Vancouver. Two words: good food. Cheap sushi and fabulous Ethiopian food.

If you looked closely, one could see the echoes of stubble tracing a faint shadow of pattern-baldness that meandered from ear, to crown, to ear. His eyes didn't always match the laughter in his voice, but when they did, the lines radiated, like spokes, from their corners.

When he told stories the words came out razor-sharp. Carnival patois, to match the oversized, indifferently polished black clown shoes he wore. I didn't know how much of his story to believe; after all, he was a balloon artist hustling tourists next to Café du Monde.

I really wasn't kidding when I said that I had a backlog of pictures. This should just about catch me up, except for the goofy vacation pictures.

I have to wonder if Pla-Mor Lanes loves or hates us. We're loud, we're really loud, we don't take our bowling seriously…but we're incredibly profitable for them. After all, we buy beer. So here's snippets of our typical Thursday night madness:

Lots of balls?
by domesticat.
(images link to larger versions on flickr -- or see the full photoset)

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Chris Frost getting his wondergeek kiss.

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Geof can do both floor bowling and sumo bowling.

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This is a typical group picture.

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I cannot explain Heather's nor Jessica's expressions in this picture.

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Nor Sean's in this one.

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Bowling inspires munchies.

Written on Saturday morning in Victoria:

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Me, in shorts, sitting crosslegged in front of a locked hotel lobby in British Columbia. Such is the joy of getting up early to write and then discovering the joys of a) your spouse having the only room key, which you discovered (too late) that you needed to have to get back inside the hotel and b) that your travelling companions are still asleep and have the only key that will unlock the rental car.

These are the random images that just don't fit anywhere else…