Couch surfing

Josiane and Eric should be arriving any moment at YVR airport. They are from Sherbrooke, Quebec. I haven't met them yet but I hopefully will before midnight. They will be staying with me for 3 nights. They are in Vancouver until Feb 9th for a story telling festival somewhere in town. Eric is a story teller.

They contacted me through couchsurfing.com, an organization of travelers and hosts that circles the globe. I joined in June 2007 and have hosted 32 people from 11 countries in the first 16 months. Some contact me because I am an artist, some because I am gay, some because I was a cyclist, some because of my central location and some because I have lots of references. The youngest has been 18 and the oldest around my own age. They stay for free. Sometimes we prepare meals together and sometimes we go out or we do our own activities, but so far I have not stayed in the homes of other couch surfers. I travel vicariously through my guests.

Several of my friends are amazed that I open my home to complete strangers, but I don't feel that way about them. I have not been too inconvenienced or taken advantage of and certainly not robbed or intentionally put out. Sometimes I have felt a bit overwhelmed, that that was the result of saying yes to too many people. Literally, I could have had double the number of guests if I had saved no time for myself and other visiting friends. It gives me a reason to keep my place clean and I have gained a few very strong friendships out of it.

I give couples my room and I sleep on the couch. That gives them their privacy and allows me to move around in the morning getting ready for work without disturbing them. I often do this for visiting friends too, so I am somewhat used to it. It is well worth it for the people I meet. I am hoping to take it a couple nights at the story telling festival too. :o)

.

Cold

It was a sunny sunrise as I walked to work this morning. Very pretty as the sun hit Canada Place a the end of Howe St but it was COLD! Maybe it was -5 or -6C with a chilling breeze. Hopefully that's that last cold snap this year, but it is expected to snow some tonight and tomorrow. Eeek!!

PHOTO: View from my living room window along Hornby Street

Sunshine

After 11 days the fog lifted on Friday. A few days ago the forecast was for flurries from Friday through Sunday, but gratefully that didn't happen. I celebrated by shopping for new jeans yesterday. Most things were on sale so I bought 2 dress shirts, a T-shirt, a pair of fancy sexy underwear and a set of pillow cases too.

Today, I met Aunty Tinkerbell for coffee at Cafe a Go-Go after breakfast at Joe's Diner. I have spent the afternoon making the calla lily sun-catcher [photo] and writing. Tonight I will watch another DVD, a collection of shorts called "Mad About the Boy". The threat of snow remains this coming week but, for now, life is good.

:o)

Rich & Luis

After 11 days of foggy weather we have enjoyed a sunny but cold weekend. Yesterday I celebrated by shopping for new jeans. Sales were everywhere so I bought underwear, a T-shirt, 2 great shirts and two pairs of jeans.

Rich & Luis came over in the evening to watch a DVD I had rented and to show me their photos of Colombia. The pictures were great, mostly of Medellin and few of Bogota, Cartegena and some historic smaller towns. Lots of family pics too as Luis had been living illegally on Long Island for a few years before immigrating legally to Canada last summer, and that prevented him from going anywhere near an airport where the authorities would nab him. Fortunately for them, their trip caused them to miss 90% of our worst weather this winter. They brought me back a delicate clay replica of a rural bus, called a "chiva" (see the photo), painted in the Colombian national colours and decorated with bags, chickens, vegetables, baskets of fruit and a pig on the roof. There are even four clay figures the chiva. It is only 8cm long at best but the facial expressions, the painstakingly painted clothes, hair and other details are all clear. Such a little treasure!

The DVD we watched was part of my mail-order subscription to Videomatica, a local specialty DVD store. They has sent me "The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green". I had watched in Friday night and enjoyed it terrifically. I has smoked a joint though and was too stoned to follow the plot completely. It is just as funny sober and well worth a second viewing. I'd like to buy this one. Rich and Luis loved it too.

“Milk”

Tuesday night I went with my friend Michal to see the movie “Milk”. I must be the last of my friends to see it. I had held off because another friend had me promise not to see it without him. I keep my promises but after a month without any effort on his part it became obvious that he had forgotten the promise entirely. So I went with Michal.

