Writings from The Crypt Vault

I am sitting at The Vault, which is fast becoming my preferred hangout spot. I came in with the intention of having a cup of coffee, but when I got here, a young lady was up on a ladder in front of the pastry case, writing "Wild Chanterelle Mushroom Soup" on a chalkboard. The next thing I knew, I was ordering lunch (a cup of the soup, alongside a piece of phyllo-wrapped salmon).  Lunch is delicious, and I'm sure that the Americano I'm drinking will have me buzzing for the rest of the day. Today, that's not such a bad thing. I have shopping to do, then laundry. If the sun keeps shining, I will take a Parkway walk.  (Yes! The sun is shining on Nanaimo. It's glorious outside these windows that first attracted me to The Vault.)

Then, around six p.m., I will walk up Sixth Street to Bruce Avenue, along Bruce to Seventh Street, and down Seventh toward Old Victoria Road, hoping to meet Jane and Franco along the way. They will be out walking as well, and we will all be hoping to meet the Olympic flame as it is carried along that route. I may dress up in a Hallowe'en costume for the occasion, but I'm not sure.

After that, I will go home and be on Trick or Treat duty for a while. We don't usually get many Hallowe'en visits, and I suspect that the flu scare will keep the volume down tonight, so I may have a bag of candies to consume while I work on my novel. (It's a dirty job....)

Finally, I will start the serious countdown to midnight and NaNoWriMo. My fingernails are suitably short now. I've been filing them shorter and shorter over the last week, bringing them gradually down to ideal typing length -- not so long as to get in the way, but long enough to create a satisfying click when they hit the keys. I have put direct links to NaNoWriMo and My Writing Nook here at The Turtle, so that I don't have to waste time going through Google to get there. 

By the way, if you write, and if you haven't discovered My Writing Nook, do have a look at it. It's a very spiffy little no-frills writing venue that enables you to sit at Starbucks (or in The Vault!) and work on your current opus online. I don't know why I find it so much more satisfying to work online than in Word, but I do. My plan is to write everything to My Writing Nook and  e-mail my work to myself, day by day, as a backup.

Right now, though, my plan is to go to the NaNoWriMo site and wave, hoping somebody will notice me and come to The Vault to join me.  Happy Hallowe'en, everybody.

Friday Photo Shootout -- Park Landscapes

We have been under water for several days, but for a while this afternoon, the sun came out, and I took the opportunity to snap a few photos in Bowen Park, which is right in downtown Nanaimo.  As you can see, Bowen Park is well-treed, but it also has many other attractions. At one end of the park there is a soccer field. At the other end is the Curling Club. Within the park there are tennis courts,

an outdoor swimming pool,

children's playground equipment, and a lovely bowling green, where white-clad bowlers may be seen cavorting on summer days.

There is a very popular seniors' recreation centre next to the bowling green.

Farther inside the park, there used to be a group of totem poles. I tried to find them today, but they had disappeared. It turns out that they were rotting and considered a safety hazard, so they have been removed. Timing is everything. I wish I had taken photos of them before they were pulled down.


There is still the duck pond, though, near where the totem poles were, and now there appears to be a fountain that I don't remember.

I don't remember this bridge, either. I suspect it's been a long time since I took a walk in Bowen  Park. Thanks to JarieLyn for this assignment. For more Friday Photo Shootout posts, just click on the camera in my sidebar.

Enjoying the remains of October

Earlier this evening, having had a very long day, I checked my e-mail, read a couple of posts, and turned the computer off, figuring that I would be asleep in short order. I had a few chores to do, so I set about doing them. As I was loading clothes into the dryer, I remembered that I hadn't told you about Amelia. So, back I came, and that's a good thing, because it was wa-a-a-ay too early to be going to sleep.

We did go to the movies last night, after we ate curried prawns and rice and salad (and a few side dishes from our neighbourhood Chinese restaurant). It was dark out, and raining, so we allowed lots of time to get to the theatre. That was just as well. I don't drive very fast under those conditions. We arrived at the theatre just in time to enjoy the commercial. It was an advertisement for some sort of hair product. I said "Since when do we get commercials at the movies?" and Jane replied "What's surprising is that it's taken this long." I had to admit she was right. We have become such cynics, she and I.

Then came the previews of coming attractions, some of which were not very attractive. I must confess, though, I was rather taken with the animated film about the kid who accidentally punctures the fake Great Pyramid and deflates it. That one had possibilities. It made me giggle.

As for the main feature, Amelia was a lot more about Earhart's love life than about her flying, which I suppose is fair enough. People have been raving and speculating about her flying for more than eighty years, since she made her first Atlantic crossing (as a passenger). She did fly in this movie, and there were nice touches like the fact that when she was flying, she and the plane vibrated. It felt very real. I found the chronology a little difficult to follow. The action took place in 1937, 1928, 1932, 1930 (or was it 1934?) and 1937. That year popped up a lot. Sometimes it was hard to tell when we were watching.

Nonetheless, I did enjoy the movie. I said I would be absorbing the atmosphere, and that's what I did. When we left the theatre, I was thinking about fox fur stoles, cloche hats, loose trousers, leather jackets and jodphurs, and this song:


p.s. Check out the poem in my sidebar. The lady had many talents.