Clouds paint the sky grey and silver, causing a dreamy feeling to wash down over me, like the showers that hang in the air. But instead of enjoying the weather, I sit inside my blue and grey cube with none of the diffuse sunlight in sight.

I am missing having a full weekend off, Split days leave little time to do anything. With the exception of Sundays, one of us is always working, and of course on opposite schedules as well. I find that our days off get too packed with things, that we either get nothing done, or have a harder time finding a day to relax.

We finally made it to the beach last week. The salt air, cool waters and burning sand was revitalizing. Sail boats lined the horizon, and sunbathers line the sand. I forgot how salty the sea is. We came back, covered in sand and salt, and with a memory card full of photos.

To finish of the day at the beach, we had a Mediterranean inspired meal. Pork stuffed with Spinach, feta and pepper, Hummus and pita, Feta Spinach pastries. All finished with a lemon shisha. The meal was deceptively colourless. All pale and greys and yellows. But one bite into a pastry or patty, and the colour and flavour poured out. Vibrant greens and reds quickly took over the plate. as we savoured our patio meal.

From there we went down to the Inner Harbour to watch the Symphony play. They were set up on a barge, in front of the Legislative grounds. The night ended with Fireworks to the 1812 Overture. The music was great, but the fireworks were rather lack luster.

This week hasn’t been the best on our bikes, Kate’s gears shattered on her Wednesday afternoon. My rear tire is blown. Tomorrow we will have to try and patch together the bicycles. Hopefully it won’t be too difficult to repair.

Finally have the car up and running. Took her out on the highway, for no real reason. Obviously we needed to have lunch in Nanaimo instead of Victoria.

I love being able to take a drive through the mountains along the coast, windows rolled down, music blaring, great company. after coming back to the capital, we drove along the Victoria peninsula. Lovely turquoise vistas, and green leaved tunnels lead us back home.

There is something in the dusk hours, that makes me long to go riding. The colours become so vibrant in the setting of the sun. Fire reds and deep velvet blues fill the sky. The electric colours of the flowers, and forest greens of the leaves start to gain this heavy saturation, bringing the colours out to play. As the world lies down to sleep, the flora, and heavens start to scream out with vigor and life. The peonies and holly, The roses and poppies start to glow, little splashes of colour rising from the growing darkness.

As the sun goes lower and lower into the horizon,  gets lined in the glow of the fire, causing the brilliant reds and oranges to mesh into the velvet blue sky as it becomes speckled with glowing jewels, some brilliant, some letting you see just enough so that you know they exist. This foreshadows the over saturation that begins to occur, as slowly the purples, pinks, yellows and reds of the flowers snap to near black.

This is in near direct contrast to dawn, Where everything seems to be covered in a haze of grey and dusty pink. Colour is leached from the world and slowly added back again. There is no where near the intensity that happens in the night before. The world is greeted to a world with promise, but still seems a little ashen. It is as if Mother Nature herself is not quite ready for the new day.

We went out for coffee tonight, as we did not have time to get downtown for the fireworks. As we were walking I noticed that you could clearly see the lit up dome of the legislature grounds. Once again, we were shocked to relearn how condensed the Victoria area really is. Because of this, we actually got to see the fireworks, vibrantly on the horizon.

This brought up the concept of perception; more specifically the concept of how we see differently. For example, when I look at the fireworks going off, I see the shapes of the fireworks before seeing the colour. I could see these faint smoke-trails that started eating at the negative spaces of the sky. Because of this, I knew how the burst would look well before the colours were there.

This was in direct contrast to how Kate saw the same burst. She could not see those trails without conscious effort. The colours were the first thing she noticed, and that was from the center out. I saw from the edge of the burst into the centre.

Perception is an interesting concept that we have been exploring as of late, odds are there will be more on perception as the days go by.

Today ended up being a beautiful day. There was this consistent mist that just begged for us to wander.We are finally starting to learn the area around us. Everywhere we go is so colourful. There are deep forest greens with spots of electric and saturated colors; the overcast sky’s caused all of the colours to pop brilliantly.

It is very different wandering on the coast. There is no flat, dull areas, every place has a story to tell. Roads curve , rise and fall. Trees and shrubbery create overarching tunnels and gateways. There is a life to the city and streets that is so welcoming. The city seems to embody the wanderer’s spirit that resides in us.

