solarbird

I took this past Friday off from work so that we could go up on the morning train, which required us to get up at stupid-o’clock. This would have been easier if I hadn’t had to work for four hours on Thursday night, and if I hadn’t had to spend most of the train ride up working on this year’s employee review–but even given that, and even given that we were operating on four hours of sleep, it was still quite nice to roll into Vancouver. We were kind of silly about not planning the arrival better, as we wound up missing an opportunity to go to the HMV earlier than planned. But that was all good. We dropped our stuff off at the hotel and then went right back out again for two Extremely Critical Missions!

One was me going to the HMV in downtown Vancouver, which, as I’ve mentioned in my previous post, is my current Vancouver source for Francophone music. I was disappointed to not find the live Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer DVD, but quite happy to find the Le Vent du Nord Symphonique album! Along with that, as per the recommendation of scrunchions, I also grabbed En Famille by Mes Aieux, and Dara got herself a Barenaked Ladies album she didn’t have yet. AND! I grabbed the season 1 DVDs for Republic of Doyle. I really hope I like it, because I’m buying it sight unseen here, just to work my way up to Alan Doyle’s guest spots in season 2!

The second, even more critical mission was this: hitting this place for OMG SO VERY, VERY TASTY rosemary and rock salt bagels. Dara bought every single one they had available, which meant thirteen of ‘em. Because SO. SO. GOOD. We are given to understand that these are in fact Montreal-style bagels, and that the shop was founded by a guy who brought that style of bagels to Vancouver. This pleases me immensely, because if Dara and I do make it to Montreal during the Trainventure, we now know to expect to find awesome bagels.

Then we settled down to the business of actually attending the convention.

It turned out to be delightful, small enough to be cozy yet large enough to be lively, with about 600 people total showing up for the weekend. I particularly enjoyed going through the dealers’ room and having lengthy conversations with the various booksellers, who took the time to ask me about my reading tastes so that they could recommend specific titles (many of which I then bought).

I didn’t go to much programming, but what I attended was fun. One panel was along the theme of “Everything I know about Japanese SF I learned from Ishiro Honda”, which was essentially a presentation on the work of the man who directed the Godzilla films. That was fun, but not nearly as fun as the later, hysterical panel about the sex life of “Godzilloids”, which was played absolutely deadpan, and all about scientific “research” into how Godzilloid creatures reproduce. Equal hilarity was to be found in the “Justify the Science Flaw” panel on Saturday night, which was people with Srs Bznz science cred doing their damndest to come up with legitimate scientific explanations for some particularly wacky science in Star Trek and Lost in Space, and also in how you could possibly actually get legitimate zombies. (After that one, I got Dara going on a similar justification for Irwin Allen’s, um, imaginative treatment of radiation in the reactor room of the Seaview on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Muahaha.)

And! Mad props to the “Turkey Reading” panel, which turned out to be not just the panelists reading selected excerpts from particularly wretched ancient skiffy books, but also volunteers from the audience acting out what they were reading, and other members of the audience bidding against each other to either stop or continue the readings! All the funds went into a fund for helping Canadian fans attend distant conventions, and it was in general great fun.

Big props to the art show as well, which was one of the most interesting art shows I’ve seen at a con in some time, and I say that as someone who has no art education at all. Dara, who has an art degree, was very impressed with the work there, which says a lot more than my own opinion. There was a lot of excellent use of texture in multimedia pieces, and one artist (who in fact was one of the people staffing the table up front) did some neat things with color contrast in her work. There was a lot of excellent sculpture and other 3-D work as well.

Dara and I went to Rocky Horror at 10pm on Friday, and we turned out to actually own the whole thing, which was kind of hysterical given that between us we could remember only about a third of the lines. Most of the rest of the attendees didn’t know any of them–with the exception of a few people who started getting into it with us, and one guy who joined Dara on a couple of the visual gags, which got great laughs once people realized what they were doing.

