Sorry folks, no pictures this weekend. Oh wait, let me grab the camera…

I’ll tell the story in a minute.

I was going to say that it was a reasonably quiet weekend, but we kept busy enough. On Saturday, we trundled down to City Square Mall (Cambie & 12th) to catch a free Charlotte Diamond concert. Along the way, we passed a new crane being put up at VGH, and the demolition of the old BC Cancer Agency Building. Aidan loves trucks and construction things (and so does Gwen — funny, I’m the civil engineer) so it was an entertaining walk.

The concert was in the “food court” at the mall (world’s smallest food court, but I digress) and it was packed. Gwen and Aidan squeezed in and I stayed at the back guarding the SUS (Sport Utility Stroller). Aidan had a great time wandering around and seemed to enjoy the first 20 or 30 minutes of children’s songs. Gwen gave him a pretty loose rein, so at one point he even wandered almost right to the stage. It could have been bad … he was eyeing the monitors and mic cords … but some sort of instinct kicked in and he made his way back to mommy.

The concert went on for another 30 minutes, but he got pretty restless. He started wandering away and was more interested in other kids’ strollers and sippy cups than the music. We stayed right until the end, though, when there was a draw for some CDs and DVDs. Wouldn’t you know it, Gwen won a Christmas CD! She didn’t even know she had entered!

That afternoon, Gwen put the lights on the Christmas tree, while I supervised. I believe we had 3 strings of 100 and 3 smaller strings (50? 70?). The last time we put the tree up, we had one fewer string of lights, but ran out before finishing getting them all on, so we had to get another. This year, Gwen ran out of lights about 2/3 of the way up the tree. So what did we do? We went out and bought two more strings of 100 lights. Over a glass of Irish Creme on the rocks, Gwen finished lighting the tree that night after Aidan was put to bed, and we got it decorated too. Now, there’ve been many snarky comments about the lights, so I’ll just let the picture above speak for itself. It’s certainly a well-lit tree, but I don’t think it’s excessive.

Plus, it heats the top floor.

Aidan’s been pretty good with the tree, occassionally pulling some of the ornaments off and bringing them to us, and occassionally saying “Light!” and then going over and warming his hands, but I don’t think it’s been too bad. Certainly, the tree is still standing, and most of the lights and ornaments are still there.

On Sunday evening we went on a sleigh ride, part of Holy Trinity’s Christmas activities. The sleigh ride was actually a horse-drawn carriage ride (seating maybe 20 or 30 people), and it was in Stanley Park. This might surprise you if you know anything about the weather we’ve been having lately. The last windstorm we had (Thursday night) felled over 1000 trees in Stanley Park, and they figure it might be months before they get all the debris cleared. The park was supposedly closed to the public all weekend, but apparently the sleigh ride was to be the first public use since the wind storm, so away we went. Arriving in the park, the road to the stables was blocked by a Vancouver Parks staffer. We were told to loop around by the Aquarium to get to where we needed to go. This seemed incredibly silly since that mean that we were driving over quite a bit of tree debris. In fact, although the western part of the park was nominally open, it was hard to see why. Huge trees were down all over the place, but the road was cleared of most major debris. We arrived at the stables 5 or 10 minutes later, 30 seconds up the road from the Parks worker. The parking lot was mostly being used as a staging lot for the tree moving equipment, but that was fine for Aidan!

Aidan enjoyed the sleigh ride — at least once we got going. He sat quietly for a bit, watching the world go by from the open-sided carriage. We droned Christmas carols, losing the words often since we couldn’t see the song sheets we were given. Aidan picked up during some of the livelier songs, dancing and “singing”. 20 or 30 minutes later it was all over. We got off the carriage and said good bye to the horses. Again, he was interested, but not really enamoured with the horses.

And, although we brought both the camera and video camera, we didn’t use either. Oh well.

On Friday, Gwen went to the CBC Food Bank Day down at Pacific Centre. Apparently they were so thrilled to see a young’un there (um, Aidan) that they gave her a family pass to Maplewood Farm. For what it’s worth, CBC raised over $500,000 for the food bank. But this isn’t a story about that, it’s about the Farm.

So, on Sunday afternoon, we went.  I knew nothing about Maplefood Farm — I didn’t even know it existed. Plus, it was a typical Vancouver winter day: grey and wet, but on the North Shore it was more so. But, we had the passes and it was a good excuse to get out of the house, so we bundled the kid up in rain gear and headed out.

