words@random

lots of food

2009-11-15T09:25:00.002+11:00

we've had some good meals and snacks the last couple days. unfortunately i never have my camera on me so there's no photos. friday nite we ended up eating at the east brunswick club on the way home from drinks with zac's workmates. i got the philly cheese steak and i was impressed. zac had the fish and chips. i had one bite and it was good but i think i was mostly tasting tartar sauce. zac was a little worried it was actual fish (i think he's forgotten what fish tastes/looks like) but he said it was good. last nite we went to mr. natural pizza on the way home. we've been talking about trying that place since we lived on brunswick st. when i first moved here. until yesterday we'd never done it. we got the vegan-ized bezalya pizza- potato, olives, onion, capsicum (bell pepper), roasted pumpkin, tomato, parsley, lots of herbs and spices, some chilli and lots of cheezly. sounds like a big mix of flavours but they went really well together. we decided we'd go have a picnic in the park. unfortunately the cool change had hit a couple hours earlier and it was kind of cold sitting in the grass in a singlet (tank top) at dusk (when i looked up yesterday evenings temperatures it was about 18C but it felt pretty cool after the weather we've had lately). the pizza was really nice though-- we'll be getting that again (and we are in their delivery area so the 1 or 2 times a year that we order pizza i think we might have to go with them).
we've had some good snacks too. we stopped by grumpy's green for a beer yesterday afternoon. they've redone their menu. there still doesn't seem to be much for the mains that's vegan (although i think they can make a few of the items vegan on request). i got one of the small snacks-- vine leaves. the first one i had was extremely salty (and i like my salt) but the others were good. zac had some flat bread with garlic oil/balsamic vinegar and salt to dip in. looked good (although plain as flat bread looks) but i didn't try it.
last nite zac made some popcorn for us. he does it in a large pot with a lot of oil on the bottom and usually a couple cloves of garlic (he can't get enough garlic). it's always very generously sprinkled with salt. i started sprinkling nutritional yeast on mine. soooo good (and it adds something nutritional to otherwise oily, salty corn). the nutritional yeast kind of tastes like "popcorn" salt i used to use in canada (a "butter flavoured" salt).

almost a bit cold

2009-11-12T16:52:00.002+11:00

today only got to 29C (and only for a short period of time). it was 23C when i rode home at lunch and back to work. it almost felt cool riding my bike(and it felt a little cool riding in this morning when it was only about 19C). a bit scary that 25C feels cool. i'm sure it's not gonna stay in the 30s all summer (we're in big trouble if it does). i've even had no problems sleeping the last 2 nites with the warmth (the first few nites weren't very good at all). i'm sure i'll freeze as soon as nites start going down to the low/mid teens again.

it's supposed to be back in the 30s the next couple days. fortunately i have tomorrow off (i'm really not liking the evapourative cooler in our room at work-- it cools nicely but i just feel sticky and my hair feels big and frizzy from the humidity it creates) but i have to go in on saturday to meet next year's kids (i think we'll be heading to the beach as soon as i'm done with that).

summer

2009-11-09T16:36:00.004+11:00

i think summer has hit (almost a month early). it's been in the mid 30s for the past couple days and again tomorrow (and then 29-35 the rest of the week). its always a bit of a shock when the heat first arrives. i had some flexicar credit to use (some of it i won, the rest was compensation for our issues getting to my citizenship ceremony) so we decided to go to the beach for the day yesterday. we were thinking barwon heads but then we decided that maybe we could find somewhere a bit closer that we hadn't been before. we ended up going to point cook and altona. point cook was nice, i'd like to go back when it's not so hot (we tried to walk a trail near some "wetlands" but the sun felt like it was burning right through our skin). we went to the beach there briefly but there were a lot of annoying children/pre-teens that were with a large picnic group so we decided to see what altona beach is like. it was very busy with the hot weather but the water looked much cleaner than st. kilda. there were lots of large tidepools with warm water too. we may have to go back again (and try stafan's pizza which is very vegan friendly and apparently worth the trip to altona).
birds at point cook:

tree at point cook: view of the city from point cook: i was a bit worried how wombat would go with her change of routine today. this week is the first week it is definitely way too hot to walk her after work. her normal routine involves me coming home, ignoring her for several minutes then a few minutes after i say hello to her and give her belly rubs and pats we go for a walk. if i try to wait to long she starts asking and then demanding a walk. i think she realizes a walk would not be fun right now. she's settled herself by the front door just sleeping and watching the world go by. she hasn't asked or hinted that she would like to go even once.

where's the rest of it?

