adventures with the posse and the puppy part 2

meet lucy. aren't we cute and wholesome? she was adorable, though very high maintenance. see, she had the "i'm so adorable!" side, thus:


but if you relaxed your guard she'd chew on you:


she drew blood a couple of times, and several books in the house are missing corners (a habit she'd better drop, cos both her humans are academics). i spent a lot of time working on "sit, drop, stay" and "how 'bout you chew on your stuffed raccoon instead of that chair leg?"

having the lucy-puppy made my time-schedule more constricted, but the gang still managed to go on some nice excursions. we explored the drive (and me, itchy, miram and cass all got hair cuts from the same hairdresser) and spent a lot of time eating nice food.

we went to the aquarium, which was very cool. the highlight was the baby beluga, seen here with her mama:


(photo by itchy - more on her flickr). the beluga was so fat and cute! miriam brought the twins for the excursion, and they, also fat and cute, sang the baby beluga song for us. there was also otters and seals and sharks and dolphins and butterflies and tortoises. there was also squillions of people, and it was all a bit overwhelming. i'm going to go again some time not in the school holidays. check out the aquarium website for more great photos of large aquatic mammals, and even a webcam of the belugas!

here is a random photo of cassandra to mark the separation between topics:


we also made the obligatory trip out to MEC, so nimmersatt could kit herself out for her and cass' big kayaking tour this week.


mountain equipment co-op, for those not in the vancouver-know-how, is a ginormous outdoor shop, kinda like kathmandu but the size of myers. oh, okay, not quite, but it has *everything* camping, kayaking, climbing, biking (kinda - not as good as my shop!), skiing, etc. i send BBB catalogues periodically, so he can drool over them long distance. it is all environmentally and socially responsible, etc. etc. itchy found the clothing labels particularly entertaining. here she is demonstrating a bandha top with an "artful centre twist":


and here's me demonstrating the fabulous icebreaker singlets i bought down the road:


itchy and i also ducked up main street and looked at beautiful stationary and random craft stuff. youse should all hold your breath for itchy-made-magnets. . .