Vancouver BC or Bust

In 1991 I graduated from WSU. I moved myself and my belongings to Seattle Washington – more specifically Bellevue.  Since then I’ve moved over 25 times and have traveled and seen the world.

What I have not done is seen my own backyard.

Vancouver BC is just a short 3 hour (with the border stop) from Seattle. And yet, it’s sat allusively up North mocking me. Teasing me for not coming to visit. 

“It’s too far.” I’d say.

“There’s no one to go with” was another excuse.

Until now. Finally.  Vancouver no longer is on my “places to go” list.

I purchased an EXCELLENT deal from GroupOn for the PanPacific Hotel located on the water front in Vancouver. Well, one of the many waterfronts. That town is surrounded by water – not at all different from Seattle.

The GroupOn was for the PanPacific Club and it got us a kickass room on the 23^rd floor with our own private concierge, happy hour every night, HUGE continental breakfast, and our own private visitors every night.

When I bought the GroupOn in February I started planning.  I am of the breed that I MUST know what all my options are for a destination so I can then decide what I’d like to do. Blueberry is of the breed of “wait until you get there.” We travel well together for this reason. She usually just hops on to whatever I have found and recommended. It’s a win-win really. My Control Goddess gets to plan and do what she wants, and her Sit Back and Follow Goddess gets to do fun stuff.

I had a list.  And I was willing to be flexible because I am, after all, older and more relaxed about some things. This was Blueberry’s birthday trip so I had to allow for to add/remove as she wanted to.

We left Lynnwood at 8:30am. Vancouver playlist playing loud, top up cuz it wasn’t quite warm enough yet for Blueberry, coffee in hand and we were off. We hit the border in what felt like no time at all.

Once across and into Canada we stopped at the Visitor center to visit their Canadian bathrooms and to just look around.

That’s when Blueberry stumbled onto this brochure for Capilano Suspension Bridge.

I had seen this in my research and avoided it like the plague. I’m not a heights person and I’m especially not a heights person when there’s a 250ft drop below you.  The tourism folks there were offering a discount and Blueberry really wanted to go. So we signed up.

Once in Vancouver proper we were a bit early to check-in so we hopped on the free shuttle to Capilano.

Now, despite my whining about the height and the vertigo and the absolute certainty that I was going to plunge to my death, this place was pretty damn cool.

The suspension bridge  is 450ft long and was 250ft high.  They “said” it’s the strongest and safest suspension bridge in the country.  I’d like to know how they test the safety part….but I digress.

On the other side of the bridge was this Tree Walk.  It was basically pretending to be a squirrel with no hop and you walk from tree to tree on these mini suspension bridges.  You ooohhh and ahhhh at the scenery and walk to the next tree.  It was pretty cool. And the bridges between trees were only like 2 stories high give or take, so I was okay with that.

 

 

We sauntered around a bit and checked out the other nature around on that side of the bridge and then I, like a drunken sailor, wandered back across. See the bridge is moving from everyone walking on it, so you can’t exactly walk straight.  I have a hard enough time as it is, I certainly didn’t need any more help.

The “newest” attraction out there is the Cliff Walk. It’s a 20inch plank to walk on that is extended 30 feet from the cliff.  I think the idea is to scare the pee out of most people, but to maybe also give them a slightly different view of where they’re going to plunge to their death. (Did I ever tell you drama was my middle name?)

I may look relaxed...but I'm anything but.

The thinks she's so funny!

Gulp!

We were starving by the time we finished this and decided to just grab a quick bite at their “grill”.  Upon seeing that a burger…just a burger, no fries, no drink, no nothing, was $12 we opted to split curly fries.  Puck had to have some too.

Back at the hotel, we checked in and started to wander the city. We didn’t get too far before we were asked if we wanted to buy a Hop-on and Hop-off bus tour.  I LOVE these tours.  They make seeing a city so easy and allow you to decide what you really want to check out.  So we bought a two day pass that we’d start to use on Saturday.

