The rest of the vacation blogging
Sep. 12th, 2008 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseThe next segment of our trip didn't quite go as planned. Originally, we'd intended to rent a car, drive to Kennewick to visit Brian's mum for a day, drive to Portland and stay for a few days to check it out, then head back to Seattle to meet up with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cyranocyrano and see the stuff we'd missed. But whatever nasty con crud I'd picked up during PAX had other ideas. {Insert dramatic cliffhanger chord here.}
The first part went well enough, happily. We got back from Victoria via the ferry and took a cab over to the downtown Dollar car rental place, where my information was taken by a hilariously crazy employee on a system that dated from 1988 ("See this forehead? See how big it is? Ugh. Ugh. I Neanderthal Computer User. Don't piss me off or I'll club you.") I was a bit nervous about driving, given that I'd never done so in anything resembling the Real World before, but I had my TomTom GPS with me, and that helped alleviate a lot of the nervousness - driving itself doesn't worry me half as much as getting lost does. Fortunately the TomTom proved itself to be quite a useful device, and we didn't get lost once. And the little Subaru Impreza that they rented to us was actually pretty fun to drive.
We had an uneventful drive to Kennewick, punctuated at various points by hitting the "scan" button on the radio station as we moved out of range of whatever station we'd been listening to. (One of my favorite moments was driving through a hilly area right in the overlap between two classic rock stations, both of which were on the same part of the band - so depending on which angle the terrain was facing, we were listening to either ZZ Top rock out over his "Cheap Sunglasses" or John Mellencamp wailing about how it "Hurts So Good".) That evening, we made it to Brian's mum Julie's place, and she was very happy to see us, as was his too-cool-for-school brother Joel. We had a nice evening catching up with them.
Unfortunately, I woke up the next morning with the Plutonian Death Cold, probably passed on to me by some con-goer who couldn't miss his Call of Duty 4 tournament. So instead of getting to go out and do things with Julie and Brian, I spent the day being a lump on her couch - and instead of driving out to Portland the next day, I continued to be a lump. And the next day, when Brian started to show symptoms. And the next.
Long story short, we ended up missing that whole leg of our trip. It wasn't as awful as it could've been - Julie took good care of us, and we ended up saving a significant amount of cash on hotel and food for that leg. And it was nice to see her, as it'd been a couple years since the last time. Still, I felt bad about taking up her couch for five days and not even being able to help around the house to make up for it. (When I expressed my apologies to her, she laughed and said "I'm not in the habit of enslaving the ill." I love her. I really do.)
So instead of checking out Portland, we spent the next few days visiting with Julie and Joel, reading, watching the fourth season of House, and generally being useless. It was pretty nice and relaxing, though, which was a nice change from day-to-day life. And I found a couple more pairs of the Levi's Curvy Jeans that I love at the nearby JCPenney, so hurrah!
Fortunately we were both feeling better by the time we were scheduled to be back in Seattle, so we bid Julie good-bye and drove to the Sea-Tac Holiday Inn, a three-star hotel that had been kind enough to accept our Priceline bid of $80 per night. I was a bit apprehensive about the place, as the online reviews had been mixed, but I'm pleased to report that our stay was perfectly nice - the hotel was an older building that showed obvious signs of remodeling, but they'd done a pretty nice job altogether. The bathroom was a tad cramped, but the fixtures were new; the room was really quite nice and the bed most comfortable (and huge!). The soundproofing was also pretty impressive, given that we were right by the airport and barely could hear any noise from outside.
Brian was pretty wiped out from the trip and still getting over the Plutonian Death Cold, so I ventured forth alone to meet up with Cyrano for the first time in person. He was perfectly pleasant and sweet in person, and was a good sport about waiting around for me to do some lingerie shopping at Victoria's Secret, where I discovered what was probably the best-fitting and most impressive push-up bra I've ever worn. $68 for the set...that was painful, but worth it to know that I have one set of super-awesome va-va-voom underwear. And considering how well-made it is, I should probably be able to wear it for the next several years. So amortized over (say) a five-year period, that's not so bad.
After that trip, we headed to a nearby brewhouse for some beer (for me), some Coke (for him), and fried artichoke hearts. The latter weren't half bad, although I wasn't able to eat very many of them; the beer was unfortunately rather mediocre. But it was fun to sit and chat in person. And afterward, we went to Barnes & Noble and I managed to only buy one book. I was minorly proud of myself.
