Sorry

Last month a wonderful Canadian-style protest erupted over the Harper government’s plan to allow just about any cop to monitor just about anything anyone does in Canada online just about any time on just about any excuse.  Without a warrant.

Canadians used Twitter to mock Vic Toews, the Minister of Public Safety who introduced Bill C-30 in the House of Commons and defended it to various media outlets for the next few days.  The #TellVicEverything hashtag started out funny, clever, and awesome, swerved a little toward rants, and then back to funny, clever and awesome.

Early on, someone began tweeting as VickiLeaks30, publishing some very unsavory elements of Toews’ divorce, all a matter of public record but deeply personal.  Accusations flew, and the Conservative Harperites claimed that the NDP was behind the account, tweeting from inside Parliament.

Turns out it wasn’t the NDP at all, but a staffer for the Liberals.  He resigned, and the most Canadian of rituals ensued: Apologies all around.

Rae reveals Vickleaks - CBC.CA http://www.cbc.ca/video/watch/News/Politics/ID=2202713007

This video from the CBC begins with Vic Toews complaining about the Vickileaks30 twitter account connection to the House of Commons, and asking for an investigation.

After almost five minutes of this, the Liberal leader is recognized by the Chair and begins his apology, first in English and then in French.

At 8:28 minutes, an NDP member is recognized, and mentions that the Conservatives had accused the NDP of being behind all this, and demands an apology.

And, he gets it.

The Bloc Québécois leader then speaks in French.

Just when I thought this couldn’t get any more Canadian, Vic Toews gets up and accepts Bob Rae’s apology, but only after critiquing it for it’s sincerity and worthiness.

Bob Rae now takes his place alongside other notable Canadians who have apologized to people for things.

Apologizing is part of Canadian culture.  Canadians apologize when YOU bump into THEM. They apologize for running up the score. I once saw a musician say “Sorry” to a microphone stand he had banged into.  It takes some getting used to
.
Search Google for “canadian apologies” and you will get 12,900,000 results.



Search Google for “american apologies” and you will get 47,000,000 results, admittedly a much higher number, but most of the results appear to be links to articles complaining that Americans have apologized for something.

We just don’t like to do that.

But there is a theory that “Canadians say ‘sorry’ a lot, but they rarely apologize.  See this excerpt from How to be a Canadian (Even If You Already Are One). 

A Canadian Protest

Last January 18 saw the largest online protest in history when Americans (and many Canadians) staged the Stop SOPA event.  The "Stop Online Piracy Act" before the US Congress would have censored websites and impeded creativity. 

In Canada, people were horrified that the United States government would infringe on the rights of its citizens that way.  They were still clucking their tongues about the Patriot Act and complaining about the added border security and fees.  There was no shortage of Canadians ready to offer advice on how to better run a country.

On January 20, both houses of Congress backed down.

Meanwhile in Canada the Conservatives had finally formed a majority government, and were ready to prove that they could do whatever they wanted now that they didn't have to worry about offending members of the other parties.  It takes some getting used to.

So what they did was they cooked up Bill C-30, which sounds a lot like the Patriot Act, except they call it the "Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act."  The CBC sums it up:

The bill includes no mention of children or predators except in the title, which appears to have been changed after it was sent to the printers.

Like similar legislation introduced in the past by both Conservative and Liberal governments, the new bill includes provisions that would:

• Require telecommunications and internet providers to give subscriber data to police, national security agencies and the Competition Bureau without a warrant, including names, phone numbers and IP addresses.
• Force internet providers and other makers of technology to provide a "back door" to make communications accessible to police.
• Allow police to get warrants to obtain information transmitted over the internet and data related to its transmission, including locations of individuals and transactions.
• Allow courts to compel other parties to preserve electronic evidence.

However, unlike the most recent previous version of the bill, the new legislation:

• Requires telecommunications providers to disclose, without a warrant, just six types of identifiers from subscriber data instead of 11.
• Provides for an internal audit of warrantless requests that will go to a government minister and oversight review body.
• Includes a provision for a review after five years.
• Allows telecommunications service providers to take 18 months instead of 12 months to buy equipment that would allow police to intercept communications.
• Changes the definition of hate propaganda to include communication targeting sex, age and gender.

This really got under people's skin, and the Harper government is already beginning to backpedal, stating that they're willing to "entertain amendments."  It might not be enough.  Canada's Public Safely Minster, Vic Toews (pronounced "Taves") stood up in the House of Commons and said, "He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers."




