well, $300 Canadian...(Patty)

A lot of juggling going on in New Orleans, and I am the ball, trying to have a 16 year old live a normal life here while popping in on my husband in Laguna, and preparing for the big move in 83 days...
Back when I thought October would be a relatively quiet month, I agreed to go on our first-ever girls trip with 2 friends I've known since kindergarten...
That is how I ended up in Seattle and Vancouver last week, while my brother-in-law stayed here with Portia...Vancouver was a GREAT vacation destination, the most beautiful bike ride I've ever taken, (a reasonable one hour and 15 minutes around Stanley Park, if we hadn't stopped a million times to take pictures), a gorgeous walk over the Capilano Suspension Bridge, lunch overlooking the water, boat rides, mountains...so many things to see and do. And they are getting ready to host the Olympics in February, so we got to see the Olympic Village and where the Opening Ceremonies will be held...
I had a remarkable piece of bad luck in Vancouver...due to the Olympics, there is feverish, last-minute construction occuring, lots of cranes and hard hats and noise...so we are innocently walking down the sidewalk one afternoon, and there is a cement truck. A construction worker asks us to wait a minute and we wait a reasonable amount of time, and then decide we will just cross the street and continue on down the road...I start to walk in front of the truck at the exact moment that a pipe bursts and, like paint ball run amok, this fierce blast of toxic cement comes roaring towards me. In case you didn't know, when you get randomly pummeled with most contruction materials, say gravel or rocks, it hits you hard and then falls to the ground...when the cement attacked me, it hit me hard and then glomed on to me, I felt like I was in a Homer Simpson cartoon, did you ever see that episode where he is covered with green, radioactive goop? Anyway, back in the real world, I was covered in cement, in my hair, my ear, and clothes from head to toe...once my "friends" realized I wasn't hurt, they started laughing hysterically, which is so helpful. And I'm saying things like "Uh, would it have been too much to ask either of you so-called friends to have said something like - Look out!"? Which just made them laugh harder... it lands soft, but I could feel it starting to harden rapidly. They saw it mainly as a photo opportunity...we were just a few blocks from our 5-star hotel, which I had to enter and walk through the grand lobby covered with cement...in the end, the constuction company was nice, they sent me a box of chocolates and $300 for "dry cleaning" which, believe me, my clothes were WAY passed dry cleaning, I threw them all away, even the coat...
Luckily I'd brought a coat AND a jacket, and I continued to provide amusement later in the day; I had the jacket tied around my waist and (in retrospect, possibly not the very best decision I've ever made) as it got cooler, I was putting the jacket on while still riding the bike, and I got the sleeve caught in the spokes, practically killing myself, but definitely destroying the leather jacket. My friends were so pleased, like could this day get any funnier? Ruining TWO pieces of outerwear in one afternoon, that's got to be a world record!

Patty