Subordinate Clauses
What I realized late this morning as I looked out my window and noticed what I was pretty sure was an unusual onslaught of vehicles coming across the Granville St bridge into downtown and up Seymour St toward me, along with growing mobs of pedestrians with atypical numbers of small children and strollers (especially for this neighborhood), was that today must be the annual Santa Claus parade.
(And if you're saying, "What?!? Before Thanksgiving?!?" remember that Thanksgiving in Canada was Oct 11, so those rules, at least, are off).
My suspicions were confirmed when I walked West toward the downtown center, until I arrived at Burrard St, which was utterly clogged with people. I found an unoccupied spot on top of the corner of a 4' high or so wall, and watched the parade from there.
It wasn't all that great, it turns out, as my 8 year old wall neighbor Matthew agreed out loud.
The highlight of the parade was the Vancouver Police Drum Corps and the Vancouver Police Pipe (as in bagpipe) Band. Otherwise, it was a lot of vehicles rolling down the street with corporate sponsorships painted all over them and not much to look at. There were some people walking down the street as well, but they seemed equally as intent on waving at the people inside the vehicles as to the crowd on the sidewalk.
I left the parade early and walked around Yaletown, hoping to find an interesting bite to eat. I did. Add Venezuelan food to my ever-growing list of obscure international meals.
* * *
I've been playing with the humidity thermostat thing. I'm not sure it works. I mean, it does work in the sense that if you turn it toward the lower percentages, the bathroom vent fan will kick on, but if you leave it there, even just a little bit below the threshold that activated the fan in the first place, the fan never seems to turn off. So the regulator seems to properly measure humidity (which is kind of interesting in itself, being able to get a humidity estimate) and operate the fan accordingly, but the intended purpose of regulating the humidity to a certain level seems to be a failure since the fan's activity doesn't really affect the humidity one way or the other. Strange. Maybe I'm just not patient enough, and if I wait a couple of days, the fan will finally dry things out enough to shut itself off. Either way, I wonder where all this drier air that's replacing the humid air being sucked out is supposed to come from.
(And if you're saying, "What?!? Before Thanksgiving?!?" remember that Thanksgiving in Canada was Oct 11, so those rules, at least, are off).
My suspicions were confirmed when I walked West toward the downtown center, until I arrived at Burrard St, which was utterly clogged with people. I found an unoccupied spot on top of the corner of a 4' high or so wall, and watched the parade from there.
It wasn't all that great, it turns out, as my 8 year old wall neighbor Matthew agreed out loud.
The highlight of the parade was the Vancouver Police Drum Corps and the Vancouver Police Pipe (as in bagpipe) Band. Otherwise, it was a lot of vehicles rolling down the street with corporate sponsorships painted all over them and not much to look at. There were some people walking down the street as well, but they seemed equally as intent on waving at the people inside the vehicles as to the crowd on the sidewalk.
I left the parade early and walked around Yaletown, hoping to find an interesting bite to eat. I did. Add Venezuelan food to my ever-growing list of obscure international meals.
* * *
I've been playing with the humidity thermostat thing. I'm not sure it works. I mean, it does work in the sense that if you turn it toward the lower percentages, the bathroom vent fan will kick on, but if you leave it there, even just a little bit below the threshold that activated the fan in the first place, the fan never seems to turn off. So the regulator seems to properly measure humidity (which is kind of interesting in itself, being able to get a humidity estimate) and operate the fan accordingly, but the intended purpose of regulating the humidity to a certain level seems to be a failure since the fan's activity doesn't really affect the humidity one way or the other. Strange. Maybe I'm just not patient enough, and if I wait a couple of days, the fan will finally dry things out enough to shut itself off. Either way, I wonder where all this drier air that's replacing the humid air being sucked out is supposed to come from.