We managed to walk our way up to Robson Street – their major shopping street apparently.  On our way I marveled at their architecture. 

Vancouver is a city of skyscrapers.  Not just business skyscrapers, but apartment skyscrapers too…everywhere.  In their downtown section, there was an abundance of glassy, shiny buildings mixed in with old world brick buildings.

The Marine Building.

This building had a single line poem from a British author all around it. It was very cool.

Saturday morning after stuffing ourselves on the supurb continental breakfast they offered, we hopped on to see Stanley Park.  According to our bus tour guide the park is the “jewel” of Canada.  It’s just 100 acres larger than Central Park and boy was it beautiful.  It offered us some great views of Vancouver as well.

Shakespeare's Garden in Stanley Park

The bus was a little bouncy and I, for whatever reason, was starting to get a little motion sick. I never get motion sick, but this time I was. We “hopped off” and took a little ferry (I mean LITTLE) to Granville Island –which – it turns out – isn’t really an island.

The Granville Island Market was awesome. I wish I had felt a bit better because it’s a photographers heaven. So many things to shoot.  The flavors in the air, the shops, the people, it was just fantastic. 

Picking out chocolates.

Leaving the market we had our maps in hand. Blueberry had the bus tour map and I had just a regular old map I had picked up at the hotel.  We were trying to find where to hop on the blue line. The earlier line we were on was the red line and only did Stanely park. We now needed the blue line to do the rest of the tour of Vancouver. Blueberry and I stared hard at the map from the bus company and couldn’t figure out WHERE we needed to be.  The street names were cut off, or non-existent which made it difficult to figure it out.  We walked a full block circle to determine that where we had started was where we needed to be.  We asked 4 people, we argued with each other, I determined we both read maps very differently and it was raining.  I’m surprised we both survived that.

Finally, the blue bus came along and we were off again.

We drove through Chinatown and got off because Blueberry wanted to see the Police Museum (YAWN).  But it was her birthday weekend so we did it.  Well, she did it, I sat in the lobby and waited. 

After that we walked up to Gastown and found a happenin’ little place called PickinPah – the guide book I had suggested this little bourbon bar for lunch.  We were hungry so we stopped for lunch.  We didn’t want to eat too much because it was late and we had dinner reservations at the Italian Kitchen.  Still, I ordered Mac N Cheese and Blueberry ordered a bowl of chili.  After about half way through, Blueberry noticed the dessert menu on the wall and saw that it said, “Deep Fried Mars Bars.” She turned to me with a goofy smile and announced we HAD to get dessert. 

The most delicious Mac N Cheese.

It doesn't look like much, but it was SOOOO good.

The chewy, gooey inside...

OMG…that’s all I can say about this dessert. It was SOOOO…. DAMN…. Good….
We finished our walk through Gastown and stopped to see the famous Steam Clock.  Apparently this clock operates by steam power. Which is pretty cool.

The Gastown Steam Clock

On our way back to the hotel I noticed the building that was in my guide book that offered an observation deck on the roof. So we went inside and bought tickets to the top. 

Again with the heights.  I’m fine if I’m inside an enclosure and can look out (not down), but the mode of travel to the top was a glass elevator!  I do not need to see the ground beneath me grow smaller. Blueberry, on the other hand, is leaning into the glass door looking down shooting photos. Ugh.

Once on the top, we got a great view of Vancouver from above. 

I survived…barely.  With shaky knees we walked back to the hotel to “freshen up” before dinner. 

The Italian Kitchen inVancouver is by far, one of the BEST restaurants I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating in. Top 10 easily.  The food was delicious, the dessert was AMAZING…and the cosmo…well you see what it was.

In the end, I loved Vancouver.  It’s a beautiful city. Clean, friendly people, lots of little dogs everywhere, and an all-around good time.  I’ll be going back there.  There’s more I need to see and do and photograph.

