DIane and I started the day in Vancouver with a run along the seawall of one of the inlet bays of the city

From there we drove about 45 minutes outside of town to visit the  Coquitlam, BC. I was there to meet witht he Coquitlam School District Administrators  and lead a discussion around recent progress and risks of AI. Our host has Stephen W, the Assistant Superintendent for the District and the leader of its (very impressive)  IT group.  Heather and Deepak from IBM were there for morale and logistical support. They were both so great to hang out with .. 

The talk went pretty well, The high point for me was the short mini-panel  that Stephen and I did after the talk. . After that, Stephen drove us around the town of Coquitlam which  is surrounded by high mountains and has a  beautiful harbor. We were able to visit one of the High school middle school campuses. where we got a very good sense of the student focused teaching and the STEAM initiatives they had for the students. 

Afterwards we had a lovely dinner hosted by Stephen, His wife Jen ..the school district Numeracy lead, Patricia the District Superintendent and her husband Steve. The setting was beautiful, the dinner was great.. and the conversation was even better.   We felt so at ease with all of them. We had great conversations about education, travel, kids.. .. it was a memorable evening. 

AFter dinner, DIane and I drove another 45 miinutes south to the town of Abbotsford, BC  in prep for the next days talks. 

Nite all, nite sma

-me

Today was Valentines Day.. VD which also stands for Vancouver day. It was time to leave portland after this really nice visit. .. Before we left today, I ran two of Jens mugs full of chocolates over to Gabe’s house for him and Sam.. I left them by the back door because it was too early for them to be up.

Then we were off to the airport for the short hop to Vancouver… It was such a short ride that we were in a DASH 8 propeller plane. We have not been inside a propeller plane in along time (which is odd because I help make them now 🙂

We got to Vancouver, rented a car and headed down own to our hotel .
We then went oput to explore the city.. Its a big city.. but still very nice place.. The people are really great. too !
Our first stop was Japadog.. a famous Japanese hot-dog franchise thats really famous here.

From tehre we went on a fast hike to explore this beautiful city. the setting is stunning.. the bay and ocean  are our favorite part. The architecture is very cool too. We went down to the ater and watched the seaplanes land and take off..   We hiked out to Stanely park and then came back to a Poke place near the hotel.. very good !

We like this place !
nite all nite sam

-me

Pretty uneventful day. Worked most ot the morning for BETA.. Got a run in..

THen Mel and Shawn met us at Nicholas middle eastern place.. It always so good to see them !

I knew the resturant well because it was there that I realized I was coming down with covid here on my last birthday !.. It was nice to come back as I don’t remember much of that first visit.. I remember I couldn’t eat much !

Beautiful view of the moon and venus tonight.

Its really nice to be here !

nite all, nite sam

-me

Today I worked remotely for BETA,.. after that Diane and I worked around the house.

Gabe had two household issues we worked on. The first was a broken drawer… It was their silverware drawer and like many it was made out of stabled particle board.. (which should be outlawed). The sides had broken and there was no gluing them back together.. Fixing that took a bunch of corner bracing, glue and a makshift clamp made out of ratchet straps.. All good now.

The second problem was that the above stove microwave no longer worked. Buying a new microwave is easy.. getting it to fit in cabinetry above the microve.. not so easy. We had bought the microwave the day before,,. we ended up takign the only one in the store..

TOday we disassembled the parts of the cabinetry that needed to come down to allow the new device to be mounted. We were installing the ew device when DIane’s foot slipped on to a shelf (that we’d made in June of 2019). and it gave way.. Diane hit her face on the cabinet as she caught herself and got a small cut and bruise.. she was OK .. but the sheetrock wasn’t. The shelf took some big chunks of sheetrock with it.

We finished installing the stove then headed back to Home Depot to get a thin birch plywood panel to put beneath the shelf when we remoutnid it.. The panel hid the sheetrock damage.. and looked nice to boot !.No one even noticed it.. but we came clean.

Gabe and I christened the new microwave by heating up a piece of left-over burrito and sharing it !

Alls well that ends well !

Then Blutos greek for dinner.. yum !

nite all, nite sam

-me