Pilcrow

Okay, I'm back. Not that I went anywhere, but as I expected, I had too much going on with Doug's visit to want to make the effort to post every day. I didn't end up taking any photos besides some at Go Play NW—you can see my set of photos on Flickr, as well as a set that Doug took—so I didn't have any to post during the week. 

Although I say I had too much going on, it was a fairly mellow visit, actually. We were up until 4 am or so pretty much every night, and I got up around noon most days; Doug usually slept in a while later, despite the noise of building repair outside and me going about my business inside. We had dinner with some friends, but did not get to see all the ones we wanted to. We spent some time running about on errands. We didn't manage to see the final Harry Potter film (I still haven't seen films six or seven part one) as we didn't try to get tickets soon enough. We did get me a replacement Xbox 360 off someone selling theirs on Craigslist, and it's been working fine. (Now I have to decide what to do about disposing of my broken one.) We tried out a couple of the new boardgames I've had for months but hadn't yet played. And I brought Doug along for trivia night, at which we came in third out of three teams. So we did a bunch of things, but nothing exceptionally big and exciting, other than Go Play NW.

Go Play NW was a great success once again. We had around 120 people, and I believe everyone had a really great time. I got to meet some cool new local gamers and hopefully will get to play more games with them. I also had a good time playing games; I got to try Anima Prime and Polaris for the first time, and playtested a neat boardgame called "Oh My God, There's an Axe in My Head!". The Northwest Rooms at Seattle Center turned out to be a great space for us after all; the noise was manageable, there was plenty of room, and people even carried tables and chairs outside to play in the courtyard, which was fun. 

And a final quick note, having a car was very handy, and I quickly got over my initial nervousness and enjoyed driving again. That said, I'm just as happy to be done with the car, and to not have to be spending money on gas. I may yet get a ZipCar membership, but first I want to see how the car crash aftermath works out.

I had wanted to continue my archive concert summaries today, rolling June and July together, but I've been busy today editing a paper and now I don't have enough time left to get that done. So the rest of the 2010 concert reviews/summaries will probably be pushed into next week, with the new year's weekend upon me. 

Instead, I'll write a bit about my Christmas vacation. Despite going into it with a cold, I ended up having a very enjoyable trip home. My flights there and back were miraculously smooth and trouble-free, which was really nice. And my cold cleared up within the first couple days, so I never felt really miserable. I did not get to spend as much time in Boston as I wanted to, but I did have a nice brunch at a restaurant in a part of Boston I've never really spent time in before, so that was good, and I did get to make my obligatory pilgrimage to Pizzeria Regina, which was satisfying as always. I also didn't get to see as many friends as I wanted to, though I didn't even try contacting some of them just because I knew the holidays are such a busy time for everyone, and because I had a cold at first; however, I did get to have that brunch with my new KEXP friend Sarah "from Boston", and despite the weather's efforts to thwart me, I did get to hang out with two of my oldest and closest friends, Scott and Doug. I enjoyed visiting my parents, hanging out with my younger brother and seeing his new place, and seeing my older sister and other relatives on Christmas (well, the day after, actually) as well as talking to my younger sister and her partner via Skype.

I finally tried my hand at running a game of "Dungeon World", based on Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World, and although I could see right away where I need more practice at running it, I felt it went very well for my first time and I enjoyed it a lot. I also finally finished reading Apocalypse World, which gave me some ideas on further customizing parts of it for "Dungeon World", and made me more eager to get back to finishing the character class I've been working on as well as preparing an adventure to run for people here in Seattle.

On the topic of spending time in Boston: people occasionally ask me if I ever miss New England, and I usually say no, although I do still love it, I'm very happy here in Seattle and don't intend to leave. However, for some reason on this trip, I found myself feeling a bit homesick for Boston while I was there visiting it. I know it so well, and yet at the same time there are parts of it like the South End that I've rarely visited or spent any time in, so I'd still love to spend time exploring it as well as simply hanging out in the parts that are familiar to me. And I have to say, Boston has so much character and beauty that Seattle rarely if ever comes close to, not just because it's so much older but also because it developed over time with distinctive styles. Too much of Seattle strikes me as bland and modern and similar, and Seattle could really conform to its terrain a lot more, with the resulting interestingly-shaped buildings and neighborhoods, instead of having the grid mercilessly imposed on top of everything. I could probably rant at further length on this topic, but I'm just about out of time for now. In any case, though I do miss Boston and do feel Seattle has some shortcomings in comparison, I'm still happy to be back here and to call Seattle home.