2009-11-06T20:31:00.005+11:00

for show and tell (where we only show books and nature for the most part) a child brought in the flattened head of a cockatoo. it was in a tall box that opened at the top and the main teacher actually got it out and showed a group of 25 children (she did put a latex glove on first). i had to photograph it for the child's folder (i won't be posting that photo here). i'd assume the head was flattened (and kind of disfigured) because it had been run over by a car but what happened to his body?
i do have this other cool nature photo i took at work (that is a bit much if you don't like spiders up close):
the spider actually ate the entire caterpillar (it took him/her a half hour or so). when i looked at the gum tree over the next few days the spider was always in the same spot. i gave her a bit of a nudge with a stick and she barely moved. the next day there was no movement. i don't know if the caterpillar killed it (poison or just gluttony) or if it just died. now, over the dip where the spider is sitting a web/cocoon like thing is being formed. we can't figure out if the spider is alive and doing it or if another animal is making some sort of coocoon type thing over it. there's all sorts of other interesting things happening on this gum tree too (and meanwhile kids are going unsupervised while i'm fascinated by tiny insects doing their thing on a tree).

vegan day

2009-11-04T20:35:00.003+11:00

sunday was perfect weather for biking the 6.5km down the creek trails to the convent for world vegan day. the only photo i took the whole day was this one of a few of the MANY bikes parked around the convent area that i took quickly as we were leaving:

(i also took a far away photo of some birds we saw along trail on the way but it wasn't a good photo-- it was just to help me figure out what they were later. i love my melboure's wildlife book-- turns out they were red-rumped parrots)

vegan day was good. weird that the first one in melbourne was my first year in oz and it was just a small group of people having a vegan picnic at albert park (we had trouble finding the group and walked around for ages before finding a group of people and dogs that we thought looked like the right group). now its a massive gathering of all kinds of animal friendly businesses and groups. by the time we got there it was pretty crowded but we went around to all the stalls sampling things (mostly chocolate) and then went around a second time and bought lots of goodies. the line ups for lunch were really long (and there wasn't as much choice in good hot food to eat as there has been in the past) so we ended up getting ice cream for lunch (and it was really good). we also caught the last half of a talk on climate change which was interesting. what she was talking about wasn't really anything i didn't know but she did have a couple interesting facts like this one:

If everyone in the UK abstained from eating meat even for one day a week, this would save 13 megatons CO2 of greenhouse gas emissions. This would result in greater carbon savings than taking 5 million cars off the road in the UK (10.4 Mt CO2). (Source stats: Nicolaas G. Pierson
Foundation)

she stated it as: if everyone in the UK went vegan 7 days a week it would be the equivalent of taking about 35 million cars off the road in the UK(that's more cars then there are there).

i like random facts like that.

one other photo- wombat enjoying her vegan "pig's ear" from vegan pet:

forks!

2009-11-01T10:37:00.000+11:00

last nite we had another good lightning storm (this time with lots of rain). i decided to pull out the camera again. i thought i'd just get a few shots of glowing clouds like the last time but it was even better than that.
the first photo is one of the many with no lightning (i just continually shoot for several seconds until i get a shot of lightning flashing)

i didn't even see the bit of the fork in this shot until i got it on the computer. i was just excited about the way everything was glowing blue in the yard (the lightning would flash several times really quickly so the whole yard would light up this eerie blue colour)

a fork! i got a fork!

another fork.

lightning

2009-10-31T09:14:00.003+11:00

last nite we had some heat lightning. we didn't get more than a few drops of rain but lightning was flashing fairly regularly so i decided to get the camera out. it wasn't great lightning because it was behind clouds but i thought i'd play with the camera so next time we have a good lightning storm maybe i can get a shot of a fork if i'm lucky.

