puszysty

Vancouver misses me. The weather followed me home.


Thursday I woke up at an actually decent hour and flew to Seattle via LAX. I got to see the desert, Pacific Ocean, and Yosemite National Park on the way, none of which I had ever seen before.
I was griping on the plane to the girl next to me about my long flight, and then she tells me "I'm from Hong Kong. Usually when I get on a plane, I'm on it for 17 hours." I shut up after that.
Alaska Airlines serves Jones on the flight. ♥♥. They also have much more comfortable seats than American. Too bad they don't have a whole lot of flights out of Austin.

Anyway, arrived at like 4:30, whereupon prophetkristy and blue_crow picked me up. We drove to Eddy's parents from there and had Thanksgiving dinner of salmon, stuffing, potatoes, and apple and cranberry deserts, all from fresh ingredients from Pike's Place and very delicious. Salmon also totally beats turkey for dinner. Yay for seafood that's not crawfish or catfish! *gripes about Texas definition of "seafood"*
By the time we got back to Eddy's place, it was fairly late, especially for me considering the time difference, so we just crashed.
Kudos to whoever told me that most people with cat allergies are only allergic to males. No sneezing to be had! \o/

Did you know that Mt. Dew has no caffeine in Canada? There is something inherently WRONG about Mt. Dew with no caffeine.


Friday morning we went to Pike's Place, since I insisted on being at least a little touristy. :) I'd never been to Seattle or even the West Coast before. I like Seattle. It's kind of like the Freiburg of America. Vancouver I'm still not sure what to think of. It's kind of a strange city, in that nothing seems centralized at all. The part of town the play was in seemed nice, kind of like a trendy residential area.
Where was I? Oh yes, back in Seattle. Wandered around the market for while, then down to the waterfront for a little while. Snagged lunch at a local sandwich shop, and then drove up to Vancouver.
Good thing we left early, because traffic getting through the bridge was horrendous. Whose moronic idea was it to have 4 lanes merge into 1? We went like a mile in an hour, it was utterly ridiculous. We whined about this later to AJ.

Frantic quick dinner at a Japanese place (which wasn't half bad) before (I really hate having sugar issues sometimes) catching a bus to the play. I discovered that my debit card did not work at the ATM we went to, most likely because I never called my bank to let them know I was going out of the country. There was frantic emailing later that night to make sure my credit card would work.

The theater was so strange, as it was inside a restaurant. We saw the signs for After the Quake, but I kept thinking the theater was upstairs because you just walked into this cafe/bar type place. And it was tiny. It fit maybe 50 people (which I imagine it why it was sold out on Saturday, boo). If anyone from Hope College is reading this, that theater in the basement of Dewitt? Yeah, about that size.
But the theater did a lot with a little. The set design was excellent as was the little bit of props they used. (I'm still wondering where they found an unopened can that looked just like the ones Sapporo put out. Just sayin) The only thing I wasn't crazy about was the smoke coming out of the floor, which didn't seem to serve much of a purpose.

In regards to the play itself, it was pretty good. Frog was a role practically written for AJ, I think. He's such a ham. We even got to hear him sing a little! In German, and the eternal German major in me noted that his pronounciation is excellent (not surprising though, I'm sure he had classes on German diction as an opera major). The role of Frog required him to do all kinds of fun things with his voice and to move in big dramatic gestures, which was all kinds of fun to watch.
The other part of the play was a story about 3 college friends and one guy in particular who was too shy to go after the girl he loved. AJ's role in this was narrator, which I don't think there's anything more to say beyond that. The two stories were interwoven throughout the play, and I wasn't sure how they linked thematically until the end.
The three of us were in the front row (though I mean, there were only like 8 rows so it wasn't like we were going to get bad seats). We'd brought dried flowers before the show, which the lady at ticket sales (podium in the restaurant) very gracious gave to AJ for us before the show. Since there was no stage door, AJ just met us out front. He said he'd spotted us I think about halfway through. The bar/restaurant was about to close, so he took us to a cheescake-slash-hot beverage place. I'm afraid that all our recaps will be fairly short of said event, since the four of us basically just shot the breeze half the time.

