Traveling pants
Hey, thanks, everyone, for the lovely birthday wishes yesterday. I got home very late and am really backed up with work that I have to do last week, so I didn't get a chance to say anything, but I really appreciated coming home to so many nice things. And thank you, Rindy, so much for the virtual bouquet! I don't have to change the water!
On Saturday, I met up with
kerithwyn for lunch at Le Pichet, my favorite place in Seattle. Lovely food, wonderful company, made for a great day.
I had a road trip yesterday with
belmanoir up to Vancouver, which was fun because it was her first chance to actually go up there and walk around the city and spend some time. We had to stop a lot on the way up because of my back injury, but we still made really good time and made it down to the Breton creperie I love in time for lunch, then we moseyed around looking at some residential streets and shopping. Every year I go up, I swear I'm not going to buy anything at Roots, but every year, I do.
Then we had dinner at this fabulous Belgian restaurant that I discovered last year with
black_bird_777. I got us a little lost trying to find it -- we had gone down to the waterfront to see the new convention center building that's down where the cruise ships come in. It's so gorgeous, and despite the fact that it was colder than hell down there, we walked back along the waterfront line until I realized we were too far past where we needed to be. I should have taken the offer of the nice, very sparkly hooker who asked if we needed any help. Fortunately, Bel has much better vision than me, and she spotted a large sign quite a ways away with the street name, and I found out why I couldn't see the street -- it stops now because they put a train station in for the mass transit.
Afterwards we walked back to the parkade where we'd left the car, and after finally finding a way into the locked building (helped this time by a snarky and friendly street person), we wandered around this huge parking structure, unable to find the car. We asked the gate guy and he told us we had to cross the street and go left, but we couldn't find an unlocked entrance, and I started to have one of those "OMG I'm going to be stranded in a foreign city" moments and got a little panicky. My back hurt so bad by that time and in trying to compensate, I blew out my left knee, and I had no idea how we were going to find the car without more walking (plus, it was fucking freezing). Fortunately I spied the parkade entrance about the time Bel was giving me the "keep calm and carry on" there-there, and we went in the "pedestrians do not enter" driveway and I knew that it was where we'd come in, so we were able to find the car. Oh car! I was never so happy to see it.
Much to my extreme surprise, we got a friendly, funny, charming border guard coming back in. I don't think I've seen anyone be friendly or even just humanly decent at the US border since I was a teen. They have made some big changes to the lanes coming in, and he was lamenting how bad they were, so we commiserated with him about how they never ask the people who have to work there what they'd like to see happen. As we passed Ferndale, we made up a whole scenario about Krycek hiding out in Ferndale, trying to fit in with the local populace but never getting it quite right. It amused us for quite a few miles.
I had planned to finish my travel book when I got home, but it was late and I was so tired and hurt so much that I couldn't do it. Poor kitties were very angry with me, but I went to bed pretty quickly and had really weird dreams. And I just could not warm up. Even on the drive back with the heat on a little in the car, I felt like I couldn't warm up, and today I've been cold all day too. There's something about that Vancouver chill that gets to me, once you get down on the water especially. I gotta say, they really did some lovely work on that city for the Olympics. I know that if Seattle ever got an Olympics, it would still be a disaster. We can 't even fix the broken infrastructure here, let alone create new stuff.
It's just nice to have a place to go, something to do, on the day. Even it's just rainy cold Vancouver, it's something different, and takes me away from sitting around, thinking about sis_r and how we aren't together on the day. Even after all this time, it feels like it's getting harder and harder instead of easier. Sometimes I don't even feel like I know who I am anymore -- I'm not a twin, I don't have this person to talk to anymore on our shared birthday or any holiday... I feel like she's disappeared from everything and I'm the only trace of her left in the world. I'm the only memory of her in existence.
Anyway. Now I need to go read the Flashpoint meets X-Files crossover ficlet (the SRU defsues a hostage situation with Krycek!) that Bel wrote for me. That's the stuff, yo. And I have got to come up with something for Yuletide, OMG. I really like my assignment and it's spooky how much the person said that was exactly like what I said about my request for the same fandom. But I still don't have a good story idea to flesh out the beginning and ending ideas.