Brian was very slightly better the next day (up and moving around, at least), so after an IHOP breakfast I took him to meet Cyrano and we all went and did touristy things like ride the Monorail and check out the Experience Music Project. And given that money wasn't as big a consideration as we were expecting, we all went out to Cutter's Bayhouse again for dinner. This time I had a berry-and-grilled-chicken salad that was excellent, but the standout dish was the salmon chowder. Most fish-based chowders I've had were far too heavy on the fish, but this was divine - just enough salmon flavor to achieve a delicate balance with the creaminess, and garnished with chives on top. By the time dessert came around, I could only manage a few bites, and even then I was in a near-food coma for the entire walk balk. (Admittedly, this might have something to do with the fact that I was wearing a corset that day.) Cyrano was kind enough to let us stay in his hotel room and chat about movies until I'd had a chance to digest some and felt up to driving back to our place.
And our last day there, we all went to the Aquarium before going to the Nordstrom's outlet and finding an absolutely smashing deal on a Swiss Army luggage set to replace Brian's old crappy bag. Considering those retail for $350 a bag, we felt like we'd hit the jackpot when we found a set of four (large wheeled bag, smaller carry-on size wheeled bag, duffel bag, toiletry bag) for $100. Plus I got an adorable pair of heeled sandals.
After getting Cyrano to his hotel so he could head to the airport, we went back to our hotel room and had a nap before the Nightwish concert. Getting to the concert itself was a bit tricky - we circled around downtown for a while trying to find parking, and when we finally did (in a paid lot) and walked to the venue, we discovered that the wrong address had been on the ticket and that we were a couple of miles away from their other location, where the event actually was. So we part-walked, part-rickshawed our way there, got in line, had a burrito from a handy street vendor while we were waiting, and found spots and waited for the show to start.
The concert itself was pretty well done, all told. I've heard horror stories about places with crappy sound equipment or bad mixers or all kinds of other issues, but this was a pretty quality production. The mixing was good (bass didn't overwhelm the vocals), the volume was plenty loud enough to RAWK without being overpowering for the size of the venue (a big problem at many Juneau concerts), and they had an incredibly talented lighting designer. So even though neither of us had as much energy as we would've liked, it was nevertheless a fine evening.
And that's pretty much it for our vacation. Between repacking and returning the rental car, we only got a couple hours of sleep that night, and between that and the plane ride we both relapsed. I was lucky enough to only have a bit more sniffling and coughing to deal with, but Brian's been sleeping through the last couple of days. Dexter was just fine, but extremely needy when we got back - and fat! He must've gained two pounds in the last couple weeks. Poor guy; between Mr. Jerry Brown dying and our leaving, he was probably a pretty depressed kitty. I know Jeanne spent lots of time with him, but she doesn't live there, so he was probably lonely. Fortunately, Brian's been home with him for a couple days, and he seems much happier now.
Okay! Work's over. Time to go figure out how to tease my hair...
cyranocyrano and see the stuff we'd missed. But whatever nasty con crud I'd picked up during PAX had other ideas. {Insert dramatic cliffhanger chord here.}The first part went well enough, happily. We got back from Victoria via the ferry and took a cab over to the downtown Dollar car rental place, where my information was taken by a hilariously crazy employee on a system that dated from 1988 ("See this forehead? See how big it is? Ugh. Ugh. I Neanderthal Computer User. Don't piss me off or I'll club you.") I was a bit nervous about driving, given that I'd never done so in anything resembling the Real World before, but I had my TomTom GPS with me, and that helped alleviate a lot of the nervousness - driving itself doesn't worry me half as much as getting lost does. Fortunately the TomTom proved itself to be quite a useful device, and we didn't get lost once. And the little Subaru Impreza that they rented to us was actually pretty fun to drive.
We had an uneventful drive to Kennewick, punctuated at various points by hitting the "scan" button on the radio station as we moved out of range of whatever station we'd been listening to. (One of my favorite moments was driving through a hilly area right in the overlap between two classic rock stations, both of which were on the same part of the band - so depending on which angle the terrain was facing, we were listening to either ZZ Top rock out over his "Cheap Sunglasses" or John Mellencamp wailing about how it "Hurts So Good".) That evening, we made it to Brian's mum Julie's place, and she was very happy to see us, as was his too-cool-for-school brother Joel. We had a nice evening catching up with them.
Unfortunately, I woke up the next morning with the Plutonian Death Cold, probably passed on to me by some con-goer who couldn't miss his Call of Duty 4 tournament. So instead of getting to go out and do things with Julie and Brian, I spent the day being a lump on her couch - and instead of driving out to Portland the next day, I continued to be a lump. And the next day, when Brian started to show symptoms. And the next.
Long story short, we ended up missing that whole leg of our trip. It wasn't as awful as it could've been - Julie took good care of us, and we ended up saving a significant amount of cash on hotel and food for that leg. And it was nice to see her, as it'd been a couple years since the last time. Still, I felt bad about taking up her couch for five days and not even being able to help around the house to make up for it. (When I expressed my apologies to her, she laughed and said "I'm not in the habit of enslaving the ill." I love her. I really do.)
