A Day at the Museum

Or, to be more accurate, a day and a half at the Cultural Centre.

We had a course organised for us, and I thought, 'ho-hum, better go and support the colleague who is organising it,' so I did.
It was very enjoyable in the sense that I liked all the people there and we were given plenty of opportunity to discuss things, also it was in town and so I was able to get lunch from Timmie's.

I did, however, have to go into work this morning.
'What might there have been in Richmond 250 years ago, that First Nations people from South Vancouver came over to find?' I asked,
'More Jewish people,' said one boy. Hmm...I think I could see his angle and I wondered if he'd heard about Sleepy's feral Jews.

Yesterday, and mostly unexpectedly, a cheque arrived from the insurance company for the excess (deductible) on our claim. It seems that the man who ran into me still hadn't reported the accident to the company, so he was found to be at fault be default - also of course from the Police and the adjuster's report.

My friend British Karen had driven through snow in Surrey and Kent at the weekend, and last night was the first really big snowfall here on the mountains.
Clever Canadians who live at higher elevations have put their snow tyres on.

The session at the museum yesterday, left me with a serious headache. The room we were in had been too hot for comfort, not inferno level, just uncomfortable. In one corner were a little gaggle of shiverers, although I have a feeling that might be a religious group somewhere.
They shivered, I and several others baked, and ne'er the twain should meet.
Of course, the shiverers who could simply have put more clothing on, had another heater brought in.

With the headache and after a day of uncomfortable heat, I had to drive downtown, not something I look forward to, but even less than the driving downtown do I like the trying to find parking.
I found where I was supposed to be easily enough, but then I drove round and round the one-way system looking for non-existent parking. This of course eased my headache considerably. Oh, no wait, it didn't at all, in fact it became somewhat worse.
But eventually I was shown the secret, hidden entrance to an underground car park and I was able to pay and leave my car somewhere that felt relatively safe.

I have been enjoying reading the diary of British journalist David Smith in the Guardian, he is shadowing the US military in Baghdad.

And.....'Aliens in America' is back filming in the school opposite us. I noticed late last night when I got back home, that they were set-up, this morning the stream of parents in over-sized cars dropping off children too lazy to walk a few hundred yards, had nowhere to go since the film crew had taken over the car park. Good thing the show is watchable.

In a gaffe that could really only be a sketch in 'Little Britain', Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs in Washington (the original, but less famous one in Tyne and Wear) has lost just under half the country's personal data.
Not lost in the sense that now no-one in Britain knows what their name is or where they bank, just lost in the sense that now someone else out there does.
My suggestion for this is to have half the country change their names, and I would most certainly start with the Chancellor, Alistair Darling. I'm not sure whether he has any responsibility for this whatsoever, but even so, he was the messenger to the Commons, and let's face it, the messenger always gets shot.
Unless of course he changes his name first and can run really fast, but whether he can or not, he is probably no-one's darling right now.

And bye the bye, and speaking of names, it seems that the seat of our cultural centre et alia in Richmond is named 'Minoru' after King George the fourth's horse.
George IV was the son of the mad one, and if it is true about his horse, then said horse needed to be a damn strapping filly, since this George had reached 17½ stone (245lbs) by the age of 35.
A fine figure of a man, but I doubt he could run to save his life.