mmm, island holidays. i luuuuurve island holidays. miriam and i had an excursion to salt spring this time, to stay with some friends. it's another one of the little islands between vancouver and vancouver island. lots of ferries and scrabble and drinking wine.click on the photos to make them bigger - that one above was taken at midday, btw.
stunning view + rainbow:
if you look down the bottom there you can see boats - this was the view to the mainland. you could see the lights of vancouver on a clear night. the stars were so bright (big dipper, little dipper, casio pia) and the trees all dark and pointy. beautiful! the other half of the rainbow:
saltspring used to be inhabited by hippies, as far as i understand, and now houses a strange mix of hippies, yuppies, loggers and hardcore christians. the town we were near was small and cute, with lots of very good bookshops and local handicrafts.
this is a park near the centre of town:
we did a bit of shopping and i got smelly things. yumness:
now i am back in the big bad city, catching up on paperwork and housework. good news - i have a job next semester! i'll be TAing for a medieval literature subject. i just met the prof i'll be working for, and she seems very nice. she's been friends for years with the prof i'm currently working for, which is also a positive sign, as current-prof and i have bonded. i asked new-prof what i should start reading and she said "beowulf." (it's very funny if you're a lit-nerd; beowulf is generally accepted as the first piece of english literature.)
it is properly winter here. top of 7 predicted for most of this week (but sunny!) and it snowed up at uni over the weekend. i just put two wool coats in for drycleaning.
13 comments:
We had a lovely 39 degrees day before a cool change came in. Had a long thunderstorm at 5.00 this morning and it has rained for about 7 hours. Sun is out now though!
What is that wild rhubarb? I'm growing rhubarb for Corinne who makes lovely, tasty tarts!
Was just looking in a Readings catalogue and and illustrated Beowulf is listed as a "contemporary presentation of an old english heroic elegy" Don't think I can read it!!
Where's the salt from salt springs?
congratulations on your job!!
very exciting.
hopefully (!) more exciting news from land of oz this saturday...
xovta
Oh yes.... overlooked the job sentence!!!
That's excellent for you, n'est pas?
jt,
i can't imagine being in 39! how do you cope? it's below 3 here, and all the pavements are sparkling and slippery from the ice.
i don't know what wild rhubarb is, now you ask. it just smells like ordinary rhubarb. yum!
beowulf is very violent. lots of killing people in mead halls. i wouldn't recommend it for light reading. apparently the new film is excitingly awful.
lovely to hear from you,
epponnee-rae
thanks for congrats!
yes, vta, i wait with baited breath. there is a b'day potluck on sat night, which i may take over in a celebrating/drowning sorrows kind of way.
aaaargh!
What are you going to catch with that breath?
And are the pot lucks that seem so ferquent in your life have any resonance with the native Canadian custom of .... can't quite remmber the exact word from "I heard the owl call my name" but are about big celebrations which used up lots of food etc?
i don't get the beowulf joke, but
i'll probably let the breath go sometime on saturday.
you'd be refering to potlatch there, bbb, dear. and maybe. but maybe not, according to wiki. i dunno.
i like potlucks very much from a pov student p.o.v. one can throw a party for under $40, and get to try everyone else's cooking.
well, cos i asked where to begin reading and she said 'at the very very beginning, dorkus.' like that.
maybe it's not funny if you're not an academic. . .
don't you patronise me, young whelp
Yep, I did mean potlatch, but after checking with Oxford I see that the meaning is so far removed from potluck to have not crossed over by some magic system.
i was being Helpful and Understanding, grot. won't bother next time.
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