patio lanterns

I've never been one to sit on patios and drink. Sitting on the patio used to mean one of my friends smoked. Any season of the year, I'd be outside with smoking friends with a drink (if I was lucky) and either melting from the heat or freezing because it was the middle of winter. Since the ban on smoking pretty much everywhere, sitting on a patio takes on a whole new meaning.

Yesterday after work, Eileen and I took the blue chug chug (a fifty cent savings versus the Aquabus) from one side of False Creek to the other to meet up with friends on a patio. We popped into the shop at the Granville Island Brewery to get a couple of big bottles of raspberry beer (it's only available for a couple more days) and then headed to the Backstage Lounge patio. Grasshopper with lemon and amusing conversation makes even hot, muggy days tolerable. Watching people and boats pass by made it feel like the best day of summer. The light fell quickly; it's hard to believe it gets dark-dark by 9pm. I decided to walk home along the seawall and Stuart accompanied me, thankfully; parts of that route are creepy. It's weird to see how much work has been done to the olympic village. A really lovely night.

While I walked home from work today, I got a call from Sara, inviting me to the Whip for some cask beer on the patio. "Black currant heifeweisen tonight!" she exclaimed. I high-tailed it home to drop off my bag and throw water on myself to try to cool down, and met up with her, Aaron and their friend who talked in a terrible fake Scottish accent. The beer was super tasty and, were I OK with drinking alone for hours at a time, I probably would have drank until I couldn't see straight. As it is, I had just the one and wished for more. It's the only cask of it, never to be made again, which is just tragic because it was so tasty. Sara and Aaron talked about maybe making some themselves, which I heartily endorsed as they are magic with anything consumable.

Instead of going to the Richmond Night Market with them, I decided to come home and try to start packing. I'm sort of concerned about packing because if anyone agrees to help I'm pretty sure they'll question the number of boxes I have. I'm getting rid of a lot of stuff, but even still... I think I'm going to have to be a bit more brutal about stuff. Sometimes I wish I weren't raised by packrats. This will be OK, this will be OK, this will be OK...