from the kitchen window- the first shot is how the sky looked without lightning (the sky was pretty glow-y) and the second is some lightning

the backyard (again the first shot is just the sky and the second has lightning):

i hit the "i'm feeling lucky" button in picasa and i like the way it changed the photo:

i wish we had better views in our yard and from our windows (most of our windows face the house next door about 3 m from ours). it makes it a bit hard for lightning photography because i'm not gonna be running across the road or down the street during a lightning storm.

sustainability

2009-10-30T10:24:00.004+11:00

last saturday i got to attend 1 day of a 21/2 day sustainability in early childhood education conference for work. i wish i could have gone to the whole thing but because my co-worker was already going to all of it, one of us had to be at work on friday so there weren't just 2 relievers working together and opening the kinder (and my co-worker is actively involved in the organization that planned the conference).

i got to go to 2 really great sessions on saturday morning-- the first one was discussing our own journeys with sustainability and outdoor play and the second one was a presentation from a new zealand kindergarten that built their entire garden from the children's ideas. they had everything from garden beds where the children could pick all the flowers they wanted whenever they wanted, chamomile grass, insects and bugs to observe (they even found a protected lizard in the garden because of the kinds of plants they had), lots of fruit and veggies and even a banana tree (it's kept inside but they were actually able to find a way to have it after one child said he wanted bananas to grow in the garden). after lunch we went on tours. i went on a tour to skinner's playground (a great supervised playground in st kilda with cubby houses built from recycled materials, a veggie garden and lots of space to play) and 2 kindergarten and child care centres in the st kilda area that have amazing gardens and programs focusing on the environment and play areas involving natural materials.

the saturday of the conference also happened to fall on the international day of climate action (they didn't realize that when the conference dates were set) so we took a photo for the 350.org website:

(my head is barely visible behind someone near the right side of the photo)

below is a closeup of the banner that is behind us in the photo:

the only thing i was really disappointed in was the food. the entire conference (including a 3 course dinner at the zoo on friday nite) was vegetarian. people i talked to said the food was pretty good. i was just there for morning tea and lunch on saturday. morning tea was muffins and fruit bowls (apples and pears). i was happy to have an apple but i was a bit disappointed there weren't a few vegan muffins (i think there were a couple others that were vegan too). lunch was a packed lunch (in a tupperware sandwich box to keep and an aluminum--aluminium to aussies--drink bottle) so we could head off on our tours. lunch for most people was sandwich wraps in the container and then there were small bananas and pieces of cake (not vegan unless they just didn't mention it and i couldn't find anyone to ask) to take if you wanted along with your water. in my specially labeled sandwich container was a salad. a small salad of lettus, tomato and cucumber with drop of an oily dressing. i'm sure the wrap bread was probably vegan and if the sandwiches had cheese or other dairy i'm sure they could have easily been substituted. so i had lunch of salad and a small banana (after my morning tea of an apple). fortunately i brought the last few almonds that had been sitting on the kitchen table so i had a little bit to snack on from a food that was not fruit or vegetable. i know it wasn't the conference organizers fault-- it was the catering people's fault for not really knowing what vegans can and can't eat. i did make it clear on my evaluation form that i was very disappointed in the vegan food though (especially sad since in the conference program book they had a paragraph stating why they had chosen to have an entirely vegetarian and vegan menu for the conference).
i did have a great time though, got to talk to some great people, hear some great things and just be around a lot of people with similar views on the environment, sustainability and the importance of play in nature for children.

sucked in

2009-10-30T09:58:00.002+11:00

i came across this article this morning. i like the clear picture it makes.

giant seagull

2009-10-22T20:38:00.003+11:00

they showed this clip on the 7pm project last nite. even funnier is the quote from peter hitchener on the youtube clip:
"I was reading away, and it was a serious story, and I suddenly thought, 'Oh my gosh that seagulls back again', because we had bit of a problem last night,'' Hitchener said.
"About 50 seconds to 6 o'clock this seagull arrived and started pecking at the camera and it had the beadiest huge eyes you've ever seen in your life.''

(it's better viewing the clip on youtube cuz its widescreen but my blog is putting it in a square)

waffles!