It was too George W. Bushian for many Canadians, especially users of Social Media.  A uniquely Canadian protest has broken out on Twitter.  Using the hashtag #TellVicEverything, people are flooding the @ToewsVic account with the minutia of their lives.


It's absolutely wonderful.

Sign On The Dotted Line

While my American friends are using their smartphones to deposit money in their Chase accounts without ever leaving their apartments, I have to deal with Canadian banks.  It takes some getting used to.

Anything that isn’t simple means going into the bank and dealing with the tellers.  And of course, because everyone inside the bank has something complicated to do, it takes forever to get your complicated thing done.  You just have to plan on spending an hour in there and hoping for a good outcome.

Today’s transaction was especially complicated.  The teller took it in stride and just got on with it, but it took some doing.  After 20 minutes of tapping the keyboard and squinting at the monitor and looking things up in a manual, she said, “OK.  Now I just need to get some John Henrys on this,” and headed for a cluster of desks.

“Oh,” I thought to myself.  “She means John Hancock.”

Pretty flashy signature for an insurance man.

But while she was off locating John AND Henry, I started thinking, “Hang on. This is Canada.  Maybe up here a signature has to do with a steel-driving man, and not with the American Declaration of Independence.”

But wait.  There’s more!  It IS John Henry, but it’s not the steel-driving man!  Apparently a cowboy never signs a document, he puts his John Henry to it. Who knew?

The Stanley Cup

It’s the end of April, and time for baseball.  At least for me it is.  But here in Canada, people are paying far more attention to hockey, as the Stanley Cup Playoffs are underway.  It takes some getting used to.

When I was a little girl, I listened to the NY Rangers on the radio late at night. I'd never seen a hockey game, but I loved the rhythm of the game, and the French names of the players. My favorite team was the Toronto Make Believes, and I hoped to stand one day in Make Believe Garden. It was a pretty big disappointment when I saw my first (televised) game, and finally understood the name of the team.

When I lived in the Bay Area, the San Jose Sharks came into being, and I paid attention to hockey once again.  The standing joke then was that there were really only 17,442 Sharks fans. That was the capacity of the San Jose Arena configured for hockey, and the most likely explanation for a team with one of the worst records in the NHL selling out every home game.

Now, the Vancouver Canucks are in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, but even more thrilling, the Stanley Cup was in Kelowna last night.  I'll never stand in Make Believe Garden, but I got to touch the Stanley Cup.



No Falcons baseball until June.  So it’s root, root, root for the Canucks.

Pop Quiz!

Fill in the blank.

Damn the __________________.

1. torpedoes
2. Americans
3. Harper Government

Canada’s navy wants to spend about $120 million to retrofit torpedoes they bought from the Americans in order to fire them from submarines they bought from the British, according to news reports.

So Canada has four submarines.  One of them is “partially operational” and the other three are not at all operational.  The navy has a total of 36 torpedoes, none of which can be fired from any of the submarines, even the one that is partially operational.  It takes some getting used to.

Apparently once the torpedoes are converted, Canada will need to spend more money to refit the subs.

All this comes to light in the middle of a federal election campaign, but it was the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency that published the information about the pending sale in a press release dated March 23.  Weapons sales of this nature have to be approved by the United States Congress.  Canada is awaiting approval.

Canadian elections and Solfeggio

Canadian elections are confusing.  Elections here are different than back home.  In the United States, everyone knows when the next election will be.  Here, at the federal level, there’s no set date.  It takes some getting used to.

Canadians seem so proud of their Parliamentary system.  (Proud in a Canadian way, that is.)  I haven’t quite figured it out.  If Democracy were a religion, an election would be a sacrament --- an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.  But as soon as there is a hint of an election, pretty much everyone complains.

This time around, the political pundits are trying to get Canadians fired up about the “In-and-out-affair” which is not what you probably think.  It’s about creative campaign funding, and the Conservative Party just trying to gain its fair advantage, a concept so foreign to Canadians I don't know how I could possibly explain it.

The chief political pundits are on the national news broadcast, called “The National,” are  Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne, and Allan Gregg.

At Issue Panel - Andrew Coyne, Allan Gregg, Chantal Hébert

Most Thursdays, they debate the issues of the day, each taking a different side.  Yes.  There are three sides to everything here.  At least.  They remind me of The Nairobi Trio.

