R&R, Eh?

(Root canals and relaxation, Canadian style)

An oxymoron, you say? Au contraire. Vancouver was just that. Five days and five nights of it. Good weather, even better food, interesting workshops, and best of all, plenty of time to sleep. It was the first time in over two years that I was actually able to sleep for 10.5 hours at night. Glorious, heavenly, restorative sleep. Dare I say it was the highlight of my trip. I know some of you readers are cursing me because you are unable to share in the delight of all this right now, but just remember that I have already paid my dues and tomorrow things go back to the usual 6 am wakeup.

I know you don't want to hear about my slumber, so here's how the trip really was. It started out with the fortunate fact that we were not flying American Airlines. Everything was on time. Our hotel was just minutes away from the waterfront and convention center and within 100 steps of the most wonderful coffee shop in the city, Cafe Artigiano. If you are ever in Vancouver, you have to get your lattes or mochas or anything with steamed milk there. They put Starbucks to shame, not that that says much, but it's the only national example I can give.

We were also very lucky that we didn't decide to leave earlier in the week to do our sightseeing and saved it until after the conference. It rained for at least four days before we got there. The sun came out during the morning of our first day and didn't really leave us for the entire time. The mountains also came out from under the clouds to welcome us, which I really appreciated.

The conference itself was interesting and I got a chance to attend a bunch of different workshops. A few were on marketing a successful practice, one was on conflict resolution, and another was an interesting talk about the dental marriage, given by a psychologist who works mostly with dentists and their spouses. In short, we're all doomed and are going to get divorced because we're married to type A people who need all of their ducks in a row all of the time. I think I got lucky in that my husband is the only dentist I know that doesn't fit that description, so hopefully we can buck the trend!

There was time for meeting up with friends from B's residency, Dim Sum, seafood, Vietnamese food (all the things you can't really get much of where we live) and a big surprise for B. His best buds J and M drove up from Seattle to surprise him for the weekend. He thought they were unable to come visit us for months, but I was in cahoots with them ever since we booked our tickets. B was so surprised he was speechless. I was so glad that he was able to see them. It had been nearly 5 years since he saw J and 3 since he last saw M. I think that was one of the reasons I was able to get so much sleep. While they drank beer and relived their adolescent adventures, I went to bed.

Aside from some really long walks (Vancouver is a great walking city) and some shopping, we also hung out and went to the Capilano Suspension Bridge, Granville Public Market, and Stanley Park. I think one of the guys' highlights was the tower of beer they shared at dinner on Sunday night. Three liters of local brew. Three guys. How could it not be great?

How did J do during our absence? Apparently he didn't even ask for us. He kept busy by giving Grandma driving directions (I'm not kidding) and learning how to play golf with Grandpa. When I saw him on Tuesday morning, he said, "Hi Mommy", gave me a kiss, and kept playing. He didn't even realize that B was home as well until I asked him if he wanted to see Daddy. That got a little more excitement, but not much. I guess we can leave him and travel a little more often, which is a good thing because summer is almost upon us.

Of course all good things come to an end and now we are moving on. I have two more teaching tests this weekend. One is for my elementary k-4 certificate, the other is for a middle school certificate that Texas has decided I am qualified for once I pass the test. The one problem is the math. I don't remember any of it. It's so bad that I got 25 out of 36 wrong on the practice. And that doesn't include the Texas history I don't know or the science curriculums that are a distant memory. I actually thought about cancelling that test, but it's too late to get a refund, so I am sealed to a fate of guessing on trigonometry and quadratic equations. Maybe I'll get lucky, but if I don't pass, I already have my reading certificate and never had any intentions of teaching 8th grade math anyway!


Hope everyone is having a great week! Gotta go and try a few more of those f(x,y,z...) problems. Fun, fun!

PS Blogger wouldn't let me upload pics all day. Sorry for the lack of images.