Seattle

Last week I took a week off work for a little vacation. I spent the first weekend largely hanging out in East Van checking out Boris and Rachael's new place, catching up with Angie and Marci who just moved to the coast, and walking around on the Drive a bit during Italian Days. 

I hadn't made any terribly concrete plans about what I was going to do for the rest of the week, but had been feeling very deprived of road trips lately. I'm not a huge fan of driving distances by myself, so I settled on hopping on the train down to Seattle for a few days. It'd been about 12 years since I'd last taken the train (on the east coast), so I didn't completely know what to expect.

It was great! Aside from the errant screaming child, which I mostly blocked out with my headphones, I have to say it was one of the nicest modes of transport I've taken in ages. It was about 4 hours, and the scenery especially between Bellingham and Mt. Vernon where you go right along the water, was gorgeous. It was really relaxing, and I just brought my dinner, some reading, some knitting, and my laptop, and settled in. Bonus, it made me less motion sick than driving, flying, or ferries, so I arrived feeling good rather than tired and nauseous. Will definitely repeat. Some of the early evening scenery:

On Wednesday, I had lunch with some of my favourite people (Jennifer, Jared, Greg, and Katherine of the Seattle Drupallers) at a great little vegetarian restaurant that Jared recommended called Plum Bistro.

I spent a bunch of time Wednesday and Thursday meandering the Capitol Hill area, and then just relaxing. Thursday night, my lovely friend Amye drove up from Portland and joined me in Seattle for the night. Then Friday, we drove back up to Vancouver. 

Amye spoke at WordCamp on Saturday, while I went and poked around the farmers market (oh, how I missed it over the winter!), and then we had dinner with Boris and Rachael out at the Rocky Mountain Flatbread Company. Their gluten-free crust ended up having yeast in it, so I didn't try it this time (maybe on a day my stomach is feeling hardy), but had their antipasto plate, which was delicious - I wish there had been more of the smoked ham and salami as they were very tasty.

Sunday morning I bid farewell to my roomie and got ready to get back to business! Sticking with a slower pace, and not trying to "do it all" made it actually quite a relaxing week, despite my usual stomach antics and packing a fair amount of visiting into it. All in all, a great little refreshing vacation!

And.... the busiest of months has come to an end. Exhales.

October was a great if not overbooked month. Between BarCamp Vancouver, the Drupal 7 Conrib Sprint, and the big PNW Drupal Summit in Seattle last weekend, I had only one weekend off the entire month (on which there was also Drupal Camp Portland, but I decided that would be pushing it).  I made up for the past month in a big way this weekend, going out to socialize only once (last night for Halloween), sleeping in till 10am both mornings, doing laundry, cleaning my bathroom, cooking, reading, chatting with my folks on the phone, and generally being a homebody.

The PNW Drupal Summit in Seattle last weekend was something I'd been looking forward to for quite a while. My coworker Shawn and I drove down a day early, and Shiraz (another one of our coworkers who lives on the island) took the ferry over and met us that night. We managed to do a little exploring of the Pioneer Square area Friday, where I bought a bunch of cool books, and drove through Capitol Hill and up the waterfront before tiring out and going back to the hotel for naps. Everyone else arrived by bus or train Friday night; we had quite the crew amassed over the weekend, with 5 people from AB, 2 others who have been doing contract work with us, and then my friend Katherine who works at another company and has been a conference roomie before.

It was great catching up with the Seattle crew, as well as lots of people who I'd met at previous Camps and Cons, and also getting to know some new people. It's such a great group, I never tire of hanging out with everyone from the PNW plus a few others who came in from Idaho, and even Montana.  I learned a few new things including, a new (to me) tool for managing content deployment using Deploy module [slides/vid here], and my Agile project management/development BOF was actually one of the highlights of the weekend for me. It was well attended, and there were some really great conversations and sharing of experiences from other PM's and devs who have been (or want to start) using Agile methods. I think that the session may have been videotaped, and am crossing my fingers that footage will surface at some point! Thanks again a million to the great Drupallers in Seattle for all their hard work making that come together.

To abruptly change topics, I got this crazy white pumpkin to carve last night (the photo Rachael took really shows how white it was); I thought it was some strange tough inedible gourd, but it really was this fantastic pumpkin. Probably some kind of heirloom variety, as it had not had all the amazing squash-iness bred out of it. Very thick and meaty, huge seeds, and so orange inside that my hands were completely stained after I was done.  Rachael and Boris used some of it for soup, so I am hoping that it was as tasty as it was entertaining (I hate to waste them, even if they are just grown to be decorative veggies).  It was a quiet Halloween, but I think that's ok. I am up for some quiet times.

ps. For the record, I still think daylight savings is bunk. Saskatchewan has it right (disclaimer: I am biased).

pps. People I know are raising money for cancer research, and you should donate!

• Jo Biggar (my friend's brother) is going to cut off his amazing dreadlocks, which he's been growing for nearly a decade to reach his goal of raising $10,000 - he's over 2/3 to his goal, so help him out!
• Also today marks the first day of Movember (ie. the month where boys grow 'staches to raise money for prostate cancer), and my coworker Shawn is participating - you can pledge on his mo growing here (if the link doesn't work, go to http://ca.movember.com/ and search for "Shawn Price").