So glad I did this for Blueberry’s 22 again birthday.  Or as our cousin Kara put it, her 19^th anniversary of her 25^th birthday.

All the photos are here.

Pioneer Woman

Yesterday I met the Pioneer Woman.  It was an adventure and an experience I won’t soon forget.  I went to her new cookbook book signing at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park. Having only been there once or twice, I wasn’t sure how this book signing would go, so in typical Jenn fashion I was 2 hours early.

Being 2 hours early though granted me a rare look into the frenzy that is Pioneer Woman and the women (and some men) who follow her.  Somehow I sat outside this chaos and did not include myself in the craziness that was this book signing.

I found a seat as close to the area where she’d be doing her speaking, sat and watched the tables around me fill up.  The store employees were setting up the chairs for the speech and had blocked that area off.  I was sitting right by this area and so knew I’d be first to get a seat – or among the first.

The room began to fill as more and more women showed up for the signing.  The hum in the air was of excitement and a little bit giddy.  I could over-hear misc conversations all around me about “did you see that show?” and “Did you read her blog about XYZ?” and it went on and on. Everyone talking about Pioneer Woman.  Every person had one, two, three, or more cookbooks in their hands and were eagerly looking through them commenting on the recipes.

“Oh I made that one. It was delicious. Isn’t she clever to come up with that combination of flavors?”

 
“Oh look at that photo of Charlie. He’s so cute.”

It dawned on me, that we talk about this person as if we know her. She’s invited us into her life through her blog, her recipes, her cookbook, and her cooking show. And somehow, we all feel a kindred spirit to her and feel like she’s “one of the girls.”

And that sums up how I felt about her. She’s just an average person who’s worked very hard to get to where she is. And somehow she’s managed to hold on to herself in spite of all the fame (and I’m sure fortune).

Anyhow, back to the signing.

The store employees motioned that the seating was opened. I got up and started walking towards a seat and was shoved, pushed, crushed, etc by a stampede of women trying to get a seat.  You would have thought that a major designer was giving away clothing for free.  The frantic feeling of these women to “get the best seat” was insane. I’ve never seen anything like it and never want to again. 

I ended up off to the side, but in the front seat. I had a perfect view of her as far as I was concerned.

She spoke for about 30 minutes and told her story.  I’m sure everyone in the room knew her story but she told it anyhow. She told us about how she ended up in Oklahoma, how she had 4 children, how much she loves her dog Charlie, and her dog Walter, and the other animals on the ranch. She spoke about how far she’s come with her food photos over the years, and gave us some examples, of then and now.  Truly an amazing transformation.  I wished, for a moment, I would make that transformation too. She sang a little song to Charlie the Basset hound, she smiled, she was gracious to us for being there. And I think still a little stunned at how much people have taken to her little cookbook, blog and story. She seemed genuine.  She seemed real.

After she spoke, the store employees called for signing group “A”, which I was a part of because I was Johnny on the spot to get my signing ticket back in March.  The employees asked everyone else to stay seated while the A group gets through, then they’d call each group individually.  Naturally, no one listened to them and everyone got up. I had to force my way through the crowd to get to the signing.

As I got closer to where they were checking the signing tickets, this rude woman says to me, “HEY! The line starts back there.” So I asked her if she was waiting to go in as an “A” ticket holder. Her response was a resounding no. So I flipped my little signing ticket in her face (not really that close) and said, “Well I am an A ticket holder, so I’m going to go on through.” (In my head I ended that last sentence with the word “bitch”).

Once “on the other side” I was about 15 back from getting my book signed. You could feel the excitement in the air. All of us women grasping our books and waiting patiently.

The woman in front of me turned around and asked me what my favorite recipe of hers is.  I couldn’t possibly answer that. There’s so many.

Finally it was my turn.

I approached her and she smiled so fully and said, “Hiya.” 

First it was the photo – I asked her to hold Puck. She commented that Puck was an original name and how did I come up with it.  My response was, “It stands for Pink Duck.” Of which she replied, “Clever!”  