2009-10-17T18:09:00.000+11:00

when i bought the vegan whipped cream i had to buy the vegan waffles so we could use whatever was left of the whipped cream on waffles. i blended up a few of the strawberries with some water and agave nectar to make a not too sweet sauce and then chopped the rest to put on the toasted waffles along with the whipped cream. a great breakfast treat.

dual

2009-10-14T17:32:00.002+11:00

i am officially australian (and still canadian). i had the ceremony last nite where i said the oath with around 130 others and then we each got our certificates of citizenship, a native plant and our electoral enrollment papers. the only minor stress was the start of the evening. we had a flexicar booked at 5pm. the plan was to go get zac's nanna who lives nearish to the town hall in coburg where the ceremony was taking place and then get to the town hall for me to register (i had to be there between 5:45 and 6:15). i had gone online to add a half hour to our original flexicar booking and the site told me to pick a different car because that pod was out for maintenance. i called flexicar yesterday morning to ask why my confirmed booking was no longer available and why nobody had told me because the only reason i knew is because i decided to change my booking. they said the car had been in an accident the day before and was out of service. they knew about my booking for the evening and would be replacing the car so my booking was ok, it would just be a different car there. i rode past my booked car spot mid afternoon and the damaged car was in the spot with its back end crunched in a bit. when we walked up just after 5pm there was no car there. i called flexicar a bit panicked because i didn't know if we'd have time for whatever alternative they would offer. of course the office closed at 5 so i had to go through the whole long voice mail message before it would allow me to speak to the on-call person. i got to her phone and it rang a lot and then went to voicemail! i left an urgent message explaining what was going on. at that moment a girl zac knows through work (she works at a different organization but zac had been in touch with her several times in the past few weeks) drove up to the line of traffic at the red light. she asked us if we were waiting for a flexicar. i said we were but we were pretty sure it wasn't coming since we knew it wasn't just somebody else that had the car out past their booked time. she offered us a lift which we gladly accepted. turns out she lives in boronia (which is about an hour in the opposite direction she was taking us, past where she'd just come from). sooooo thankful for her and her perfect timing. flexicar called while she was driving us and the on call woman said she was going to have to call the operations manager because she was also under the understanding that there would be a car there for us too. i explained someone had helped us and we wouldn't be needing flexicar that nite. she's gonna make sure we get some extra driving credit added into our account for all the stress it caused us. we also had to get zac's sister to pick up nanna and then drive us home afterwards. other than that mix up, it was a good nite. after, we came home and celebrated with an aussie dinner of (vegan) meat pies and coopers beer (i should have gone for the more aussie vb but its not good and probably not vegan). then we had dessert of canadian thanksgiving pumpkin pie. it worked out ok-- it was almost proper pie consistency (just a bit less firm than it should have been) but it doesn't taste great. its ok but i think maybe i needed more sweetener or something to make it taste like proper pumpkin pie. the soyatoo whip cream helped though. (that's the first slice. the one i had today was a bit less sloppy looking)

motivation part II (see below for part I)

2009-10-13T15:41:00.004+11:00

i became motivated. the sun came out (briefly) and i did a nice 30 shred workout (mostly for the strength training).
after, i had a hair appt. i've been going to rising angel for probably a year now after going to cheap walk in places for several years. such a difference when you go to a good salon and get the full wash, cut and dry with someone who knows how to make your hair look good (i LOVE the wash/scalp massage and every time i go it makes me realize why wombat LOVES her baths even though she hates water-- the full massage she gets from us then must be good).
after that i went next door to radical grocery (waffles and vegan whip cream) and the few op shops in the area. i managed to find a pretty much new (with instruction booklet) rice cooker for $10 (zac has been wanting one for a while).
when i got home i made a pie crust (from la dolce vegan), cut, cooked and pureed some pumpkin and made a pumpkin pie from a recipe in how it all vegan (which is currently in the oven-- the pie, not the cookbook). turns out i don't have a 9" pie plate (just 7 or 8" ones) so i had some left over filling (which was quite liquid-y and i'm hoping is thickening up in the pie while it's in the oven). i decided to use the last bit of filling to make a spiced pumpkin latte. soooooo good! unfortunately there was only enough for the 1 but i guess i could always make a 1/2 batch of the pie filling and use it for lattes.
if the pie works out there will be photos (complete with vegan whip cream)

