Catching up

Hi everyone. I know I have been pretty quiet.

Let’s see…

We left the country! My sister has a time share usually in Mexico, but she traded it for one at a resort on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Alec and I got passports (I had one from when I was 20 but it had expired, and we drove up. It’s not something we usually do, and it was fun. We hadn’t been swimming for about 15 years and I had to get a bathing suit!
See our pictures from the trip … Our Canada vacation – September 2008.My brother was also there the first night, but I didn’t get any pictures of him.

On the way back to Olympia, Alec dropped me off at Noel’s placeand I spent the night there. (Thank you, Noel!) Then he took me to a Youth Suicide Prevention conference which focused on youth at risk including LGBTQ, Native American, homeless youth and others. I thought it was excellent.

One of the things I did during the conference was planned ahead. I was a lunch table facilitator, which means during the lunch break I talked very briefly about why I was at the conference (Bill’s story, safe schools, etc.) and then asked people at the table why they are there and have a conversation.

Who sat with me was very random. I was at a table in the corner of the big room full of tables and people. Only two women sat at my table, and they were from the new Seattle chapter of
ULTRA Teen Choice (Character, not condoms) – yup, abstinence folks. Needless to say we had an ‘interesting’ conversation.

Now I’m making plans to go to Washington DC for a week to be at safe schools thing in mid-October. I will get to work with some cool people doing some amazing work. I’ll get to see some old friends and some relatives while I’m there too.