Shot/Seen

November snow is a relative rarity in Vancouver. Some winters, snow is a rarity period.

But it snowed this morning, heavily at times, even if the temperature was too warm for much of it to stick.

When I look out this same window tonight, there’s only a light dusting — not much more than a heavy frost — on the lawns, and a couple of cars that haven’t moved today still have white roofs.

Link takes you to my Flickr photo stream.

Saturday night in Seattle at Georgia’s Greek Restaurant and Deli, a small and friendly place, where Georgia is a lively host, and the food and the music are great.

Yanni Novakis is the Greek in the band, and the entertainer, as comfortable singing O Sole Mio as he is classic Greek rembetika, and an energetic guitarist to boot.

Cathie Whitesides and Hank Bradley aren’t Greek, but they play the music as well as I’ve heard it played. And they clearly enjoy it all: I’ve rarely seen musicians smile their way through a gig the way Cathie and Hank do.

Laura Blumenthal isn’t Greek, either, but the Greeks in the audience have trouble believing that, when she sings or speaks. “But you have no accent,” several of them say in wonder. Laura sits in for the back half of the evening, singing in Greek and Turkish, her voice blending sweetly with Yanni’s.

Link goes to my Flickr photo set.

I haven’t had time to play with the WordPress template here and get everything properly set up, but all of these photos are available under Creative Commons licences. I intend to use both the Creative Commons Developing Nations CC deed and the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 CC deed.

Basically, those licences allow you to make use of my images for your own purposes or, if you are in a developing nation, for profit-making purposes. All the details of the two sets of licences is available from the links above.

Once I figure out out to hack the template here, I’ll add the appropriate CC badges.

WIthout a late-November Thanksgiving to mark the start of the holiday season, Christmas more or less seeps onto the scene in Canada.

Christmas displays pop up here and there throughout November — a string of lights here, a candy-caned window painting there, traceries of evergreen boughs slowly everywhere and, this week, a string of snowflakes in the window of the corner coffee shop.

Link goes to my Flickr photo stream.

Late fall in Vancouver inevitably means fog. While large parts of this country are getting ready for snow, we’re socked in and grayed out.

We had a four-day stretch of fog this week. Visibility was down to less than half-a-kilometre and all sound was muffled, even the rather mournful moans of the foghorns out in the bay.

Link goes to my Flickr photo stream.

If you’re going to sell Vespas, the service vehicle needs to capture the spirit of things.

Besides, I couldn’t resist the colours.

Link goes to my Flickr photo stream.

Graffiti tags are spray-painted everywhere in the city, evident but not very often overdone. Sometimes, I think there’s a whole language here that I don’t know and a story that I’m missing.

Note: Link goes to my Flickr photo set.

Last drop

It’s hardly an original observation, but Vancouver is fueled by coffee.

We’re known for having Starbucks outlets across the street from each other and for the sheer number of spots to get a double non-fat latte with chocolate sprinkles.

There are, for example, three coffee shops within three blocks of my place. Six blocks from here, there are three Starbucks within a block and a half. (According to the Starbucks web site store locator, there are 80 Starbucks within a five-mile radius of here.)

Note: Link goes to my Flickr photo set.

One of the reasons I love my neighbourhood is the richness of bird life. Along with the typical urban dwellers — the crows, the pigeons and all those little brown birds that I can’t identify — there are occasional visitors.

Just now, for instance, there’s a red-tailed hawk sitting on a branch of the tree across the alley. Two crows are keeping watch from another branch eight feet above the hawk, and there’s a grey squirrel nervously skittering around in the same tree. Two more crows have flown in and settled in above the hawk

It’s common for great blue herons to fly overhead. We’re coming up to the season when bald eagles will start making appearances and, every couple of weeks, a raven or two will show up.

All this in a highly urban area, in the middle of the city. Wonderful.