In stark contrast to my travel adventures of the previous two months, my flight to Boston was possibly the smoothest one ever. No fuss or waiting at security (and no backscanners in use yet, and no pat-downs), I was able to change my seat on both planes to slightly better ones, I did some light dozing on the first flight to Minneapolis and then some heavier sleeping for a couple hours to Boston, nary a sound or fuss from any of the kids within earshot or from the small dog in a carrier, and I got in to Boston on time. Really the only downside was that my knees started hurting from being kept in the slightly bent seated position for so long, and my feet apparently swelled as I had to loosen one boot near the end of the first flight and then loosen the other near the end of the second. 

My brother and I had a good brunch at The Beehive with "Sarah from Boston" of KEXP fame, and then drove up to Jeremy's house in Dover. I dozed off in the car just before we crossed into New Hampshire, and did not wait long after arriving at his house to lie down again and nap for another couple hours or so. The lack of sleep and the illness are getting to me. I roused for dinner at Rocky's Famous Burgers in Newmarket and an hour or so of Rock Band, and I've stayed up for a bit to catch up on some online stuff, but really, I've had it. It may be only 8:30 in Seattle, but it's 11:30 in New Hampshire, and I'm wiped out. Time for bed. Fortunately, tomorrow I can sleep in for a bit.

That was a crazy busy week. I went to Decibel Festival for five nights. Afterhours shows from Thursday through Sunday kept me up until 5 or 6 in the morning, then I'd sleep until noon or 1. Besides already knowing someone because she mistook me for Brian when she saw me out dancing back in May, I met five more people who all mistook me for Brian, met two more people who were probably mistaking me for Brian but couldn't remember the other guy's name, met Brian himself, learned another friend has always thought I looked a lot like Brian but never told me, and met two more people who said I looked a lot like Steven Severin, the owner of Neumos (though they didn't actually mistake me for him). I also met several other people under normal circumstances, not for being mistaken for someone else. I took lots of notes at the shows, and lots of photos that will end up being tossed out as too dark or blurry. I dressed up a bit, wearing nice button-down shirts and nice shoes every night. I discovered that three of my nice shirts, which I've owned for over a decade by now, are way too baggy on me, undoubtedly have always been too baggy, and never should've been bought. I was reminded that I like being dressed nicely on occasion, and that I have too many printed tees, not enough plain ones, and I still don't have enough in colors I like. I danced a lot. [Edit: forgot something!] I got a high-five from Mary Anne Hobbs.

Monday I had to run for some groceries and clean the catbox and the bathroom and do laundry and make a decent meal before running out to see School of Seven Bells. I went to bed at 3 am instead of 5 but it didn't matter because I was awake until after that time anyhow. I also developed a sore throat and some congestion, though whether due to picking up a cold or just in reaction to five days of being around so much smoking is unclear. Yesterday I drove down to Portland, saw an awesome show with Freezepop and discovered the awesomeness of Ming & Ping, and drove back, not getting to bed until 6 am again. I did not get doughnuts at Voodoo Doughnuts, though I considered it. Today I've started my write-up of Decibel Festival for the KEXP Blog, and I had a tally training session at KEXP for the membership drive that starts Friday. I'm now feeling very tired and ready for bed, which is good because I need to get back to at least my usual hours, and bad because I still have a lot of stuff to do.

I feel like the past week has been a vacation, even though for most of it I was technically working for KEXP. Definitely a crazy exciting vacation rather than a calm relaxing one, though.

This week I'm in New Hampshire at my parents' home for Thanksgiving. I haven't spent Thanksgiving with them since 2000: in 2001 I went down to Brooklyn to have Thanksgiving at my younger sister's place, and since then I've been in Seattle and spent it with my very good friends Tony and Pam. The reason I'm home is because my high school 20th reunion is tomorrow, the day after Thanksgiving. I've been looking forward to it for months, it should be a good time. Of course with Facebook I've already reconnected with a bunch of old friends, but still it's not the same as seeing them in person, and one funny thing about Facebook is that because it's so easy to add friends and see their updates, often actual communication through messages falls by the wayside. 

