Hi ladies –

I’m new … I had a friend introduce me to the site last year but I didn’t take advantage of what was offered or spend time to see what was going on.

Tips, tricks, or comments are welcome.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Canada Day and that summer is treating you right so far

Kris

have been reading a few blocks bemoaning the total lack of humanity that seems to be around us these days…this is one small example.…there are a million others.

I thought about this the other day when we came upon the detrious of a car accident.

One car had t-boned another. Sadly, a fairly common occurence in my town.

This had occured on a clear day, in a wide open stretch of road.

The only way that this accident could have happened was speed and or a total lack of reaction and ‘anticipation’ about what was going on around the drivers seconds before they hit.

Anticipation….watching the road ahead AND behind you. Watching the drivers ahead…trying to ‘anticipate’ what they might do next.

This skill is obvioulsy no longer taught in drivers ed anymore.

And no wonder…if the teachers of driving are now younger than me…we are dealing with Gen Y and so on…..generations who seem to have missed out on a lot of things that seemed like good old fashioned common sense and gee COURTESY FOR THE WORLD AROUND YOU?

Forget horrors like people NOT rushing to help a man hit by a car.

How about just the everyday occurence of people walking right in front of you - stopping right in front of you - doing the same on the ROAD…..we are dealing with people so cocooned by their cell phones and iPod’s and their own teeny tiny worlds…that they travel through life completely unaware.

One day, I was driving to pick up Adam at school, as I turned in, I glanced up. There at the top of the tallest pine tree was a beautiful Bald Eagle. Just sitting there..right by a very busy main road. NOBODY saw him. Nobody was aware of him. Just me.

Humanity needs to start looking up more….before something REALLY big and heavy lands on it’s collective head.

cross posted at the AntHill

There were no doodles for Canada Day on Google.ca this year…something that all the Canucks noticed.

It’s long been a Google tradition, a wink to Canucks: A Canada Day version of the website’s logo, illustrated with Maple Leaves, a loon and even a beaver.

But yesterday? Nothing but the usual primary-coloured letters.

Asked for comment about the snub, a spokesperson offered little comfort in an e-mail.

“We enjoy celebrating holidays at Google and are sorry we missed one that’s special to you. As you may imagine, it’s difficult for us to choose which events to celebrate on our site. We have a long list of holidays that we’d like to celebrate in the future. We have to balance this rotating calendar with the need to maintain the consistency of the Google homepage.”

I can’t wait to see what they do for Fourth of July.

Must type in quick post before I melt…waaay too hot in my computer corner!

I was just wondering what everyone is doing for Canada Day?

I have a feeling we will probably be just BBQ’ing and chillaxing..but you never know.

The Vancouver Sun has a good guide for what is going on in our neck of the woods..but I am sure many other parts of BC are celebrating too.

I have done the Granville Island thing for a couple of years..but the kids found it sort of boring…we are thinking on checking out Queens Park in New Westminster this year.

Please share what is going on with you on Canada Day.

Oh…and…do you want this shirt?

I ordered one ‘test’ one ..but the XL is a wee bitty tight for me….( I will SAY they fit SMALL!)

Anyway..I needed to see how it looked.

Soooo if you want it and it will fit you…..

POST!

YOU…POST ON WET COAST WOMEN!

TALK ABOUT BEING A WET COAT WOMAN…NETWORK..BOAST ABOUT YOUR SITE….SOMETHING…..

LINK TO SITES YOU LOVE….GIVE ME SOME LOVE!

YOU GET THE PICTURE!

I will then pick the winner on July 16….

It is a nice shirt…good quality cotton.

I will be away to order a (ahem) BIGGER size for me.

Climate action dividend cheques are arriving in the mail. Apparently, they’re to help people make green choices. And on Monday or Tuesday a new 2.4 cents/litre gas tax goes on (oh and it also goes on natural gas, so even if you don’t own a car, you’re getting hit with it anyways. So are the people who deliver groceries, so you’ll be paying for it anyways. Revenue neutral my ass).

But, back to the cheques. Mine arrived yesterday sometime and I got it (them, really, because I get one and Darren gets one) from the mailbox this morning.

This is the outside:

I picked it up and noticed it felt really substantial. I could practically use it as a pillow. Its soft and puffy (although the biodegradable window in the front is sort of crunchy, but whatever). On the back though, it says its printed on recycled paper.

So I opened it. Because I wanted to see what was in it that made it so soft and pillow-like.

And here you go. Its stupendous really. From left to right: a twee brochure on how you can most appropriately spend your Climate Action Dividend. Suggestions include:

1. Switching to compact flourescent light bulbs
2. Weather strip windows and doors
3. Install a high efficiency hot water heating system
4. Install low-flow showerheads and keep showers under 10 minutes
5. tune up your vehicle and keep tires properly inflated
6. Install crawl space insulation

Lovely. I already do 1, 2 and 5. I don’t have a crawl space - just a ground level lower level of my house which is insulated and weather stripped already. So fuck that noise.

I have a low flow showerhead. And I doubt that you can buy and install a high efficeincy hot water heating system for $100. 

Vehicle tune ups should be done regularly since it helps cars pass aircare (hey, look! Emissions controls that have been in place for YEARS) and you don’t generally have to pay $100 to inflate your tires - you can get a tire gauge for under $20 at Canadian Tire and air is free at gas stations.

