Ottawa
Thanks to Liz, Maria and Joey for the fun Tuesday evening, when I also met Rannie, Eldon and Paul at Tequila Bookworm. The subject of conversation centered on what it was like to work for a company in the 'hookup' industry, my favourite stories involving the "betas". Because I'm not terribly interested in turning this weblog into porn-industry lingo, you'll have to contact me privately for what that means. Yesterday was one of the longer travel days I've ever had, taking a streetcar, coach bus, plane, coach bus, light rail (twice!), and bus to eventually get home 8 hours after I landed. (Work event, beercasting and concert comprised most of those 8 hours). Again, thanks to Ottawa and Toronto for their hospitality, and I look forward to visiting soon.
Maybe November?
In September of last year, I made a short announcement that I'd be travelling to Ottawa in March to visit the Icelandic side of my family. March is here, and I've cut Montreal off of my itinerary, but Toronto is still on. The plan is:
- Fly to Ottawa on March 25th.
- Hang out in Ottawa with my family until the 28th then take a train (baring that, rent a car) to Toronto.
- Hang out in Toronto with for a couple of days and nights.
- Fly from Toronto to Vancouver on the 30th.
Original plans included—but no longer include—visiting Montreal and then Toronto, or even bypass both cities and travel to Boston and New York City to visit friends there, then bust my ass back to Toronto to fly back to Vancouver. So instead, I'm saving Boston, New York City, and Montreal for a separate trip (or separate trips?), maybe in the summer, on my own dime and my own time.
The funniest part of the power outage coverage—and this may only be the way that Canadian television news is covering it, my being in Vancouver—is that even though the power is out in our nation's capital, the people in Ottawa, the Town That Fun Forgot, seem not to have noticed it.
Update Aug. 16 1:00 AM: from this news report: "Ottawa police reported 23 cases of looting, along with two deaths possibly attributed to the outage -- a pedestrian hit by a car and a fire victim." I apologize to the good people of Ottawa, Ontario and fully retract my above statement: apparently they did notice there was a blackout.