Ernie Kovacs - The Nairobi Trio “Solfeggio”

If we have an election in May, I’ll probably hear “Solfeggio” in my head the whole time.

Canadian Frugality

Yesterday it came to light that President Obama’s proposed budget includes an item which would charge Canadians a $5.50 "”inspection fee” when entering the United States by plane or boat.  This is the same fee that the US charges people from other countries, and from which Canada was exempted in 1997.  No fee will be assessed to the Canadians who stream over the border by car or bus to buy food, clothing, gas, and alcohol at decent prices.  And Canadians are really conflicted about cross-border shopping.

Should we not expect a National Debate on cross-border shopping?

You would think something important had just happened, judging from the reactions of many Canadians.  Who knew?  Canadians are apparently just entitled to visit the United States whenever they please without being subject to the same fees as, say, people from England, Germany or Finland, just because they are Canadians.

It takes some getting used to.

The CBC kicked things off with a story slugged Obama proposed travel tax for Canadians, with a link to a poll question.  The question is:  Border fee:  Do you think the passenger inspection fee is reasonable?  Not surprisingly, the results look like this:

CBC non-scientific poll results

Many Canadians would rather complain about a proposed $5.50 (US) fee than about a $42M (CAD) glass dome which will house Canada’s Parliament…temporarily.  That $42M figure is courtesy of Public Works.  Other sources estimate the cost of Stephen Harper’s Cone of Silence as closer to $100M.

"One Hundred Million"

Canadian cross-border frugality is widely recognized by residents of Michigan and Ohio, who can't find anywhere to park at Wal-Mart in the winter because the parking lots are full of $70,000 motor homes with Ontario license plates.

Last month during the World Junior Hockey tournament Canadians flooded across the border to Buffalo, NY  to cheer for any country playing against the United States.  (It's a shame, really, that Canadians' Gold Medal hopes were dashed by arch-rival Russia.)  Apparently Americans can overlook fans fighting in the stands and general rude behavio(u)r, although some are still surprised and disillusioned when they witness it in their own country.  Donn Esmonde of Buffalo.com wrote about it here.  What sticks with them, however, is Canadian frugality:

Make no mistake, we were more than happy the past couple of weeks to have Canadians sleep in our hotel rooms, eat in our restaurants, drink in our bars and shop in our malls. We love the uncommon smell of outside dollars. All we ask is that you do not be obnoxious about it.

In some cases, it was too much to ask. I talked to workers at a downtown bar/restaurant that will remain nameless, to protect the place’s cross-border business. By tournament’s end, they had disdain for all things emblazoned with a Maple Leaf. The main complaint, and this is not new, is a lot of Canadian hockey fans are awful tippers.

“They would have a few beers and leave like a quarter or 50 cents,” said one bartender, who for job security reasons asked that his name not be used. “Servers said they were getting two-dollar tips on a $25 check.”

No report on the generosity of the Russian fans, but a two-dollar tip on a $25 dollar bar tab in the middle of an event is heroically frugal.

Hey, guess what, Canadians.  It's not your country.  You're don't get to come and go as you please simply because you're Canadian.  Run out of things to do in Canada?  Feel like making your way to the United States by air or sea?  Just pony up the $5.50.  You can always stiff your waiter later on.  You're entitled.

The Christmas Tree Cam is (probably) live!

I think we finally wrestled all the technical issues to the ground.  Here’s our 14th Christmas Tree Cam.

Watch live streaming video from christmastreecam at livestream.com

You’ll mostly see the tree, sometimes Sandy Dog, and every so often Cate or Eric.  Merry Christmas!

Stop the Presses

Former Prime Minister of Canada Jean Chrétien is quoted as having said, “Canada is like a big canoe…”.
 
Canadian Voyageurs, Walking a Canoe Up a Rapid - Currier & Ives, c1860
I have come to realize that in fact Canada is like a small town.
Canadians make fun of Americans who say things like, “You’re from Canada!  Do you know my friend George?  He’s from Canada!”  Yet more than once I’ve sat in the curling club and heard someone discover that the guy she lived next door to in some tiny town in northern Ontario 35 years ago has a son who is married to her best friend’s niece in Vancouver.

It takes some getting used to.