It turns out to be a great place to bring toddlers. It’s a small property, but they have horses, cows, chickens, peafowl, goats, sheep, pigs, and sundry other fauna.

Aidan was suitably impressed with being able to get up close and personal with the paddocked animals, such as the pot-bellied pig:

After seeing some of the penned animals, we went to the rabbit pen. You can actually go into the rabbit pen and touch and feed the dozen or so rabbits that they have. I’m not sure who liked petting the bunnies more: Gwen or Aidan. A big bonus was that he didn’t run away screaming when they hippy-hopped around!

After the rabbits, we went into the big barn where we saw a small troupe of girls doing Irish Dance. Again, this was a good source of entertainment, as you can see:

Following the dancing, we went to see the goats. It seemed like they had two dozen goats in a muddy pasture. Only, these were small goats. And, we were able to go into the pasture and touch the goats! Aidan thought that this was just great!

All in all, it was a really good outing. I was originally skeptical, but Aidan clearly enjoyed seeing all the animals and being able to go up and touch so much of them was quite exciting.

I don’t know how we’ll beat that next weekend!

So, since mid-October, we’ve been subscribed to Zip.ca.  For those who don’t know, Zip’s a DVD rent-by-mail operation.  Canada’s equivalent to Netflix.  Rent-by-mail sounds pretty hokey to start with, but with our plan, we get to have 3 DVDs “out” at a time, and unlimited DVDs for the month.  All for one monthly fee.

So, the first thing that makes this worthwhile is the huge library.  Blockbuster’s got nothing on these guys.  Lots of kids stuff, lots of current stuff, more TV series than you could possible fathom.  We even have some UK series on our list (Blackadder, A Bit of Fry and Laurie) that we’d never be able to get from the local store, or at any sort of quality from any of the Torrent sites.

The second thing is the turn around time.  Usually, it’s about three days between putting a DVD into the mail and getting a new one from your list.  This was a concern going in, but it actually works out rather well.
And, the customer service is good too.  We had a DVD delivered that we didn’t order.  A polite online chat session with a CSR got the problem fixed.  They sent a follow-up email afterwards which led to a second chat when they told me they were going to resend a DVD that I already had.  In the end, we got the DVD we were supposed to, and within a few days.

The fact that we can “time-shift” these is also a plus.  Google for “Auto Gordian Knot”.  And “DVD Shrink”.
On the downside, impulse watching doesn’t happen.  You build a list, and you watch what you get.  You don’t necessarily get what’s at the top of your list, so it’s pretty hard to predict what you’re going to get.  Also, it doesn’t prevent you from getting crap movies.

For example, we recently got three recent “comedies”.  “The Wedding Crashers”, “The 40 Year-Old Virgin”, and “The Brothers Grimm”.  So far, “The Wedding Crashers” was so-so.  No need to see it again.  “The 40 Year-Old Virgin”?  Ugh.  a few funny moments, but painful mostly.  Actually, a painful first half, and an almost enjoyable second half.  And those were two of the better performing movies recently.  I wonder about the third in the set.

I think the best thing is being able to catch up on tv series that we’ve missed out on.  You know, the ones you didn’t watch but turned out to be great.  Sure beats buying them all.

Between this and our PVR, regular TV, movie-store rentals, and movie theatre visits have dried up.  The entertainment industry had better be paying attention — things are changing.

For some time, I’ve harped on about West Coast service.  West Coast service is typically quite laid back.  Slow is not an inaccurate description.

Over the past few days of Christmas shopping, I’ve had a number of … well, surprisingly helpful “customer service” people help me.  Typically when approached by salespeople in retail, I brush them off.  I absolutely hate being harassed or pressured.  But over the past few days, when asked the “can I help you?”, I’ve looked them straight in the eye and said “yes”.  Of course, it helps that I’ve had some particular things in mind.  Anyway, I’ve had to re-evaluate my opinions a little bit.  Of course both my sister and a good friend, M., work retail so I know they’re not all bad.  But still, the concept of helpful CSRs is a little bit hard to digest.

So, slow but helpful.  Hmmm, my world is tilting.

The Christmas traffic sucks though.  Some things never change.