November 22, 2011: Either a power line's down or someone's coming to kill you! A leisurely day with the Europeans!

"What was that?!"asked Akemi, suddenly sitting up.

"I think it was one of the dogs,"I suggested in my half-awake state.

"Not the dogs,"she said.  "I heard something.  Downstairs.  And the alarm went beereepee."

Heard something?  Downstairs?  Beereepee?  I crawled out of bed and hit the lights.  The room remained dark.  I glanced over at the nightstand.  My digital clock was dark as well.  The home alarm was lit up red.  The first thing that came to mind was those professional hits were they cut power to a place in order to disable the alarm before moving in to kill their intended target.  The second thing that came to mind was the storm raging outside and how it had, in all probability, caused a power outage.   Turned out the latter was correct.

Alexander told me about an incident in a house he once rented.  In the middle of the night, he heard a bump from the closet in the middle of the night.  He got up to investigate, didn't find anything inside the closet per se – but did find a trapdoor IN the closet that led up to, as he put it "a room like the one in The Grudge".  Fortunately, Alexander is still with us so I assume he didn't find anything hiding up there.  Could have been worse.  He could have discovered someone who had been hiding in his closet for over a year – like that guy in Japan.

Anyway, later today…

Akemi: "So what happened?  BC Hydro apologize to you?"

Joe: "No."

Akemi: "Rude."

Another late morning wake-up – which was fine as it allowed Akemi and I to put together a monster brunch…

Lulu, the first one up, waiting for the action to commence.

No, he didn't microwave a mouse. Alexander attempts to master the fine art of defrosting frozen raspberries. This was his first of two attempts - that ended with the exact same results.

Le Brunchez-Vous: various pates, terrine, a chanterelle and feta omelet, hard-boiled eggs, steelcut Irish oatmeal with brown sugar, crusty baguette, bagels, cheese, salamis, and a terrific breakfast juice (beets, carrot, apple, pear, and ginger).

We followed the leisurely brunch with a leisurely stroll downtown…

Jombies!!! What Akemi calls zombies after being inspired by recent episodes of The Walking Dead (or, as Lawren now refers to it: The Talking Dead).

Break time!

A rare photo of Alexander and me. I should post more of these as there's a chance I may want to sponsor him too some day.

We brave the cold to check out the art gallery! Well, not the actual art gallery but the adjoining gift shop. Close enough!

We dropped by Chapters where I picked up three volumes of the Herman collection. And forget my gloves. But find them when Akemi and I go back to look for them. She insists on my taking a pic of the forlorn gloves. A powerful lesson learned.

 We returned home for some late afternoon R&R.

The pugs also enjoy some late afternoon R&R.

For dinner, we headed to West Vancouver's best restaurant, La Regalade, where we met up with Robert Cooper and his wife Hillary, and Andy Mikita and his wife Candace.

Alex goes over the menu.

Terrific company.

The dish of the night was a dessert. And a dessert containing fruit no less! I avoided it just for that reason but ended up regretting it.

Akemi isn't big on French restaurants but loved La Regalade.  Guess there's another trip over the bridge in our near future.

We returned home and each to our laptops (in what is becoming a comfy little routine).  Alexander found the Country Music Channel, which turned out to be one of the high points of his day.  He lay, sprawled out on the comfy couch, listening to that Kenny Chechnya and surfing the net.

Sarah and Lulu unwind before bedtime by planning their Paris trip.