Canada is really like a small town when it comes to the CBC, the national subsidized English-language broadcast network.  (My French is not good enough to know if that is also true for the French-language network.)

It must have been a slow news day indeed when someone at the CBC in Saskatchewan decided to put a story about a Saskatoon man stuck for five hours in a hole into the Canada-wide RSS feed for the CBC news website.
 
A rescue crew carries a man out on a stretcher after extricating him from a hole at a
construction site. (CBC)
In some of the laziest reporting I have ever seen, two stories on the website and a video do not give the man’s name, do not say how he got into the hole in the first place, and do not press the local police on what they mean when they say it was "not believed to be accidental."

As is often true of stories on the CBC website, the best part is the Comments.  Although we don’t often see Godwin’s Law demonstrated by the posters on CBC forums, sarcasm abounds.  One comment reads:

My condolences go out to the family and friends of the hole in these difficult times.

Another:

So close.. after digging all that way from China, to get stuck at the end..

In that apocryphal story about the canoe, when everyone concentrates on doing his own job to the best of his ability, the canoe glides swiftly on the water --- no matter how troubled.  So thanks, CBC, for a job well done.  You’ve provided valuable insight into the Canadian Identity, if not into the identity of this man in particular.

Take Me Out To the Ball Game

The Kelowna Falcons play ball here.  The team is part of the West Coast League. 

Most of the players are American kids who play for NCAA schools during the school year.  Some of these kids go on to sign with MLB Teams.

I love going to the Falcons home games.  It’s the only place I can hear the National Anthem in public.   

This is minor league ball.  I refer not only to the standard of play, but to the atmosphere as well.  The Falcons owners have done an outstanding job of securing sponsors for little events that go on during the games.  The PizzaWay pizza eating contest is always a hoot. So it the TD tire roll-off. There are base races and cup-of-water races.  The bat spin is sometimes more exciting than the game itself.  It takes some getting used to.

All the home games are broadcast by an enthusiastic and knowledgeable guy called Ryan Watters.  The games are live on the Falcons home page and on AM1150.  Because I’m 57, it makes more sense to me to take a transistor radio to the ball park than an iPhone to listen to the game.  But people here don’t seem to get that part of the experience of the ballgame is listening to the home team announcer, so I also bring an earphone.

Of course, the games are on an AM station, the radio is mono, and plugging in a “regular” set of ear buds means sound in just the left ear.  I got tired of the right ear bud dangling and getting in my beer, so I went into The Source looking for a cheap mono ear bud.

The Source used to be RadioShack in Canada, and then it was known as The Source by Circuit City.  Now it’s not even that, it’s just The Source.  To give you an idea, one of my customers went to The Source to get a replacement CMOS battery for his computer.  The battery cost $6.99 CAD and they offered him an extended warranty for an additional $1.07 CAD.

I only go there for things that I need and can’t get anyplace else, like a really cheap mono ear bud.  I found one in there for $4.99 and took it to the counter.

The young lady at the register (or “till” as they say here), picked up the item, looked it over and said, “What are you going to do with this?”

I tried to explain to this maybe-20-year-old that I need to plug it in to my mono transistor radio so I can listen to an AM station while I am at the ballgame.

Blank stare.

She didn’t get “mono” or “transistor” or “AM station” and I am pretty sure she didn’t get “ballgame” either.  (She did, of course, want to sell me an extended warranty.)

The entire baseball experience is underappreciated by most people in Kelowna, it seems to me.  If your only knowledge of baseball comes from watching a couple of ex-Blue Jays do the commentary on Canadian cable TV, maybe it’s hard to relate to watching minor league baseball live while listening to a decent play-by-play man.  Maybe trying to bring baseball to Kelowna, in Canada, is like trying to bring hockey to San Jose, in California… Hang on a minute.

An evening at the ball park is a great evening, win or lose.  Thank you to the Nonis family for bringing quality baseball to Kelowna, and keeping it here, against all odds, for ten years.

Armed robbery with a screwdriver

Last Friday, someone held up the government liquor store by threatening the clerk with a screwdriver.

Several years ago a series of holdups victimized clerks in convenience stores ("convenience" in the Canadian sense --- you can't get any beer there) and gas stations.  That perpetrator was also armed with a screwdriver.

It didn't take me very long to figure out that if I was working nights in the 7-Eleven or the PetroCan station I'd totally  want to have a Black & Decker power drill under the counter.  But I guess that's just because I am an American, and prone to over reacting to the "need to do something --- anything --- in my own defense.  (Or "defence" as they say here.)

