Tidbits

Sleepover at Ikea - Maybe this is the only way to get to the $1 early enough…
A ramen bath - Japanese spa with special baths resembling instant noodles. I wanna play!
Old age homes for dogs - 1) Old dogs don’t like to be abandoned at strange places. 2) Playing with young puppies will probably cause the older dogs to die faster due to exhaustion.
A remote-controlled pigeon - Oh the poor thing…
An article on a brilliant method of teaching grade schoolers about bats and rabies. I smell a lawsuit.
Will trade beer for Crumpler bags. Tempted by the beanbag and messenger bags…

First Vacation of the Year

January 23, 2008, 6:23 am

So I’ll be off on my first trip of the year next week to Seattle/Vancouver/Whistler. Going to attend a conference in Vancouver, so will try and maximize my time out west. Should be fun, trying to balance lectures and work at the same time. This will be my first official work-related conference, I’m not sure what to expect. Being web-related, however, I’m sure it will be fairly casual.

I find it sort of shocking that it’s been early 4 years since I’ve been to Seattle, not since 2004. I don’t expect it to have changed much, and will probably visit the usual cluster of tourist attractions. Maybe see some places I never got to see before (Museum of Flight, the Underground Tour). Definitely going to find that Troll!

I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere else after this. The China trip in May should be confirmed, Renison cashed my deposit already, so hopefully will have the final word this Friday. It’s going to suck up 5 weeks of vacation. I don’t actually have five weeks of vacation… I wonder if they will let me work on weekends, that is, I wonder if they will let me count work that’s done on weekends, ha.

West Montrose Covered Bridge

So the rest of Jan’s been pretty uneventful as well, been mostly sticking around Waterloo on weekends. Finally ended up visiting the West Montrose Covered Bridge a few weekends ago, because Mike wanted to take Mr. B out for some exercise.

Photo set on flickr

Normally around this time of the year, there would have been snow and stuff, but now it just looks like Fall. According to the sign, this is suppose to be the only remaining covered bridge in Ontario. Now it’s maintained by the province (instead of Region of Waterloo as I previously thought) and part of our Ontario Heritage collection, I guess.

It’s located here (well where the river is):

View Larger Map

As you can see, it’s a bridge in the middle of nowhere. Though it’s a good side-trip on the way to Elora Gorge.

The Shopping Bag Dilemma

One last note, we’re trying to cut back on the number of plastic grocery bags we get from shopping. So we picked up one of those reusable bags from Sobeys the other day. It costs $1, but they said they will replace it if it ever breaks. When we put the bag, along with our groceries at the checkout, the cashier put all the stuff into the bag, and didn’t charge us for the bag. Thought that was interesting. How do you tell if the bag has been paid for or not? Can you just walk out with a new bag every time? Who knows…

... and that’s all my thoughts for today.