There are several topics in there that I could address at length. However, I'm pretty wiped out. Despite my best intentions and (mediocre) efforts, my sleep schedule has drifted back again to 3 AM to 11 AM. My flight east was an overnight, leaving at 11:30 PM Monday, and I thought that I would doze on the plane as usual but in fact I got no sleep at all. I napped for a few hours Monday afternoon and then was still so tired that I was in bed by 12:30 AM (local) and slept to the morning, so I thought that meant I would adjust easily to the East Coast schedule. Instead, I went to bed again at 12:30 AM last night, and lay there for six hours, finally falling asleep some time after 6 AM only to have to get up at 9:30 AM to start on Thanksgiving. So now I'm really tired, and on top of that I've apparently picked up a minor nasal infection so I'm a little congested. 

I'm about to head off to bed, hopefully I'll get a good long night's sleep and be feeling better for the reunion. Also I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Among other things, I'm thankful for all of you, my friends and readers.

My sister Andrea and her partner Jen came for a visit:


Andrea played in an improvised music concert led by Bob Marsh:


We went out to dinner a lot, sometimes with Jen's family or my friends:


We toured the Theo Chocolate factory in Fremont, visited Discovery Park at sunset, and the Olympic Sculpture Park:


We visited Jen's aunt's cabin on Marrowstone Island, where it was rather grey, cold, and rainy:


Nimiel was nervous about the visitors for the better part of the first week, but eventually grew to love them... or at least to love Jen's hair:

and the shopping bags:


See all of the photos in the set "Andrea & Jen visit 2008".

Also, let me just add this: has the Luxor lost all sense whatsoever? Who on earth thought that advertising these two shows together was a good idea? Note that besides this prominent sign outside the Luxor, there are additional advertisements all over Vegas. I pity the poor girls of Fantasy, inextricably tainted by association with freakin' Carrot Top. It's hard to think of a less sexy combination.

I've been on vacation in New Hampshire all week, visiting my family for Christmas. It's been pretty good so far; my flights home went smoothly and were early, I've had a good time with my family, I've been hanging out with Doug and have also managed to get up to Maine to visit Jay (parkbenchzine) for an afternoon, and hopefully I'll be heading up to the Hanover area tomorrow to visit my high school friend Jeff, whom I haven't seen since I moved. There's still never enough time to do everything, but I'm pretty happy with what I've got.

Apparently I've adjusted a lot to the Seattle area, because driving up to Maine reminded me that East Coast drivers are fucking insane assholes. The slow drivers are going 70, everyone gets up real close behind you before passing, and they're a lot more aggressive about cutting in and out between cars. It was strange to find myself being regularly passed, rather than being the one generally passing others. I had one guy come along who wasn't going a lot faster than I was, but the idiot waited until I moved to pass a tractor-trailer and then jumped right behind me and put on his headlights to signal me to get out of his way. Once I did pass the truck and got back into that lane, the jerk took his time passing me. Then I ended up passing him because he'd gotten into a slower lane, and when I moved to the far left again to pass another van, the jerk got behind me again with his lights on. That time I just slowed down and matched the speed of the car I had been going to pass and stayed there a couple minutes, until the jerk cut back two or three lanes and passed us on the right and then kept going at a faster speed, cutting his way forward, so I didn't have to deal with him again. I'll have to remember to not complain about Seattle drivers for a while - oh, a week or so - because for all that their passive, over-cautious, slow driving can be irritating, it's not so bad after all.

I'm supposed to be flying home on Sunday (which happens to be my birthday as well as New Year's Eve), but I'm scheduled to go through Denver, which has been getting buried with snow, so I'm not sure what's going to happen with that. Hopefully I can get a good answer tomorrow about whether my flight's still happening. Although I am enjoying my time here, I really do want to get back home to Seattle.

So, what about my Christmas vacation, when I wasn't falling sick? It was pretty good, actually.

I've just realized that I didn't write about last Christmas (2004) at all. (I'm just going to call it "last year" even though it was 2004.) Because I had recently started paying for braces, I ended up deciding not to go home to my parents'. That was my first Christmas away from home, ever, and I ended up feeling depressed about it. I didn't actually spend it sitting at home alone (well, alone with my new cat), as I went with the Dowlers to one of their friends' for dinner; that was nice and I'm glad I was invited. Still, it just wasn't the same as the noisy LaRose family Christmas that I'm used to, and I really missed that.

