Do you think anyone would buy this?

Gadzooks! We have just participated in our first yard sale, and we sold lots of stuff!

Oddly though, it's the stuff we thought wouldn't sell that sold quickly! The kitchen cart, which we used to keep a microwave on, made someone extremely happy. Based on that quick sale, we brought down our old filing cabinet - and it sold too! And we made someone happy with lots of Dr. Who VCR tapes!

It was a day long effort, and we got lots of fresh air, and met lots of our neighbours because it was the annual yard sale for the building we just moved into. So it was a great thing all around.

And to top it all off we actually sold our CD stand! We've had it on Craigslist for months and no interest, but someone wanted it today!

We've never been to a yard sale, let alone sold stuff at one. But it was greatly successful. Who would have known! Go figure!

What is he doing with those handcuffs?

We are sitting in a restaurant on Denman Street having dinner, watching people go by when a cop on a motorcycle comes up and parks on the other side of the street.

The waiter - quite the flaming type - looks to see if it's his favourite cop. Oh, no it isn't, how sad, this one is not quite as well built. But he does have an interesting trait.

As the cop slowly gets himself set to walk about, he takes his helmet off... and handcuffs it to his motorcycle!

The waiter finds that quite exciting, and suggests positions that can be taken on a motorcycle with handcuffs... he's quite entertaining.

As the meal goes on, no less than 3 more motorcycle cops come up and park next to each other, in preparation for going on a walk about. They all handcuff their helmets to their bikes!

So if you ever see a motorcycle cop walking around in Vancouver's West End... pssst, they don't have their handcuffs on them!

Unless they have a spare set... I don't think I want to bring it up with any of them... that could be a bit more "exciting" than I really want it to be!

This is a fun place to live!

How many layers of black paper can you get on a roof?

Wow, what a nightmarish move that was... yes, we've up and moved house, so I haven't been blogging lately. And I don't really want to ponder questions that came up while moving... so on to brighter things.

Yesterday I was sitting in my new living room watching men mow the roof of the building next to me. Yes, I said mow, as in cut down the green mossy growth. There was a veritable meadow on top of that building, bit of a drainage problem maybe?

Today I am sitting and watching more men take layers and layers of black paper - with a lot of dust on them - off the roof. Every time they seem to be finished taking off the black paper and they grab brooms to brush the brown dust around, they find more paper! And then they stop and rip up more paper. And then they start dusting again. How many layers are there on a single flat roof?

Oh yay, it seems to be getting a bit cool out there, they've put their shirts back on! I may just be getting older, but there was nothing good about bare torsos on those guys, that looks much better now. Of course now they are removing something with a sander that is throwing up lots of smokey white dust, so we've closed all our windows.

And they've found more paper!

And I've found an interesting entry in Wickipedia explaining problems with flat roofs. Yes, that would be why the roof was so green, lack of drainage. That can be quite the extreme problem in Vancouver. Now I get to watch to see if they put down a single sheet coating like the article suggests... and level it so the water runs off... I guess time will tell on that last part!

So many new things to ponder in my new home! This could be fun!

Post Script: Nope, no leveling. Nope, no single sheet coating... and boy does the dip in the middle of the roof look more like it's going to be a water feature, and not a roof to keep the rain out. I guess we will be seeing much more green in the months to come!

How did these adults manage to get this old?

Sometimes you just have to wonder how a person has managed to live as long as they have...

There was a flood in our apartment building a few days ago. Today the water was shut off for most of the morning while they fixed the broken pipes. For several days now, notice that the water would be shut off today has been posted in all the elevators. You can't get into your apartment without using one of these elevators, the doors to the stairs are locked, so unless you are being a hermit, you have been in an elevator and have seen the notices. Even if you haven't read them.

So lets take a count of who didn't know about the water being shut off... a staggering number in the teens, if not more.

The most egregious ignoring of the notices award goes to the dentist. She has an office on the lower level of the building and was in the middle of a dental procedure that requires water when the water was shut off. This is supposed to be a well-educated, literate person who needs to use the elevators to get to and from her car in the parking lot every day and runs her own professional business.

So what is the stupidest thing you can do during a water shut off... kill your children.

We have a pool. The pool is full of water. It is treated daily with bleach and other chemicals. The award for most dangerous stupidity goes to the woman who came down to fill her children's water bottles with water from the pool. She had to be told by other shocked adults in the elevator not to give this water to her children. Just imagine explaining what happened to your children to a person in Emergency at a hospital - this should get you locked up for life-threatening stupidity.

The children of tomorrow have no chance, the adults have doomed them, but how did the adults get to be as old as they have? What did our western society miss? Has wealth and over-abundance made everyone stupid about basic human survival? Has clean running water readily available in a million taps made people forget how precious that is?

