Dreaming of lime gerbils in a cheese sauce

This weekend I went to Vancouver BC with ljtourist for the Celebration of Light finals and Vancouver Pride. We drive up Friday night and got to town around 23:00ish. Frank dropped me off at my hotel then headed over to cow's place. The three of us then met up at Rhizome, a local hippy coffee shop around 23:40 or so for a drink and to semi-plan Saturday morning.

They wanted to sleep in and I'm not really able to do that - especially this weekend because I was a moron and forgot my CPAP machine. Sleep wasn't much of an option for me. We agreed to meet at Brian's place at 11:00 and head off to dim sum for brunch.

I woke up at my usual time (after a very restless sleep). After the usual morning ablutions I grabbed an apple tartlike thing at the continental breakfast at the hotel then wandered out to see what was going on. Evidently pretty much everyone in Vancouver is still asleep at 09:00 on Saturday morning. Everything but a few coffee shops was closed... with one very, very notable exception.

While wandering around I came upon John's Jukes, Inc. A retail emporium that has, among other things, refurbished pinball tables for sale. Oh dear, I am in soooo much trouble. I've wanted my own table for a scary long time. He has a large selection (at least to my inexperienced eye) and seems to have pretty reasonable prices. I played one called Fire for a good 45 minutes. It's CDN$2500 plus shipping and customs and I'm really, really tempted to buy it. However, I want to play other games and see if it's really the one I want to invest in. I'm actually considering going back up there just to test play the tables he has and pick one. It's almost like I'm adopting something. I did pull myself away from the shop and wander off to the Nice Cafe for a pot of tea before heading to Brian's to start the day.

After much discussion we went to a dim sum place in walking distance from Brian's. We got there around noon and as I expected there was a bit of a wait. I think we were seated around 13:15 or so. The food was very good. Unlike most dim sum places they don't circulate carts. You order and wait and wait and eventually some of the food arrives then some more and then you order more and some of that and some of what you'd previously ordered arrives and so on. I think we were there a good 3 hours from first arrival to paying the bill.

We hopped on the Skytrain and headed out to New West Minister to the game store where I got so many Wii games last time I was there. This time the selection was slim. I didn't get anything for the Wii and I only got one pack for the DSlite. At least now I can play music on the lite. After the game store we decided to go for some Tim Horton's donuts. Brian looked up the nearest one and we thought it was a mere 5 blocks away - up hill. Up a very steep hill.

We were wrong. It wasn't 5 blocks. It was a lot more (I've no idea the count, 15? 25?). Lets just say we worked off those donuts before we even bought them. We caught a bus back to the Skytrain station and headed back to Brian's after that.

The evening's festivities and Sunday's activities will be in future posts. I don't want to make this one tooooo long.