Couldn't Conquer The Blue Sky

This spectacular picture of an island off of Mexico was taken from 200 miles up by Astronauts on the International Space Station while traveling at 17,000 miles per hour during one of its 15 or so daily orbits.

I thought this was pretty darned cool.

Earlier this month, we had the coldest day in June since they started keeping records from back in the 1930's. The mercury dropped to all of 12 degrees for a daytime high, (which was like 3:00 PM), so in the morning it was all of 6 degrees or so. Simply put, while walking to the store a couple of weeks ago, it was so cold you could see your breath freezing in the air. Yesterday and today though? There were record high temperatures set all over the province, and BC was by far the hottest spot in Canada. It is simply perfect. Hot, sunny, no wind, and there hasn't been a cloud in the sky at all since Friday morning, nothing but perfect clear blue skies over the mountains and the ocean.

I woke up early (which is continually confounding me as why I can't sleep in on weekends, but on work days, I could quite happily sleep until noon - duh. "Paging Dr. Freud"). But I digress. Last night, I blew off a going to movie with Gino, and just stayed home and cooked up my first in a long time batch of Garlic-Chicken-Death, (which was awesome BTW). I watched some TV, had a few glasses of something, and went to bed at 11:00 PM. I'm also thinking that my lazy, crazy, swinging days of summer are behind me, considering its a long weekend, I just got paid, and it's perfect weather and all, yet I choose to eat something healthy, shave my bunions, yell at those damned kids to stay off my lawn, and then go to bed early). This morning though, I was up before 8:00 AM, and went out for a walk to the coffee place, then down to the beach and just reveled in living in the heart of the most beautiful city in North America.

I walked through my neighborhood, and was assaulted by all the smells of summer; Maple and Oak trees gave off their scent, and I was able to walk in and out of the perfume of the many different flowerbeds as I strolled by, all the while framed with the fresh-cut grass smell of the ocean which is a scant 2.5 blocks away. The city was quiet, there was no traffic on Denman St, and the sun was warm, and rays of light were lasering through the tall trees and lighting up the sidewalks with contrasts of green & golden light.