Having Fun in Vancouver

I just got back from 10+ days away on Cortes Island at Hollyhock. I am feeling refreshed and renewed.
I am spending about 4 days in Vancouver and then heading to Seattle. While here i am meeting people that I knew when I used to live here.
I had dinner with my sister my first day here. She is doing well and has a very interesting identity related job. She works for a branch of the government that deals with estate disbursement. So when people die and they don’t have a will or an executor or when they do have a will but no executor it is the office she works for job to find the people who get the assets. She does a lot of digging around in ancestry.com and accesses birth and death registries throughout north america putting together the needed identity paper trails. Next time I am up here I will interview her about her job so you can hear first hand about the challenges she encounters.
My friend Irene from highschool #3 invited me to an interesting conversation about wisdom. It turns out Ellen was there from highschool #1 and remembered me. She asked if I had done a science fair project on bleach and fabric – which I did do. She reflected that it seemed to her that I didn’t like highschool much – yep. The experience was more neutral for her.
Yesterday I had lunch with Aunt she told me all about my cousin and his current challenges in highschool – turns out some of them are similar to the ones I had but quite a few are not. We went for a walk on Granville St and then shoe shopping for me.
I then hung out with Newell Cotton who is sort of like a little brother to me. He was 1/2 in age between my sister and I (she is 3 years younger then me) and his mom baby sat the two of us quite a bit when we were little. It was really fun to just sit and talk about what we are both doing now but with a deep sense of familiarity and connection that only comes when you have known someone since they were like 2 years old.
I then got to spend time with my friend Braden who was from highschool #3 we met when I was a senior and he was a freshman – he is someone that I spoke with regularly when I was off at college and visited while home.
I have felt really good about spending time with people here and knowing that in the coming year spending more time in Vancouver will be a good thing.
Tomorrow I am meeting the other ‘odd kid’ from my elementary school and he also went to highschool #1. I will share an update about that tomorrow.