Tuesday, April 22, 2008

crazy

Lots has happened, and I really want to blog. Of course I really should have gone to bed a half hour ago, so this will be short. 8)

We had a beer-brewing party at our house - we kegged one of our beers, then had everyone over to drink it all in one night. 8) Luckily it was only a small keg, and some of our friends can drink a surprising amount of beer! Here are Neil (brewmaster), Jeff, and Erik surveying the brew:



Douglas has been camperizing the van like crazy. The roof is all insulated, and there is actually a roof! It's fuzzy and blue, and it keeps the interior of the van amazingly warm!!



In our fancy new van, we went to Victoria


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to visit my brother, and so I could go to the Canadian Museums Association conference. Victoria is a really fantastic little town, and we loved our visit there. We ate decadent cake for my brother's birthday, went out for Thai food, walked on the beach, and visited the ducks in the park near my brother's house.





We also watched a string of long, depressing movies with subtitles (we kept trying to choose others, but kept getting sucked in!!) We saw 'there will be blood', 'letters from iwo jima', and the new ang lee 'lust, caution'. All good, all long, all wrenching.

The conference was good - completely different from a science conference. The sessions were all 1.5 hours long, and there was lots of talking about people-oriented subjects - visitor experience, working with street youth, fundraising tactics. I met lots of folks I needed to meet, listened to some talks in French (the society is bilingual, and there were heaps of francophones there), and generally felt like a bona-fide museum employee.

After all this work, Douglas and I took a few days and relaxed in Tofino. We did nothing but listen to the waves. It was spectacular.

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And relaxing, in spite of being a tsunami zone. Look at that stick figure go!










So much for short! I need to go to bed, so I'm stopping here, but there is more to tell: of birthday garden parties, and skate park construction...