Stress is a wonderful thing when measured in retreat. If its origin is a two week long PowerPoint marathon building up to a two day program review, and all that remains is the afterglow from the fiery mass of Microsoft that has slipped below the horizon. Wednesday was my last day at work and now I look through salt sea air to the Vancouver skyline. Enchanting. The view is surreal from a balcony on the 15th floor of a hotel just south of Granville Island. The myriad of city lights aglow before a mountainous skyline appear as a thousand drops of crystal sea shed from a sinuous emerald and enchanted wyvern casting about in the twilight surf.
The bulk of today was spent driving from the 54th street resort to the Vancouver Holiday Inn (700 N Broadway). The effort started at 9:00 AM and concluded at 5:00 PM. The trip was uneventful. The kids plugged into their DVD player. My wife listend to ‘Breaking Dawn’, and I listened to Thomas Paine’s ‘The Rights of Man’.
Once at the hotel the universe snapped from the virtual to reality. Well, sort of. If you count walking around Granville Island dining on Chicken Caesar salads and desserting on Gelato some kind of reality.
In the evening the kids ran circuits between the pool and the dry sauna trying to recreate the Tucson climate. My wife and I with Auntie Eeay Veeaitch shared a nice wine on the 5th floor patio and watched the sun tuck itself into bed.