motivation

2009-10-13T10:29:00.002+11:00

today is my RDO. i figured i'd get some things done since it's only tuesday and i'm not exhausted from a week of work (although yesterday was very long and involved a staff meeting/dinner after work). i woke up this morning and it's all grey and windy and COLD (the wind almost feels icy-- i'm sure it did feel icy at the time i would have had to ride into work). so far i've done nothing but make breakfast and try to fix things on the computer. i'm working up the motivation to do some sort of exercise. i also kind of want to make a pumpkin pie, which would have to be done from scratch (no canned pumpkin or pumpkin pie mix in australia but i do have a big pumpkin from our aussie farmers direct box that is waiting for a purpose). it's thanksgiving in canada so it would be fitting to have that today (no way i'm gonna do the full tofurkey dinner thing but a pie could be a little taste of thanksgiving). i just need to get out of this chair though.....

spring is back

2009-09-29T16:16:00.002+10:00

although we really needed the rain (and a lot did fall in the catchment areas) i'm soooooo glad to see the sun again. it was starting to feel very vancouver like with all the rain, grey sky and coldness. i decided to celebrate the sunshine this afternoon by cleaning up the back yard a bit, doing a lot of laundry (i had been putting it off because of the rain) and then relaxing with a margarita and some good music.

wombat even joined me for a while and started working on her belly tan (it'll be black in a few weeks):
she's a bit of an idiot though and stays laying in the sun, even when she's too hot. she's panting in this photo: i did force her to go get a drink after i took the photo (she was back out in belly tan position 10 minutes later).

curling up on the couch

2009-09-25T16:36:00.002+10:00

i wanted to go up to sydney road this afternoon (mainly to get ice cream from the radical grocery) but i don't think that's gonna happen. its really dark for 4:45pm and the rain has been coming on and off most of the day (and the one point where it wasn't raining i took the dog for a walk since she was going crazy in the house). i'm not gonna put all my raingear on just to ride up in the cold rain for ice cream. it's good for all my new little veggie seedlings though. i haven't had to water them since i planted them 4 days ago cuz they've had good rain fall on them every day.

lotf

2009-09-25T13:44:00.002+10:00

i finally tried lord of the fries today. don't know why i've never been there. probably cuz i rarely go into that part of the city and when i do i'm not hungry or i'm rushing to/from a train. i even faught the massive footy crowds who were trying to keep dry while waiting for the parade to start (i forgot there's a parade the day before the grand final-- i wondered why so many st kilda fans where getting on the tram all in their team colours/clothing). i just got the fries with the frech-canadian toppings (vegan gravy and "cheese"). they were sooooo good. just what i wanted today. i'll have to go back and get a burger or something at some point. now i'm gonna finish setting up our new set top box so we can get all the extra free to air channels (so now we'll have 7 or 8 channels of nothing on instead of 5).

summer?

2009-09-12T16:23:00.003+10:00

it's suddenly summer today! 29C and sunny (most of the time). i think tomorrow is supposed to go back to normal high teens sort of temps but it was nice to have a day or so of summer. the wind is driving me absolutely crazy though. yesterday it was so bad when i rode home at lunch there was no way i was getting back on my bike to go back to work so i walked. it was still blowing bits of hair in my eyes and pushing me around. today when we were walking home we could hear a sound that was a bit like a jet engine being distorted by wind. when it didn't go away after a minute or so we realized it wasn't a passing plane but it was just the wind howling over everything. it was really weird how it wasn't just howling going around any specific building but it was just doing it in the air overhead. it's also weird of the graph above how the humidity and dew point suddenly plunged in the last hour or 2. the wind has also mostly died down just now too. its weird feeling warm, dry air and having quietness.

the celebration continues

2009-09-04T17:09:00.002+10:00

i got to keep celebrating my birthday with a nite out on wednesday. we went for dinner at white lotus (mmmmm....tamarind "fish") and then off to somewhere in the city that zac kept as a surprise. we ended up at the anthenaeum where tex perkins was doing a show called "the man in black". it was the story of johnny cash mixed in with his music. it was a really good show.
until wednesday i'd also forgotten one of my other highlights from our canada trip. while we were in portland we saw a johnny cash cover band (counterfeit cash) do a show at a pub. it was really impressive (it was kind of weird looking at the guy cuz he looked nothing like johnny cash but did really well at johnny cash's vocal sound). he even did some of the cover songs johnny cash did on his american recordings albums (you gotta be a pretty good impersonator to be able to pull of covers of covers).