Interesting points I can recall:
The tattoo on his back in the webisodes is not real: it's something he asked the makeup people to draw on as a final shoutout. It's the symbol for his dad's theater company.
The Gaius tattoo was maybe his idea (he couldn't remember exactly it seems, being so long ago). The makeup people drew it on, and also rolled him a big joint for one of the outtakes.
His accent in Earthsea (which I have not had the...pleasure...of seeing), is supposed to be kiwi, but is based on "about 5 minutes worth of research".
Alice has great costuming, and is nothing like the Tim Burton version that's coming out. I know he said more about this, but I forget.
We asked him about the shoutout to Hogan in Rollback, which it totally was, and said something about Hogan getting him into MetaTropolis, to which he said "He said that, did he?"
The long hair in season 3 was a result of laziness, which was pretty much collective throughout the cast, after being gung-ho military in season 1. He also mentioned how stunning Mary McDonnell is, especially for her age.
He's doing a web series called Riese with Ryan Robbins (Charlie Connor from BSG) sometime soon. He described as "steampunk".
One of the kind of cool things he mentioned as coming up on Smallville is that they're bringing in some of the Justice League. I noted seeing the Wonder Twins already, and he threw out...Hawkman I think it was. I shared my theory that with the underground lair and the sweet car that he might secretly be Batman (I am so lame), and his response was that there are "no cool costumes in his future", but he may go evil. Someone said something about a possible robotic arm. If this happens, I so want him to get a cat a la Claw. Anyway... SV is for sure going run one more season, since Tom Welling's contract runs through next year. The show apparently had the highest rating ever for a Friday (or something like that) not long ago, so it's hard to say one way or the other.
He said he got some great pictures at Dragon*Con, like the video we saw him taking on his phone.
He has the BSG soundtracks, Bear gave them to him. He almost made the concert in San Diego, but something else was going on.
His plans for February are anywhere but Vancouver.
Eddy mentioned that some of the group were trying to guess who he played in...Hamlet, was it? He said he had been some character that shows up in the beginning and then not again until the very end, and sometimes he'd watch hockey during the long break. He's so Canadian, I love it. ♥

All told we were probably there for about 30-45 minutes. It was nice to just chill, talk, and eat cheesecake. Casual is nice.


If you're still reading at this point...it rained.
A lot.
All day.
So after a brief excursion to Gastown, a trip to a souvenir store to indulge my mother's spoon collecting hobby, and a walk to Caprica the library, we opted for indoor activities and went to the Aquarium. Where we saw cute fuzzy things like OTTERS, cute not fuzzy things like baby belugas (in the deep blue sea. Swim so high and he swims so free), and not cute not fuzzy things of various natures. Took a quick drive around the island, and went back to our hotel and basically watched movies for the rest of the evening. There was an excursion out to Chinatown, sadly and oddly lacking in restaurants of any sort, at least the part we wound up in, and ended up at this place which was basically a diner that served Chinese. It left something to be desired.


Sunday started out fine and dandy...and then Kristy's car got a flat. Someone was nice enough to stop and point this out to us, so we pulled over and attempted to fix it. Her hubcap was being very difficult, and a passerby stopped and basically did the work for us, which was really nice of him. Drove on donut til Bellingham, skillfully avoiding the tunnel of lovedoom on the way out of Vancouver. K got the tire replaced there and we had a very late lunch (it was like 3:30 by this point, between the not topping 45 and the 50 minute wait at the border). Kristy sadly had to leave soon after arriving back in Seattle (boo work!). Eddy and I went to Half-Price books, since I'd finished On the Other Hand, Death back in Vancouver.

An aside about that book: the movie is WAY better. In the book, the murderer/kidnapper was some random guy who didn't even show up until the last 3 chapters of the book. That takes all the fun out of the who-done-its when the cast of characters is all nothing but innocent bystanders. Not to mention book!Donald totally pissed me off. I don't think I'll bother with the rest of the series.

After the book excursion and some lazing about in her loft, we had dinner at this vegetarian Thai place, which was excellent. Mmmm, curry.


Monday morning I used to visit the UWashington School of Law, which is on my list. I met with admissions, but for some reason, the financial aid guy was gone and they had forgotten to notify me. My impression of...well, I won't say campus, since it's really just one big building, was that it seems fairly relaxed, not overly competitive. You're pretty much guaranteed clinical experience if you want it, which I like. They also have faculty, peer, and professional mentors, which I really like. The only thing I'm not crazy about is that they run on a quarter system, instead of a semester. Once things settle down there (it was pre-finals week there, so I wasn't able to get the student tour), I'd like to pester a student and get their perspective. My brother is on a quarter system, but I'm sure it works differently for his major than for law.
After meeting with admissions and checking out the law library, I wandered down to the general info booth (not particularly helpful), and back up to the campus bookstore, just to kind of get an idea of the area. I like it. I could see myself there. Perhaps if I end up at like, U of M, I could move to Seattle afterwords. The demand for immigration lawyers is certainly there.

After heading back to Eddy's place and packing, we walked downtown to find the train station and kill some time. Nothing too terribly exciting...checking out some really random japanese dollar store, walking by the art museum, which was closed, and grabbing lunch (my last indulgence on notcatfish seafood).

Then the flight. I half-slept a good chunk of the first part, and missed most of the Rockies. Whatever, I've seen the Rockies from the ground. The second time the flight attendant came by and asked if I wanted something to drink (was half-asleep the first time), I said "I'm not thirsty, but..." The lady next to me noted I was hungry and I remarked that I was too cheap to pay for anything. It's like 5 bucks for a bag of peanuts, so not worth it. I must have had my puppy dog eyes on, because the flight attendant took pity on me and gave me a free cookie.
Once in Dallas, I managed to find a bbq place that was open and thankfully did not have to suffer through McDonald's for dinner. The flight to Austin was delayed because of some mechanical issue, and we didn't land until about 11:45. You understand why I was tired when I posted last night. Thankfully I had enough stuff in my inbox this morning that I was able to keep myself from falling asleep at my desk.

And thusly endeth my trip to the great Pacific Northwest. Can I go back now?