Given the size of the convention and the nice layout of the hotel, it was very easy to just randomly hang out and chat with people in various locations, not just in the con suite. And that was really awesome, since Dara and I both are a lot less likely to do that at a con the size of Norwescon. It really hearkened back for me to the days of Rivercon and Marcon, when we were in Kentucky, in terms of size and friendliness!

Also? Mad props to the con suite for actually having a wet con suite as well as a dry one–because that let us accomplish one more Critical Mission, finding Growers cider! This had been highly recommended to us by cow, and it turned out that they had some right in the con suite! WINNERS: Dara and me. The peach cider was particularly tasty, and once we got ready to go on Sunday afternoon, we made a point of finding some of that as well as some dry apple to bring home with us.

So yeah! Great, great fun, and I must give shoutouts as well to Foxipher and Shaddyr from the Filk list, with whom I had some lovely chatting even if I didn’t have a presence at the filks. (I really, REALLY need to start practicing some filk-circle-appropriate stuff.) We also had some lovely conversation with a friend of Dara’s, and with a few other random folks we hadn’t previously known but with whom we just naturally had conversation spring up, with delightful ease.

And that right there I think sums up the awesomeness of the convention: relaxed, groovy, and friendly. I’m greatly looking forward to coming back next year.

solarbird

This is important because we want to go to VCON next month! One, we want another excuse to visit Vancouver, and the B’ys have not favored us with another Vancouver show on the tour schedule yet this year. Two, it’s a fairly tiny convention and we’re looking forward to attending a convention Dara doesn’t actually have to work. Three, we haven’t had a formal vacation this year, and don’t have one scheduled, so this’ll be a bit of a mini-vacation!

So I’m going to have to fill out the forms for reporting a passport lost and applying for a new one. Fortunately the courthouse down in Lake Forest Park takes the appropriate forms, AND they have Saturday hours. So I’m going to get that done and dealt with next weekend, and pay the fee to expedite a new passport, and hopefully that’ll get VCON all squared away. We have hotel reservations but we don’t have train tickets yet.

Anyway–yo, Vancouver peeps, if there’s any chance you’ll also be at that convention, let Dara and me know! It’d be nice to see you.

ravyngyngvar

Details about the weekend in general, and pics as well, behind the fold!

First up, there was the weather. We were blessed with beautiful warm, sunny weather, perfect not only for outdoor concertgoing, but for sightseeing as well. Good weather to drive in too, even in a car with broken air conditioning!

Sign at the US/Canada Border

Our first bit of sightseeing was actually before we got to the border: we stopped at Peace Arch Park so Yngvar could have a proper look around that. That was neat, with the sunshine coming down on the water, and various nifty bits of sculpture to look at, not to mention the actual arch. I think the most amusing bit of this for me was wandering around the very perimeter of the park, which is right on the US/Canada border, and seeing an actual residential street right there. With a sign to helpfully remind you where you are.

Crossing the border itself was mostly nicely uneventful, though I think we slightly startled the Canadian border guard by having a Norwegian in the car; he had a bit of a “well that’s different” air about him. He was quite amiable though and simply asked us all the expected questions, and got Yngvar a stamp for his passport. Once we got into Canada, though, we discovered that the usual tunnel Dara and I take to get into Vancouver was down to one lane northbound, so traffic was terrible. Also, since we were to meet up with cow to crash at his place but cow was still at work, we opted to go blow time looking at the Capilano Suspension Bridge instead.

Now, we’d been at the bridge before, Dara and I realized once we’d gotten there. After, that is, we got dinged for tickets for 30 bucks a head–which we didn’t know about in advance. But we went in anyway since the bridge is pretty awesome. Not recommended for people who are afraid of heights, though. I had a bit of a time going across it, what with the bridge not being exactly still. On the other side, there were all these treetop platforms and interconnecting walkways; that was pretty neat, and made me totally expect to bump into the Galadhrim or something. Dara for her part kept thinking Flash Gordon.

Gigantic Tree, No Seriously

Also, there were huge, huge trees. Like this one that was marked with a sign that said it was the largest tree on the ridge, with a circumference of 14 feet and a height of over 250 feet. It clocks in around 300 years old, too. That, my friends, is a tree.

