The last few days

Saturday; Some skating in the morning followed by a nice sunny walk to Granville Island in the afternoon. Its kinda nice to be able to just sit outside with the warmth of the sun on your face.

Sunday; Today no sun... but I did manage to go for a run in the morning before the rain started. I did meet up with my uncle (that lives in Nanaimo) but was returning from spending a few months in Quebec for some brunch at Naam. I had a dragon bowl and it was delicious; a bowl with scrambled egg, potatoes, parsley and red peppers. Yum! My uncle had to run off to catch his ferry but he did leave me some Pudding Chômeur delivered from my mom (he flew from Ottawa) and a copy of the day's Ottawa citizen, so I can catch up with some Ottawa news!

Monday; I went to visit the H.R. Macmillan planetarium and the Vancouver Space centre. IT was lots of fun. The have one part that is museum like with exhibits on space and lots of interactive stuff. They have computer simulators to pretend landing space shuttles, planning a mission to mars or connecting the shuttle to the international space station. It was fun though I wasn't very good at it! They had a demo on rockets and they talked about Newton's laws. One cool demo they did; they vaporized some ethanol (I think) in a pop bottle and then affixed the pop bottle on a string then they lit the gas in the pop bottle and the rocket launched across the room on the string. Very cool! And I learned that Bob Thirsk is a Vancouverite! (I worked at a science summer camp this past summer and we had a slight obsession with a life size Bob Thirsk cut-out!)

Then I went to some presentations in the planetarium. It is a really cool planetarium, a lot bigger than the inflatable ones at Science and Tech. They have these large reclined chairs so you can watch the large dome overhead. They have this projector (called Harold) that projects the stars and other images on the ceiling. The first presentation was on the history of astronomy and a presentation of the tonight's Vancouver sky. They also identified some key constellations. Another presentation was about native culture and their relation to the stars. It was neat. They believe that is you should not look at Northern Lights for too long. And that they are formed out of the spirit of people who have passed away. Sometimes spirits that are playing a soccer-like game with walrus skulls! It was very enjoyable to watch these presentations.