So this year I decided I wasn't going to miss that again, even though I'm arguably worse off with about the same amount of credit card debt outstanding and a condo to pay for as well. Because I didn't buy my airplane tickets until Thanksgiving weekend, I spent a lot more than I wanted to. I'd already decided I couldn't afford a rental car, and I knew the transit strike in NYC was likely to happen, so I was also anticipating travel hassles; that plus the expensive flight made me grumbly before I left and second-guess whether I should be going. But I'm very glad I made the decision to go, because I really enjoyed myself.

The transit strike and jet lag meant that I didn't do much in NYC before Christmas, but it was good to visit with Andrea and Jen (my younger sister and her girlfriend) and see their new place. I wanted to check out the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company, but we didn't have a chance to go by there until after Christmas, at which time we determined it seemed to be closed for school vacation. (It fronts for 826NYC, a nonprofit organization for teaching writing skills to students. Rather annoyingly they don't simply list any kind of store hours anywhere on the site as far as we could tell; we had to piece together that it was closed for vacation from how the latest news was written.)

Up in Boston, I got to have some of my favorite pizza in the world, sausage pizza at the original Pizzeria Regina in the North End. I was arguably more disappointed the last time I was home for Christmas two years ago by missing out on that than I was by being miserable and sick all that week, so I was particularly pleased that it worked out this time. I also had pizza at Bob's in Nashua, my favorite local place, and that was good too. Ah how I miss good sausage pizza! It's just not the same out here.

My plans to hang out with my friends mostly worked out. Unfortunately, I managed to pass on the cold I'd picked up from Andrea to my friend Doug, so that he was sick on Christmas and wasn't able to come hang out with Scott and his family that night. I did have a good short visit with Scott and Lissa and Scott's parents and aunt, though it would've been nice to have some more time. Fortunately Doug was recovered enough on Monday evening to come over for a family game and little birthday celebration for me; and we also hung out on Friday and Saturday evenings, so I got to spend some good time with him. There was good family time too, mainly Christmas day itself, a family game of dominoes on Monday afternoon, and family breakfast on Tuesday before Andrea and I returned to NYC (driven by my younger brother bandtechiegeek, who stayed overnight).

Back in NYC, Andrea, Jeremy and I had dinner at a hipster place in hipster central, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We didn't see any famous Williamsburg residents like John and John of TMBG, but I swear the attractive hipster at the next table (with the birthday party group) kept checking our table out. The next day after Jeremy left, we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to meet a few of Andrea's friends for a dim sum lunch - and now that I've been I can say I have tried it and it's just not something I care for. Then Andrea and I went to the Museum of Modern Art for their Pixar exhibit, which was cool.

I had hoped to meet some of my VHive (ex-Delphi) forum friends for drinks while in NYC, but there was minimal response the first week when I talked about meeting after Christmas, and no response that Wednesday. I felt snubbed, but it was a very busy time for everyone, and I know at least one other person's party plans were being turned down on account of general tiredness, so I figure I shouldn't take it personally. Anyhow it's probably for the best, as spending the last evening quietly at my sister's place, reading a book (All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson) and repacking my luggage, was a good thing to do. Still, I realized that since my sister moved to NYC, I haven't spent an evening out on the town in Manhattan, and I'd like to do that.

That's about it for the trip. As I mentioned in the previous entry, my flight home took much longer than it was supposed to - first there was a delay leaving because of the weather, then a passenger with diabetes fell ill and we landed in Minneapolis to let him off, and it took about two hours to get back in the air - so I got home very tired, which may have contributed to my illness over the weekend. I also didn't get to see all the friends I would've liked to; I really need a trip with more time, and a rental car so I have the freedom to travel around to my friends' scattered homes. Overall though it was a very good Christmas holiday.

When we reached the area of the border, it took us an hour to actually get to the gate due to traffic, and only a minute to go through the process: "Where are you from? Where are you headed? What's your purpose? Do you have any firearms or [some other thing, I forget - explosives, maybe]?" That was it. They didn't actually check all of our IDs, just mine. On the way back into the States, we had our IDs checked before getting on the ferry, and when we landed all that we were asked was whether we'd brought back anything with us, which we hadn't - none of us bought souvenirs or anything. So besides the long wait to get in, the border crossings were quick and easy.