The high point of the bridge visit though had to be seeing this amazingly bold little squirrel–a brown squirrel mostly, but with orange along his underbelly, who most likely was a Douglas Squirrel. He sat there eating a pine cone as bold as you please while Dara crept up to him to get his picture, and then promptly scampered away when he was done. We caught up with what was possibly the same animal shortly after when we came back into the seating area and saw it trying to scramble into the top of a trash can. It couldn’t quite make it, and it fell down hard back to the ground.

And then it turned around, looked right at us, and I swear to god, let loose with this stream of chittering invective as if its failure to secure tasty treats out of the trash was OUR FAULT! I’d never heard a squirrel swear before. It was hysterical.

Anyway, that was all fun. Once we’d seen our fill we finally went to go meet up with cow, and once we got everything unpacked and settled, we headed out again to Steamworks to meet up with hsifyppah for dinner. On the way out Dara kept bouncing and chirping “GREAT BIG SEA!” so I said to her, “Great Big Sea tomorrow!”

This apparently amused the guy in the elevator with us as we were heading down to the ground floor. Turned out he was in fact from Newfoundland, and oh my yes, very familiar with Great Big Sea. I couldn’t tell if he actually liked them, or if he was being sort of indulgently tolerant at us while thinking “Oh god not more squealing fangirls.” I’ll say this, though; dude was kind of cute. ;)

Once we got to Steamworks and met up with yam, much tasty food and drink and conversation were had by all. The conversation was pleasant and the food was tasty! A nice way to round out the evening.

Saturday, at least the portion of Saturday not dominated by Great Big Concert Goodness, was mostly given over to visiting the Science Center near cow‘s apartment and later to a walk around False Creek and the Granville Island Market. The Science Center was very kid-oriented but fun anyway; I particularly liked playing with the infrared harp they had in there, and the huge fulcrum attached to a 200kg hippo figurine to let kids play with leverage and weight. And the weather remained absolutely glorious, so it was great to walk around the water and over into the market.

We got some of the super-tasty bagels Dara and I always have when we go up to Vancouver now, since that particular bagel shop had a booth in the market. When we all sat outside by the water to eat them, this bird hopped up to us and let loose with this stream of trilling. We were quite amused and gave it bits of bagel to reward it for singing for its supper.

After that, though, it was time to scamper off for the concert. We hopped one of the small Aquabus boats to get across the lake to where Dara, Yngvar, and I would need to go and catch a bus to Stanley Park, and that was fun. There was a friendly lady who was one of two crewpeople on the boat, and she was of course asking us all where we were from. Yngvar got pleased reactions when we said he was from Norway, since one of the older folks in the back of the boat said his grandfather was Norwegian. And when I said we were going to go see my favorite band Great Big Sea in concert, two little older ladies standing next to me were all “oh hey we’re totally going to go crash that concert”. Hee! SEKRIT NINJA GBS FANS. One of ‘em said her husband was from Newfoundland, even.

While we were on the boat, we got temporarily stopped at one of the docks by a wedding party who wanted to take pictures of all the participants looking out from the boat, which was rather charming. We all yelled “congratulations!” at them after they were done.

Then, of course, we headed off to Stanley Park for Awesome. This will be covered in its very own post.

Sunday was more of what we got on Saturday: sunshine and lots of walking and some journeying by boat and train alike. First up was some brunch at a tasty place that required us to hop on the Seabus, a big ol’ water-going vessel that held about 600 people. This was quite delightful once we started talking to this amiable Englishman sitting next to us, an older gent in his 60′s who’d been traveling around the world a lot with his wife and who was currently visiting Canada. He chatted with us a lot and told us about various places he’d visited, and when Dara and I said we’d gone to Japan for a science fiction convention, he laughed and supposed we must like Doctor Who. We staunchly affirmed this. ;) He said he quite preferred Doctor Who over Torchwood, since it was “more realistic”. Snerk.

