Entries Tagged 'Life' ↓

If you put a photo of yourself on the Internet, you should know what to expect.  Courtesy of David… 

(click pic to enlarge)

I was about to buy some books on Amazon — books that I would read once and never touch again — when I had a “moment of clarity”:  why not just borrow them for free from the library?

That I had so completely forgotten about the whole notion of public libraries shook me a bit.  Somehow I had gotten into the mindless habit of ordering books on Amazon.  Perhaps it was mind control by aliens: Consume. Conform. Obey. Sleep. Perhaps not.

Certainly I hadn’t been a stranger to libraries earlier in my life.  As a teenager in high school I had a part-time job working in one.  I still remember a bit of the Dewey Decimal system from that job, e.g., 770 is photography.  I remember hoping to apply my Dewey Decimal knowledge when I got to university and being disappointed to discover the university libraries used the Library of Congress system.  Speaking of which, I actually visited the Library of Congress during high school when my dad brought me along a business trip to Washington, D.C.

During graduate school I used the university library more for a quiet place to work than anything else.  Almost all the research papers I needed were available on the internet.

And then I joined the working world and slowly bookstores replaced libraries.

So it was with a sense of renewal that I dug out my old VPL (Vancouver Public Library) card and went downtown to the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library.  I found exactly what I was looking for in minutes.  Somehow I thought my library card would be expired since I hadn’t used it for something like ten years.  The card was still valid, though I did have a $0.50 fine from 2000.  I was happy to pay.

Life is full of small pleasures.  One of them for me was going to the wedding of Lisa and Wes and seeing David wearing this:

My brother sent me this photo:

That’s me as a teenager guarding the entrance to the secret compound where the Great Leader lived.

No, not really.  That’s from one of the times my dad took me and my brother target shooting somewhere in the Angeles Crest mountains.  That 7mm rifle now has a good home with my Uncle Heinz.

Canadians aren’t real big on guns. I don’t know anyone in Vancouver that owns one. I don’t. However, when I visit the U.S. I am quickly rearmed:

I was a little rusty with the pistol:

Here’s my friend Ed who owns the guns I was shooting above, showing me how it’s done: