Lions Gate Stopover, Late Lights and weekend movies

The pleasures of cycling seem to have gone up a notch or two, after almost three weeks of walking and taking the bus because of snow and ice-covered roads.  Rather like how good health feels after an illness.  On Monday, I had a little time before school, and stopped on the Lions Gate Bridge to photograph these trees on my right, as I headed north.  I wonder if they leaned away from each other in this dance pose before the snow.  If so, they didn't catch my attention.  Maybe it took the backdrop of light filtered through mist fog to highlight the featured trees.

The bridge angles seemed to call for dancers or musicians or some artistic representation.  I wonder if anyone has ever thought of choreographing or composing a bridge piece.  I once heard a performance on the radio called Port Symphonies that was done with ship fog horns and sirens.  Hm....  a ballet or modern dance performance, or a symphony on the Lions Gate, would be incredible.

And another kind of light.  Bill and I began our weekend on Friday evening by eating supper at the Naam. 

We eat there fairly frequently.  There's usually a line-up and the service can be slow, but we have a favorite friendly waiter, and there's always live music, and I enjoy the Dragon Bowl.  Bill likes their Pop Eye Spinach Pizza.  But, I digress.  Afterwards, we made a right from 4th onto Stephens Street.  At the SE corner of 5th, the lights on this house reminded me of the ones I posted about some weeks ago on Cypress Street.  In my day (I don't believe I just said that), if all Christmas lights weren't taken down by January the 6th, people thought of the house owner as either lazy or a bit strange.  In a weird sort of way, I prefer the lights after Christmas.  They're not reminding me to get my shopping done, but just adding a bit of fun and brightness to Vancouver's typically rather drab and dreary January weather.  Bill often senses before I do when a picture moment presents itself.  He was already stopping before I thought of getting the camera out.  I liked the reflections on the fence, and also some that were in the puddles on the street.  My puddle pictures didn't work, nor did the ones taken from the front of the house, but these side views were more successful, I think.   

We saw two movies on the weekend, Revolutionary Road and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.  The first had incredible acting that held me spellbound, but I have to say, I don't do conflict well.  Knots in my stomach settled in and stayed there for pretty much the entire movie.  Painful, watching two unhappy people torture each other emotionally.  And Benjamin?  I won't say I loved it, but it grew on me as it went along.  The idea of becoming younger as everyone around you ages was well handled.  I came home and read the Fitzgerald short story afterwards, to find that it was about as different from the movie as it could be.  Probably a good thing that the movie took the same theme but little else from the original story.