This is what happens in a kinder, gentler country where people are horrified at the notion of owning handguns: You have teenagers in touques (say "tewks") brandishing screwdrivers, holding up night shift clerks for a carton of smokes and a packet of fried pork rinds.

The local SpokesMountie at the time said that there just weren't enough Mounties to have much hope of catching the guy, but after the video tapes aired on the local news, the kid turned himself in.

Oh. Canada.  It takes some getting used to.

This time, the Mounties were in pursuit, even bringing the K9 unit.  Unfortunately, Constable Fraser and Diefenbaker were busy, and the guy got away.

No word if the bad guy was using a Robertson screwdriver.

Play ball, eh?

Yesterday there were three ball games on TV, all of them divisional playoffs for major league teams trying to get to the World Series.  I watched the Cardinals - Dodgers matchup.

In the US, the game was carried by TBS, but up here, Rogers Sportsnet takes the TBS coverage and drops in their own commercials and their own game updates.  So during the 7th inning stretch, they go to the studio for an update...on the hockey.

It takes some getting used to.

Go 9ers, eh?

So I'm here in Canada on a Saturday night, watching a pre-season football game.  It's my beloved San Francisco 49ers playing at home.  They are playing the Oakland Raiders, and I am watching the game on KTLA - TV out of Los Angeles on our digital cable.  It takes some getting used to.

I'm thinking, "Wow, this is kind of weird." And then, who should show up for the Raiders at quarterback but Jeff Garcia!  Former 49er, yes. But also --- and this closes the circle --- former Calgary Stampeder.

Garcia didn't disappoint: he went right out there and threw an interception on third and long.

I feel like a real Canadian now!

I was working my way through my first cup of coffee and my RSS feeds this morning when I came upon this article:

And I thought to myself, "How did the Inuit manage to hold off Microsoft?"

In fairness to me, I HAD just finished reading a curling feed that mentioned Paul Gross, and "Due South" is one of my favo(u)rite shows. But wow. "Inuit" instead of "Intuit" --- It takes some getting used to.

What Was He Thinking?

An article on the CBC website informs us that Canada hired two public relations guys to represent Canada's interests to the United States.

"While this isn't the first time Canada has hired lobbyists to launch an American media campaign, it's the first time the government is being open and transparent about it, [PMO spokesperson, Kory] Teneycke said, though he refused to discuss how much the lobbyists will be paid or how long they will be retained."

This is what passes for openness and transparency in Stephen Harper's Conservative government. It takes some getting used to.

The story actually gets better.

It turns out that the publicity flaks the Canadians hired are Mike McCurry, former White House Press Secretary for President Clinton, and, of all people, Ari Fleischer, who played the same part for President George W. Bush. Fleisher, apparently, "helped organize interviews" during Prime Minister Harper's visit to the US last month. I guess two of those were his own and McCurry's job interviews.

The vitriolic comments following the story are about what you'd expect:

• Harper and the Conservatives are in bed with the Americans, and Canada is about to become the 51st (and 52nd, and 53rd, and 54th, and 55th, and 56th, and 57th and 58th, and 59th, and 60th) state(s). (Personally, I think you have to be either an American living in Canada or a Canadian living in the US to understand why that's so funny.)
• Ari Fleisher is a big, fat liar
• Mike McCurry is a big, fat idiot for believing that Bill Clinton "...did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinski."
• Americans are big, fat idiots, period.

Well, Canadians, who would you rather have representing Canada to Americans? Maybe Rick Mercer? Be careful what you wish for.

It's the economy, stupid.

The local community internet site had this report today:

This is the thing about Canada.  You just don't have people running around with handguns like at home, so now that times are really getting tough, we have people holding up Subways with a screwdriver.  It takes some getting used to.

And no, we don't have an underground train here in Kelowna.  They mean the Subway sandwich shop.

The local reaction to this is to compose Letters to the Editor, complaining about people who are not just exactly like the letter-writers, and complaining that the RCMP is too busy using radar on the side of the road to stop robberies in shops.

Tell you what.  If I was working alone in a Subway, a gas station, a convenience store, or anyplace that had cash on hand, the next guy that came in with a screw driver better rob me before I can get to the cordless drill I would keep stashed under the counter.

A screwdriver, for crying out loud.

