raccoon prints! aren't they like creepy little hands? oh, i love raccoons. they're so cool and mean looking.also in the cool and mean looking category, miriam and i went on a special excursion to tsawwassen to find bald eagles. they are *so* cool. we drove around and found about half a dozen sitting on trees on the side of the road, looking too kool for skool. see, mean! cool!
they're enormous. the interweb tells me that "Bald Eagles are about 29 to 42 inches long, can weigh 7 to 15 pounds, and have a wing span of 6 to 8 feet." which, um, means 100 cm long and 6-7 kilos. ginormous, in other words. the females are nearly as big, but just brown, so they blend better. they still have the big yellow beak. we saw one of them fly off above us, and i had a great view of feathered legs and great yellow claws. it was a pretty cool excursion.
today we went on a very different excursion - to the yuppy part of downtown vancouver, where winifred is housesitting for a prof. she's on the 25th floor of a building in yaletown, with a view of sea and mountains (with a bald eagle circling in the distance today). we went for a swim in the private pool which was lovely and relaxing, and deserted except for the three of us. then we went to the most insane supermarket i've been in. it was called yuppymarket. actually, it wasn't, but that's what we'll call it. you could get sixteen millions varieties of, say, fig and hazelnut flavoured crackers, or ten different sorts of fresh mushrooms (i want!), pre-chopped onions in boxes, pear cactus slabs with the spikes removed and sugar free non-caffeinated root beer in cute little glass bottles. everything was incredibly expensive. i got a small tub of really nice lemon yoghurt and a small thing of lime and macadamia nut chocolate (yum!) and it cost $10. winifed spent $75 on dinner. it was fascinating; north america is a place of infinite variety.
21 comments:
for some reason i feel compelled to say this to you: castanets
now that that's out of the way, raccoon prints are like the most gorgeous thing i have ever seen. i love mean-looking animals too. that eagle is totally awesome.
And I thought Leo's Fine Food and Wine in Heidelberg was great!!!
Will send a photo tomorrow of the Inglewood Botanical Gardens, taken at the weekend with my new whizz bang Canon digital SLR camera!!! You were in the snow, we were in the dust!! Been raining for a day here though and there is a bit of green out my window and puddles in the lake.
Did they have rhubarb yoghurt?
oh my goodness those racoon prints are amazing!! you should print that photo, can you email me a copy?
xo vta
So missy mojay is coming to vancouver in July too!
Are you as excited as I am?!!!!
there are many things on which to comment in this post, but i choose "pre-chopped onion"
now i don't know what to say ...
How do Bald Eagles compare in size to Wedgies?
that eagle is all kinds of awesome. may i see one in August?
P.S help me come up with a list of must sees? time's a flyin' (and soon i am also!)
gauri,
yay! glad you enjoyed them! the eagle was a world of awesome - you should see them in real life some time too.
love
ps. "alphabetise"
jt,
you ain't seen nothin' yet! truly, it was amazing. the three of us were getting stared at by the other customers cos we looked like dirty bike punks instead of yuppies. v. odd.
got yr photos - ta muchly. they made me homesick. can i post the one of the rotunda?
it is so dry, you poor things. it's raining here again, snowing on the hill, and buses are on a delayed schedule. joy.
wish me luck getting to my office for office hours!
love
bbb - no. i looked very hard, but no cigar. yoghurt flavours here are boring in comparision to amsterdam.
vta - aren't they cool? raccoons are cool! you must come here and see one.
will email it, though you can easily steal it yourself, you know. on a mac you hold "control" while you click on the image and a drop down menu will appear. you pick "save image as", and bob's your uncle. on an IBM you right click on the photo, i believe.
nimmersatt - nobody tells me anything! that was the first i'd heard of it! (maybe cos my turn to email) but then i got a neat email from missymojay, and yay! lots of yay! vortex reunion!
so exciting! i do hope i can enjoy you all being here and not be running round in a movingpanic. hmmm. decisions again. bah.
groteaux - your comment has been placed in a queue and will be answered by the next available operator. your comment is important to us.
bbb - wikipedia tells me wedgies have "a wingspan averaging over 2.5 m (7 ft) and an average length of around 1.2 m (3 ft)". which, gosh, makes it a bit bigger. does that sound right?
itchy - probably not, i'm sorry. they only come south for winter, and like to nest up north and have their babies in summer. or so i've heard. we can defnitely find some raccoons for you, though, if we try.
it's funny to think of canada being south, though it's about as far south as you can go and still be in canada - we could see american mountains across the bay.
have you had a read in the book? anything catch your eye? what kind of things do you want to do? outdoorsy, naturey, shopping, museumy, etc.?
You can post the photo of the rotunda. Not so dry here this morning - another massive thunderstorm last night and an inch (dont know metric measurement) or rain in half an hour. It just bucketed down. Trees down everywhere!
Corinne went to the park early this morning and there were lots of people there looking for their dogs. Ours were all hiding inside!!!
xxxx
So the eagles are both fairly similar in size. Both very impressive birds. Ask Folgrot about standing next to one in the Territory Wildlfe Park near Darwin. She said its beak looked BIG and VERY sharp. She looked very nervous.
I think the one circling around us while we were standing under the tree it's nest was in at Arkaroola was scarier!!!
poos. couldn't you convince them to make an exception?
things I want to do so far: see the two main art gelleries, ride around stanley park (is it terribly hilly?), visit the aquarium (beluga whales!), see funky shops and markets, go for a trip to nature somewhere (not too far away, am on tight budget) and spend as much time with you as you have to give. sound good? we should talk soon about things like whether I can crash on your couch for two weeks or not, etc. almost ready to book flights!!!!!! crazyness.
hi lian i am learning the internet and i hope you like vancouver. sarah is looking forward to going. i will let her send you a message.
Hi! originally that said "i am looning the internet" which was soo cute ;-) mum's email is CAROL.RAE2851@GMAIL.COM oops sorry for caps. love the eagle photos and we oohed and aahed at $75 shopping for dinner - yum! ok better go, hugs!bye lian .-0
itchy,
sounds like we could go north and see them. squamish? or you could go the aquarium instead and pretend the otters were eagles. i've heard the aquarium is uber-good, though uber-pricey. i need a tourist to give me an excuse to go there.
stanley park is very hilly in the middle, but the sea wall might be open by the time you come (still closed from all the big trees that came down in last winter's storm), and that's flat all the way round.
all your plans look very good!
crash away, my dear.
hi carol! very exciting to see you on my blog! glad you're learning to use the internet - i hope to put up lots of photos of sarah's adventures once she gets here. (if that's alright with you, sare?)
aren't the eagles cool? i am so in love with them.
$75 wasn't including booze, come to think of it. be astounded!
love to both you!
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