Drowning Nor Waving

Today has been Seattle Day.

Woke up fairly late this morning to a text from _eljefe_, who was both in town and free for the early afternoon. So subject_zero and I, our gracious hosts having gone to work like normal people, navigated our way through downtown Seattle to meet up with him with possibly a maximum of fuss. For all I've been plugging getting lost and adventure and stuff, I really do feel better when I have the internet in my pocket and GoogleMaps to guide me. But we managed.

Met up, and went to Pike Place Market, to nose around and get some lunch. Had Chinese, with an excellent view of the harbour, and then grabbed a coffee and _eljefe_ dropped us off with reasonable directions to the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum, where we had some comp tickets for around 2pm.

The Experience Music Project's pretty small as museums go, but it's pretty super: There was a sculpture made out of guitars, a Seattle band map, a whole exhibit about post-punk and Nirvana, a Jimi Hendrix exhibit that made me realize he was actually the 1960s equivalent of Atticus Ross, a lot of oral history recordings, and a whole section where you could monkey around on instruments and actually record. We laid down Fake Plastic Trees (Danny on guitar, me on vocals), Nothingman (Danny on both) and Casual Walks (me acapella), but didn't buy the CD because in retrospect we were a touch terrible.

The science fiction wing of the museum was pretty media-oriented -- a BSG exhibit which was meh, an Avatar exhibit we didn't care about, and a horror movie one -- so we mostly skipped it.

Afterwards, grabbed a coffee on Pike and met up with Jon and Nish, and then went for Thai for dinner and meandered back to home base. We've spent the evening monkeying around with their guitar and having World's Longest Singalong (and it's better than what we recorded), and now our fingers hurt and we're just sort of vegging around with laptops and knitting and manga and the like.

A bit more Seattle to be had tomorrow morning; the flight to San Diego is midafternoon, and then it's WFC starting in the evening. Our days of hoboing around the Pacific Northwest are ending all too soon.

Possibly more coffee reports tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Lots of kind of half-assed planning today, and not a lot of follow-through.

Met up with subject_zero as advertised, and decided we'd try for the Museum of Anthropology: one of the backpackers I was drinking with last night said it was really very good, and I hadn't been out by UBC just yet. So we walked to the stop for the right bus, only to have the bus pass us right by, and Danny said, "Hey, is it even open today?" So I made sure. And no, it was not. Dammit, Vancouver: I like culture on Mondays too.

Cast about for a few more ideas, and ended up at the Vancouver Art Gallery, which we knew was nearby because Occupy Vancouver is right in front of it. The first two floors are closed -- they're putting in a new exhibition -- but the third and fourth were open, and they weren't bad exhibitions: on the third, a history of the collection itself, complete with copies from their files about restoration, and the founding of the museum, and various pieces they'd acquired on subscription. The one about Emily Carr and their restoration drive for her stuff was especially good, as were the 1910s newspaper clippings, mostly due to awesome 1910 typography. On the fourth was a three-artist video installation exhibit: one from Vancouver, one from LA, one from Guadalajara. The last two were really quite good, and video's not exactly my thing.

Best thing in the gallery today: probably a full-room installation of a cityscape made of coloured plastic, with projectors running images of cityscapes through them and onto the white walls. It was something about the way the light broke and twisted through them, and the feeling of being inside and outside the piece all at once: it reminded me of the best thing we saw at Nuit Blanche this year, in the Gladstone, with the screens full of shots of crows. We do not necessarily know art very well here, but we know what we like.

Ironically, though, it was pretty hard to get a washroom in the gallery. There was one right in front, and the security guard manifestly would not let me use it even though I was right there about to get an admission. Third floor or nothing. This is deeply ironical in a city where there are actually clean, free, accessible public washrooms in parks in the poor part of town. Income disparity strikes again.

After being cultured and so on, ran a few errands: picked up some US cash for Seattle tomorrow, grabbed a coffee on Georgia Street (thus completing our survey of the major Vancouver coffee chains visible: Blenz, Waves, and Trees), and walked through one of the downtown malls, where I failed to get a refill of face powder and Danny ogled iPads, and we concluded that malls are fundamentally the same the world over and mostly suck pretty hard. And then we meandered back to Granville for dinner at a big and trendy-looking sushi place that was nonetheless pretty much empty, and ate all the sushi in the world. The value of all-you-can-eat is apparently lots. We've been walking all day for three days. I think we needed the protein.

Our conviction that Vancouver is frozen in musical 1998 continues. Music played at the sushi place included Sloan's "The Good in Everyone" and the Refreshments' "Banditos".

Back at the hostel now, camped out in my first-floor armchair (informally dubbed the Quiet Room, it being quieter than the common room) to answer e-mail, figure out the distances and ways and means between me and the bus station, the Seattle bus station and jonofthewired's place, all that and the airport for Thursday, and just generally be central in case anyone from the little posse we had going last night is heading down to the bar. Although given how sleepy I am at this point, I may just call it an early night. There is a reasonable amount of travel happening tomorrow.

