a year of yay

 late in the afternoon on new years eve i went on a little driving adventure downtown to pick up flavor, ottolenghi's new cookbook and fatima's christmas gift to me.  just as an aside, if otto, as best bud and i call him, lives in england why do you think he spells the name of his book FLAVOR?  come on now, yottam, are you serious?  we all know it's FLAVOUR.  anyways i had a nice little outing out into the wide world. the book could only be secured at the robson street indigo.  there has been a large shrinkage of physical book stores and this has opened my eyes wide to it.  as i neared the store i saw that finding street parking would be an exercise in futility. an already busy shopping street had even less parking with wide swaths blocked off to make pedestrian distancing easier.  i soon caved to my resolve not to use a parking garage and found one on alberni and thurlow.  

there was a group assembled at the parking pay station.  some dressy middle aged nye party animals, a few of which already seemed quite tipsy and me in my shlubby jeans and tshirt.  i'm middle aged too.  i need to keep reminding myself.  but they were older than me mmk?

the girl guarding the door directed me to the proper pick up spot and i went right there, got my book in my greedy grubs with a jolt of joy  and i walked right out again. i drove around downtown a bit but there really wasn't anything to see.  so i drove towards home.  having lived exclusively on  bread for a couple of days i was super thirsty.  naturally i hatched a plan to have some mye shaved ice delights.  when i got to richmond i drove directly to sulamida and it was closed.  i could have gone to other shaved ice places but i said to myself, self satisfy yourself with a nice icy fruity screamer, it's way cheaper and it's by your house and you know it's open.  so that's what i did.

exactly 30 minutes after consuming said treat i was in the thros of lactose intolerance on the toilet for maybe 45 minutes of agony.  after that lesson, learned but not accepted, i snuggled into my bed with FLAVOR and whiled away the hours happily ogling food artistry and craftmanship and learning otto's lessons in flavour.  the 3 p's. process, pairing and produce.  i actually finished up on the last page just as the neighbourhood fireworks alerted me to 2021.  i kissed myself and went to sleep...but not right away.

heather and i met nyd as is our tradition for a walk.  but first we enjoyed a brunch at sophie's cosmic cafe in kits.  i picked heather up at city hall skytrain station.  my first act of renewal on nyd was emptying all the mcdonald's bags from the back seat of my car.  new year, new fast food escapades!  speaking of food, heather brought me a bag full of foods.  she's on her own journey of food discovery.  her tastes are shifting, you could say.   so for me that means i got some fish, some bacon \(don't worry she still likes bacon.  i know you were worried) some crackers and cheese (stuff we didn't eat at christmas), trailmix with peanut butter cups, some dried fruit that looked like cut up veggies, and some banana pudding...maybe more that i can't remember right now.  luckily i still had my work's cooler in my trunk since camping, so we stuck it all in there.

h and i were worried that there would be huge line ups at sophie's but not only did we get right in, but there was parking directly in front of the restaurant.  wuuuut.  so year of yay!  sophie's cosmic cafe is a lil diner with a very quirky asthetic.  the walls and shelf are crammed full of weird things like pez collections, lunch buckets, sparkly boots, whatever.  it's all there.  the seats on the booths are bright red vinyl and the railing between seating partitions is held up by rows of glass coke bottles.  bright colourful and a feast for the eyes while your tummy is waiting for its feast.  i got the mexicana which was eggs scrambled with italian sausage, salsa, sour cream, black beans and tortilla chips.  i got breakfast potatoes on the side because how can one pass up on breakfast potatoes?  on cannot.  heather got these bennys that came on cornbread.  the cornbread was the clincher for her but in the end she said she couldn't taste it.

after some good eats and some good chats we drove up to ubc.  our plan was to walk in pacific spirit park because we might get less wet in the woods.  this was my theory.  it was raining as it had been all week.  we sat in the car in our parking spot.  sometimes the rain was coming down hard and other times it seemed to let up.  we didn't feel like getting out of the car, but eventually we just did it.  jaywalked marine drive without incident and entered the trails.

we had a lovely walk with lots of chats.  we were not walking fast.  not even briskly.  more like a chubby amble on my part.  we develeoped a system where heather-of-the-bad-knees would use my shoulder as she stepped up on to the boardwalks.  i noticed by the way she was stepping that the steps, which seemed pretty normal height to me were high to her.  i thank heather for giving me insight to the vertically challenged lives around me.  i've been this particular height for about 35 years... that's weird to think, about.  i've usually been the tallest of most of the cohorts i belonged to.  anways i digress.  what's important to note is that we met many people and their dogs.  heather was haivng that ambient noise thing that happens to her brought on by the sound tunnel created by her umbrella.  i of course was bear headed out in the elements, bare feet in my keanes.  i'd much rather get my foot wet than a sock wet.  some people don't comprehend this preference.  have burning coals for feet and a dawning of comprehension might occur.

the coolest thing we saw was a woodpecker!  yes it was woodpecker friyay 2021!  the woodpecker was quite low on his tree and so busy creating the largest hole ever that he seemed quite unbothered by h and i gaping at it him delight for quite some time.

we turned around at some point and headed back.  i told h that i always wonder what do i miss by turning around.  fomo is real when it comes to trails.  as we were nearing the road i registered some discomfort in my feet.  "yah, i need new shoes" i said to myself and also to heather.  wet and happy i dropped heather off at 49th sky train station, saying hi to my long ago first neighbourhood in vancouver.  our tisdall house is not there anymore but i said hi to the spot where it once was.

on the way home i was listening to the cbc, as i do, and there was a comedian, derek seguin, talking about his girlfriend's motion sickness.  it was so hilar.  reminded me so much of karey. i forgot all about the food in the back and was home about 30 min before remembering the food in the car.  luckily the fish was still frozen

after some time sluggin, i got up and discovered that my feet were more than annoyed.  my bad foot.  the gimp, the bum one, the maimed appendage, was back, and maaaaaad.  i couldn't walk on it.  i spent the major part of the rest of the weekend supine.

note the new jeans