Thursday, September 28, 2006

ugly st john's

sitting here at work listening to two coworkers talk about how ugly this city is. how ugly this end of the whole island is. the city is covered in weeds. no one cuts the grass or tends the green spaces. there are weeds coming out of curbs and the bottoms of buildings. one of these coworkers is moving back west, where he is from. he says there are no jobs here and after giving it a fair 5 years it just hasn't worked out.
i have to say that i agree (about the dumpiness). this city is extremely dumpy. even the little patches of grass beside parking lots and in the roadways are untended, full of dandelions and weeds. how hard would it be to put together a city works department? oh wait - i think they have one. well here's an idea, how about getting them to actually do useful things. the highways and roads are full of cracks and potholes - the cracks i can understand from the rock freezing and shifting, but the potholes could really be fixed. buy some weed eaters and lawn mowers and get at it. the lawns at the schools aren't even mowed. just covered in weeds. don't these people take any pride in their city? how do the kids feel going to school in what look like abandoned buildings, with windows boarded up and dandelion lawns? i'm bitter today. can anyone tell?

Sunday, September 24, 2006

alone in the new found land

vernon has gone to halifax for 4 days to play with the symphony there...so now i am alone on the rock. it feels ok. i have no friends, have i mentioned that? well actually, i have friends...they just live 5000km and a 4 1/2 hour time difference away. i am between them and paris right now. it's lonely here, but somehow i'm busy.

school has started again and i'm taking another financial accounting course *yawn*... oh wait - considering this is my career choice maybe i shouldn't be yawning! ah well. plus i'm knitting a scarf. yes that's right a scarf. i have plans for a toque - a new one for dad too considering the first one i knit him is rectangular and really ugly. very warm though i think......oh well - i tried! first time can't always work out the way you want. but i've mastered knitting in the round and so i'm sure it will be much better the second time around. i need some handwarmers as well. it is so cold here. as todd said yesterday when i was talking to paula....my definition of "really f'n cold" is about to change dramatically. he is definitely correct on that one. it is winter time cold here already.....at least, vancouver winter time cold. i'm trying to not look like a loser and wear a toque and gloves when everyone else is running around in shorts but honestly it's like 11 degrees and windy. oh but wait....that, apparently, is not a wind....it's a light breeze. i'm surprised i heard that over the sound of the "light breeze" howling through my ears.

here are some pics from our latest adventure on the rock. we had about 2 hours to actually hang out and do something fun (academics are VERY busy, much busier than i imagined....and he has a lot of administrative stuff to do as well which just adds to it.) anyhoo - we had about two hours so we decided to just go for a walk around here. it's great because you can really drive for about 6 minutes, walk for about 5 and you are somewhere completely magical. we drove down to quidi vidi lake (which is a 15 minute jog from my house) and parked the car there. then we walked from there up to the foot of the trail up to the cuckold's cove lookout. then we realised we had less time than we thought so that was basically it. anyhoo - here are a couple of pics from that day.....

quidi vidi lake...there is a really nice walking/jogging trail around the lake. i could *almost* feel like i was on the seawall when on the other side where it's all sea-wall-y with nice lush plants and things. the side in this picture is all ghetto and nasty.


me, looking out.


towards cape spear.....that farthest point of land that you can see there is the cape...


pretty, pretty...

Saturday, September 23, 2006


last sunday i threw a potluck dinner party for vernon's birthday. his actual birthday was on monday, but sunday seemed like a better day for a party. it was really fun. great food, great people, great booze.