I was happy to see the film with him. Definitely he’s one of my favourite friends. The sun is always out whenever he’s around and it seems to last a couple days after he’s gone. He lives in Kelowna and comes down a few times a year. Sometimes he stays with me but not the last few times as he has been attending seminars with work colleagues. We have often mused about doing road trips around the province to areas we have never seen, such as the 8 hr road from Williams Lake to Bella Coola through Tweedsmuir Provincial Park. I am always concerned that with my limited ability to deal with stairs and uneven terrain that I would be an impediment to travel with but he doesn’t see it that way. (Gawd bless his sweet soul!) Over dinner at an Italian restaurant before the movie he re-stated his commitment to do something with me this summer.

“Milk” has had a big impact with many of my gay friends, especially of my generation. I came out when Harvey Milk was still alive and visited San Francisco while he was still Supervisor. I was also in teacher training when he successfully fought Senator Briggs’ initiative to create a witch hunt against gay teachers. I thought the portrayal of those early years of gay liberation was brilliant. It really brought me back, though I was a bit young to be involved in activism in the late 70s as I was still trying to figure out who I was. My activism didn’t really start until February 1981 after the infamous Toronto bath raids.

Most of that pre-AIDS reality of the 70s has been lost but, unlike some friends, seeing these images again does not make me nostalgic. I never believed I was accepted by gay circles in those days, even though I felt a sense of loyalty to "the community". At least gay society was safer than straight society in most ways. I also see no point to nostalgia, just as I no longer fantasize about what I did before muscular dystrophy pinned me down. Some things it’s just not wise to think about too long.

PHOTO: Michal

OBAMA-RAMA

It was dead quiet on the phones at work today while the world was watching Obama’s inauguration. No one can get enough of the man, it seems. For example, Canada’s national news service, CBC, has on its website a lead article on his swearing in and his call for “remaking America”, the itinerary of the inauguration ceremonies, the full text of Obama’s address, a photo gallery of the day’s events and the days leading up to it, a D.C. diary of a CBC news correspondent who tells us her thoughts and observations at every step of her trip to Washington and every part of the ceremonies, an article by seasoned correspondent Henry Champ called “An Inauguration in a Cell Phone Age”, a synopsis of the Bush years and how Obama’s term in office might be different, another article by Heather Mallick titled “Don’t fool me please, Barack Obama” and an arts ariticle called “In his image” (a survey about Obama inspired art images). Besides these, there is another news article about his plans to visit Canada in the near future, his first anticipated foreign visit, and three video reports on the inaugural parade, happenings in his Kenyan village and people’s reactions around the world. This is even bigger than Princess Diana’s death, and a much happier event.

I am hopeful too, though I don’t have much interest in image or publicity events. I probably won’t be seeking out recordings of today’s happenings because I expect to see images of the day for months and years to come. And the images are inspiring. Only the most jaded veterans would scoff at the potential good Obama could do in his term. The worst I have heard is that he’ll be assassinated before he can enact any real change, but in this case that would be license for revolution. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, at least not a violent one.

Meig's Disease

All morning I seemed to be aware of where my sister must be in hospital at any particular moment. At 1:20 pm I called her friend who dropped her off at the hospital and she told me that the surgery had started late. I called again around 4:20, just before leaving work, and her friend told me the news. The tumour isn't cancer but Meig's Syndrome, which caused pleural effusion (water in the lining of the lungs) and a cyst on the ovaries. The symptoms disappear once the tumour is removed. She had been told that 1/80 off those with her symptoms turn out to have Meig's instead of cancer but the odds were so small that we assumed it must be cancer. She tells me the doctors were shocked it wasn't cancer and all the medical staff is so happy for her.

So this fairy tale ending comes the same week of Obama's inauguration and my union voting on the contract settlement that will give each of us a $4,000 signing bonus. Tomorrow the forecast is that the fog will lift and part and we will have a sunny mild weekend of above average temperatures. Two close friends have just returned from a month away and my friend Derko is coming down from Kelowna for a short visit next week. Does life get better than this? :oD
.