Zeus Rarely Visits Here

Dogs hate thunderstorms, but I am sort of a fan when witnessing nature's electrical displays.   I've spent a lot of time in the tropics and lightning and thunder can put on spectacularly awesome shows. 

The Lower Mainland of British Columbia usually isn't a great place if one enjoys thunderstorms. Rain, yeah sure; we get winters full of it, but electrical storms are about as rare as hen's teeth. Last evening, a toothy chicken was nearby, I guess. We heard louder thunder than ever generally occurs here. The news this morning, showed one house in Burnaby with a chimney as rubble. Now, that's a bit too close to be entertaining. 

However, a great part of the weekend was wet. After the summer's drought conditions, it felt like the land was contentedly sucking it up and sighing a little. It is surely autumn as is evidenced by this picture that we took during a  walk in Queen's Park this morning.

 

Bring On Autumn

Shopping this morning sort of got me into the autumn mood. It was much more for the pumpkins than the wet roads.

   

This afternoon, I have been trying to coax the maximum out of my ageing modem/router. I can easily get Internet speeds of 400 Mbps through its ethernet ports. And luckily, that's how my TV and Nvidia Shield are connected. 

The 2.4 and 5 GHz wifi bands are completely another story. Our buildings are saturated with wifi signals and my old router can no longer pick the best frequencies on its own. I have been forced to choose channels manually. This has sort of thrown my Google Home into disarray. Now, smart speakers all over the apartment try to deal with my Google Assistant commands independently. It's all a bit of a headache. 

Fortunately, these are the type of troubles I sort of enjoy troubleshooting.

Rainfall Warning in Effect

 

The weathercasts showed the system was tracking this way. It is a typical autumn storm and is forecast to dump more rain than any local weather event since January!  It was a good day to wash the car for free. So we dawdlingly drove around New Westminster neighbourhoods on our way to Walmart. 

Back in the apartment, the dining table light has been on all day.  Sigh.  We've still no verified plans for escape this winter.  A complete, 5-month, rainy, Vancouver winter would drive me mad, well perhaps just crazier.

When at the mall, a short trip into a dollar store today provided me with a new home for Bradley, my sourdough starter.  His old peanut butter jar lid got a bit rusty.  I think he's pleased with his new surroundings.

We Stopped at a New Local Business

For most of the summer, we saw a sign indicating that a new branch of the local Fruiticana store was coming to the Sixth Street hill. Every time we drove uptown, we joked that it was still ... Opening Soon. The site was a former specialty market and a plant and gardening center. We never stopped.

Now, however, the new Fruiticana has opened to the public. The back area, once filled with sheds for raising plants, has been removed and made into off-street parking. The lack of spaces in front of the former business might've been one reason we didn't access it. 

Today, we parked a few streets to the west of Sixth Street. The area between the shop and Queen's Park is a prime, historical residential part of New Westminster. Many heritage homes have wonderful landscaping and the area is one of our city's best-kept secrets. Well, it's not too much of a secret I guess, as these homes are all worth over one million dollars nowadays.

The shop had a good selection of fruits and vegetables but the business also sells Punjabi products.  Jay spent time looking through the Indian spices and we got a bottle of hot, lime pickles as well as other items.

We will assuredly make stopping here part of our routine.

 

Surprise ... New Washing Machine AGAIN!

As soon as I got up, I threw a load of new towels into the washing machine. So it was still before breakfast when Jay asked me if I could smell something electrical burning. The wash and rinse cycles were complete, but I would see that the drum wasn't spinning and it should have been. The smell was slight but it was obvious that there was a problem.

Damn.  Just last weekend we had a conversation with friends about their need to probably buy a new washer and drier.  I think the conversation jinxed us.

Our former washer was a cheap, Chinese model as there's hardly any brand that'd fit in our tiny bathroom laundry closet.  We still have the original, small drier that sits on top of a physical shelf.  The guy who cleans the vents says never to get rid of it and it'll last forever.  The closet width for the washer is only around 28 inches.  

Wait, the last RCA lasted just four and a half years!  For the majority of those years, we were away for five months out of each year.  What junk!

I wanted to replace it IMMEDIATELY.  I had an appointment for regular blood tests at 10:55 am uptown.  So before that, we hit the uptown London Drugs but they didn't have anything suitable in stock.  In fact, supply-chain problems meant they had almost nothing available in all of  Canada.

So, we came back and ordered one online through Best Buy.  The closest store with one available was about seven kilometers away on Scott Rd. in Surrey.  So, I parked on the mall roof and walked to the 6th Street lab to have my blood drawn.  Jay waited in the mall and after we headed across the Pattullo Bridge to pick up our replacement.

It fit in Kimchi, my EV and it fits in the space allotted it.  The old one is temporarily sitting on the balcony.

No Elephants Planned

Some hand towels just arrived from Amazon. I got to know their Amazon Basics products through electronics and small devices such as our ceramic heater and a great little tea kettle. I love the quality of the wires and cables they sell under their Basics brand too. 

So we'll give their towels a try. 

I don't think the ones that came tonight will ever become a temporary animal, such as this elephant on one of our beds on a former cruise.

 

Unusually Imperfect

When one is perfect nearly one hundred percent of the time, any imperfection comes as a bit of a shock.

It's okay that the surface of today's loaf is not flawlessly smooth, as I'm quite sure this rye and white flour bread will taste just great.  It surely smells as though it will be delicious.