it's kind of weird sometimes, because vernon's friends are all michelle's friends....so these are people that i've heard about for 10 years basically, in one way or another, and now i've been plopped down into the circle. they are all really fun, it's just weird. i wonder if it's weird for michelle to know that i'm up here seeing her friends and having dinners when she is in georgia not knowing anyone. i guess the consolation there is that all my friends are back in b.c. and i feel basically all alone out here in the middle of nowhere.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

brigus

last weekend vernon and i went for a drive and ended up in brigus. brigus is a little fishing village about an hour from st john's on the other side of conception bay. it's right beside cupids if anyone knows where that is. anyway, it is a really beautiful spot and like all other places in newfoundland it has a lot of history. like it was home to a couple of really famous sea captains who did things like build the first 100 ton schooner in newfoundland and a couple of others who went on those early arctic quests to the north pole (one of them was actually in charge when peary claimed the north pole). the sea captains were of course all named Bartlett and were all related. it's a small small place, this newfoundland.
there is a tunnel at brigus that was blasted through the rock down to the water so that the bartlett ships could moor in deeper water closer to shore. you can walk through the tunnel today and come out at a little lookout. it's pretty. i took about 50 pictures of a seagull that was swimming around. none of them look nearly as artsy as i'd hoped and so you don't get to see them. :)

this is a view of the village from one of the (many) graveyards...

some boats in the harbour...

this is the little deep water bay that the tunnel takes you to...

a view from the united church (which is now a heritage site)...i don't know where the united people go to church...maybe they don't?...

one of the churches with the gates leading up to the graveyard surrounding it...


if you go to this wikipedia article it provides the 2001 census results for brigus. i find it interesting that 39.1% indicated catholic and 63.9% indicated protestant. no jewish or muslim or other. not even an agnostic, or unaccounted for.....it's either/or with everyone accounted for. of course, there were only 700 and some odd people there....but still.....
i guess this answers my "why is the united church a heritage site now?" question. apparently they only have need for the catholic and protestant churches.

today we might do a local hike, if the weather improves. hopefully it does and i'll have more pictures for you.

Friday, September 01, 2006

new york

ya new york! this was a fantastic trip. it's great when you know someone who lives in manhattan and will let you crash on their floor for a few days. the weather was great the first day we were there and then decidedly against us for the rest. it was warm, but rainy. ugh. oh well - you know what? it was new york! so i didn't give a rat's ass. speaking of rats, i saw several. greeeeeat. i didn't manage to capture any on film though.

ok - so here are a few pics.....this one of course i took from the plane (ok so i took about 10 from the plane, but who cares!)

one thing i love about new york is how every time you turn around some famous building is jutting out......

and so many streets are a lesson in perspective (and i love how this old guy got in my shot!)

the first day we were there we just walked and walked. we did both sides of the village, soho, gramercy, and a bunch of other crap in between. it was great - my feet were sore but i got a cute dress and top in some shop in soho that was having a killer sale. vernon is good at waiting patiently - a quality i admire in a man. he is also good at saying "i think that's enough" and i'm good at saying "oh right, well i only wanted to try it on". :)
we were staying a few blocks from vernon's old building so of course i wanted to go by and check it out. here's the street sign with the building behind. interesting eh?

that night we met up with a couple of vernon's friends who took us to this great noodle bar momofuku. it apparently is a very popular place since a couple of people told us about it (and of course we were cool enough to be able to say "oh ya, we're going there already"). anyway, it WAS fantastic and not that expensive. unfortunately it only seats about 20 people so you gotta get there early. after dinner we went to a wine bar around the corner (evan is a wine dealer) and drank wine and talked and talked and talked. and after the wine we went to a bakery where they all ate cannoli's and i gnawed on some biscotti. when i asked if there was dairy or eggs in the biscotti the girl replied "um...it doesn't make people sick. whatever you have it won't make you sick". good enough for me! and you know she was right - it didn't make me sick. :)
the next day we ended up down in the bottom of manhattan again so we went over to ground zero and stared in the construction hole. it was weird. then we walked over to the river since it's right there and i got my shot of the way-far-off statue of liberty and ellis island.