~Dusk||

The cloak of night, and shroud of the June rain create a magic in the air that begs us to wander. The rest of the world is sitting in a deep slumber. People never could understand the enchantments that begin to show in the midnight hours. A shame really, people need more magic in their lives.

The few who listen to the call are never disappointed. The over saturation of colours make the world seem almost black; the rain cools the skin and heart. The night reaches out its gentle hand and eases the burdens that the harsh daylight places on the shoulders of the people.

The day, in contrast, is busy, restless. It offers little chance to show the bright pinks and purples of the flowers; there is no time to catch the crisp scent of the birch and cedar that hangs in the air. No the magic has to hide in the world of automobiles and technology. Magic has no place there after all.

But as the twilight hours turn to coal black nights, the Fae that hide in the scents and colours start to dance and play, creating a world hidden to all but the select few. The ones who listen to the call indeed see a more livelier world

The days have been odd – a weird mix of restlessness and not wanting to do much. So we sit and relax. A day for reading and writing it seems.

To me, the weather seems to accentuate this. It is sunny out, but there also lies a chill wind. It is hard to believe sometimes that the ocean air can reach this far in. We lie a good four kilometers from the ocean.The scent of the the ocean still reaches us though.

It would be nice to have some rain to wander through. We don’t see as much rain as we would like, seems Victoria does not see near as much as the mainland can. Almost like we have a little shelter. It stays temperate though. rain or shine it stays warm, quite the change from the prairies.

We still need to explore this area. We know downtown, and the area we live, but have yet to really explore the city.

The city is small. We almost want to laugh  when people give disdain about driving to Victoria from Sooke. It is a half hour drive during busy hours, but everyone here seems so used to the short distances. Two of the major roads are only a block apart, and the blocks are much smaller than they are out east.

We will most likely be wandering later today.

I have confirmation of my new job now. I will be starting on Monday. It will be nice getting full time hours and a decent wage.

There is still a lot going on for us to get settled. We have finally managed to unpack some of our stuff now that we know we will be staying at Andrew’s for an extended period of time (we are planning on taking over the lease) We are still trying to get a rhythm down however.

One of the biggest issues I think we have been having with the settling process is pacing ourselves. There are many things we both want and need to do, but we have been exhausting ourselves trying to get them done. As such, we haven’t had much in the way of free time, and when we do we just collapse in place.

We still have lots of things to do, but we are both working on taking time for us, creating more of a plan so we can make sure we have time for us.

~Dusk||

I  have my bike up and running again. I love being able to take to the road, coast down a hill and let the wind cause jackets and hats to billow. So tomorrow will be “ride to work: take two.”

On other news, I have a new job – back to being a phone jockey. I will be starting as soon as some leg work is done. With any luck that will be Wednesday. It will be nice to be doing work I actually want to do.

I am looking forward to taking the bikes out on more of a ride. With any luck we will be hitting one of the trails come Saturday – not sure which way we will take it yet. Hopefully we will get some photos, and I will figure out how to add them to the posts.

~Dusk||

So time to do an update.

We have now been in Victoria for just under three weeks. Setup has been slow but we are getting there. The basics are covered – we have a place, jobs, food on the table.

It is beautiful out here – no where near as rainy as Vancouver, nice and temperate – almost every day has been sitting at about 20C. Sadly we have yet to do too much exploring – we have only done the tourist bit once. Everything is in nice and close proximity so we can walk everywhere. Right out side our place, we have a path that takes us straight to Victoria (which is actually a really small area like 10 blocks by 10 blocks type small), the other way the path can take us to Shwartz Bay (where the ferries from Vancouver come in). We plan on exploring these paths in the coming weeks.

Our immediate plans are to get a set of bicycles. everything is close enough that we can all but park the car. We can walk to work/Victoria in approximately 45 minutes.

Everything in this area is beautiful. There is a lot of older architecture, adding a lot of character to the city. The legislative grounds are a good deal smaller than the Edmonton, but what the grounds lack in size, they more than make up for in aesthetics. Parliament looks out onto the Inner Harbour, and there is holly surrounding the grounds. At night the Parliament building is lit up on the edges with LEDs. It really is a remarkable sight. Then there is the Fairmont Empress hotel. It is built in the same style as the Hotel Macdonald, but dwarfs it in size. With any luck we will be able to get some pictures up soon.

~Dusk ||