Happy New Year!
This morning I made a troubling discovery: Yes, there are Wal-Marts in Canada. It was in a shopping mall, and not quite the monolithic 1/4 square mile parking lot small-town-economy-killing beasts of the States, but it was most definitely a shopping mall. I don't know why I'd assumed they hadn't made the border leap, but they seem like such an obscene only-in-America concept, that perhaps deep inside my heart I'd hoped that was the truth.
On the happier side of things, my car battery is now replaced, and my stereo and gas gauge and all the other electronic thingies which had turned into a chaotic mess due to the previously unreliable power supply are now back to working order. It's sort of unnerving to drive around with a gas needle on hard empty and a digital miles-remaining readout which says "0mi". I knew it wasn't true, there being somewhere near a half a tank of fuel in the car, but I'd still catch it out of the corner of my eye and freak out about every 3 minutes, until I remembered again what was going on. Sad, but true.
Of course, part of this adventure involved learning that all this time I've had the power to reset my stereo myself and just never knew it (which I had to do anyway, because the service department claimed the manual was not in the car, when, in actuality, it was exactly in the manual slot where it belongs — perhaps it was a clever tactic to force me to learn how to do it myself), but the code sequence took several minutes to do, and I think I would have gotten tired of re-entering it every time I got the car started anyway.
While the car was in the shop, I walked down Marine Dr in North Van to find some lunch and something to keep me busy for a couple of hours until I could pick the car up. Although the original intent was to get some decent food and sit and read my book for a little while, I ended up with fast food in the Capilano Mall, and wandering around in there a bit. Mall discoveries included the cutest boardgame ever and the the coolest refrigerator ever. I wanted to buy the Mouse Chaos game pretty badly, but had to convince myself that finding groups of people who are interested in playing such sorts of games, especially after moving, is pretty difficult, and it would probably spend a lot of time in its box.
The mall was strangely empty, as was the Indigo bookstore, a couple of other shops I stopped in, and Marine Drive in general. I eventually found a cozy window seat at the Leo Caffe, and asked the proprietress if there was some event going on somewhere that had drawn everyone away. "Today is Iranian New Year," she answered. "Everyone is busy making preparations for big dinners tonight." So, there you have it. Happy Iranian New Year to any Iranians around. (The general surrealism of the revelation was reduced a bit when the lady mentioned that most of the residents and business owners of that particular neighborhood, herself included, are Iranian, and that it isn't exactly a city-wide phenomenon. I mean, sure, Irish and non-Irish alike celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but it would have been news to me if Iranian New Year were the same.)
I also pulled my car over near the north shore of Burrard Inlet, and picked up a couple of pieces of sulfur which had fallen off a train on their way to or from the big piles of sulfur a little further west. I'll probably end up just throwing them away (or burning them somewhere, if I find myself in the mood to create a really noxious odor one day and the cat for some reason isn't living up to the task on his own), but for now, it's kind of cool to have a little piece (or three) of local Vancouver culture on my table.
On the happier side of things, my car battery is now replaced, and my stereo and gas gauge and all the other electronic thingies which had turned into a chaotic mess due to the previously unreliable power supply are now back to working order. It's sort of unnerving to drive around with a gas needle on hard empty and a digital miles-remaining readout which says "0mi". I knew it wasn't true, there being somewhere near a half a tank of fuel in the car, but I'd still catch it out of the corner of my eye and freak out about every 3 minutes, until I remembered again what was going on. Sad, but true.
Of course, part of this adventure involved learning that all this time I've had the power to reset my stereo myself and just never knew it (which I had to do anyway, because the service department claimed the manual was not in the car, when, in actuality, it was exactly in the manual slot where it belongs — perhaps it was a clever tactic to force me to learn how to do it myself), but the code sequence took several minutes to do, and I think I would have gotten tired of re-entering it every time I got the car started anyway.
While the car was in the shop, I walked down Marine Dr in North Van to find some lunch and something to keep me busy for a couple of hours until I could pick the car up. Although the original intent was to get some decent food and sit and read my book for a little while, I ended up with fast food in the Capilano Mall, and wandering around in there a bit. Mall discoveries included the cutest boardgame ever and the the coolest refrigerator ever. I wanted to buy the Mouse Chaos game pretty badly, but had to convince myself that finding groups of people who are interested in playing such sorts of games, especially after moving, is pretty difficult, and it would probably spend a lot of time in its box.
The mall was strangely empty, as was the Indigo bookstore, a couple of other shops I stopped in, and Marine Drive in general. I eventually found a cozy window seat at the Leo Caffe, and asked the proprietress if there was some event going on somewhere that had drawn everyone away. "Today is Iranian New Year," she answered. "Everyone is busy making preparations for big dinners tonight." So, there you have it. Happy Iranian New Year to any Iranians around. (The general surrealism of the revelation was reduced a bit when the lady mentioned that most of the residents and business owners of that particular neighborhood, herself included, are Iranian, and that it isn't exactly a city-wide phenomenon. I mean, sure, Irish and non-Irish alike celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but it would have been news to me if Iranian New Year were the same.)
I also pulled my car over near the north shore of Burrard Inlet, and picked up a couple of pieces of sulfur which had fallen off a train on their way to or from the big piles of sulfur a little further west. I'll probably end up just throwing them away (or burning them somewhere, if I find myself in the mood to create a really noxious odor one day and the cat for some reason isn't living up to the task on his own), but for now, it's kind of cool to have a little piece (or three) of local Vancouver culture on my table.