Canadian Kitty or American Kitty?

There's some kind of rule here that allows Canadian television stations to take over an American TV station if they are broadcasting the same program.  So even though I tune the cable box to the Fox station out of Spokane, suddenly I am watching "24" on the Global channel, with ads for Tim Hortons.  It takes some getting used to.

Last night, I wanted to watch "Life" on NBC.  But Global hijacked the station, and showed the first half hour of a dreadful show called "Lie To Me" before showing the last half hour of "Life" just as if nothing happened.  Well, I guess they tried their hardest, so it's ok.

So here is this, courtesy of another American Girl in Canada.  Thanks, Brittney!

Finally, a decent burrito in Canada

In Canada, people go out for "Chinese Smorg." It takes some getting used to.

Finally, in Vancouver, I found Adobo Burrito, two blocks from the hotel.

They have a big sandwich board outside that says "Mex Burrito." Everything is fresh, and you can see them cooking the chicken and "meat" on spits. I'll even forgive the kid who works there for asking me what kind of "wrap" I would like, that's how good this burrito is.

Eat there or take away. Cheap, filling, fresh, hot. This is the the only decent burrito I've had since the last time I was back home and went to La Cumbre.

Blogging from Vancouver, BC

We are in Vancouver, BC live blogging the 2009 World Wheelchair Curling Championship. The event goes for eight days, and we got here a day early just to make sure everything (high speed internet, press credentials, hotel room) was ready.

"It's good to be back in a real city," I told myself the first day as I walked to the nearest Starbucks.

It's a city, for sure, with noise and traffic and places to eat that stay open after 9:00PM. But "real" might be overstating it. I have lived in real cities, and I have traveled to real cities, and my experience has been that in real cities, people live to get things done. In contrast, here in laid back Vancouver, people live expecting that things simply can't be done, so when they are not done, well then uh oh. The motto of Vancouver should be "It's not my fault. So."

It takes some getting used to.

Here in Vancouver, population 580,000, they are preparing to host the Olympic and the Paralympic Games in 2010. The streets are torn up, there is construction everywhere, and there are several new buildings for the games. You can't pick up a newspaper or watch a tv newscast or look at an online portal anywhere in BC without being bombarded with stories about the facilities being finished on time.

Unless, apparently, you are a Vancouver Taxi driver.

We have taken a cab every day to the new Olympic/Paralympic Centre. Every day, we have had to direct the cab driver, except on the second day, when the same driver as the first day showed up at the hotel.

Ok, fine. That's not the problem. The problem is that when we try to get a cab back to the hotel, it's a giant negotiation with the Vancouver Taxi dispatcher, because they can't find this address on their maps. And they just don't seem to give a damn about fixing that.

There's a world championship event going on. The place is full of Handi-DARTs and wheelchair users. We need a wheelchair accessible taxi, and we will need one every night at about the same time. "Could you let your dispatcher know where this is? We'll need a cab every night about this time."

We either get a grunt in return, or a card with the cab company's phone number, or both. Talking to the dispatcher is like talking to the wall.

I've never been in a city of any size where this was normal.

In Chicago ("The City That Gets Things Done"), the drivers were not only required to know where everything was, they took great pride in it. In San Francisco ("The City That Knows How"), if you needed to know where ANYTHING was, you just needed to ask a cabbie. (And by anything, I mean a good Italian restaurant that's not touristy, where you could get breakfast in the middle of the night, and what the baseball scores were. Anything.)

Even in Atlanta ("The City Too Busy To Hate"), even in the runup to the 1996 Olympics, cabbies knew where the new facilities were, how much they cost, and what used to be there.

But not here in Vancouver. Here in Vancouver, the VANOC representative is amazed that the American wheelchair curlers brought their own shower benches, and that they are so self-sufficient. "Of course they brought their own stuff, they're not expecting to wait around until someone provides them with something," I did not say out loud.

Vancouver's motto is "By sea land and air we prosper"

Just not by taxi.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Here's our 2008 Christmas Tree.

I went out in a snow storm yesterday, December 13 to get it. Apparently it was 51 in San Francisco. Here in Kelowna it was -5 degrees Celsius (23 Fahrenheit) when I went to get the tree. It takes some getting used to.

You can see our tree live by clicking here.

Please use the comments here as a guest book. Happy Christmas and best wishes for the new year to you and yours.