Then as she started signing books I mentioned to her that I was a finalist in one of her photo contests. I had my wits about me and had brought a copy of the photo to job her memory. She looked at the photo and said, “Oh I remember this one. I loved it. “ She asked for the story behind it and I briefly told her. 

Then she thanked me for coming and sent me on my way.

It all happened so very fast, but I’m so glad I did it. I got four books signed … and I know each of my friends will pay me handsomely for their books…if they want them that is.

For Mom because she asked nicely.

For Heather because she and I talk PDub stuff every day.

And for Megan for giving me the first PDub cookbook and getting the craze started.

Doing What You Love

I recently had an email conversation with a friend who said he can't seem to find what it is he wants to do with his life.  He's worked in and out of Hotel Californiasoft for years and just can't seem to pinpoint what his life passion is. 

I questioned him a little about what he liked to do in his spare time.  What did he read? What movies did he like to watch? What TV did he watch? Did he game? etc. I was trying to figure out what, if anything, in his life was a common denominator.

After and exhaustive three day email thread it finally dawned on me, he just wasn't that interested in living his life. He was a passenger in his life and at this point he wasn't interested in taking over the driver's seat.

It got me to thinking about this on and off over the last several days.  I wondered if I was doing what I love, and if I wasn't doing what I was currently doing, what would I be doing?

I happen to be fortunate that I do love what I'm currently doing. I worked hard to get to where I am and I'm enjoying the heck out of it. 

But would I do something else if I could? 

So many fantasies ideas pass through my noggin daily.  Many are just that, fantasies.  Its fun to think about it, but I'm not that interested in actually doing a lot of them.

As I continued to think about this and wondering am I really doing what I want and more importantly, am I doing the fun stuff in my life that I want to do.  Time to pull out the life list and refine and adjust.

At the end of the day, I'm quite happy where I am. I'm thankful that I've put in the effort needed to get myself to a happy place of work, and play. And more importantly I'm happy that I question, almost every day, am I doing what I want to do? If not, what needs to change.

Are you living the life you want? No? What needs to change?

This too shall pass...

I am, of course, referring to the blasted rain that's back in the Great Northwest.  After a beautiful, sunny weekend, the rain has returned. And oddly, I'm okay with that. Allergies were out of control this weekend, so the rain helps some.

This weekend FLEW by. I had a ton of stuff on my agenda to do, and I did about one-third of it. But that's okay. Nothing major got left out.

Saturday, bright and early, okay, so not early. I took Sparky off to get her new bling!  Dropped her off and met the Pantry Goat for breakfast. We went to a little dive we'd gone to before. It was almost 11am so I ordered lunch and the Pantry Goat ordered dinner.  More specifically Liver & Onions. Blech.  Puck wanted to make an appearance too so we set him up as the cherry on top of the Pantry Goat's ice cream that came with her dinner.

After breakfast, the Pantry Goat dropped me off at Starbucks so I can wait for Sparky to be done. I anticipated having to be there for a couple of hours, but turned out I was only there for like 30 minutes. I literally got my iced tea, sat down, flipped through a couple of pages of my book, drew a few items for the game I'm addicted to and the phone call came in that Sparky was done.

I hoofed it a half a mile to pick her up. She looked good. Sitting in the sun all sparkly with her clean outside and her new bling.

Smokin'!!!

You'll notice the sun is out too. Rare in Seattle in the Spring.

Ah, the new windscreen. 

I drove the long way home to "test" it. And I may, or may not have drove 70+ MPH to see just how well it did work. With the windows down, the wind is like a breeze.  With the windows up, it's like an oversized sun roof. Sunshine, and a little breeze. It's awesome. I'm so glad I did this.

Sunday, I was up early thanks to the Canadian Geese that frequent Lake Jenn (aka the pond out back). They honk their way in to the pond every morning about 5:15am. It wakes the cat. Which, anyone who has a cat knows, means I am next to be poked awake.

