After tonight’s broadcast and after looting our hotel mini-bars, we’re going to try to brave the blizzard and fly east to home and hearth, and to do laundry well into next week.  Before we leave this thoroughly polite country, the polite thing to do is leave behind a thank-you note.

Thank you, Canada:
For being such good hosts.
For your unfailing courtesy.
For your (mostly) beautiful weather.
For scheduling no more than 60 percent of your float plane departures at the exact moment when I was trying to say something on television.
For not seeming to mind the occasional (or constant) good-natured mimicry of your accents.
For your unique TV commercials — for companies like Tim Hortons — which made us laugh and cry.
For securing this massive event without choking security, and without publicly displaying a single automatic weapon.
For having the best garment design and logo-wear of the games — you’ve made wearing your name a cool thing to do.
For the sportsmanship we saw most of your athletes display.
For not honking your horns. I didn’t hear one car horn in 15 days — which also means none of my fellow New Yorkers rented cars while visiting.
For making us aware of how many of you have been watching NBC all these years.
For having the good taste to have an anchorman named Brian Williams on your CTV network, who turns out to be such a nice guy.
For the body scans at the airport which make pat-downs and cavity searches unnecessary.
For designing those really cool LED Olympic rings in the harbor, which turned to gold when your athletes won one.
For always saying nice things about the United States…when you know we’re listening.
For sharing Joannie Rochette with us.
For reminding some of us we used to be a more civil society.
Mostly, for welcoming the world with such ease and making lasting friends with all of us.

As I live in an Olympic “hot zone” I thought I would take some pictures of what it is like being in my neighborhood these days.

This is a new sign (above) that suddenly appeared one  day.  I kept thinking they should have had something like this long ago.  I hope that they will be able to change the sign after the Olympics and redraw it with the appropriate (permanent) information.  These signs have popped up all over town.  It would be a waste if they were taken down after the Olympics.  I’m still trying to figure out where I live.  I have been here for 1o years and it has always been called East False Creek, Main St, East Vancouver.  I have never ever been called Mt Pleasant (that’s a whole different area).  I guess, since we don’t have a name, they figured Mt. Pleasant sounded good.  No map I have found today refers to this as Mt. Pleasant (that’s up the hill from here and to the east).

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Above are three of the various banners that are all over town.  These are the ones on my street as I walk home.  They are attractive banners, in both official languages – I see that every second sign is in French and all the sports seem to be represented.  My only question is…what does the blue sign under the last banner mean?  It popped up yesterday.  I have NO idea what any of the acronyms represent.  I’m used to seeing movie signs – and this seems to be in the same vein.  It’s on a need to know basis, and if you don’t need to know…you’ll never figure it out.  If you head to the left as the sign represents you end up in the parking lot beside Science World (which is now Russia House) and you are beside all the tents that are Quebec House, Saskatchewan House, Hockey House etc.  If you go straight on, you can get to the media centre at Canada Place.  With all the road closures, our street has become one of only two northbound streets open heading to downtown. Main St is the other one, but with the closure of the viaducts this weekend, traffic will be very interesting to say the least.

Next there are all the “parking restriction” signs.  These are my favourite because they are EVERYWHERE.  In this case, we are talking about a two block area.   This is my walk home, north along Quebec St, and it is only two blocks.  It is a block full of condominiums (five towers), and townhouses.

This is the sign right in front of my house.  All the signs get confusing, but this one bugs me the most.  The bus sign points to the bus stop.  After 10 years of living here with no way of getting to Yaletown we finally got a bus last year.  It’s a half hour walk along the seawall (which is closed for the Olympics to get here), or it’s a bus ride…the next sign is our actual bus stop.

I’m not impressed that my bus stop is no longer there.  Now, I can’t go to Costco, the liquor store or the Urban Fare market.  I’d like to say I’ll be so busy going to all the events around me, that this minor inconvenience won’t bother me – but that would be a lie.  We all know where the tickets went (hello city hall, hello fat cats, hello government trough dwellers, hello scalpers) and we all know that nobody we know is going to any of the big events with a face value ticket.  I am going to some short track speed skating, some skiing at Whistler (don’t get me started on transportation) and I do have nosebleed (and I mean NOSEBLEED) tickets to see Burton Cummings at the Victory Ceremony.  I bought a package early and got lucky.  For $900 I am going to 3 events and a victory ceremony.  I’d like to see the opening or closing ceremonies (they were fabulous in Salt Lake) but that won’t happen unless I get lucky.  The last time I checked they were going for about $800 each.  So, I’m not impressed with all the inconveniences and closures, but I hope the games are successful.  I just wish Canada would smarten up and actually celebrate their athletes and be proud.  I know more about Russian and Australian athletes than I do our own.  Why would that be?  Oh yeah, all our money went into the pockets of the rich and not into promoting the actual sports  represented.

I don’t mean to be cynical.  It just drives me crazy that we live in a country where we have great athletes and great opportunities.  I used to idolize Karen Magnusson when I was a young girl and she would teach me skating; I sat on the edge of my seat watching Kathy Kreiner tear down the hills in Calgary.  Why aren’t we celebrating these athletes in the run up to the games?  Why don’t we hear more “ra ra Canada” as this is OUR Olympics?  No, we’re too busy trying not to offend anybody to do that.

The games are almost here – pray for snow for Cypress.  It’s not looking too healthy.

I do like Miley’s voice. It has that “je ne said quois” quality that I like. Britney had the same thing in her voice, as did Rachel Sweet, Bonnie Tyler and numerous others before her. She also seems to have a talent for writing decent songs. I know its pop schlock…but that’s what I like.

