Mark: How about you? What's new in your life? Jill: Well, no new additions.
Mark: No new additions.
Jill: No pets.
Mark: What's the matter with you? You've been married now what, a month? Jill: Two months now, actually.
Mark: Two months.
Jill: Two months! No, nothing's really changed. We're getting new appliances this weekend. Mark: Well, that's a start. Jill: That's about it, I guess. Chris just decided two days ago, all of a sudden, we need new appliances. So, we're getting a new Mark: Springtime, time for a new stove? Jill: I guess he's bored and so we're getting a new dishwasher and new oven and stove and new fridge. Mark: Wow!
Jill: This weekend it's being delivered. Mark: That's pretty good. Jill: Yeah, he doesn't mess around. Mark: No!
Jill: When he told me he thought about doing this, this was about two days ago, and, apparently, things are getting delivered this Sunday, so.
Mark: Now is that a green light for you to go out and go buy something else that you want?
Jill: Well, not really because I generally do that all year round and that's kind of his point that I just spend money all the time. You know, every week I'm coming home with something new, so. This is not actually for him either it's for 'us'. Mark: Right.
You mean you're not buying stuff for 'us'? Jill: Not generally, no. The bigger purchases I usually leave up to him.
Mark: Right.
That's a good thing to do, yeah. Jill: But no, I'm happy. That's fine with me. I mean they were the original appliances and I think our condo is now about 18 years old, so it was time to get new ones. I mean we got a new washer just about a year ago and these are just going to be much nicer, stainless steel as opposed to the white. You know, they were getting a little bit Mark: Just newer and more features. Jill: More modern and an oven that is self-cleaning.
Mark: Oh nice.
Jill: Our oven was getting pretty disgusting and neither of us were motivated to clean it.
Mark: I was going to say, you can clean non self-cleaning ovens, you know that?
Jill: Yeah, you can. So, anyway, now we have an excuse not to ever clean our oven.
Mark: Right.
Jill: So, yeah, we're just completely spoiled here, obviously, that we have all these amazing appliances. Mark: I was going to say, we have a self-cleaning oven too but it doesn't seem to work, the self-cleaning cycle or thing part of it. Jill: Actually, I've heard that. Mark: So, we just don't clean it. Jill: Well, I think that's probably the worst job, worst chore, is cleaning an oven. Mark: Spraying that, whatever you call it, Jill: toxic whatever and then leaving it. Mark: I know, leaving it sit.
Jill: And then you have to get in there and scrub with an SOS pad, well, at least in our oven you do.
Mark: Oh yeah, in any oven. I mean the stuff just gets baked on there.
Jill: Yeah.
Mark: What's amazing to me is I've done that before which Jill: You've cleaned an oven before? Mark: Yeah, I know it's surprising, isn't it? Jill: I never have.
Mark: I can't remember where I did that. I try to avoid household chores. I think maybe in college when we had to cleanup our Jill: Your dorm or something. Mark: Not a dorm, our apartment or whatever we were renting there.
Jill: Yeah.
Mark: Anyway, I've done that before. It was not fun.
Jill: It's a miserable job. Mark: And trying to get in the oven and you're crouched in the thing. You know, brutal.
Jill: Yeah, it's brutal, so now we don't have to deal with it. Mark: That's good. It's nice to get new appliances. That's always fun. Jill: Oh yeah, that will be great.
Mark: Probably more energy-efficient too.
Jill: Yes, that's right, energy-efficient and yeah, there will be a number of things that are better about them. And then the only other thing is I'm just fixing up our deck, our roof-top deck, which is quite large and quite nice. Mark: It sounds pretty nice. A roof-top deck somehow sounds nice. Do you have a nice view looking off of it?
Jill: We go up some stairs and we open it and we've got a gorgeous view of the north shore mountains, all the buildings downtown and then also the ocean, so it's a fantastic view. Mark: Yeah.
Jill: And it's a big deck. It's not like a little tiny deck it's very big. Mark: Which is so nice; to have a big space.
Jill: Yeah.
We've got a barbeque and table and chairs and I actually want to get a few nice teak chaise lounge chairs to put out there and then I definitely want to do some nice flowers and plants this year. We haven't done them for a couple years because we're not home very much in the summertime on weekends and it's full sun up there so things need to be watered all the time; everyday sometimes in the middle of the summer here because there is never any shade up there. Mark: Right.
Jill: So, I don't know if things will survive but I want to at least try and spruce it up a little bit with some color. Mark: At least if you are able to water it. I mean, being in full sun like that they'll look great. Jill: Oh yeah and I've been doing some research and I'm only going to, obviously, get the plants and flowers that do well in full sun. Mark: Right.
Jill: Not stuff, you know, like hostas. And things that need shade, I just won't plant up there. Mark: No, yeah.
Jill: So, that's about it. Mark: Now we just need a little hot weather so that you can enjoy your deck.
