Boka with Bob

Unpacking is a nuisance, and it's even worse when Conrad's not here to pitch in and when our place is a catastrophe. Ugh. I'm home from Seattle, yes, and here for less than two weeks before vacation. It almost seems like a joke, I know.

Dinner last Monday night in Seattle was at a place called Boka. Not related to the one in Chicago, apparently. I like the one in Seattle better, I think.

My companion was Bob, a cataloguer from Northwestern (and he still talks to people like me who work at state schools - a generous and kind soul). The man is a delight to dine with really as he doesn't let you get away with anything, or so his fine, dry wit makes it seem. Did I mention that he's handsome and single?

As for the food, well, the salmon was pleasant (damning it with faint praise, I know), Bob's scallops were apparently good if rich, the duck and waffles (on the left) were more interesting than good, and the lemon trio was the best dessert I'd had since Vij's gulab jamun. Best of Seattle - to that point. If Mary Augusta sends me the few photos from Dahlia Lounge the next night, then there may be shots of the doughnuts that were shamelessly superb!

Seattle so far

Is it chauvinistic of me to blog an entry on each street corner or morsel of food in Vancouver and then come to the US and lump three days in Seattle into one entry so far? Likely. Sorry. Also very lazy of me. Let's get started.

Friday we arrived, having taken time on the way to shop at some outlet stores. I didn't have any particular obligations on the Friday beyond dinner CG arranged at Purple Cafe and Wine Bar. Such very odd and not especially good service. [PLUNK!] a glass of wine is set down and no indication of what it is or why it was paired with the course. Half an hour later: [PLUNK!] Strange night of dining, but as we were all determined to have a good time, I think we did. FXK and Melissa joined our ranks for that meal. Only the photo of the Syrah brownie turned out in terms of photos of food, alas.





The Midwinter Meetings really began for me on Saturday. Happily, my schedule wasn't all that crammed, so I did get to stroll around some, including walking down to the Market with CG and grabbing a bite of lunch.



That night we hit a couple of vendor receptions, one at the Experience Music Project where we roamed in the museum and pretended to know what we were doing with musical and recording instruments. After that it was a brief stop in the Space Needle before I called it an early night.




Yesterday brought some more meetings and a focus group, but also lunch with a friend from the Twin Cities, Bob. The Public Library, where we took these photos, is quite an interesting (if not actually attractive building). Some of the colouring is a bit disconcerting, like the red hallway outside the room where the GLBT Round Table social was last night. But still, good to see what the fuss was about.

I escaped the social before the end, and headed back past the convention center to grab dinner at Tango with a friend from Houston, David. Good to dine with him again, a regular conference occurrence, it seems. Sweetheart of a guy, now if I can just convince him to run Victoria this year as well!




Today? Campaigning for Jim Rettig, then I tried to find a hotel where a discussion group was being held. No such luck. Merde. My sense of direction is so bad. Ah well. I did have an enjoyable breakfast with the friend of a friend. Steve is a flight attendant for Delta and soon to move to an Ontario farm with his partner. Interesting the paths we all choose, I think. We strolled around a gay neighbourhood some, then it was time for more committee meetings.


Still up for this trip: two more nice meals out and one more committee meeting. But truthfully? I will be very glad to be home on Wednesday night and gladder still to see Conrad when he gets back from Orlando on Friday night.

last evening in Vancouver

You know, I haven't been in Seattle in some 16 or more years. Wow. And yes, I am looking mighty shaggy in that picture. The facial hair may need to come off

The last entry took in lunch yesterday, so let's finish off the Vancouver visit with this one. Not a great deal to report, in some ways. We spent time in a coffee shop on the Island, browsed the Market a little before heading back to the hotel (which appeared to have some interesting meetings taking place), then got ready for dinner.

CG had picked Raincity Grill for dinner. I hadn't been before, but I knew of the place; its reputation is good. Martin, in fact, had dined there previously and gave it a thumbs up. The restaurant was doing a Dine Out Vancouver menu, so we were able to have a nice three-course dinner at a reasonable price.

Food photos, of course:

My charcuterie plate appetizer.

Mark's steak dinner.

CG's Skeena River (woo-hoo!) salmon.

My garbanzo and fig tagine.

The bittersweet chocolate terrine.

The vanilla custard.

We left after breakfast this morning, and now it's Conference Weekend. Um, yay? Kind of hard to make myself get back into the swing of library stuff, though I've seen some familiar faces already. And amen for outlet shopping in Everett!

Wild Rice

Lunch today was down in the vicinity of Chinatown at a place called Wild Rice. We sat on couches at the back of a long, sleek, hip room and shared some soup and small plates. The savoury stuff was uniformly very very good (some beans with garlic and almond brittle, sesame spinach, mussel potstickers among the dishes). The wine list included the Joie Noble Blend (hooray!). The look of the dessert going to the next table seduced us into ordering one for the table - a chocolate mousse without dairy but flavoured with Szechuan pepper and served with honey tangerine segments. We should have resisted since we knew it had no dairy; mousse is not mousse if there is no cream involved!

Ah well. Martin, as you can see, keenly enjoyed the earlier courses!

Museum of Anthropology

It's not supposed to snow here. I trudged through a thin veneer of slush covering Granville Island on my way to the pool this morning. Ah, but we had it easy, as we discovered a handful of hours later. Downtownish, it's wet - it's still raining unrelentingly outside the coffee shop windows. Up toward UBC, it was snow falling. Wet, heavy snow, accumulating on the roads, weighing down tree branches. Messy as all get out.

In lieu of a jaunt over to Victoria today (the amount of travel versus the amount of time we'd have there before having to turn around to catch a sailing wasn't worth it) we all went up to the Museum of Anthropology this morning. I love the collection there, mostly for the First Nations arts and crafts they have. The Museum allows photography, and though it may somehow violate copyright to post it here, I think that if it inspires more of you to go see it, so much the better.






Best of all is Bill Reid's magnificent sculpture of Raven and the First Men, carved from a single block of yellow cedar. I was welling up seeing it again.