Next update from Seattle!

Only a day and a half into the trip, I think we can categorically say this was a good idea. I have been really worked up for the past couple months. I am not exactly worked up at the moment.

So!

subject_zero picked me up at the airport last night after my first large-plane flight in quite a while (you don't even feel those landing. It's kind of amazing) and we parked my stuff at the hostel where I'm staying, smack in the middle of Vancouver's club district. Very late dinner (lobster ravioli, beer, cheescake, more beer) and filthy gossip ensued at a microbrewery by Waterfront Skytrain station. I have missed subject_zero terribly.

This was pretty much the night: it was late, I'd done a five-hour flight, and generally lying down seemed like a good idea.

The hostel's nice and tidy and cheerful and packed with Australians. My roommates for the moment are three pretty nice undergrads from Portland, up for their fall break, who were out clubbing until an amazing hour last night -- I didn't hear them come in, and I was up until about 3:30 Pacific (mostly wondering why I wasn't tired when it was past 6am on Brain Local Time, and how was I still awake?). This means I'm getting a certain amount of privacy: I'm out most of the day, and when I come back, it's the room to myself and playing my music and general chilling out for hours. There's free wifi and a common room, and the kitchen is huge. So far, it hostelling is beating the hell out of hotels.

Vancouver itself: cool and damp and ivy-covered, and full of crows, which apparently fill the niche that pigeons do at home. I can't get my finger on the architecture: it's this mix of curvy ultra-modern stuff and almost coastal US warm-climate houses, and the kind of pastel siding I've seen in the Midwest. There are a lot of condos, and there is a lot of green. It feels kind of young and slick. I don't get that sense of age, of layered history, I have back home. Also, decided lack of hipsters thus far. We may be in the wrong neighbourhoods for it. Surprising amount of on-street cosplay, though.

There is a thing the sky does here, heavy with three different-coloured striations of cloud, where it lies low and thick over the ocean and flows down into the mountains, and you feel...contained. Most effectively and completely contained, as if someone's put a lid over the top of the world. It's not oppressive -- everything is sort of too big and stately green to feel oppressive, really -- but that cloudy sky is like a hand light on your shoulder. You can never quite forget it's there.

It's a curious and beautiful city. I'm pretty rock-certain already I could never live here. There are red maples planted here and there, and I kept lingering among their leaves, just hungry for the shocks of colour amidst all the soft grey.

---

This morning, rolled out of bed to what looked like it was going to be rain (the rain never actually materialized) and met up with subject_zero around noon to go to the Granville Island Public Market. First rule of Vancouver: Everything is always farther than you think. No, really. Farther.

This will become important to the story later.

So we walked across the Granville Street bridge and around and down and in this weird loop to get to the island, which is sort of like what would happen if someone took a tourist town or that one area of Charlottetown, PEI and smacked it in the middle of some other city: lots of little shops, crafts, nice wide sidewalks, etc. Considering how much we had to backtrack to get there, I suspect the artists have been corralled onto the island in the middle of the river to keep them contained (like Escape from New York, just without the President). It's small and lovely, and the farmer's market there is a bit like St. Lawrence: spread through a few buildings, and reasonably broad. I should probably not be so surprised at how comfortable I am in a market, but it's like finding my safe place. We'll probably be going back Monday or Tuesday to stock up for the trip to Seattle.

But for today, we picked up a whole bunch of food -- walnut and rosemary bread, cheese curds, honey garlic pepperoni sticks, Indian candy, passion fruit, tiny little bananas, pomegranates, Fuji apples -- to be our provisions for Stanley Park.

Stanley Park is...not a park as I am familiar with them. It is an old growth rainforest, lurking at the edge of a city. It smells soft and sharp like fallen leaves and the ocean, and it's damp everywhere, even though it didn't rain; I'm convinced it was just damp out of sheer habit. There's a seawall running along the outside, with historical plaques and such facing the bay, and steps down to the water in case you for some reason want to walk down into the ocean. And then there are trails and trails everywhere though the woods. We ate passion fruit and bread on park benches by a stand of totem poles, and watched the mountains, and found which redwoods are in fact Ents.

Thing is, it's is also farther than you think it is, and bigger.

We were overall shooting for Prospect Point, at the far north end of the park: kind of rambling about, looking at things, taking our time. What we took is probably the most roundabout, longest, least efficient route to Prospect Point that mankind has ever invented. It was extremely scenic and a great walk. But then it was 5pm, and we were only halfway there. And our feet really hurt. There was...some interesting and creative swearing. And a few kind of tired giggles.

But since this is adventure day? We went anyways.