birthday weekend

2009-09-01T17:18:00.005+10:00

for my birthday dinner i wanted to try shakahari in carlton. it's odd we'd never gone there before last weekend because its a very vegan friendly vegetarian restaurant and only a couple kms from home (and one of the oldest veggie restaurants in melbourne). soooooo goood! we shared the avocado rolls for our entree (appetizer to north americans). i got the marcopolo gift for my main and zac had a vegan lasagna made with quinoa. the meals were the perfect size and i still had a bit of room for dessert but we decided to go for a walk down lygon street to one of the gelato places and get vegan sorbet.

my actual birthday was on sunday and we had a wedding to go to. it was the brother of the groom of the wedding we went to in february. the ceremony was at the same greek orthodox church the groom's brother's wedding was at:

the reception was at quat quatta. they did an amazing job of our vegan meals. i was a little worried about our meals because this was the first wedding i've been vegan at. in the past, my vegetarian meals have been good and filling mostly because of the amount of cheese. zac's vegan meals have always been good but very small because the chefs don't seem to take into account that when you put a few veggies on a plate (with no grain or protein) it's not going to be a filling meal like the meat mains are. we were stuffed by the end of this meal. we had 2 rolls with some veggies at the start of the meal from a share platter on the table. then we had avocado salads (with about 1/2 an avocado for each of us). the main was a stack of grilled veggies that were done really nicely. our dessert was a bowl of berries (i LOVE berries and was excited to find out that was our dessert over the usual fruit salad that zac has always had at weddings). the parents of the groom:his mom is soooo sweet. i've only met her a few times in the past but she greeted me at the church with "happy birthday, shawna!" i was pretty amazed she remembered considering her son's wedding was about to start. at the reception she came up to me a couple times and wished me a happy birthday and at the end of the nite she told me she had planned on getting me a little mini birthday cake but remembered i was vegan and didn't know where to buy a little vegan birthday cake. i was sooooo full when we left there's no way i could have eaten any birthday cake.

taco pizza

2009-08-31T16:45:00.000+10:00

after an amazing taco pizza at the joint in victoria i decided i had to try to recreate it at home. i was impressed with the results. i made a thin pizza crust and put a layer of homemade vegan queso on top. i mixed some dried tvp with boiling water and taco seasoning and waited for it to rehydrate so i could put it on top of the queso. then i chopped up a tomato and sprinkled it on top and cooked the pizza for 15 minutes. after it came out of the oven i added the lettuce. i thought about adding some vegan sour cream but i forgot to buy it. it was really good though. definitely be making this again.

spring!

2009-08-29T11:57:00.001+10:00

we came home to spring in our garden (technically it's not spring for a few more days but nature doesn't go by our rules)

the yellow flowers where these buds 2 months ago

the nectarine tree is covered in buds and a lot of them have already opened into flowers:

