Staycation daze

So, after six solid months of Interim VP duty and a transition to "permanent" VP, all of which involved a considerable number of twelve-hour days and of instances of working on weekends, graduation has come and gone and I am finally in a position to take vacation.

Or I guess it's what's now called a staycation - some familial responsibilities are keeping Coco in town, and a rare visit from an east-cost pal happens to coincide with my time off, so we're not leaving ton. (Coco is off on summer break, no teaching, so she's on a long staycation.)

Friday was technically my first day off, but it was more like a recovery day. We cleaned out the garage a bit, read a little, napped a lot, and we watched Justice League.

Saturday was supposed to be nice, so we grabbed the Nexus passes and headed up to B.C., intending to traverse the rope bridge at Capilano. The cloudy skies just a relatively few kilometers north weren't burning off, however, so we had to settle for a little shopping and some lunch at Chau Veggie Express, our new go-to for vegetarian pan-Asian food. While at IKEA, we saw a sign that coincidentally mirrored our quest:

 

Our cleaning spree had inspired Coco to address the growing disorder in her art-studio corner of the garage, so this seemed awfully timely. And while we didn't find anything to do the trick at IKEA, or even in Canada, we did score some shelving at the local Lowe's - more below.

That night, we watched Hello, My Name is Doris - no review forthcoming, but it was a sweet, quirky little movie that a well worth catching.

This morning, Sunday, we assembled the shelving we had picked up on Saturday that was meant to tame Coco's creative chaos; like a dam holding back a mighty river, only time will tell whether it is up to the task:

But this is supposed to be a staycation, not a workation, so after lunch Coco and I urban-hiked to the View Tower in the Sehome Hill Arboretum on the Western Washington University campus:

The whole trip comprised only a little over three miles, but you can see the elevation change.  The trip through the adjoining neighborhoods was uneventful, but as we entered the arboretum proper, we encountered something right out of a horror movie:

This message did not appear to be referencing the trail itself... but nothing creepy appeared.
 
In the end, the view was well worth it:

That's Canada way off on the horizon.

We thought our exertions merited some dinner, so we made our way down to a local brew pub. Along the way, we encountered this D&D-centric school:

I wondered if they have separate schools for halflings, dwarves, half-orcs, and so on. We made it to dinner without encountering any elves, whether Wood, Sun, or Deep. The food was good, and a brew pub wouldn't be a brew pub without brew, so:

Which of course led to this:

Not a bad start, I'd say.