McNabb

McNabb
Best QB ever!!

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Rose City Romance Reader's Luncheon


I attended the yearly Romance Reader's Luncheon held at the Governor's Hotel in downtown Portland this year. The luncheon was catered by Jake's, which is a very nice seafood restaurtant. There were ~200 people there, so it was set up in one of the larger conference rooms. The guest speaker was Suzanne Macpherson and there were at least 30 other authors there. It was really fun!! The author at my table was Ann Roth (for real!!) and I got to sit right next to her and talk to her the whole time. She was the nicest lady and I so enjoyed our chat. Love her books, so it was a real honor for me. I got an autographed book from her and also autographed books from Stephanie Rowe and Christina Dodd - two other authors that I like that were in attendance.
This convention is a fund raiser, so they raffle off tickets for door prizes and gift baskets. I won the first door prize!!! It was a gift bag that had six new books, along with book marks, lip gloss and chocolates. They also give you a goodie bag when you walk in that had another 5 books in it. Very fun!
The last time I attended the luncheon, I won a door prize and a gift basket - made a killing!
The cool thing is this luncheon raised over $2,000 for Oregon Literacy.
Can't wait for next year!!

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Victoria Canada




My friend Karen and I took a trip up to Victoria Canada to celebrate her birthday. It started off with me driving up to Seattle Friday afternoon. Judene and I met up at the Lynnwood Mall and got caught in a snow storm. Long story but the snow only hit that one area - 10 miles away it was totally dry. Crazy!! Judene and I did some shopping, then we walked across the street in the blizzard, both of us were covered in snow, to MacGrath's and had a nice WARM dinner. After dinner, we headed back out into the snow storm and walked to the movie theatre and saw the Al Paccino movie - "88 Minutes". It was good. We really had a nice time!! I drove over to Karen's after the movie.



Saturday morning - Karen and I caught the 7:30 am high speed catamaran, The Victoria Clipper, out of Seattle up to Victoria. It was really cool...only took just over 2 hours to cover 180 miles. First thing on the agenda was to check into our hotel called Hotel Grand Pacific. We were on the 8th floor and had an amazing view of the harbor. One of the tour guides said it was their only 5 star hotel on the island. It was really nice. