Seattle and Vancouver!

Two weeks ago I flew to Seattle! Ya'el picked me up late at night, and I stayed the night at her place. The next day, we met the rest of the family, and Ruthy, at the Amtrak station, and took the bus up to Vancouver for J-West, the west coast secular and cultural jewish conference, organized by the wonderful members of the Peretz Center!

Lots of fun - great workshops - good company - entertaining talent show - delicious potluck food. I participated in a workshop where I made mandelbroit - Jewish biscotti, more or less - one where Mark ran a game of Jewpardy!, and gave one on Jews in musical theatre! That was super fun for me; I got to talk lots of musical theatre details and history, and play an hour's worth of music snippets from Irving Berlin's "Yidde on Your Fiddle, Play Some Ragtime" to Jason Robert Brown's "How Can I Call This Home," from Parade, all for an appreciative audience of many generations!

Anyway, after the highly successful conference, which was a great time for all and during which we stayed at a delightfully comfortable Vancouver hotel (have I mentioned how much I love hotels? the mattresses, oh, the mattresses... the free toiletries... how clean they are, without me having to clean them! ah...), we squeezed into Ya'el's tiny black Honda (the one that is actually my parents', and which I used to drive, and which used to belong to Ruthy) for a miserable drive back to Seattle, although the drive was followed by a nice day and a half exploring Seattle a little and visiting with Ya'el. We shopped at a used bookstore, where I acquired, among other books, Queen Zixi of Ix. We also had brunch at a coffee shop where I had hot cocoa that was both delicious and beautiful:

And the full day in Seattle, we made food at Ya'el's house, which was also great! And also saw Ya'el's work and wandered around the University Village.

Anyway, the next day I flew home to New York, hung out with Skye, who was staying at our apartment for a few days for some meetings with managers, and the next day Alex and I left on the bus for Monmouth, Maine, which is where we are now, and which I will post about later!