Michael R. Barrick

His claws are long and his fangs are fearsome
— Even mighty squirrels won't come near him.
The survey says (and we agree)
That weiner dogs best let him be.

With voiciferous song he lets us know
Whenever the kibble is running low.
He has burly arms and skookum frame.
When you're tharsis everything's a game.

There's hiding and chasing and running,
And summer sun balcony sunning,
Morning treats and bedtime wuzzles,
And tickling _jazz_'s feet when he really wants trouble.

So let the bells ring out and the trumpets play,
For tharsis is eight years old today.
Born on Easter 1998
No other cat is near as great.

This is for Lorra because she liked the walk to work.

Granville Bridge

This is just the last part of my walk home, the walk over this bridge. I've checked on a map and from beginning to end the bridge is about 1.3 Km while my total walk is about 3.2 Km. When the buses aren't on strike it is unusual to see more than one or two people walking across, but lately there are always douzens of people walking across the bridge.

False Creek

This is the view of the marinas along the south shore of False Creek, which is the body of water the bridge spans. False Creek is so named because one of the early explorers (either Vancouver or Cook, I don't remember which) mistook it for a river mouth. In the early days of Vancouver the city planners wanted to fill it in completely since they saw it as an impediment to the growth of downtown. They did fill a lot in. If you know Vancouver you might be surprised to know that Main Street used to be a bridge about half way along the original inlet. Clark Street is where the head of the inlet was originally. Granville Island is artificial, a land fill, and not "clean fill" either - it's a garbage pile. A few years ago a pocket of methane from the decomposed garbage exploded and ripped one street apart and damaged some of the expensive condos. The people who lived there were all offended that they were living on an old garbage pile. Erm... hello? Granville Island was built in the 19th century for heavy industrial purposes. Basically it's a layer of "clean" dirt over a layer of toxic sludge built up on a pile of garbage. But it's pretty.

Burrard Bridge

This is looking at all the boats coming and going under the Burrard Bridge . The Burrard Bridge is the oldest of the three standing bridges over False Creek. There have been bridges where the Cambie Bridge and Granville Bridge are for over a century but both of them were rebuilt, the Granville bridge in the 1950's and the Cambie Bridge in the 1980's. The Burrard Bridge was built in 1935. The other bridges are fully modern and functional, the Burrard Bridge is art-deco and is much prettier than the others.

The "Sesame Street" park

Almost home. Here's my building in the evening light as seen across the "Sesame Street" park. You can see the "100" sculpture in the middle of the trees. It's edge on so from here it just looks like a concrete block.

Pedestrian Underpass

I'm off the bridge and this is the pedestrian underpass at the south end of the bridge. From my apartment I can see people not using this all the time and running stupidly across the off-ramp. Eventually someone is going to get squished because this thing is not well marked and people just don't know it is there.

Langman House

The is from the exit of the underpass, looking up at Langman House Antiques. These are my neighbours.

My building's courtyard

This is courtyard of my building. I love this building. There are galleries and hair salons, a dress designer, web and graphic design shops, photographers as well as people just living here. I hate living in ordinary apartments. They shoot movies and TV shows here a lot. The evening I shot these pictures (last Thursday) there was an opening in the gallery visible in this shot (behind the asymmetrical steam vent) with live music in the courtyard.

Tharsis

And finally I am home, greeted at the door by my monkey Siamese cat, Tharsis. Who, incidentally, is sleeping on the monitor right now as I type this.

Still in my PJs at noon with Tharsis on the monitor.

Let's start with todays comic from the collection. Mmmm... coffee.

At the moment I'm still waiting to hear from HSBC. This is getting annoying. I want news, damnit! I'm sick of being broke. Although there are definitely things I will miss about working at home, the spastic income won't be one of them.

Last night was Evilyn's birthday. I was supposed to go to Myr's party and then meet Evilyn for cake. Well I ended up getting over ambitious with the drawing I was doing for her birthday and it ended up taking a couple more hours than I planned. I ended up skipping dinner and missing Myr's party in order to get to Death by Chocolate on time. So I ended up having cake for dinner. Not bad in itself, but following that up with drinking wasn't the most brilliant thing I have done lately.

The drawing in its frame

After cake and coffee it was off to Sanctuary for more fun. And it was fun for the most part. A whole bunch of Evilyn's friend's came out and the place seemed much more crowded than usual. Other than the unfortunate side-effect of the line at the bar being a bit long, having a good crowd is definitely a good thing. But things went a little sour at the end. This guy I am acquainted with, John, seems to have discovered drugs recently and has been seriously overdoing it. Last night he was on GHB and overdosed. Seems he split his face open when the convulsions stared and night came to a grinding halt as he bled all over the dancefloor and the paramedics were called in. Bloody idiot, in every sense of the phrase.

My sympathy is severely limited for this kind of irresponsibility. And I feel justified in my distain by the fact I have done equally stupid things (as the scar on my forehead will attest, although that was aquired through good, old-fashioned alcohol consumption and I wasn't so lame as to get the whole club shut down and wreck everyone else's fun). I'm just embarrased that I was actually over at this guy's home last week. I'm embarrassed by the association. I'm tired of mentally unstable, irresponsible idiots.

Evilyn opening the present

Not that I have ever been terribly tolerant of stupid people. I left Duncan to get away from this kind of idiocy. I stopped hanging around with people like Ken (the person who was feeding me drinks the night I split my head open) for the same reason. I've done my experimenting, learned my lessons, and I just don't want to be around people who still haven't grown up, or even worse, won't grow up.