On Saturday, I met up with
kerithwyn for lunch at Le Pichet, my favorite place in Seattle. Lovely food, wonderful company, made for a great day.
I had a road trip yesterday with
belmanoir up to Vancouver, which was fun because it was her first chance to actually go up there and walk around the city and spend some time. We had to stop a lot on the way up because of my back injury, but we still made really good time and made it down to the Breton creperie I love in time for lunch, then we moseyed around looking at some residential streets and shopping. Every year I go up, I swear I'm not going to buy anything at Roots, but every year, I do.
Then we had dinner at this fabulous Belgian restaurant that I discovered last year with
black_bird_777. I got us a little lost trying to find it -- we had gone down to the waterfront to see the new convention center building that's down where the cruise ships come in. It's so gorgeous, and despite the fact that it was colder than hell down there, we walked back along the waterfront line until I realized we were too far past where we needed to be. I should have taken the offer of the nice, very sparkly hooker who asked if we needed any help. Fortunately, Bel has much better vision than me, and she spotted a large sign quite a ways away with the street name, and I found out why I couldn't see the street -- it stops now because they put a train station in for the mass transit.
Afterwards we walked back to the parkade where we'd left the car, and after finally finding a way into the locked building (helped this time by a snarky and friendly street person), we wandered around this huge parking structure, unable to find the car. We asked the gate guy and he told us we had to cross the street and go left, but we couldn't find an unlocked entrance, and I started to have one of those "OMG I'm going to be stranded in a foreign city" moments and got a little panicky. My back hurt so bad by that time and in trying to compensate, I blew out my left knee, and I had no idea how we were going to find the car without more walking (plus, it was fucking freezing). Fortunately I spied the parkade entrance about the time Bel was giving me the "keep calm and carry on" there-there, and we went in the "pedestrians do not enter" driveway and I knew that it was where we'd come in, so we were able to find the car. Oh car! I was never so happy to see it.
Much to my extreme surprise, we got a friendly, funny, charming border guard coming back in. I don't think I've seen anyone be friendly or even just humanly decent at the US border since I was a teen. They have made some big changes to the lanes coming in, and he was lamenting how bad they were, so we commiserated with him about how they never ask the people who have to work there what they'd like to see happen. As we passed Ferndale, we made up a whole scenario about Krycek hiding out in Ferndale, trying to fit in with the local populace but never getting it quite right. It amused us for quite a few miles.
I had planned to finish my travel book when I got home, but it was late and I was so tired and hurt so much that I couldn't do it. Poor kitties were very angry with me, but I went to bed pretty quickly and had really weird dreams. And I just could not warm up. Even on the drive back with the heat on a little in the car, I felt like I couldn't warm up, and today I've been cold all day too. There's something about that Vancouver chill that gets to me, once you get down on the water especially. I gotta say, they really did some lovely work on that city for the Olympics. I know that if Seattle ever got an Olympics, it would still be a disaster. We can 't even fix the broken infrastructure here, let alone create new stuff.
It's just nice to have a place to go, something to do, on the day. Even it's just rainy cold Vancouver, it's something different, and takes me away from sitting around, thinking about sis_r and how we aren't together on the day. Even after all this time, it feels like it's getting harder and harder instead of easier. Sometimes I don't even feel like I know who I am anymore -- I'm not a twin, I don't have this person to talk to anymore on our shared birthday or any holiday... I feel like she's disappeared from everything and I'm the only trace of her left in the world. I'm the only memory of her in existence.
Anyway. Now I need to go read the Flashpoint meets X-Files crossover ficlet (the SRU defsues a hostage situation with Krycek!) that Bel wrote for me. That's the stuff, yo. And I have got to come up with something for Yuletide, OMG. I really like my assignment and it's spooky how much the person said that was exactly like what I said about my request for the same fandom. But I still don't have a good story idea to flesh out the beginning and ending ideas.