We stayed in a hotel in Coquitlam, a suburb of Vancouver. Our hotel was just off the Trans-Canadian Highway and right near the Braid transit station, so we were around 15 minutes away from Vancouver's downtown by car, or 45 minutes by SkyTrain (the mostly-elevated train system). Because we got to the hotel at mid-afternoon and then had a late lunch, we didn't do much on Monday besides take the SkyTrain in to downtown to walk around a bit (mainly in the Gastown neighborhood) and have dinner. In the future it'd be nicer to be closer in to downtown by train, but the train is pretty nice so it's just as well to leave the car behind. In fact, if there's decent train or bus service from Seattle to Vancouver, I'd seriously think about not driving at all.

On the other hand, if I wanted to include a return to Whistler (where we went on Tuesday) along with the trip to Vancouver, I'd definitely want my car. There's probably some bus service from Vancouver to Whistler, but the highway there is a winding mountain road, and that's the sort of thing I can drive just fine but get motion sick if I'm in a bus. And I would like to go back to Whistler, though it'd be better to spend a night or two there. The main resort, Whistler Village, is very nice and it looks like there's quite a bit to do year-round. We went for a walk around Lost Lake, which had a couple beach areas and a bunch of people swimming; I tested the water and it felt fairly warm. I haven't gone to the beach in a long time (even longer for a lake) or gone swimming, and suddenly I really wanted to. Overall it just seems like a good place to go on vacation with a group of friends.

Back in Vancouver on Wednesday, we watched the Tour de Gastown, a bicycle race held in the streets of Gastown. We were eating dinner during the women's race, but finished and were outside shortly before the start of the men's race and decided to watch. The course is 1.2 km long and the men (130 of them to start) do 50 laps, or 60 km - it took about an hour and a half to finish. Although none of us were particularly interested in racing, we found it exciting to watch after all, but would've preferred it to end sooner than it did. A guy standing near us was loudly urging his friend on with calls of "GO JEFF! MOVE IT UP, JEFF!" As we didn't know anyone in the race, we decided to start rooting for Jeff as well, which the guy thought was cool and amusing. Sadly, Jeff stayed resolutely in the middle of the pack and never had a chance of winning. One thing about the race that nearly drove me crazy was the poorly-managed pedestrian crossing in the course near us. The crossing guards weren't coordinated with each other and weren't good at deciding when to allow pedestrians to cross, often hesitating too long, and as a result there were some close calls with a few pedestrians scuttling out of the way of the oncoming pace car or cyclists. I realize an hour and a half is a long time to have the street closed and strand people on the inside of the track, but it still seemed like they'd be better off to do that than allow any crossing.

Other things we did on Wednesday included visiting Stanley Park and walking around a good portion of the seawall, and visiting the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden. We had bought tickets for a trolley tour designed to allow people to get on and off at various landmarks (and hotels), and that gave us a quick overview of the highlights we weren't really visiting, too.

Thursday, while waiting for T. Davis to meet us for dinner in Victoria, we went to check out Miniature World, a collection of dioramas of historical and fictional scenes. It was pretty neat - as I've been interested in Warhammer 40K since moving to Seattle, I could appreciate the work they put into the models and terrain. The historical ones were generally better than the fictional ones. Mom was quite impressed with the detail they were able to get into the tiny figures, and decided she wanted to add some to her Christmas village display.

Friday morning, we went to the Butchart Gardens, planned by the wife of a wealthy cement manufacturer to fill in a worked-out quarry. They were pretty nice, and of course the transformation of the quarry into the "Sunken Garden" is quite impressive, but what I liked most was their Japanese garden. Even though it was just as much a planned creation as the rest of the gardens, it felt the most natural and therefore the most comfortable to me - the other gardens were places to view, while the Japanese one felt like a place to spend time in. Then because the 3:30 ferry was already sold out by the time we got there at 1, we spent a few hours walking around downtown and had an early dinner before catching the 7:30 ferry to Port Angeles.

Those are the highlights of the trip. It's clear that there's a lot to do in Vancouver and another trip is in order. Victoria will also be nice to visit again (and spend more time with T. Davis), but I think next time I'll take the Victoria Clipper ferry and leave my car home. In fact, if I wanted to visit both cities on one trip, I'd probably go to Victoria first using the Clipper and then take the regular ferry from Victoria to Vancouver.