Land of Shad & Sonia

Sonia and I are decorating our house for Christmas. The outside was done last week. I’ll post pictures later. Today was the tree. We had tree Chipmunks ornaments, all of which play the same song. We decided to have a little fun with them. This is my first YouTube post BTW.

Monday we got up early, thinking that we would catch an early ferry out, only to find it horribly windy. The early morning ferries were canceled. There wasn’t much else to do but sit and wait. Power was out in Mission, so we left a couple of hours early in case the trip was difficult…It was. We encountered lights our all over the place. There was a tree blocking Glover Road on the way to the bypass. But we managed to get to the ferry terminals by 2:00. Luckily, they honoured our reservation and we were able to get on the 3:00. Home by 7:30, and ready for bead and work the next morning. Yay us.

Sunday we just rested for a while, go some lattes. In evening we to my cousin’s house for Laurie’s brother’s birthday. They had two Playstations setup to play Guitar Hero. It was really fun. Even Sonia enjoyed it. We might have to get that game for the Wii.

With all of our shopping done (any not much money left) we decided to head back to Canada early on Saturday. We took the back way through Sumas instead of going through the Peach Arch. It’s way faster. Now being the kind of person who almost never gets away with anything, I decided that I didn’t want to lie to the border guard. When we finally got up to the booth, we declared that we were over our $800 exemption. We were prepared to pay the duty, but he just waved us through. Bonus.

We got to my aunt and uncle’s place in early afternoon and had a little visit before heading into Vancouver to have dinner with some old friends: Dave and Jody who recently moved down south from Dawson Creek, Tamara and her husband Darcy, and Jody’s friend Bianca. We met them at an Indian restaurant in Kitsilano. Sonia had never had Indian food before, so she was a little hesitant. It was fun visiting, I haven’t seen those guys in so many years. After dinner we wandered down to Tamara and Darcy’s store Drexoll Games (shameless plug). We hung out there for a while then headed home.

Friday morning we headed off to the Seattle Outlet in Marysville. It is supposed to be “the” outlet mall in the area. Over 100 stores. Now the previous day Sonia roasted while shopping, so we left our jackets at the hotel…big mistake. First off, we were there almost an hour earlier than the stores opened, and second, it’s an “outlet” mall. You have to go outside to get between stores. Needless to say, we were pretty cold. Bought a ton of stuff there and headed back to the Alderwood mall to finish off our trip.

We at dinner at Ruby’s Diner…a 1940′s themed diner. It had pretty cool decor, and train running around the restaurant, and all the waitresses we dressed in candy stripped uniforms that were pretty cute. I had the sliders…little tiny burgers done in a dinner bun. Very reminiscent of the White Castle sliders seen in one of my favourite movies: “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle”. I felt pretty special eating then.

Sonia and I headed down to Seattle (we’ll Lynnwood) on Thursday to do a little shopping. We were both in desperate need of some new clothes, and with the dollar being as strong as it is…why not.

We tried to take the 9:00AM Ferry, but we were a little late, and with traffic we were too late to take it. We decided to take the Coho from downtown Victoria to Port Angeles instead. We managed to get downtown for the 10:30 sailing. We’ve never taken the Coho before, so it was an experience. It’s very old school compared to BC Ferries.

Now so many of my co-workers said that the Port Angeles to Seattle drive was the way to go because it is so scenic. However, when we got off the ferry, it was so fogged in, we couldn’t see past the car in front of us. Oh, well…next time. The drive in was pretty good. We board our second ferry of the day to take the trip from Kingston the Edmonds. It was even older-school than the Coho. And everyone stayed in their cars, so we have almost the whole top to ourselves. We were delayed a bit as they did a Coast Guard safety drill.

We got into Lynnwood and managed to do some shopping at the Alderwood mall. Scored some pretty good deals. After dinner we checking into the hotel: The Embassy Suites. It was really nice. It had kind of courtyard/villa feel on the inside. The room came with a complimentary full breakfast.