Forget the danger of a comet hitting the planet and wiping everyone out... we seem to be doing the job ourselves.

Are crop circles alien skid marks?

We are experiencing more construction chaos at our home again. Luckily, we are moving!!! Yaaay! But before then, I need to use a temporary wooden ramp to get in and out of our building because the wheelchair ramp is blocked by construction tarps.

This temporary ramp will likely last until way after the middle of next month, when we are leaving, but it doesn't inspire confidence right now. It is made of wood, and they've stapled a black-gritty-sheet-of-something to it so it's not as slippery as bare wood. But it's not a stable black-gritty-sheet-of-something, it is a dispensing-millions-of-tiny-black-pebble-like-things-sheet-of-something. And those little black pebbles are getting into my wheelchair wheels.

On my way out, the little black pebbles don't bother me that much - they do eventually make their way out of my wheels - but on the way into my home they are a menace. I do park this wheelchair inside my home after all! So I've been driving back and forth and around in circles in the hallway outside my apartment door before driving in... which has made me wonder about crop circles.

The carpet in the hallways is reportedly going to be replaced soon (it's quite insane to do this when there is construction going on outside the building's front door, but the strata council is quite insane, so it's to be expected) so I'm not feeling so guilty about making a mess.

I can turn almost on a dime in my wheelchair and I can make completely round little circles of black pebbles in the carpet in the hallway. If I try hard, I can reproduce some of the more interesting crop circle designs in the hallway. Unless someone saw me doing this, how it was done would be a complete mystery to folks!

So do aliens in space ships use crop fields on Earth as places to get gritty stuff off their ships? Do they occasionally run through comets or other space debris, and they're just trying to get the gunk off?

If so, I can sympathize with them. It's just crap you shouldn't have to drag around with you. And if it can entertain the natives (or the neighbors) at the same time, that's a bonus!

Are there more odors down here?

It's been a while since I've ventured into busy downtown Vancouver during the lunch hour on a weekday, but I needed to go out today and it was about that time, so I steered my wheelchair slowly through the crowds to get to my destination. While driving I noticed a plethora of odors in the crowds. So am I being very sensitive, or are there more odors down here at sitting level?

The perfumes were extreme - both from people and from the shops that sold perfume. The oddest thing of late is that the men are wearing more perfume than the women! Seriously doused males wreaking to the max! Who are the advertisers who thought selling perfumes for men was a good idea, and how can we stop them? And why are men putting so much scent around their waists? Are they trying to attract females in wheelchairs? It isn't working.

The wreak of cancer stick cigarette smoke is always a problem, and down here at wheelchair level is worse than at standing level! On the other hand, the scent of smoke from recreational pharmaceuticals isn't that bad... and there was lots of that everywhere, not sure if I should complain about that... nah, relax, it's all good.

The sewers also have their own odors, and I'm closer to them now than I was before. Luckily I can hold my breath while I pass them, and I am as fast as your average jogger when I go at my normal outdoor speed. (I can go faster, but I reserve that for driving on the seawall when it's empty, because that IS faster.)

So there are many odors down here that I have to live with now. But I'm an adult and can understand all of the odors, what about all those children in child strollers? What are we doing to them?

Post Script: OH! That's where all the pot smoke came from! There was a marijuana rally outside the Vancouver Art Gallery - as I drove my wheelchair past it! Well, that was timing wasn't it?

Will a washroom be a tourist attraction?

The new Vancouver Convention Centre is quite the tourist attraction. It is built out over water with a fish habitat especially designed to attract fish, and it has a roof with "thousands of indigenous plants" planted on it. (What plants - beyond moss - are indigenous to roofs? Now that's a good question... looks like a lot of grasses... maybe they're from the planet of the roofs.) But I digress.

The more interesting question is... during a hot, dry August day, will using a washroom at the convention centre be a tourist attraction?

Yes, it rains in Vancouver. A lot. A really great deal. Many days of non-ending rain. But that's in the winter. In the summer it gets hot and dry and watering restrictions are put into effect. In August most of the grass is brown in Vancouver - it will come back to being green in the Fall when it starts raining again, but August is a brown month. So what will happen to the grasses and other "thousands of indigenous plants" on the roof of the Convention Centre? It is prized at being a green building, so they will not be using water to irrigate it from the municipal water supply, not directly anyway, they will be using "brown" or "black" water from the waste drains inside the building. So if you wash your hands in the washroom of the convention centre in August... the water that flows over your hands will then go up to the roof to water the plants!

Cool. Does this mean the washrooms will be a tourist attraction? I'm thinking I want to go just to pay a visit! I'm not sure what kind of conventions will be going on there in August, but I'm going to keep my eyes open to see if I want to go to one of them! Or at least go to visit the washroom when they're happening.