldn't get on that because that exit was closed! We ended up not getting home until about 1am, which was an hour later than that on my internal clock. Still, the kitties were there to greet us when we did finally arrive, so it was all OK after all. House still looks like a bomb has hit it - must tidy up before parents arrive bearing wine.

I've read some of my friends page and looked at my email for the first time in 2 weeks, but if I've missed anything important, or not replied to something you think I should have, give me a poke.

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Thu, 19 Aug 2010 10:57:46 GMT

Finally, we have found some internet in darkest France! Holiday is lovely. Am v brown and feeling laid back and relaxed sitting in Eymet market. Have bought several lovely bottles of wine, been canoing down the river and spoken a reasonable amount of French. Pyrennes were v beautiful and hire car coped with v steep roads. Have sucessully changed gear and driven on wrong side of road with no deaths. all in all, v.g. holiday! Am missing cats though - have only seen one in a resturant here.

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