we went to the Frick collection that morning and it was amazing. not only a great collection, but a great building. and a good size - not too big. later that afternoon we met our friend Naho (who we were staying with) at MOMA. it was fantastic. i loved it. we did the 5th floor, the 4th and then the photography on the 3rd. i absolutely loved it - and because we went on Free Friday i didn't feel guilty if i sailed passed a picasso and thought "what the hell was that guy on?" instead of "wow..ooo....aahhhh". not that i don't like picasso, i actually really love some of his pieces, but some of it is just weird. anyhoo. anyway, i think that might have been my favourite gallery. i'm also glad that we did the photo exhibit. naho and vernon had never gone through it before and they really enjoyed it. plus there was one photo by some guy who i had just read about in the new york times. so of course i felt very worldly and "in the know". of course, i can't remember his name but i liked his stuff. there was a canadian guy who had taken a shot of some garden in vancouver and you could just barely see a bit of the city in the background and the north shore mountains. it was neat.
i also really liked taking pics out the window of the gallery.....

here's a little matisse that i liked for you....

vernon and naho chill out while i run around trying to soak up as much as i can....

here's vernon staring out at the ant hill like maze of the gallery....

and after all that we were so exhausted that we went home and drank monty python's holy grail ale (tempered over burning witches).

and then we went out for dinner with some more of vernon's friends! they were fun - a greek couple who took us to a greek restaurant in hell's kitchen (one more neighbourhood to cross off my list). we closed the place down, which sounds exotic but they closed early. we were exhausted and basically stumbled back to the subway, crawled home and passed out.

and oh look - it's a new day and we're at another gallery! it was raining so rather than go to the botanical garden we went to the MET. i'm really really glad we did but i need another 5 day trip to new york to see the rest of it....here's vernon looking at a rembrandt (rembrandt? maybe....i can't remember.....oh ya it is...i still have mush brain from too much art...)...

this little woman is about 5000 years old and japanese.....

this is super cool (although not as cool as the egyptian temple that they actually have here that the egyptian government had to excavate and move when they built a big dam) - this is from an assyrian king's throne room. lots of wall carvings and then those two big statue things at the end. they are a set of monumental stone lammasu, or guardian figures, from the Northwest Palace of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II. (yes i looked that up on wikipedia because i couldn't remember).


and this, my friends, is a tablet describing the building activities of king nebechadnezzar II of babylonia. it was really cool. they had tablet showing how to make beer, letters between people on pieces of clay 2 inches square in little boxes to protect them, contracts for grain. really amazing stuff. i was sorry to leave!

but leave we did! we walked across central park......


and went down to columbus circle......

where vernon took this embarrassing photo of me with this giant statue's ass.....

then we hit the mac store - there is a HUGE mac toy store that is brand new. so we went and i was bored and it was crowded. we liked the entrance though - they totally copied the louvre, but instead of the pyramid they have a cube with a giant apple. then you go in and go down underground.

and THEN we took naho out and got her wasted for her 30th birthday which she just had. it was great - dinner at a japanese/italian pasta joint (very interesting and really good) and then belgian beer. how can you go wrong?



our last day in the city and we decided to go down to chinatown and little italy (the one street that is left of little italy anyway). actually i decided to - and vernon had never been down there! he lived here for 6 years and never went to chinatown. he had also never been though the asian exhibits at the MET or the dawn of civilization part which was so cool. anyhoo.
so here i am on mulberry street - the last street in little italy. we wandered the street markets, vernon bought me a ring (alina and elga, put your hats back on - not THAT kind of ring), and had coffee at a bar while our bartender/actor (or is it actor/bartender) told us stories.

and then we went back to the cello man's shop and picked up the cello. it took two hours of adjustments for vernon to be happy with it. i was so bored. i went pee at one point just to have something to do. but i'm glad he got the work done - and i'm sure the cello is happier too. and really, without it - i wouldn't have made it to new york!

on our final night we took the midtown new jersey transit train out to maplewood and had dinner with some friends of ours who just bought a house there. it was really nice and lots of fun. it was nice to be out of the city and eating home cooking!
anyhoo. that's it. then we flew home and now i'm in newfoundland. did i mention that i live here now? yup. it's official....