My bus just passed a Tim Hortons. There was a dead pidgeon in the parking lot. There was an old guy in a Toyota Echo doing a 50 point turn, trying to get out of his parking spot, nearly running over the pidgeon everytime he lurched forward. On the other side was a seagull who was trying to get the pidgeon.

I would like to believe that the saegull had alturistic motives. Maybe he was trying to save his fallen avian bretherand from a horrible crushing fate. Most likely he wanted to eat the pidgen before the Echo did.

I’m sure that there’s a project management metaphore in there someplace. Or a really bad Tim Horton commercial.

I’ve just transfered my website to a new domain host: Dreamhost. The offer a pretty impressive lineup of features for pretty cheap. I’m hoping I can fix up a sweet photo gallery. Or at least one without php errors. If you notice any weirdness, please let me know. I’m not posting my email address…anyone that I care about know how to get in touch with my anyway.

So I’ve been bad about documenting my last few days in Cali. Partially because I’ve been busy, partially because I’m lazy. There hasn’t been a lot going on.

Wednesday we did a lot of recap of our first two days for the benefit of the folk who arrived on Tuesday. After work we did some wrap up then went for dinner at a really nice sushi restaurant. We ended up back at the hotel before 9:30PM. Amazing.

Thursday we did more work. Cam got lucky at lunch; we found a vegetarian Indian restaurant. I think it was the first time he’s had a full meal since we got to California. We broke early (about 3:30) then went to downtown Sacramento to do some shopping. Karl and I ended up going to the Capitol building. We got to see where Governor Schwartzenegger does his work. It was pretty nice. Karl got some good pictures. We went back to Old Sacramento and met up with the rest of the group. At dinner, we ended up back at the same Sushi place from the night before. It was really good. We had a waiter that was pretty funny. He sat and chatted to us for quite a while. We headed back to the hotel for a final brainstorming session that went on for an hour or two.

Today we venture out to the MAXIMUS Healthy Families Program office to check out their operation. It was very similar to ours, and not nearly as streamlined. We had a quick lunch downtown then headed to the airport. Today is supposed to be the worst travel day in America, so we thought we’d beat the rush. Which leads me to right now, sitting by the departure gate, waiting for my plane to come in. Hopefully it will be here soon.

Another day of hard work in the world of document imaging technology. Gleaning best practices, learning lessons-learned. With the volume of information that has been presented to me, I should be feeling much smarter. But I’m not.

The rest of the project team arrived this evening. We’ll be tackling the business side tomorrow. Anyway, Karl, Cam and I had some time to spare before we picked them up from the airport, so we decided to head into Sacramento city (we’re actually staying in Rancho Cordova, not Sacramento proper). We saw the governor’s mansion – didn’t see Arnold though. We headed down to Old Sacramento – kind of a riverboat, Wild West themed part of town. It was kind of cool. We decided on Joe’s Crab Shack for dinner. It was a pretty huge place, and pretty famous, I’d say by the volume of merchandise they were selling. Karl order crab stuffed shrimp, which we were very excited to see. Whatever ill feelings I may have to our neighbours to the south, I must say that they are light years ahead of the world in crustacean-enhancement technology. To even conceive of a shrimp that was infused with another sea creature was beyond my grasp. Alas, when the food came we were saddened to find out that the crab was not “stuffed” in the shrimp, but merely place on top of it. Still, these bold pioneers of stuffing one kind of animal into a similar kind of animal are blazing the trail for future culinary adventures. Turducken anyone?

So I went into a store to purchase a present for Sonia. I can’t say which in case she reads this, it will tip her off. I explained to the nice lady behind the counter that I was from Canada. She asked me if I had relatives down here. I said no. She then replied, “Well why in the world would you want to come to Sacramento?” I know it’s not the most glamorous city in the world, but to have such a pitiful sense of civic pride sort of astounds me. I’m sure that there is lot of reasons to come here. There seemed to be tourists around.

Shad’s Vegetable Count: managed to procure a half piece of corn on the cob from KFC, of all places. And I have a piece of broccoli at the Crab Shack. Things are looking up. My colon may survive this barrage of meat and fat after all.