To say our Saturday was Surrey-licious would be an understatement. John and I took the train out to Central City in the early afternoon to meet up with our good friend (and honorary sister) and my niece for Winterfest. We got some thundersticks, ice skated on plastic, were hassled by mascots and listened to some really loud music on a big live stage. Children were running amok everywhere, it was slightly soggy out but all in all, it was a pretty great day even if my niece didn’t want to make a “magic wand” or get her face painted (in all honesty, neither did I, so it was cool).

John was able to take some good shots despite the grey weather and low-light, the following are from his Flickr set.

The Rec Centre parking lot, 102nd Ave, and the Central City Plaza were all reserved for Winterfest.

Olympic mascot “Quatchi” with Surrey mayor, Diane Watts.

Shane Philip with the didjeridu on stage.

Kids craft fair and story-telling inside the mall. Smell the commerce – mixed with Elmer’s glue.

More activities for kids. This tent was giving away saplings. My niece had no use for such a thing although she did enjoy this animal tracks quiz.

We skated on a synthetic polymer “ice rink”. It was… interesting.

He is the “Ice Prince”. He wanted to tell you that a lot, which my niece did not appreciate.

View the rest of the photos from Winterfest in John’s Flickr set.

I’ve almost completely left the Chinese New Year celebrations slip by me this year. Today at 12:00pm (about 20 mins ago) the parade kicked of in Chinatown, starting at Pender and Carrall, “it travels northbound on Pender, east on Gore, south on Keefer and ends at Carall.” [News1130]

Photo credit: SqueakyMarmot on Flickr

Vancouver has a huge Chinese population, filled with tradition, and pride that helped build up this entire region. When walking around my side of town I hardly notice anything that would hint that the new year was here. The only shop window displaying something festive is Le Chateau on Burrard and Robson. It’s storefont is filled with bright red lanterns trimmed with gold, strewn about the entire window display. It’s actually quite nice. The rest of the shops are focusing on what’s happening February 14th. Something with less tradition but I suppose more buying power.

The entire moth of February is about a heart-shaped box (which are themselves being made into chocolate this year). Commercials on the radio are suggesting that a mobile phone is “the perfect gift” or maybe that mp3 player or TV. I’ve already touched on the fact that we don’t need much for Valentine’s Day so I’m going to highlight other things happening in this city this month – even though we’re almost halfway through.

Also next weekend Mount Washington is hosting the Ski for MS. The Thelma to my Louise, Keira-Anne will be boarding to raise funds for a great cause. Read more about it on her post.

Here at Miss604 we are always looking for neat community events and especially charity fundraisers that we can get involved with and promote. From Blogathon, Food Banks, Childhood cancer research, Hospital Foundations and Raising the Roof for the homeless.

After an evening of bowling and good times at Commodore Lanes, Corinna sent me the idea over Twitter, suggesting we get a blogger team together for the Bowl for Big Brothers Classic (much like the Skate for a Cure). I have contacted the organizers and have now setup a Team Blogger.

Proceeds from The Bowl for Big Brothers Classic support Big Brothers of Greater Vancouver’s quality mentoring programs by funding volunteer screening, training and monitoring of friendships as well as fun activities for Bigs and Littles…

…Mentoring benefits the community by endorsing volunteerism, tolerance and social responsibility. Our vision is to put a mentor in the life of every child who needs one. [About]

Sponsor the team or a bowler:
Go to the event home page > Donate > Sponsor a Bowler or Company.

Team members can start collecting donations online, or in person. If you register for Team Blogger I’ll have a pledge book for you that you can pick up.

If you would like to join us March 16th @ Xcalibur Bowling in Surrey for the event, sign up and make sure to select the team to which you’d like to be added. In this case our “Company Name” is “Team Blogger” or you can search by team captain, “Rebecca Bollwitt”.

Join the team:
Go to the event home page > Select Register > Sign up > Join Company (or just click this link)

Team Blogger so far:

This year’s theme is also “Beach Party” and they encourage costumes (bikinis are questionable but lei, grass skirts and flip flops are encouraged).

It’s pretty simple but there’s a lot to take in. Sign up, collect, bowl or donate and receive our eternal gratitude and the obvious warm-fuzzies. If anyone has any questions, please drop me a line in the contact form or in the comments, thanks!.

As an experiment, and to try something new that looks pretty fancy, I will be using CoverItLive to live blog tonight’s DemoCamp. During the live blog you’ll see me posting in real-time and you’ll also be able to comment as it is fully interactive. Once the live portion is complete, I will paste the archive here as well.

The live blog is over and available at the bottom of this post. Here’s some feedback as I think overall CoverItLive was pleasant from a readers’ perspective.

Posting

Comments

I’ll let this all marinate a little longer but my overall impressions of CiL were very positive. I believe there are more functions I haven’t yet explored (and perhaps even a more useful archive feature) so I’ll give it some time and a couple more chances.

Read the live blog (after the jump on the main page) as covered in CiL and pasted here from my in TextEdit. The CiL instant replay is available after the text, at the bottom of this post. Continue reading this post ⟩⟩

Miss604.com will be going through some changes over the next little while.

No, not those kinds of changes – and you probably won’t even notice a thing.

We’re trying to keep up to date with the growth the site has seen in the last little while and as a result some upgrades will need to be made. I know mid-week is an undesirable time in which to perform such maintenance but I have no other choice. Please bear with me as the site may flutter in and out of consciousness for the next day or so but I assure you once everything’s back up and better than ever it will be worth the wait.

Also, a new Miss604 contest will also be announced and you’ll have to do practically nothing to be entered (not like the cartwheels, belly circles and head taps that I requested last time).

So please, stay tuned, bear with us, and thanks so much for reading, you guys are great!