Carpet Cleaning Day Adventures

Saturday was the least fun day of the year: carpet cleaning day. Yay, let’s get up early on the weekend and move furniture and vacuum! Fun! The cleaner was supposed to come between 10-12 but he actually showed up at 9:30, which was good because he was done faster but bad because it meant I didn’t get to have a shower.

He was done by eleven, and rather than spend the whole afternoon hanging out in the linoleum-floored parts of the apartment while the dogs languished in their crates Taylor and I decided instead to embark on an Epic Quest.

First, we went down to Barking Babies in Yaletown so I could buy Georgie a new collar- she already outgrew her baby one! I got the same colour/style/brand: red glitter! I haven’t put it on her yet but it’s very cute.

The next leg of our journey took us to the edge of Chinatown and the weird Tinseltown mall. Taylor wanted to go check out some nerd hobby shop so I went to Yoko Yaya and bought a bag full of origami paper, Japanese stationery, glitter stickers, pens and tiny plates. Taylor was disappointed by the store he went to and Yoko Yaya makes him crabby, so he went and sat outside. When I found him he said he just wanted to go home, but I was like “… and spend the whole afternoon hanging out in the linoleum-floored parts of the apartment while the dogs languish in their crates??” and he agreed to accompany me into Chinatown proper. To try to cheer him up I took us to Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Park (the free side, not the classical garden you have to pay to get into). I love it there, it’s like a ~hidden oasis~

when I took this picture I realized that I could see this Martin Creed piece almost perfectly from where I was standing

After a quick trip up the street to try to find some good Hello Kitty toys (no dice) we swung back past Tinseltown, where I’d promised to buy Taylor a frappuccino and some doughnuts- he was pretty hangry (hungry + angry) by this point and I didn’t want our day ruined. Once we were re-energized we headed into Gastown, where we stopped at nood– we were looking for end tables for the living room, a chair for my new desk (I think I may have found one at a different store yesterday but that’s another story) and Taylor also bought a salad spinner (another story, this one about lettuce).

Taylor trying to find out what this store was going to be

some Halo thing next to Waterfront Station

the exterior of the Fairmont Pacific Rim, it says “lying on top of a building… lying on top of a building… lying on top of a building… the clouds looked no nearer than when I was lying on the street”

Instead of cutting through downtown to get back home we kept heading west until we reached the Olympic cauldron (which is a fountain now), at which point we got down onto the Seawall. Other than a couple cauldron-viewing sessions back in February I hadn’t been down to that area in forever, back when it was all detours and construction sites. Now it’s all little parks and restaurants and weird art sculptures all the way through Coal Harbour, so it as a really nice walk. We went as far as Cardero St before heading up the hill to go home. We got back here at about 4 o’clock, which means we’d been out walking around the city for FIVE HOURS. Wow. WOW!

Digital Orca by Douglas Coupland- how Vancouvery!

Kichou is all wet because he fell in a fountain, haha

I think we really made the best of Carpet Cleaning Day, although by the end I was pretty footsore and hangry myself, so I don’t think we’ll be doing that again soon, I do want to go back and check out some of the stuff we saw again, just not all in one fell swoop, you know? Spread out.