So instead of checking out Portland, we spent the next few days visiting with Julie and Joel, reading, watching the fourth season of House, and generally being useless. It was pretty nice and relaxing, though, which was a nice change from day-to-day life. And I found a couple more pairs of the Levi's Curvy Jeans that I love at the nearby JCPenney, so hurrah!
Fortunately we were both feeling better by the time we were scheduled to be back in Seattle, so we bid Julie good-bye and drove to the Sea-Tac Holiday Inn, a three-star hotel that had been kind enough to accept our Priceline bid of $80 per night. I was a bit apprehensive about the place, as the online reviews had been mixed, but I'm pleased to report that our stay was perfectly nice - the hotel was an older building that showed obvious signs of remodeling, but they'd done a pretty nice job altogether. The bathroom was a tad cramped, but the fixtures were new; the room was really quite nice and the bed most comfortable (and huge!). The soundproofing was also pretty impressive, given that we were right by the airport and barely could hear any noise from outside.
Brian was pretty wiped out from the trip and still getting over the Plutonian Death Cold, so I ventured forth alone to meet up with Cyrano for the first time in person. He was perfectly pleasant and sweet in person, and was a good sport about waiting around for me to do some lingerie shopping at Victoria's Secret, where I discovered what was probably the best-fitting and most impressive push-up bra I've ever worn. $68 for the set...that was painful, but worth it to know that I have one set of super-awesome va-va-voom underwear. And considering how well-made it is, I should probably be able to wear it for the next several years. So amortized over (say) a five-year period, that's not so bad.
After that trip, we headed to a nearby brewhouse for some beer (for me), some Coke (for him), and fried artichoke hearts. The latter weren't half bad, although I wasn't able to eat very many of them; the beer was unfortunately rather mediocre. But it was fun to sit and chat in person. And afterward, we went to Barnes & Noble and I managed to only buy one book. I was minorly proud of myself.
Brian was very slightly better the next day (up and moving around, at least), so after an IHOP breakfast I took him to meet Cyrano and we all went and did touristy things like ride the Monorail and check out the Experience Music Project. And given that money wasn't as big a consideration as we were expecting, we all went out to Cutter's Bayhouse again for dinner. This time I had a berry-and-grilled-chicken salad that was excellent, but the standout dish was the salmon chowder. Most fish-based chowders I've had were far too heavy on the fish, but this was divine - just enough salmon flavor to achieve a delicate balance with the creaminess, and garnished with chives on top. By the time dessert came around, I could only manage a few bites, and even then I was in a near-food coma for the entire walk balk. (Admittedly, this might have something to do with the fact that I was wearing a corset that day.) Cyrano was kind enough to let us stay in his hotel room and chat about movies until I'd had a chance to digest some and felt up to driving back to our place.
And our last day there, we all went to the Aquarium before going to the Nordstrom's outlet and finding an absolutely smashing deal on a Swiss Army luggage set to replace Brian's old crappy bag. Considering those retail for $350 a bag, we felt like we'd hit the jackpot when we found a set of four (large wheeled bag, smaller carry-on size wheeled bag, duffel bag, toiletry bag) for $100. Plus I got an adorable pair of heeled sandals.
After getting Cyrano to his hotel so he could head to the airport, we went back to our hotel room and had a nap before the Nightwish concert. Getting to the concert itself was a bit tricky - we circled around downtown for a while trying to find parking, and when we finally did (in a paid lot) and walked to the venue, we discovered that the wrong address had been on the ticket and that we were a couple of miles away from their other location, where the event actually was. So we part-walked, part-rickshawed our way there, got in line, had a burrito from a handy street vendor while we were waiting, and found spots and waited for the show to start.
The concert itself was pretty well done, all told. I've heard horror stories about places with crappy sound equipment or bad mixers or all kinds of other issues, but this was a pretty quality production. The mixing was good (bass didn't overwhelm the vocals), the volume was plenty loud enough to RAWK without being overpowering for the size of the venue (a big problem at many Juneau concerts), and they had an incredibly talented lighting designer. So even though neither of us had as much energy as we would've liked, it was nevertheless a fine evening.
And that's pretty much it for our vacation. Between repacking and returning the rental car, we only got a couple hours of sleep that night, and between that and the plane ride we both relapsed. I was lucky enough to only have a bit more sniffling and coughing to deal with, but Brian's been sleeping through the last couple of days. Dexter was just fine, but extremely needy when we got back - and fat! He must've gained two pounds in the last couple weeks. Poor guy; between Mr. Jerry Brown dying and our leaving, he was probably a pretty depressed kitty. I know Jeanne spent lots of time with him, but she doesn't live there, so he was probably lonely. Fortunately, Brian's been home with him for a couple days, and he seems much happier now.
Okay! Work's over. Time to go figure out how to tease my hair...