It was maybe kind of stupid: if we'd turned around, we could have grabbed a lazy dinner and whatnot, and probably felt better for it in the morning. But it was also kind of worth it: The view out to the ocean is kind of ridiculously incredible, and catching it with the sun going down was probably even better. There was also a cafe up there, and we sat down (yay!) and ate some things with protein in them (yay!), having already demolished most of our snacks. And then we, well. Had to get back out of the park, all the way back where we'd come from.

Yeah. *g*

Walking down through Stanley Park at night is a bit like Escape from Witch Mountain, or a whole subgenre of horror movies and/or Criminal Minds episodes. Whole legions of my relatives are never going to find out that happened so I don't get strangled, revived, and strangled again. But? High adventure, people. High effing adventure. Also, the road straight through the middle is really a lot faster than whatever it was we did on the way up.

We ended up sitting for an hour or two in a coffeeshop near Burrard Station trying to make our feet do things again, puttering and chatting and eating Nanaimo bars. The other thing Vancouver seems to do so far is be musically no later than 1998 at all times: both today's coffeeshops, the one I grabbed breakfast at this morning and the one we found this evening, and the hostel both this morning and tonight in the common room were playing stuff I haven't heard since I was 16. Also, the Burrard coffeeshop rickrolled us. And we don't think it was ironic.

So after all that, we split up for the day and I stumbled back to the hostel (with a side trip through Occupy Vancouver on the way) and tucked what leftover groceries I had in the kitchen with an eye to climbing into bed early. Instead, ended up in a two-hour conversation with a severely cute guy from Dublin who handed me a spoon and shared his pint of Ben and Jerry's with me in the hostel kitchen (another point in favour of hostelling: cute Dubliners! Ice cream!). And now I am on my bunk, frittering about the Internet with extremely sore feet and a general and fuzzy sort of contentment. I'm hoping to be up for the two-dollar breakfast downstairs tomorrow morning, so sleep is soon.

...and yeah, that was only the first full day of nine.

---

Tomorrow's only half-planned: definitely Chinatown, and definitely my little walkthrough of Main and Hastings, so as to write Indestructible properly, with tastes and detail and smells. No idea what else we might get up to. It probably depends on the state of our feet, and the weather, and the operant whimsy.

Thrilling updates tomorrow. Goodnight, children everywhere.

September 12, 2011 Progress Notes:

As-yet-untitled Shadow Unit DVD extra

Words today: 850, spread over a few days.
Words total: 850.
Reason for stopping: Draft.

Books in progress: Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science-Fictional Universe.
The glamour: Tonight there were four social/volunteer engagements I probably could have gone to (and maybe should have), but convention weekends, as fun as they are, do kind of take it out of me. So I blew off everything and stayed in to work on Ideomancer stuff and arts grant applications all evening. And to finish writing this.

Arts grants applications have many moving parts. Tonight's work marathon was, in hindsight, a really, really good idea.

---

Can-Con was, in sum, small and tidy and quite a good time: everyone was really pleasant, the quality of the panel discussion (both the ones I was on and the ones I went to see) was really high -- there was a future of urban environments panel that any Toronto public space dork would have been happy to see -- and I have remembered that I like trains. They are very civilized. Also, I got to have quality time with kafkonia, deakat (who is a hero of the revolution for collecting me from the VIA station at 10:30 Friday night, dishevelled as I was), and monkeyman.

Saw a grand total of nothing of Ottawa, and missed seeing commodorified due to mishap, but I was in town for maybe 43 hours, and sometimes it can't be helped.

So that was that.

In other news, I've been slowly but steadily getting interview requests from bloggers interested in Above, and one of them has gone up this week at Spanish blog Soy Cazadora de Sombras y Libros. I link this one partially because I'm so floored by the dedication here: when so many people don't bother to read in their first language, loving books enough to read, and blog about it, and be an active participant in book culture in one's second or third language? Hardcore respect.

And that is about it for tonight, since tomorrow there is volunteer flyering early in the a.m., a gauntlet of book events in the p.m., and for all things must I be functional and awake.

(What's that? It means let's go.)

Not much blogging -- or writing -- this week: I've been caught up with real world/meatspace stuff, the inevitable demands of going out of town for Readercon in a few hours (panel research, frantic housecleaning, arranging of lunches, figuring-out of reading passages, etc., although I just canned it all last night and went out to a reading in Kensington instead), and the doings of Toronto City Council. Yes, this is a council week. It has pretty much eaten my head. Yes, the last few years have brought out my latent political process nerdery. What of it?

So. Long story short: sorry for the radio silence. And it will continue a little longer, because I'm going to Readercon, and have decided to not bring my laptop with me on the grounds that really, I should be hanging out with people I don't see enough of instead of sticking my face in the Internet.

If you are there? I will see you there! I look forward to our hanging out and many panels and some drinks!