(I can’t believe I’m mentioning her in my blog)…..but I digress…

The latest from Miley is that she is leaving Twitter (has left). I’m always surprised when celebs tweet personal stuff anyway. There are some who only seem to tweet that which will help their profile or help sales or promote their causes (hello Donny Osmond). While I see nothing wrong with this, I just roll my eyes. I don’t want to be anyone’s friend, but I don’t need fifteen messages to vote for Donny on DWTS thank you very much. Rainn Wilson twitters, but all I think when I read his is that he’s nuts. Will Wheaton twitters but only to apologize or say what “con” he’s appearing at this week. John Mayer twitters but it’s boring. The list goes on. The only celebrity tweets I really enjoy are those of Jann Arden. The woman is crazy, normal, human,obsessed and fabulous. She’s also terrifically funny.

Back to Miley though. Miley didn’t like that the press, paparazzi, stalkerazzing, (insert derogatory term here) were taking everything she tweeted and making it into news. So…she wrote a rap about it. I think it’s pretty funny…and that’s why I think she rocks.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tSOTQPUQoU

So, here I am over a month later, thinking about going back to work tomorrow. It’s amazing to me how life just goes on. It doesn’t matter if I participate or not – it just goes on. Sometimes I wish it would just stop until I’m ready, then I won’t have to worry about wasted time!

Today is my last day of being able to sleep in before the 5:30 a.m. alarm starts blaring at me. So, this morning at 7am I was jolted awake by the loud sound of blaring music coming from across the street. Of course, we have to have a rock concert in the parking lot at that hour. With fifteen apartment buildings in the neighborhood it’s perfect. It’s the worst band I’ve ever heard, massacring songs I actually purport to have enjoyed at some point in my life. Of course, this is all because there is some run this morning. I don’t know who’s running, or where (I suspect it’s another Breast Cancer Run), but all the runners have run away! They’re not standing there listening to you play. I would have run really fast just to get away from the sound. I don’t get it. I don’t know why this has to happen weekend after weekend. Do we really need rockbands at 7am??? Really? All it does is make me want to support the cause even less.

Sigh. I’m cranky in my sleep deprived state. I can’t even watch tv with this noise in the background – when is it going to end? Obviously no city official lives within earshot or they never would have allowed it!

Today is one of those days. Several months ago Susan Atkins asked to be released from prison. She is apparently dying of a brain tumour and is not long for this world.

Yes, this is the Susan Atkins of Charles Manson fame. She swore before a grand jury that under the direction of Charles Manson she stabbed Sharon Tate to death and she participated in the death of musician Gary Hinman. She also admitted that there was no limit to what she would do for Manson. She thought he was Jesus. Furthermore, she showed no remorse or willingness to accept responsibility for what she had done forty plus years ago.

She was denied parole.

Flash forward to December 21, 1988. Pan Am flight 103 is blown up over Lockerbie Scotland. All 289 people on board (mostly Americans) and 11 people on the ground were killed.

In 2001 Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was convicted of putting a suitcase full of explosives onto a plane in Malta. He is now (apparently) terminally ill with prostrate cancer and was just released from prison on compassionate grounds.

I have been thinking and wondering – is the Manson murders any more heinous than blowing a plane out of the sky? They were both sensational cases and the bombing led to the bankruptcy of Pan Am.

Personally maybe they both should have gotten the death penalty, but they didn’t. Now they both have death hanging over their heads. What I wonder is…why the difference in the reaction to their requests to be released? I know it’s different countries and different judges…but where is the compassion? What does this say about us?

I am trying to figure out how to add a picture with this app. I assumed I could during set up because of what it asked me, but I can’t seem to figure it out (yet).

Maybe I figured it out. Well I did figure it out but it so severely impacted the transmission time that I removed it.

I’m sitting here repressing my desire to comment on the news…grrrr!

I am waiting to go and check out the local farmer’s market. It’s been a long day and I need to get some air to revive the dead brain cells incurred as a result of work. I just hope it doesn’t start raining.

I spent time today gazing at one of my favourite photography magazines. I find myself being drawn back to that hobby in a major way. I was looking at some courses, but none of them seemed to address my interest. My passion is to shoot in black and white and make it scream at you to look. I just think that anyone can shoot a decent colour picture. I’ll have to do some more investigation.

I wish the sun would come back out. We had several glorious weeks of sun and reasonable temperatures. Today is cold and grey.

I can’t wait until my vacation.

So, my friend, put down anything that may be a burden to you right now.
Don’t pick it up again until after you’ve rested a while.

Here are some great ways of dealing with the burdens of life:

* Accept that some days you’re the pigeon, And some days you’re the statue.

* Always keep your words soft and sweet, Just in case you have to eat them.

* Always read stuff that will make you look good If you die in the middle of it.

* Drive carefully. It’s not only cars that can be Recalled by their maker.

* If you can’t be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.

* If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, It was probably worth it.

* It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to be kind to others.

* Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, Because then you won’t have a leg to stand on.

* Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.

* Since it’s the early worm that gets eaten by the bird, sleep late.

* The second mouse gets the cheese.

* When everything’s coming your way, You’re in the wrong lane.

* Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.

* You may be only one person in the world, But you may also be the world to one person.

* Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.

* We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names, and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.

* A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

Is this the same lack of diversity that got him released from murder charges all those years ago?  Maybe this shows how important it is to have LOTS of money and good lawyers when facing charges.  He had the “dream” team back in California and they managed to hand pick a mostly black jury for him.  It seems that in Las Vegas he didn’t have that luxury.

Poor O.J.  I do remember being in high school and watching him run though.  It was a marvel to see.  He was good.  I’m not one to judge or slander, but perhaps it has finally all caught up with him and he can’t see a way to wriggle out of this one.