Sunday was Sunday Dinner day. I had all the makings already so I got to it. By 9am everything was done with the exception of grilling the chicken.

I tried to keep it light again this month.  Sunday dinners were originally about comfort and cooking all those large comfort food type of meals.  I'll get back to that I'm sure, but for now I'm trying to keep it light.  Dinner consisted of:

Open-faced Chicken Sandwiches with Basil Mayo. I swapped out the ground chicken, for chicken breasts. And I marinated them in homemade pesto for the day. OMG they were so good. The mayo for this sandwich is weird in that it has basil AND dill pickles. The first time I made this recipe I was all, "That's an odd combo." but I tried it and was surprised with just how good it was.

Along side I made a Caprese salad - using a little of the homemade pesto and some balsamic vinegar. Yum.  And I made Balsamic Green Beans and Mushrooms.

THAT recipe was awesome.  Putting the green beans and mushrooms in a marinade, then baking them at a high heat made the ends and outter edges all caramelized.  OMG. So good.

Finally, I did the Flat Apple Pie again for dessert.

All in all, the good friends, good conversation, and good food resulted in another successful Sunday dinner. Know how I know it was successful?

An Artist I Ain't

Yesterday while watching Ellen, she discussed a new app out for iPhone/iPads called Draw Something. It sounded interesting, and fun. I'm a horrible drawerERER...I mean bad. I have a vague recollection of playing Pictionary in college where I was drawing a typewriter and my partner guessed moose. 

Like any good follower I downloaded Draw Something.  I discovered several facebook friends who are also part of the crazy. Let the games begin.

I spent most the night laughing my ass off at some of my attempts.  How my friends guessed any of them is beyond me...other than they are awesome.

The app is very simple to use.  You start by downloading it - der. There's a free version and a $.99 version.  I recommend signing in under your FB credentials, then you can see all your friends who have it downloaded and can start games with them.

Once you start a new game you're given a list of random, in some cases VERY random, words.

You get three levels.  Each level offers more "coins" if completed successfully. The coins are used to buy other colors or other "get new words" if you're using the free version.

So once you decide which you can draw without looking like a total lunatic, you begin drawing. After a couple of tries you figure out there's an eraser, different colors (which by the way, colors make all the difference sometimes), and different size pen strokes. 

This photo was "borrowed" from the Internet and does not in any way represent one of my drawings. Though this masterpiece could be one of my drawings...I'm that bad.

Once you hit that you've finished "drawing" you send it to your unsuspecting friend. They receive it and receive a number of letters in the word, and letter options to choose from. You'd think that'd be helpful. Not so much.

This photo was "borrowed" from the Internet and does not in any way represent one of my drawings. Though my friends WISH I was that good.

So far, the one main downside I can find so far is it doesn't store any pictures you draw to look at and laugh at later.  I've been talking about this app all day and trying to explain to co-workers just how I drew a "shrimp" that looked more like a caterpillar on crack. According to their help section though that feature is coming, so Yay.

In the meantime, I may have to have a camera handy to snap some shots of these "drawings" I'm making and receiving. Let me give you an example.

It took me, my officemate, and Heater to figure this out. And I figured it out only AFTER the MomUnit gave me a hint. Because I couldn't find a way to copy this, I "drew" it basically in PaintBrush to send to Heater to help me.  So keep that in mind, but this is a pretty good rendition of what the MomUnit sent me. Her cow was a little skinnier than mine.

Even with the "it has 5 letters to it" clue and a bunch of letters provided, I had no idea what this was.  I did finally figure it out after the MomUnit gave me a clue.  Any guesses?

