It's been a month full of festivities and there's plenty more to come in the lead up to Christmas.
Thanksgiving in Canada is celebrated on the 2nd Monday in October. While the precise historical origin and belief of the holiday is disputed, most agree Thanksgiving is a holiday to express thankfulness, gratitude, and appreciation to God, family and friends for which all have been blessed of material possessions and relationships. They say you can eat 3 times your daily calorie intake in a Thanksgiving meal and my first Thanksgiving was a cracker - I ate my way through 3! I ate and drank so much I looked like I was pregnant with a turkey baby. 3 weeks later and I'm still working off all that turkey, roasted potato, beets, squash and of course the pumpkin pie . Ah well, when in rome......
Living in this part of the world I've noticed how much daily life is complimented by the seasons. It's currently Fall in the northern hemisphere and B.C is full of colour. You can actually see the colour of the leaves changing daily, quite an amazing sight. All of the winter vegetables and fruits are starting to appear and the last few berries have been picked. We have an enormous Copper Birch tree in the backyard that is over 100 years old. In the past few weeks I'd been admiring the different colours it was changing and was shocked to find after a weekend away all the leaves had dropped and it is now bare. Now I'm looking forward it seeing it covered in snow. Fall is also the time to plant your spring bulbs which I've done. I can't wait to see the tulips, daffodils and iris bloom come spring.
I caught Angus & Julia Stone play a gig at Venue here this month and took my kiwi friend along for the experience. Supported by The White Buffalo (amazing acoustic rock) A & J played a phenomenal set to a sold-out show. I stopped counting at 6 on how many instruments Julia can play, what an extremely talented woman. Angus' shy introductions and Julia's cute anecdotes were lapped up by a heavily Aussie crowd, and we happily received hits like "Mango Tree", "Big Jet Plane", "Just a Boy", "Bella" and many more. Thoroughly enjoyed the performance and would definitely see them again.
At the end of the month came my first Halloween. I must admit I was waiting with anticipation for this one. I love a good opportunity to kit myself out in a stupid outfit and it was a tough decision to decide on the outfit for this. The shops don't offer many choices for female Halloween costumes here, you can choose from slutty, slutty, or really slutty. I chose to make my own so in light of my new passion for our national sport I went as a beaten up Canucks player. With an oversized Canucks jersey, socks, some blood, a black eye and a few knocked out teeth my outfit was complete. The girls and I met up at the Seabus and headed downtown. Granville St was the place to be and despite waiting in line for 45 mins to get into the club it made for a good chance to check out all the costumes parading up and down the street. Wow, folks really go to town with their outfits here. I think my favourite would have to go to the guys dressed up as the stars from Little Britain. Bloody hilarious.
Well it's fast approaching my favourite time of year here, winter. The mercury has dropped down to 2 degrees so far and I'm thrilled to say that it has snowed. Yes, there is a light dusting of the white stuff on the mountain tops surrounding me. I was out driving one morning and when I turned up a road facing the mountains I squealed with delight at the sight in front of me. We are currently in a La Nina pattern which means the waters around the equator are currently measuring colder than average. The La Nina pattern generally means below average temperatures coupled with average or above average precipitation and for this part of the world this generally equates to more snow than average.In addition, La Nina can affect the position of the jet stream and point it straight to Mt Baker (only a 1.5 hr drive from here), a situation that can cause the storms stacked up in the Pacific to bring their moisture laden goodness directly our way as system after system is propelled our direction by this "storm highway".
With the snow tires on the "nanny van", the riding gear all prepped to go, all that's left to do is bag myself a "winter warmer" and I'm set for the season.
