Nothing much!

April 29, 2009 Maurice Leave a comment

Well the weather finally seems to be turning the corner into summer, but I’m not holding my breath about it! The other day i posted a picture of some tulips in our back yard garden – here is a picture of the tulips a couple days later – the color is darned glorious!

And the cherry tree has finally bloomed, but it looks like a lot less blooms than last year. Guess we’re not going to get a bumper crop this year!

One of our friends was heading to Cancun, Mexico but has been forced to cancel due to the swine flu pandemic that threatens to envelope the globe. Is that something or what? The scale of it seems incredible, with Mexico City considering shutting down public transit! Wow – that’s an amazing reaction.

Surely, in this day and age, a flu pandemic cannot be THAT serious, can it? They say that up to a quarter of a million people die from the flu yearly, so will this drive that number up significantly? I always worry about how the media approaches these kinds of stories. Headlines from many papers are over top really, creating fear and worry among anyone with a sniffle or a cough.

SWINE FLU GROUND ZERO screams one headline; SCIENTISTS PERPLEXED BY SWINE FLU screams another; even the New York Times is adding to the hysteria with silly pictures of people with masks on… the practice of wearing a mask can actually INCREASE your chances of getting the virus, people! Here’s a link to a story if you don’t believe me.

RELAX – chill out. This too will pass….

All About Max

The mind wanders

April 22, 2009 Maurice Leave a comment

Stream of consciousness post this evening… We’ve had time to reflect on the Vancouver Canucks four game sweep of the St. Louis Blues and people got more than just a little carried away! They were out blocking intersections, and honking horns and fighting – and finally a cop got his leg broken. I mean, come on people! It’s the first round, we’ve won nothing.

Not that I’m not glad we won! Sure, I’m excited, but there are three more rounds to go. No point in getting carried away over nothing.

What happened to spring? Usually the cherry tree in the backyard has finished blooming already. So far, it’s not giving much sign of anything. If this is happening to our usually very productive tree, how are things going with farmers? I sense that food is going to be pricey this summer, rather than cheaper.

The early tulips we got in February are toast; they grew four or five inches then got snowed on, and they never recovered. The ones that were later coming up are finally giving a bit of a show.

Max had some dental work done this week, and had his nails clipped. He’s not great with strangers to say the least! When my folks stayed for a few days last week, he barked at them each morning. sigh. Not behaviour we want – I wish I knew what he felt… how can these people in the house be a threat? They’ve been there all day, all night…

I’m confused. He’s such a goofy friendly guy in general. It’s just this stress of seeing some one new sets him barking.

My official Sun Run time was 1:13:35. Darned slow I know, but I see in retrospect that I needed to train differently than I did. I’ll do better next year. It’s fun to be running again, especially now that it’s finally warming up. Although it wasn’t really very warm this morning!

(So what did happen to spring? Isn’t this the time of year it gets warmer?)

Thought for the Day: If I can remember when an application was for employment, a program was a TV show, a hard drive was a long road trip, and a keyboard was an electronic piano, does that make me old?

Something About Us

Sun Run Sunday

April 19, 2009 Maurice 2 Comments

Today was the Sun Run. It’s quite an event, the 2nd largest in the world. As one of the winners said, “Oh I’ll be back – watching 50,000 people run is inspirational!” There were actually 55,858 people who ran, walked or rolled the 10k course through the streets of Vancouver.

I’ve run in the Sun Run before, but the last time I ran it (2000), there were 40,000 runners, and we ran through Stanley Park for the most part. This course was quite a bit different, never entering Stanley Park at all. There were two tough bridges to ascend, but for the most part the run was flat and level.

Not that that helped me! But at least I made it through. But it was a tough go… if it had been an 8k, I’d have been fine. If I’m philosophical about it, I haven’t run for 8 years, and I’ve only been training for 3 months, so can’t expect much. Excuses, excuses, I just didn’t have it this time. Ah well. I’ll be out running on Tuesday with Max, and we’ll have a fine time.

The most amazing thing was to see the MASS of people! Really amazing – you come around the corner onto 4th and there are two kilometres of 4 lane street absolutely solid with people running – absolutely solid. Pam described it as a wall of people moving, when she saw us coming over the Cambie Street Bridge – and it really was something to see.

Lots of people run it in costumes, but I saw a very inspirational saying on one ladies shirt. It said, “Living proof that organ donation works. Thanks to…” and she named the people who I assume saved her life. Wonderful.

Truly an amazing experience. Sometimes the running is tough (move over to the right BEFORE you start walking please!) and you have to dodge around people who are slower, but it is a FUN RUN. And the inspiration on the way from people lining the route, giving you applause and words of encouragement, that really helps too. When you’re struggling they inspire you to get back into pace cuz hey, they came to see runners, so give ’em a show!

Tons of runners carry cameras, so there must be a lot pictures of the race around. Here is a link to the Vancouver Sun’s gallery.

Something About Us

Run for Life

April 6, 2009 Maurice 2 Comments

I have been doing some running lately. Seems every time I get a dog, we start running! When Buck got too old to run, we gave it up.

Max is a fit ball of energy tho! He loves to run, especially if there are birds to chase. We run around Surrey Lake and he thinks it’s a total gas to chase the ducks and other birds making use of the wetlands.

On Sunday April 5th I ran in the 5k Run For Life, a fund raiser for cancer research. My family has been hit hard by cancer, so I figured it was a perfect time to do a little fund raising and get some excercise too. This was the first 5k I’ve run. It was fun – I will definitely do it again next year too.

I’ve run in the Sun Run before, and the last time there were 40,000 people. This race had about 300! You can be a little more anonymous in that 40,00 mass! But 300 – not so easy…

It was held out at Sun God arena in Delta BC. We got there early, and there were lots of people milling about, some obviously course marshalls, wearing bright yellow vests with crosses.

Lots of people were there to support cancer survivors in the family, some proudly wearing names of people they are hoping to help. (Go Mario!)