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Friday, October 11, 2002

 
The last couple of weeks have been a big blur of activity. I worked without a break from September 22nd to October 5th, had a houseguest from October 4th to October 6th, left for Seattle first thing on October 7th, and got home late last night. Now I have four days of freedom. Woohoo!

I had an uneventful birthday, which is fine with me. Jeff went out and got Indian food from my favourite restaurant, the Little India Cafe, and we vegged on the couch and watched television. On the Thursday (September 26th) I headed to Montreal for the CPAWS AGM. The next morning, we got up early and headed to Val Morin and the Far Hills Inn. It's a gorgeous place, and the good thing about CPAWS board meetings is that they always include a long hike, lots of good food and lots of booze. The meeting was particularly good in that all of my somewhat radical recommendations regarding fundraising were passed. I had anticipated some resistance, but I guess I've been there long enough that there's a certain amount of trust that's developed. It also helps that I work with an amazing group of people. We have so much fun at the office, it's scary.

The following weekend we had a visitor from Ireland, Jennifer. She's a distant relative of Jeff's and has been traveling through Australia and Canada since January. She was a pleasure to have around and we took advantage of her stay to go for a hike on the King Mountain Trail in Gatineau Park.

Monday I flew off to Seattle. I had been invited to take an intensive fundraising course. It involves a few days in Seattle, four months working on a particular project with some one-on-one consultation, then a follow-up workshop back in Seattle in January. We stayed at a really neat old hotel called the Camlin. Despite it's age, it has a certain grandeur about it. You can almost picture the horse-drawn carriages pulling up to the front door, and the bustle of activity as gold-seekers got ready to head up to the Klondike.

Our workshop was held in the REI flagship store. It's kind of like Ottawa's MEC, but about 20 times as large. It's right downtown and takes up a whole city block. It's surrounded by a hiking trail and a mountain bike test trail. Very cool.

The workshop was over two days and was from 10am to 4pm each day. That gave me lots of time to walk around Seattle. I discovered that Seattle is a shoppers mecca. Every store under the sun was within walking distance of where I was staying. I've never seen so many shopping opportunities in one place. I've been to Seattle before, but I didn't remember this part of it. I visited some of my favourite "American" stores: Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, Barnes and Noble, Crane and Company...the list goes on. I didn't buy much other than a bunch of clothes for Devon from The Children's Place. I went into Old Navy and the Gap, but was totally overwhelmed. Each of them was the size of the Bay at Bayshore. Geez!

The highlight of the trip was visiting the Experience Music Project designed by Frank Gehry. No words can describe it. You'll just have to look at the photos:

wiggles and
squiggles and
reflections and
waves