It is hard to be away from diaryland for a while. There is always so much to write about but when that text box pops up my mind goes blank. Well, maybe not so much blank, but it decides to just release a trickle of information and never the stuff that I previously wanted to write about.

I got back from Vancouver last night. My ass and legs were extremely sore and my mind loopy from spending nine hours in the car. The drive didn't really feel like it took that long, but it did, I'm still kind of trying to recover I guess.

Vancouver is a fantastic city. I was amazed at how big it was, amazed at how many high rises there are. It is a thoroughly modern city. It made me realize how quaint and/or charming one could think Portland is.

We got up to town on Friday evening. After the uneventful border crossing we had to endure an hour of extremely slow traffic just to get to the outskirts of town. I'm not sure what their rationale is but they seem to close down all but one lane inbound so that the outbound traffic is smoother. Gah! It drove us crazy.

We checked into our hotel which was a block away from English Bay in a pretty chi chi part of town. My favorite part of the neighborhood was the circle of flag poles the inner four were Canadian flags and surrounding them in greater number but lower were a bunch of rainbow flags. Ha ha ha. We ate sushi that night. My sister and I met up with Silly who walked us around in a vain attempt to ditch us. Eventually she just gave up and decided to join us for drinks. Of course, Liz is underage in the States but not in Canada. It was a strange experience for her at first, but like anything, she got used to it. So we drank and had a nice long conversation. We aren't the first people that she's met in real life from diaryland, but she is our first and I can say that I won't be scared to do it again. Silly, thanks again.

After that we called it a night. The next morning we were a bit groggy but snapped out of it after coffee and breakfast. After Friday without hanging with our mom we spent the entire day Saturday with her. Unfortunately for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, that day was plagued by thoughts of Stephanie, but not even the new stuff, the really old stuff that's over. So I was a little crybaby on and off throughout the day. I wish I hadn't been. I don't want to bring people down when we are on vacation. We took an architectural tour of the city led by an architecture student from UBC. Unfortunately, I don't think she was the most competent tour guide in the world so I'd just replace her commentary with my own. Take this for example, she said that the arches that were in the classically styled train station were references to the railroad. She kept using that in a couple of different buildings. Liz and I were puzzled, just looking at each other. Since when are arches references to the railroad? I don't believe I'm mistaken when I say that the ancient Romans used arches extensively, and not just in their railroads...you know, if they had them. So that's pretty much when she lost us as attentive listeners. Unfortunately that was the first building of the tour. We stuck with the tour until almost the end when we got tired and decided to have a drink and lunch at the Hotel Vancouver.

The hotel was built in the 20's and/or 30's. It has a really tall and pointy copper roof and some classical stylings. So that was nice. We kind of regrouped from there and decided to take the skytrain out. We took it out pretty far. I was impressed with it as a means of transportation. I was also impressed with the size of the Vancouver area. Just huge.

We went back into town and kind of kicked around for a while before taking tess's advice and going to the night market in China Town. It was pretty rad. There were so many people there and so many vendors selling stuff like Vietnamese DVDs and cell phone covers. My purchase was a lighter with a picture of Chairman Mao on it. When you open it a light goes on and the Chinese anthem is played. It is one of those crack style lighters with the super hard flame. The flame turns green after a couple of seconds. Definitely a great purchase.

We decided to walk from China Town to Gastown. Unfortunately we decided to take a detour through Crackton. I'm not really sure that's the official name of Vancouver's crack district but it definitely should be. Man, what a fucked up area. I really get uncomfortable when most people walking on the street are actually stumbling and some of those people are openly smoking crack on the sidewalk. We powered through that neighborhood. Ugh, how damned depressing.

We finished the night out with drinks and dinner. Liz and I went and had another couple of drinks before bed. She had to take advantage of being legal for one last time.

And I guess that brings us to yesterday. Had breakfast, drove down. Got my cat from Stephanie, rode down to Eugene from Portland with the Good Roommate. Got home and zoned out.

I've got more to talk about, I'm sure, but I'll leave it at that for now. I'll update with some more "personal" stuff later, probably today.