Future coffee drinkers of Canada

Cole is not drinking a coffee, relax. It's tea! And it's actually not even that. I emptied the tea into my travel mug on-the-go since hot tea was splashing out of the stroller's cup holder and all over the place every time we rolled over a crack in the sidewalk. Lovely! I am getting used to being covered with various liquids, but I paid good money for a relaxing cup of loose-leaf earl grey (or is it gray?) tea, so I didn't want to waste it...

Cole is very fond of playing with things other than his toys. Comb? Spool of thread? Shoe? Sign him up. A coffee cup was a logical choice in that line... Anyway, I really enjoyed the looks of passerby (or is it passersby?) on the street, many of whom scowelled at me as though I had actually given a baby a hot beverage. Silly dimwhits - he only has coffee in the morning. :-) It was worth it for the funny photos.

Wind, personified...

Slate magazine's recent report of the Clio Awards (advertising's big shindig) is pretty funny, and it turned up this hilarious non-winning ad for wind power from Germany.

I can't stand most North American ads, but Europe churns out some pretty good material. I guess taking for granted that at least some of your audience has a brain is a good start!

So looking forward to this...

I would certainly say that I do not normally plan my life around the tv. I actually can't stand the thing, and for the last year we didn't even have cable. (I do, however, watch my fair share of dvds and commercial-free internet tv). But, when we moved, we ditched our Shaw cable for Novus (only available in new buildings downtown, I hear). Their internet service is a million times faster and including basic cable we pay much less than we did before...

One of the benefits of this is that I now can see Masterpiece Theatre again! One of the few things I love to watch - they're on PBS, also home to the awesome Agatha Christie Marple series... Well, they are certainly answering my viewing wishes with their line up of Jane Austen recreations over the next few weeks.

Some of them I've seen before (and they were great) and some are new to me. I hope the new ones are up to my high standards - I know the books inside out and can spot a deviation a mile away. Last year a trip to Bath, including the roman ruins, the Pump Room and the Jane Austen museum, was one of the many highlights of my trip to the UK. It's sometimes lost, I think, that the books were much more than "just" novels - they really did come from an amazing woman who managed to wrap up social critique, controversial topics and wit into the pages.

They're doing Mansfield Park this Sunday (9pm in Vancouver) as well as rebroadcasting Northanger Abbey (at 4pm), which I missed last week. I can't wait! I missed Persuasion too, but I've seen their version before and it's terrific. Thankfully they didn't redo Pride & Prejudice - the version with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle as Darcy and Elizabeth is unbeatable! If you can watch no other, watch that one!! (I loathed the Hollywood version!). I'm interested in the redo of Sense & Sensibility - I actually really loved the version from a while back with Emma Thompson.

All the poochy pants and happy endings I can stand - hooray! :-)

Wow, that's stupid!

Good gracious, this is pitiful and horrifyingly, tragically funny! I believe this dummy is from American Idol?

Sweet, sweet memory...

It doesn't take much to make me happy! Well, I guess that's not exactly true... Yesterday, after driving Jamie to the airport, I booked it out to White Rock to take photos of the totem poles out by the beach promenade. No matter my own personal preferences, totems are my best-selling subject on iStock, so when we spotted new ones recently I had to make a trip back with my gear. I think I got some great shots. Sky was brilliant blue all morning while I took pictures out and about.

When driving back home, low and behold - I remembered about the Krispy Kreme donut shop way out in the middle of nowhere, which was conveniently right where I was! I should know better, but there's just something about hot fried sugar dough that is extremely appealing. Honestly those donuts should be illegal. But PJs wanted a donut too, so I had one for each of us. ;-)

Next up on my list - errands. Returned broken dvd player that work gave to us as a gift (recalled - apparently they catch fire!) and bought the sweeeetest CF card for my DSLR camera. We don't want to bring a laptop to Ireland, and I needed more memory so I can shoot all those green rolling hills, ancient landmarks and pubs to my hearts content. I had a 4GB card in mind which would be four times my current card, but I couldn't stop from buying the 16GB card instead... What? It was on sale (of a sort). I could not stop my evil giggling when I realized that I can now shoot over 2500high-res jpgs (or 800 RAW + jpg)! On one card! Mua-ha-ha... Jamie bought me a 2GB SD card for the pocket camera on Saturday (700 high-res shots) so I am pretty much all set for massive amounts of photo memory! Trust - I can take 3000 photos in one trip.

See - all it took was that to make me have a great day! Oh, and I bought a new bra (always good!), had a great pasta dinner (homemade good) and enjoyed 3+ hours of new teenage melodramas that Jamie had Veoh'ed for me (Gossip Girl - so bad it's good)... That and an interesting 911 documentary, Confronting the Evidence, (ignore the intro segment - it's cheese) late at night. Good, good times.