I had the morning before leaving Seattle, during which Holli took me to the main Seattle library because it’s a cool building. And also because books. Turns out the building is eleven storeys of books. (Okay, not all of them had books. One had computers, another had meeting rooms, and another had admin stuff. But still. The library I worked at only had five storeys, and this one had eleven.)

Eleven.

Storeys.

:D

The Seattle Library and Pictures with Me in Them

Alas, we had little time to linger over all the books (their special collections area has all these pretty, old books that I wanted to pick up and flip through and just generally hold in my hands *happy sigh*), so it was a quick tour with stops for me to take pictures of the library and Holli to take pictures of me.

My pictures aren’t great. I was more in a “documenting the things” mood rather than an “art the things” mood. Holli’s pictures, on the other hand, are fantastic. And not just from our library visit – she took some of me on our other outings, too, and I now have them all :D

Let’s start with the older ones. First, there’s me and the Space Needle:

Then there’s me and the real Space Needle:

And remember how there’s a west coast Statue of Liberty? Holli got a shot of me with her, too:

And now that we’re properly caught up and you have proof I went to all these places, here’s proof from the library trip that Holli and I were, in fact, in the same place together:

(Cool building is cool. Also, we are darn adorable :D)

My favourite picture Holli took of me from the whole trip, though, was taken later in the library trip.

It’s my favourite picture of me, period:

Isn’t Holli a great photographer? :D

When Writers Meet up in Portland

I had an hour layover in Portland in the evening, during which time I had dinner with Lelia Rose Foreman.

I’m not actually sure how it happened, but somehow, she found me on Facebook sometime last year and sent a friend request. Since she and I had a bunch of mutual friends who were all other writers, I accepted the request.

Isn’t it weird how social media can bring people together?

So, during my layover, we ate and chatted about travel stuff. Turns out, she’s lived in both Alaska and Japan, and that she and her husband loved Japan so much they ended up staying there longer than they’d first anticipated. It was so cool listening to her stories about what she’s seen, done, and tasted (she didn’t remember the name of the food, but she remembers trying this one thing in Japan that she disliked so intensely that she ran to the garbage can to spit it out xD).

Right now, she’s working on a textbook for homeschoolers which includes a recommended reading list. The Illuminated Heart is on that list, a fact which is so many kinds of awesome I can’t even begin to count them.

Lelia is a delightful person and I thoroughly enjoyed talking with her. One day, we will have to hang out for more than an hour.

Also: Yes, I’m behind on these. I’ve been in California for two days now and you’re just hearing about Portland xD I’ll try to put up two posts tomorrow and the next day to catch up. Or just three tomorrow. We shall see. Either way, you’ll hear about California tomorrow :D