The Keg

Traditions are something I love.  I have a lot of them that only I am privy to and won't share them with anyone, even if you ask nicely.  (Though I'll admit sometimes my "traditions" get mingled with "process"). Every family has traditions, at least I hope every family does. They're fun. They remind you that you have something solid to look forward to.  Maybe it's a tradition your great-grand pappy passed down to your grand pappy who passed it down to your pappy who passed it down to you.  Maybe it's one that you just created in the last week/month/year. Either way, I like traditions.

One of my favorite recent traditions is Sunday dinner.  I love that I started this.  The tradition of getting friends/family together on a regular basis to eat good food...does it get much better?

Sometimes there are traditions INSIDE traditions.  For example, Sunday dinner is a tradition in and of itself.  EVERY Sunday dinner we take two photos: one "normal" one "not so normal".  Anyone who has attended more than one knows this to be true.

Another of my favorite traditions is going with BigBro, Seattle SIL, and Blueberry to The Keg in our birthday months.  We all signed up for their birthday deal (if you haven't you should, it's a good deal. A free meal up to $23.95 in the month of your birth.). Which means every April, September, October and December one of us gets a free meal, and the other three tag along ... because it's a tradition.

I hesitate to also say that the discussion of signing up every family member we know for each month of the year every time we get our free meal could also be a tradition. We'll sit and rattle off family members who's birthday's fall in months our's don't. For example, the MomUnit would give us a November free meal.  We'd never do it, of course, cuz that would be fraud.

Last night was our traditional Keg meal for Blueberry's April birthday. I won't say that she'll be OLDER than me, but she'll officially be older than me in a week.  Then for 8 months I can give her crap about being old.

I happen to love the Keg.  I've never had a bad meal there and have always had exceptional service.  Last night was no exception.  My steak was ordered medium - which in Keg terms comes out just as I like it, usually.  This time it came out WELL DONE.  It was still tasty and still edible. When Jenny, the waitress, came back to check to see if our steaks were cooked ok, I mentioned mine was WAY over cooked. She offered to cook me a new one.  Not wanting to waste anything, and not wanting to wait another 15 minutes for a steak, I said no thanks. It was fine. But thank you for the offer.  She asked a couple of times to make sure I was sure.

After Jenny walked away convinced I didn't need a new steak, Ian, the manager stopped by.  He "heard" that my steak wasn't cooked to my satisfaction and could he have another cooked for me. Again with the, "No it's fine, but thank you for asking." Ian then said he'd take my meal off my bill.

Now, it should be said that I did not say my steak was not cooked right to get a free meal. Didn't even cross my mind in fact.  Jenny asked how our steaks were, and I told her.  The Keg and their service did the rest.  I love when they don't even balk at giving you another steak or offering to take it off your bill.  They showed they believe in their product and if I'm not satisfied they will make it right.

It got even better though...since it was Blueberry's "birthday" meal, Ian brought her a piece of ice cream cake with a candle. THAT put the customer service over the top for me. Never before have we ever got a piece of birthday cake for going because it was our birthday's!! Bigbro, Seattle SIL and Blueberry all but licked the plate too.

I refrained. 

Prior to going to the Keg, for the first time ever, I looked up their menu items and the calories for items I would normally eat.  A normal meal I'd have there, without any concern of calories ranged at about 1400 calories. Oy vei.  That's almost my entire days worth of calories.

So I looked, I plotted, I planned. And eventually came up with three options.  I knew 1) no salad would be permitted. Too many calories there. 2) had to not get any potato of any type, and not get the rice pilaf (500+ calories for that alone).  Eventually I opted for steak and steamed asparagus.  I managed to get to the gym before meeting the fam, so I had some room to work with. Still wasn't going to waste the effort on a salad and potato.  BigBro shared a bit or two of his potato and Blueberry shared her sauteed mushrooms.  At the end of it all, I was pretty happy with my decisions and I wasn't stuffed to the gills like I normally am.

So to Let me 'splain. [pause] No, there is too much. Let me sum up. (movie reference?). 
1. Traditions are awesome. Make some.
2. The Keg is awesome. Eat there.
3. I'm awesome. Period.