Jill: Yeah.
Mark: So we can all get out and enjoy the weather. It's been kind of cool this year. Here we are middle of June and, I don't know, what did it get up to today 15? Jill: I think it was supposed to get up to 18 or 20, actually.
Mark: Oh, really?
Jill: But to be fair, June, and I've always said this and even the meteorologist on the news the other day was saying this, that June is not a month you should count on in Vancouver for being nice. Mark: Absolutely not.
Jill: It's a very unstable month. There is always a lot of rain. It's not a hot month and in May we had quite a bit of nice sunny weather. That last week of May and the first few days of June we were actually breaking records because we had so much hot, beautiful, sunny weather.
Mark: When you say 'so much', we had like Jill: Well, a week and a half. Mark: four days.
Jill: No, it was more.
Mark: A week and a half?
Jill: You forget.
Mark: Okay, there were four hot days and six days that were not raining.
Jill: Like 25 degrees. No, no, you don't remember. Mark: Any of you that are planning on visiting Vancouver, if you are looking for nice summer weather Jill: July and August. Mark: Yeah, mid July to the end of August even into the middle of September.
Jill: Yeah.
Mark: That's when we have our nicest weather. Outside of that, you are almost guaranteed at that time of year to have beautiful sunny weather.
Jill: March, April.
Mark: And then in Vancouver or B.C., this area is just such a phenomenal place to be when the weather is like that. The rest of the year we just kind of grin and bear it until it gets nice again.
Jill: April and May, I mean, April-May you get some nice weather. There are always some nice days.
Mark: For sure.
Jill: But you can't count on long stretches of nice weather. Mark: No.
Jill: You certainly can't say, oh yeah, you know, April and May are really nice months because there will be some nice days but there could also be a lot of rain, so your best bet is July or August. Mark: Although, I seem to remember years past like this spring was particularly cool. We've had much nicer April and May and June, well June, we're still in. It hasn't been that bad really, I exaggerate. Jill: But it's been, except for the first few days of June, kind of cloudy or some rain almost every day this month so far. Mark: And cool.
Jill: Yeah.
Mark: Like the other day, yeah, you had four blankets on in the office instead of your usual two.
Jill: No, I had two blankets and my heater.
Mark: Yeah.
So, no, no, but the weather hasn't been great this year but any day now. It's supposed to get hot next week. Jill: Yes and if you recall last summer, June was absolutely terrible like usual; rainy, cloudy every day. I think I was still wearing my long johns to work to keep warm. July came and July was just scorching and it was Mark: like someone turned the heater on, yeah. Jill: Everyday sun and August and went right in to October where we had water shortage problems.
Mark: Did we last year?
Jill: We didn't so much over here but they did on the island. Mark: On the island they had that. In Tofino they ran out of water. They were trucking it in.
Jill: That's right, that's right, which is a real tourist town in the summer. Mark: Which is really silly considering how much rainfall we get here in the wintertime, but if you don't store it then you don't have it when you need it. Jill: Yeah, that's right. Mark: People here always assume it will rain but if it doesn't rain for a while then you run out, which they did. Jill: They did, yeah.
Mark: And they rely on tourism there. On Vancouver Island where we are going for our outing, a big part of their economy now is reliant on tourism and they basically had to send people home.
Jill: Well, people couldn't even take showers or anything at one point. They just literally were out of water.
Mark: All the hotels shut down which is amazing, yeah.
Jill: It was a pretty big disaster for them. So, yeah, I'm hopeful that I think we'll get another warm, hot, dry summer after this month is over. Mark: Well, somebody told me, who was reading the Farmer's Almanac or whatever, that's what it says is coming: a long hot summer. I've heard that. I don't know if that's wishful thinking or what it is, but. Jill: Well, I know people who swear that the Farmers Almanac is right. I dont know.
Mark: For those who don't know, the Farmer's Almanac I don't really know much about it It's a book that's put out by I don't know who that predicts all kinds of different things. I've never actually seen one; I've just heard it talked about. Jill: No, me either; yeah, the illusive Farmer's Almanac. Mark: Yeah, but definitely it's a book that's published. I even think you can get it in bookstores.
Jill: People talk about it.
Mark: Presumably, farmers go by it. They plan their harvest or crops or whatever by what's written in the Farmer's Almanac. I don't know how they predict stuff. I don't know if it's scientific or if it's hocus-pocus, but Jill: Well, we'll see won't we this year? Mark: We will see. We will see. Anyway, I think that is going to do us for today. Before we go I just want to remind everybody to make sure to come check out our site at thelinguist.com where you will be able to read a transcript of this podcast and use all our learning tools to save and lookup the words and phrases, to write, have your writing corrected, speak online with our tutors and other members and work on your pronunciation; whole range of functionality that we offer at The Linguist. Please come and check it out. There is a 14-day free trial and we hope to meet you online someday.
