I realize I slipped under the radar for most of this week. After being sick last week, I hit the ground running on Monday, pulling an all-nighter Sunday on a writing assignment. Also, sending out two office reports and getting some rather tragic news made for a rather hellish Monday. Pulled another all-nighter on Monday night to finish the assignment, and dragged my sorry carcass to the office on Tuesday afternoon in the co-op car I booked over the weekend: a lime green Volkswagen Beetle, my nth? co-op car.

The previous week I was in a Honda Civic hatchback, the week before that I was in a silver Mazda truck — a beast of a vehicle, but all I could get at the last minute. So far, my favourite car is still the Toyota Prius hybrid, of which the co-op has only one, but I’m sure they’ll look into getting more. The Volkswagen Beetle is a pretty zippy little car — I did a lot of speeding in it over two days — but I like the noiselessness and handling of the Prius in the city. That said, I love being able to drive a variety of vehicles. I don’t know if I could just buy a car one day and stick with that after having this much variety.

Returned from two days in Sechelt, a bit more rested, on Wednesday night, but still with loads to do. But I needed a time-out from work, so I’d made arrangements with Claire and May to go out again on Thursday, before Claire leaves Vancouver next week and May moves to Switzerland at the end of March.

Last night I cooked up this rather complicated plan for a restaurant/photo op/night tour of Vancouver, as both Claire and I like taking pictures, but food turned into the priority for the evening as everyone was pretty hungry. I chose Guu, a Japanese tapas restaurant at the west end of Robson St., near Denman. I love Japanese tapas, and much prefer eating communally from small dishes rather than chowing down on a big main plate all to myself. We even ate outside, under the heat lamps, while tables of Japanese people sat inside and pointed to us as if to say, “Are you out of your minds?” It wasn’t particularly cold, though, especially under the lamps, and when you eat you warm up, anyway.

From Guu we moseyed on over to Cardero’s, a restaurant a few blocks away on a pier in tony Coal Harbour. The place was hopping (and loud), but we stayed until it closed. Obviously, Guu wasn’t enough for us, because we ordered their pizza of the day, red wine, desserts, and coffee! Gluttony is great! Actually, the plan was for some drinks at Cardero’s, then more drinks at the top of the Landmark Hotel in the revolving restaurant/lounge, but we didn’t make that far. We got so caught up in the discussions we were having that we lost all track of time. I’m planning to meet Claire in Paris in May — if she doesn’t head to Mexico early — and May, who will be in Switzerland, will probably be in hermit, work-mode, so getting her out to play in Spain or France will probably be impossible.

Coal Harbour

Claire