Brunch: also very tasty, although damn it was also very filling. So we walked around the nearby market for a bit, and I was amused by one particular sign that made me think of mamishka: “Screaming Mimi’s Seafood Deli and Steamer”. Then we hung out outside by the water. It was very sparkly out there.

Sparkles on the Water

We jumped on the train then to head down to Aberdeen and “Chibi Akihibara”, to show Yngvar the Asian shops there and to give cow a chance to return a bunch of library books. This gave Yngvar a chance to buy toys for his baby nephew, so that was good; I popped into a bookstore called Sup (hee) there, only to discover that they had no English section so there wasn’t a damn thing in there I could read. I was however amused that they had a translated copy of World War Z, with a cover that looked significantly different of course from the US release.

Shot off the Olympic Bridge

Coming back, we got off the train at Olympic Village–where a lot of building is of course going on for the Olympics in Vancouver next year–so we could walk across the bridge back to cow‘s place.

From there, it was pretty much down to getting ready to come home again. Yet another lovely weekend in Vancouver, though, and every time I go up there, I miss it when I have to leave again!

cow

cow took solarbird and spazzkat and me over to the nearby HMV–which proved to be a way more fruitful visit this time around than on the two previous visits, because this time I actually scored an album by La Bottine Souriante! Also picked up one by the Punters, who I’ve been meaning to listen to anyway by way of introducing myself to more Newfoundland music; plus, this album has the magic words “Produced by Alan Doyle” on the back, so I’m figuring that’s a strong recommendation right there. Lastly, got one by the Rankins, since I like their track on Fire in the Kitchen.

Relatedly, cow also gave Dara and me a copy of hsifyppah‘s very first filk CD, Steel Cage Match. Looking forward to listening to this, in no small part because “I Fell Asleep (Reading the Silmarillion)” made me LOL, and also, I want to hear “Livejournal Shanty” too.

And, cow snagged me a couple of loaner copies of La Bottine Souriante albums from the Vancouver Public Library as well. These shall have to stand me until I can acquire actual copies of these albums–which I have now ordered from Amazon, since apparently Amazon’s actually stocked up on La Bottine Souriante a lot since the last time I looked. To wit, bitchin’. Or should that be bitchin-ez moi?

Anyway, aside from all this musical love, we stopped in at Little Sister’s, which is Vancouver’s oldest queer bookstore. Which was kind of neat. I walked out with a novel called Salt Fish Girl which sounded interesting to me and SFnal (it mentions shapechanging and biotechnology), even though it doesn’t call itself a science fiction novel. I told the dude at the counter that I was a bit surprised that they didn’t have Tanya Huff in their (teeny) fantasy section, given that she’s a queer Canadian author and that she has a whole trilogy of books starring a queer boy, set in Vancouver even! He thought that was cool, so who knows, maybe they’ll stock ‘em. Also, they had a big black Labrador-lookin’ doggie who reminded me a lot of Sheriff, the doggie who lives along the goat trail.

OH OH OH, also, they had a magazine on the rack there with a cover blurb about an interview with the actress Alex Hedison. Wait a minute, I thought, Hedison? She did look suspiciously familiar, so I thumbed into the zine to check the interview–and yep, that there was the daughter of David Hedison, my very own Captain Crane from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. And she’s not only queer, she’s the former partner of Ellen DeGeneres! That’s some pretty high-profile queer there.

And after that, cow went back to his place while Dara and Paul and I proceeded to hop on the bus and head down to the Asian-heavy community in Richmond, where they have a couple of largish Japanese/Chinese/Asian-friendly shopping mails. That was neat. Quite a bit of flashbacks to Japan there what with the layout of the stores and the sorts of stuff they sold. We snagged a couple of gifts for folks, had tasty lunch and later on tasty yogurt, and eventually staggered back to Chez cow for zzz’s.

We’ll be heading to Steamworks for tasty food in a little bit, and to meet up with gerimaple and possibly also elfmaid. Which should be a fine closer to a pretty fine day indeed.