Thanksgiving

For the past few years, Thanksgiving has taken on a different feel for me. When I was in Whistler, I wouldn't often celebrate Thanksgiving, since I usually had to work. Thanksgiving was a holiday in which to earn overtime pay.

In Whistler, Thanksgiving is also identified by the annual Turkey Sale, an over-hyped and under-delivering ski and snowboard equipment sell-off. WhistlerBlackcomb enjoys advertising and promoting it as an event not to be missed. It's a good time to buy ski and snowboard gear, but in my opinion it's nothing spectacular. You can find similar deals elsewhere at different times.

This year, Carmella and I journeyed to Maple Ridge to her mom and brother's place on Sunday. Carmella's mom really looks forward to Thanksgiving, and makes a great meal for us. She made a turkey, yams, some Finnish casseroles, gravy, cranberry sauce, and potatoes. It was excellent! Because most of Carmella's extended family is in Ontario, our meal was small with only four of us there. The meal could have fed ten though, for sure!

Today, Carmella and I attended a gathering of friends without families, and it was fun.  There was excellent food and good conversation. Cindy, whose house it was at, is really social and has tonnes of friends. There were lots of people there, and I only new three of them. It was at the end of the weekend, and I was feeling a bit socially maxed out. I was happy when Carmella wanted to leave earlier than the others, because I was ready to go too.

Before we went to that dinner though, we took a walk along the sea wall around Stanley Park. It was raining, but we went anyway. Here are two pictures from today.

Here, Carmella points to the spot where either an otter or a seal used to be, seconds before.  We saw him swimming, and I got out my camera.  When I looked for him through my viewfinder though, he was gone!  He'd taken a dive, and we didn't see him again.  Oh well, very few people get to see otters or seals on Thanksgiving.

After the otter, I turned the camera around and took a picture of the both of us in the rain.

Observe my yellow umbrella.  I'm trying to find a way to start a coloured-umbrella campaign in Vancouver.  I'm of the opinion that it's dark and grey in Vancouver for the whole winter, so plain black umbrellas should be banned.  It should be a Vancouver mandate to only allow coloured umbrellas within city limits.

This initiative will bring colour to the streets, and cheer up the perpetually sombre citizens.  I need a catchy name though.


Colours Up!

Colour-plui Vancouver!

Parapluie arc-en-ciel (the rainbow umbrella)

I think I just thought of a name for my blog.  La Parapluie Jaune.  The Yellow Umbrella.  I think it fits, because  I have a yellow umbrella and I'll likely be using it often.  Plus, jaune brings a fun cross-language homophone into action, since it sounds a bit like my name.

Or, maybe I'll just use the English words.  I don't know, maybe I'll try both and see which seems to fit better.

Or maybe I'll just call it the aluminum tree, like the background picture.