If not, usual caveats apply about breaking the place while I'm gone, and while I will check e-mail once a day (or try to) from the business centre, don't expect any substantial answers from me until Sunday night, when I return to my treehousey lair.

(Allons-y. Let's go.)

Home! Got in about two hours ago -- and that worked out because I shamelessly begged a lift home from my parents earlier in the week, rather than taking TTC like I usually do -- and sifting through e-mail/eating pizza/being in my apartment.

It is too quiet. I miss my writers and kitties and scenic cacti.

I do have some last dribs and drabs of trip pictures, though:



This is that one picture I snapped at Colossal Cave on Thursday before the cellphone battery gave out. As you can tell, it is a cave that is very large.



Yours Truly, post-gothing on Friday night. This was actually right when I was taking off my makeup. Really, I love the new Goth blouse and the steampunky way it works with the glass pendant and I was just proud that I pinned my hair up and it stayed up through all that headbanging.



Another trip to the Red Velvet Cupcakery before we descended on the Tucson Festival of Books yesterday morning. coffeeem and willshetterly can haz cupcakes.



A wide shot at the festival, and our very own jennygadget, complete with home-baked blood-spatter cupcakes, after the Shadow Unit panel. I shot that one from the panel room stage, so it's a bit wonky.

And finally, the last Tucson installments of Signage: An Occasional Series.



And that is that for CupcakeCon 2010.

---

Needless to say I'm bagged -- we were up this morning at 4:30 to get to the airport in time for various flights -- but if I owe you e-mail or whatnot, I will endeavour to have everything caught up by Tuesday evening.

(And then she fell down with an audible fwump.)

Gothing! Minus a truepenny, who was not feeling the dancing thing, last night we headed out to The Surly Wench, which is a combination pub/club sort of thing, or maybe just a pub with a dance floor in the back. It had tiny, tiny speakers, but people did not filch your table and danced with enthusiasm. Despite a one-hour detour into eighties stuff (Pet Shop Boys? Frankie Goes To Hollywood? On goth night?) we closed out the club. Also, you cannot dance to "Bela Lugosi's Dead".

I don't have pictures, but I assure you we looked awesome.

A bit underslept this morning, but there is oatmeal with Stuff (tm) in it, and shortly we shall be off to the festival of books. See you there if we're seeing you!

March 11, 2009 Progress Notes:

Saturnalia

Words today: 900.
Words total: 12,700.

Reason for stopping: It is nearly midnight local time, and I both climbed a lot of steps in a cave today and ate a lot of dinner. Reader, I am le tired.

Darling du Jour: Gregory was a little too dark-complexioned to go pale with absolute rage, but it didn’t stop him from trying.

Things Yet to Cough Up Their Names: The band name Zeke and Gregory have been gigging under; the somewhat tragic singer of Gregory's old band; the name of Gregory's old band, for that matter; some song titles penned by Zeke.
Mean Things: The comfort of another human being. Yes, this is mean. It's a lot easier to get hurt if you've opened the shell a crack, after all.
Research Roundup: Perpetual motion machines; Cerberus.

Books in progress: Janni Lee Simner, The Bones of Faerie.
The glamour: Actually, right now I am experiencing legitimate glamour. I have no idea how I'm going to go back to my life next week.

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Between little stretches for the last two nights and a long one this afternoon, I entirely rewrote the prologue to this book and tinkered with the chapter and a half already extant. There are still comments on it like "This entire thing needs more of Janus's subjectivity. When you find that, stick it in here?" and so forth. It is not perfect by a long shot, but it is much, much better than it was.

I have fresh words to report on this for the first time in about six months.

That aside, before the big book-futzing push, today I slept nicely late, fixed lunch for The Company (potato and mushroom and green bean and mandarin orange salad with the maple dressing stuff, served with the fancy!cheese we picked up the other night at Safeway) and went to Colossal Cave. It is yes, a cave, and yes, colossal. A very prototypical climber boy gave us a tour of it, which involved cavey features of all stripes and orientations as well as some fantastic views. Sadly, I forgot to charge my cellphone (which is my camera) before we went, so I only have one picture, of the entrance. I'll slap that up tomorrow when I have something else to pair it with.

Tonight was otherwise pretty laid-back: a huge dinner of various leftovers and awesome chocolate cupcakes coffeeem made, some nice soaking in some warm water, and hanging out. Tomorrow morning we grab stillsostrange at the airport and then there is to be climbing and gothing. I hope to debut the black lace parasol I got in Tombstone yesterday. Yes, did I mention that? I got a black lace parasol in Tombstone. This makes me the coolest person alive for this calendar day.

Saturday is the book festival, and then home on Sunday. And I don't know where all my vacation just got to all of a sudden.

But for now, there were new words today.

Goodnight, O Internet.