Back to the contents of the envelope. On the English side (its printed in English and French), in the bottom corner it says “by using 40% post consumer recycled paper for this project we saved…262 trees, 10, 780 kilograms of solid waste, 98, 978 litres of water, 34, 105 Kilowattt hours of electricity, 19, 595 Kilograms of greenhouse gases, 50 Cubic Metres of landfill space.”

Whoa. Like, dude. So if you used more post consumer recycled paper, you could have saved even more! Right (I might be wrong, I really have no idea).

The second thing on the picture is the envelope itself (also printed on recycled paper).

The third thing with the mad paint skillz on it is the cheque itself. Big enough for a tri fold, along with a nifty note from our ever-lovin’ Premier who sends us his best regards. The cheque itself is somewhat less than the bottom third of the page.

Um. Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but couldn’t they have saved even more ghg’s, etc (not to mention postage) if they’d just done direct deposit into my bank account? Now, I have to go to the bank to deposit this. Which I’ll combine with other errands, and I’ll turn my car off as I go through the drive through ATM, but still.

Do you see my point? They’ve probably created more waste then what people will save simply by issuing this cheque.

As for what I’m going to do - well, I have a web friend who lives south of the 49th. Her cat recently had a rather expensive surgery to remove a bladder stone. Its going to her to help pay the bill.

Cross posted at Resolving Timeline Issues

When I was in Nova Scotia I wasn’t on the internet as much as I am here in Vancouver. Luckily for me my DH was working from home in Nova Scotia and was following twitter. I was upstairs and DH said that City Mama was looking for bloggers in Vancouver. I got right on twitter and had a conversation with her. This started a number of emails, a couple of blog posts as interview, and a job offer. I was stoked from the beginning and once the contract details were figured out (I was the first Canadian hired) I was writing up a storm. My blog is finally live, though with a few bugs to be worked out.

I am now the City Editor for Being Savvy Vancouver. This is a local blog affiliated with Savvy Source, a mostly US based source for preschool parents. I am the first of two Canadian cities to be included though there are a few ex-pat Canadians living in cities in the States who are writing for Savvy Source as well. As amazing as it seems, I am writing with an fantastic group of writers, most of which I have been reading for a very long time.

Check out my new blog at http://vancouver.savvysource.com/ and show some love, and by that I mean comments, or add me to your blog roll, or shoot me an email (gwenfloyd at gmail dot com) and I will send you a badge for your post. If I can get enough Link Love for my new blog I can win another contest and maybe get a little more cash for the new little one. So, if you do write a post, or put me on your blog roll, please send me an email so I can let the higher ups know.

You also might want to check out some of the other Savvy Source bloggers by using the drop down box on Being Savvy Vancouver. There are tons of cities and ideas to keep your preschoolers busy. While you are at it take a look at City Mama and enter her contest. All you need to do is link to her post, and then comment on the post to let her her know you did. Easy peasy.

I guess it is apparent that I am really excitied about this writing gig. I not only get to write about things to do with Aidan, but I get paid a little bit as well. So far I have been able to be really organized about my writing time and I hope that I can keep it up. Come the end of October, I will hopefully have a huge number of posts pre-written so things don’t get too out of wack with the new baby. I am sure a parenting website will be a little accommodating in the first few days after the new little one is born, but I will have a bunch of posts ready in case. Wish me luck!

Mr. BlueFur says the space is filling up!

So if you are interested in attending and hearing and seeing BETTER speakers than myself….check out the links…

They are also looking for a Coffee & Snack sponsor. If you know of someone or something that would like to do this, please let me know.

This is for the the BC’ers….I received my $100 from our Premier today.

It is supposed to help me go green. It is supposed to take the pain away from them eco tax that is being placed on our gas come July 1st.

Some how, at $1.45 a litre…it ain’t really going to help.

I don’t even think that covers a monthly bus pass.

Perhaps a small wheelie shopping cart for more eco friendly groceries….or perhaps for a harness to put on the dog to help pull $200 worth of groceries home.

Have you noticed how expensive your grocery bills are these days?

While rebates and ‘free’ money is always sweet…I just feel there was a better way to do things and to spend MY money on.

What do you think?

While I have been blogging for over two years now and using WordPress for the last year and a bit, my social networking has been quite far afield - hence my upcoming trip to BlogHer.

It has only been my focusing on Wet Coast Women more that has given me the opportunity to look at the blogging community on my own doorstep.

Crunchy Husband and I managed to attend the Word Press Camp Vancouver in April.  We were impressed by the huge turn out and I loved getting to peek at some of the blog folks that I only knew through the ‘net.

When I heard that my own hosts BlueFur were instrumental in putting together a Word Press Camp out in the Fraser Valley area, I thought ‘how awesome is that.’

Then I had a small heart attack when Gary asked me to speak at it.

Me.  About my own little community blog here….and how I did it.

Heh.

So, I am working on my little bio and the ‘title’ of my presentation as we speak.

If you live beyond the borders of Vancouver…or not…and are a lover of WordPress or are thinking of switching to WordPress…(your really should, especially if you are on Blogger)…then go sign up and attend this event next month…July 16th.

There are WAY cool speakers…our own Miss604 - Rebecca Bollwitt is speaking!

Must go work on my bit now!