sooo much good food

2009-08-29T10:48:00.000+10:00

i loved trying all the different vegan options everywhere we went on our trip. in vancouver, our friends took us to a place we'd never tried called the foundation. it was all vegetarian and very vegan friendly. the service is always a bit slow but the food was soooooo tasty. i think we went 3 times during our trip. portland had LOTS of options for vegans. before we left australia i was looking at happy cow for ideas and printed of an entire page of purely vegan restaurants. the first full day we were there we wanted mexican for lunch. we decided to try to food carts that are in the downtown area. we found a mexican one and just asked for vegetarian burritos with no cheese or sour cream. the guy replied with his thick spanish accent"so you want to vegan burritos?"-- he knew exactly what we were going for! we got to go to hungry tiger too which has its own vegan menu in addition to the meat menu. the nachos even had really good melt-y vegan "cheese" on them! we went to a nice cafe on hawthorne (don't remember the name) where we just went in for coffee but they had so many vegan options on their menu that we ended up eating too (unfortunately our first choice, the vegan quesadilla, wasn't available because they'd run out of vegan cheese but we had a really nice tofu scramble instead). the picture above is zac in front on "zach's shack" hot dogs. this was the only thing we could find open to eat at 2 am (we tried 3 different mexican places). this hot dog place/bar was great because any of their 8 or 10 dogs on the menu could be done veggie. portland also has it's own "vegan mini mall" with food fight vegan grocery (i think we bought/ate more than a healthy amount of vegan jerky from there), herbivore clothing, a tattoo place (with vegan inks) and a bakery. right around the corner is red and black cafe which is a vegan, worker owned and run cafe. we also went to voodoo donoughts a couple times to get a sugar fix (vegan bear claw). portland is a great city for vegans.
when i got to victoria (i went a day before zac so i could try to organize more of my things to bring to australia) my mom took me to planet organic to pick up some random foods that weren't at the supermarket (like a soy based cheese that didn't have casein or other dairy bits in it). i ended up getting a nacho cheese that was SOOOOO good (we used it on quesadillas while we were camping and made a massive platter of nachos at my mom's on nite. we went to dinner at green cuisine (pay by weight vegan food). zac also had to go back there every time we were downtown so he could get a "not-naniamo bar" to snack on. we also went to hernandez (little mexican place recommended by sarah kramer. we had it for the first time on our last trip up to cananda and now we're hooked). we also HAD to try the joint after sarah kramer talked about that place too. i wish we'd gone to it sooner than on our last day cuz they have sooooo much good stuff and they can veganize any of their pizzas, calzones and quesadillas. they use some of the fake meat stuff and they make their own vegan cheese. we had a vegan-ized taco pizza--- sooo good! we also finally tried rebar which seems to be victoria's most well known vegetarian friendly restaurant. it was good but i liked some of the other places better.
we also had some good home cooked meals too. the evening we arrived in portland our friend's mom (who had been visiting from the east coast and was getting back on a plane in a couple hours) made us a nice pasta dinner with some vegan saussage in it. my mom made some really nice vegetable soup using her juicer to make a thick, tasty stock. we ate well (fairly healthy and LOTS of food) through our whole trip.

vancouver

2009-08-26T17:58:00.005+10:00

i took a LOT of photos during our 3 weeks overseas. i narrowed them down to a large selection and put them on facebook. here are a few of them and some stories of our trip (i've divided it into a few posts).

the second night we were in vancouver was the celebration of light (fireworks display) finale so we went to see that with a friend

the burrard street bridge after the fireworks (a bit glow-y from the smoke haze in the light): a friend of ours and his australian wife (he came down to oz to visit us/see the country, found a melbounre girl, married her a year ago and they live in vancouver) had some kind of tour passes that get them and 1 guest free entry to a lot of tourist-y things. they hired a share car for an afternoon and took us up grouse mountain and capilano suspension bridge.

there are grizzlies on top of grouse. the 2 bears were taken to live in a large enclosure when they were orphaned (in 2 seperate incidents) as cubs. i think that was about 6 years ago because we saw them when they were cubs when we did a hike up the grouse grind (the tour pass got us in the gondola for free)

this young bird was practicing for the bird show they do on grouse: we also took the free ski lift up to the very top from the main tourist-y area (the second mountain i've ridden a chair lift on in the non-ski season this year-- did it at buller during atp. seems like a weird thing to do. especially twice in 8 months)

the view coming down the gondola (it was a bit hazy from the heat):

the share car had to be back not long after we got down from grouse but we did make a quick stop to the capilano suspension bridge, ran across the bridge and through the treetops walk and gift shop and stopped only momentarily to have our photo taken with this bear (we managed to get the share car back only 3 minutes late and no one was waiting):

english bay as seen from the burrard street bridge (we walked that bridge several times):

the cool bike lane on the burrard street bridge:

its a bit hard to tell from the photo but to the left of the yellow line is a raised sidewalk/footpath. on the right is a road level bike lane blocked from traffic lanes by cement barriers. only problem is the start of the bridge is a bit dodgy for bikes not to get hit by cars merging onto the bridge from a side street.

we were also in vancouver for the pride festival. we decided to watch the parade. my favourite bit (the dog has doggles on his head!!!!):

we also got to go to under the volcano festival. a good day of music and relaxing. it's at this great park on the beach in north vancouver. the day started out a bit rainy but cleared up a bit and was nice (not too hot or sunny to be out all day but not cold either). the view from the beach:

we went to portland for a few days to see a friend (i LOVE portland). i didn't get many photos (and most of the photos i took were of our friend's roommate's dog tanner-- he was sooooo cute!). i did get this one. it's not really funny in america, only australia.

our one incident we had happen in vancouver (there's always one) was at our favourite hostel. we love this place cuz we can get a private room with a double bed and its right downtown (although right on the edge of the seediest area of the poorest suburb in canada) and it's got a great pub downstairs from the hostel rooms. the private rooms are all on the second floor with windows overlooking this courtyard area that's only a couple meters or so across (and no doors to actually get into the courtyard at ground level). i woke up one nite to the sound of a lock being played with and then a creaking noise like our door wasn't shut properly and was just creaking slightly in a breeze. i thought that seemed a bit weird (cuz i'd seen zac shut and lock the door) so i tapped zac and said "i think our door is open". when he responed with "what?" we saw a silohette of a person diving under our bed!!!!! zac jumped up and grabbed his tough plasic nalgene water bottle (he's still convinced he could have done some damage with that) and i jumped over to the light and flicked it on. a guy crawled out from under our bed in his underwear! zac kept asking the guy what he was doing and the guy just kept repeating "just creepin around man, just creepin' around." our wallets and passports were sitting up on the desk with some of our other stuff but he hadn't touched it (where was he gonna put anything he took anyway). he crawled over to the window, hopped out and onto a pipe that went across the courtyard. he then jumped to the women's bathroom window (which was kind of a big leap) and went out through there. zac went down to the desk and got told the staff on duty (which unfortunately the night shift is done by this guy that doesn't seem to speak or understand english very well at all and is rude on top of that). he came up and took a quick look at our room and our the window (the guy had long gone) and then told us to go to sleep. the hostel is pretty secure and you need a key card to get to the stairwell to the rooms and then another to get into your floor's hallway and a key for your room. non-hostel guests are not supposed to be brought into the hostel so we were pretty sure he was staying there and had a room he'd taken his clothes off in. the next morning zac went down to the desk and the woman there asked zac right away if he was shook up about the last night. she said they'd looked at the security footage and saw him go into the women's bathroom and 15 minutes later come out again. when he came down in the morning they told him he was evicted (he only had 1 more night to go but he actually asked if he could have his money back for that next nite!!!). he claimed he was drunk and trying to scare a friend but got the wrong room. we're pretty sure he wasn't actually trying to take anything or do anything to us but you can't just crawl into someone's room!!! the hostel got barbed wire put over the pipe that day and i think bars on the window too but we didn't want to stay there anymore so they refunded our money, gave us extra coffee vouchers and some vouchers for the bar. fortunately our friends micah and stephanie live close by and were willing to have us stay for a few more nights with them then we'd originally planned (we were only going to stay with them the last 2 nights since they have a fairly small 1 bedroom apartment). i'm a bit sad that hostel has been ruined for me cuz that was the only hostel i ever really liked.

victoria

2009-08-26T17:30:00.005+10:00

we spent a week in victoria (including 2 days camping with my brother and his girlfriend). i took a LOT of pictures on the ferry ride to and from the island.

mount baker from the swartz bay ferry terminal before going back to vancouver (that was the first day we saw baker, it had been hidden in haze every time we were places we should be able to see it until that point):

approaching tsawwassen ferry terminal (and all the mountains just behind vancouver):

passing another ferry (one of the newer ferries):

my mom took us to goldstream for a walk. unfortunately we got caught (unprepared) in a heavy rain shower (it only lasted about 10 minutes but we were wet). i wasn't able to get many picutres cuz of the rain but here's one of a stump growing a tree ontop of it: the harbour (one of many shots):

the legislative buildings and a totem:

this was just at the end of my mom's street. there are a few deer that live in the neighbourhood since the wooded area they lived in behind our house (and the neighbours' houses) has been mostly cut down and houses have been built):