With Canada Day mid-week this year, we had decided to spend the whole week on Galiano. Our friend David, who has been gracious enough in the past to take us out on his boat suggested that we do the Canada Day Lamb BBQ on Saturna Island again - but with a twist! We’d leave Tuesday night and “camp” on the boat!
Read MoreVictoria Visit with Stuart and Jo
With Canada Day mid-week this year, we decided to spend the whole week on Galiano. We were headed over on Friday night (26th) and staying through the following Sunday. Canada Day was in the middle, and since we had a longer stretch, we decided to spend the weekend on Vancouver Island visiting our friends Stuart and jo and their girls. It had beena while so it was good to see them.
Read MoreFIFA World Cup Takes Over Vancouver
After years of build up and waiting, the World Cup was upon us! Vancouver was (along with Toronto) one of the two Canadian host cities for the event and it seemed that the city was really going to embrace the festivities. I thought I should share a little bit of the fun going on about town.
Read MoreBarns to Beaches Festival Featuring 54-40
Our weekends in the city tend to get fille dup pretty quickly as we like to maximize our time and take advantage of all the things that the city has to offer. Case in point on Saturday, we had a festival in Tsawwassen in the new Southlands neighborhood where one of my all time favorite bands, 54-40 was the headlining act! We also got to catch up with our friends Tom and Tracy that live in the area, making for an excellent day!
Read MoreA Trip Home - The Canadian Open
One of the few trip I had planned for this year was a trip back to Ontario to spend some time with my family. I decided to work from Mom’s house for the week (no time off with the big Antarctica trip later this year) and keep everything at work moving forward. I had decided to time it with the Canadian Open (golf), which was being played almost literally in Mom’s backyard.
Read MoreRoof Garden Update and First Day out at the Nat!
I am finally caught up (mostly) and this one will be fairly quick. I thought I share some pictures of the roof deck, a really funny (short) story and a quick post on our first trip to the Nat for the summer to see the Vancouver Canadians play baseball! Summer is finally here!
Read MoreA Morning Wander at Reifel
As we had a nice weekend at home, we thought we’d make our first trip to Reifel this year to see what was going on. We had not been since last fall, partly because we were busy, but partly because we could not get there for most of this year! More on that later…
Read MoreMy Birthday Night Out
As my birthday was on a Wednesday, our celebration was a little bit low key. Justine had found a very fun looking event on the Friday night, “Eat the Invaders”! It was a really interesting approach to exploring the local food scene, and we had an amazing night out!
Read MoreGaliano Spring Update - Birds, Gardens and my New Robot Mower!
This is going to be a long, somewhat random post catching up on a few different topics. First off some updates on the progress of the gardens and orchard at Galiano. Spring means that things change so quickly. It’s been a frustrating start to the season. I also got to set-up my new Lymow, robotic autonomous lawn mower and start to understand how it works (spoiler pretty well so far!). It was also my birthday and we had a nice night on the roof with Alex and Matt. Like I said, lot sto cover as it’s been a busy month!
Read More2026 Roof Opening!
Another short, interim post. The weather has been so spectacular that we managed to get the roof fully opened this weekend! This is one of the earliest that I can remember in a long time. The gardens are planted, the cushions are on the couch and we’ve cleaned everything up. Here’s hoping we have a nice, long summer to enjoy!
Read MoreA Short Post - Spring Flowers
This is just a short post to share some spring flowers (and a bird or two) on a walk earlier this week. I have a bigger post to share on the trip to the island last week, but that might take a bit of time to get up. Happy spring!
Read MoreGaliano Bird Walk
We were back on the island for the weekend, with lots of work to do. We cut more broome, had a big fire to burn it all, hung out with some friends and got a bunch of work done around the property. Sunday morning we joined up with a local bird walk to see what we might see around Bellhouse Provincial Park. It was quite a nice weekend, and we saw more than birds!
Read MoreThe Start of Spring Projects
We were back on Galiano for the weekend, with a whole raft of projects to tackle. We finally got to use a purchase that we made back in the fall, there was more garden to be planted and of course broome to be cut. We ended up with a pretty nice weekend and we got a lot done!
Read MoreAn Actual Ski Weekend
Justine and I finally managed to sneak a couple of days of skiing this year! We left it pretty much until the end of the season, but we had an super-fun weekend at Silver Star Mountain resort near Vernon in the interior. It was a long way to go for a couple of days, but it ended up being excellent and a great way to wrap up “winter”.
Read MoreSan Jose and Back to Galiano
It’s been a busy spell for travel. Immediately after getting back from Galiano (see the last post) I was on a plane to San Jose for a few days in our head office. While it was a pretty uneventful week, the weather in San Jose was amazing! After being back for a few days, I was heading back to Galiano solo to deal with a bunch of activities for the golf course while Justine had a girl’s weekend at home.
Read MoreA New Addition to the Roof
In the middle of trying to get our place put back together with the renovation, I found a great deal on a small Yardistry greenhouse that looked like it would be a perfect size for the roof! I couldn’t pass it up (free shipping too) and so we had another project to tackle at the all wrong time of the year.
Read MoreA Quick Weekend on Galiano
I got back from Barcelona around midday on Friday. The trip home was fine and I powered through to stay up until a normal bedtime. Saturday morning we were headed over to Galiano to see how spring was unfolding and to start planting some of the early seeds. We only had a couple of days, but it’s always nice to head over.
Read MoreMWC 2026- Barcelona - Part II - The Event
Picking up where we left off, it was the Sunday before the start of the event. The rest of the week was (sadly) about work - we had full, busy days ahead of us. I ran into a surprisingly large number of people that I know, got to check out some very cool new things and made introductions to a number of new partners that could add to our product ecosystem. It was a busy, productive week!
Read MoreMWC 2026 - Barcelona - Part I - Exploring the City
My second big work event of the year was in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress (MWC), the biggest event dedicated to the mobile phone and cellular industry. I have never been to the event before, and it has certainly been on the list for a long time. This was the 20th anniversary of the event being in Barcelona, and any excuse is a good excuse to spend time in that fabulous city. I had a little bit of time to explore, but mainly it was full days in the conference center.
Read MoreA Long Overdue Renovation Post
This post really belongs more in 2025 than 2026, but let’s just say it’s both taken longer to complete the project and longer to write this post than it really should have. The overview is that we had heat pumps installed in our townhouse back in late October. As they had to cut open walls to run the power and plumbing, it seemed like a good time to do a fairly major renovation on the place. This is that story.
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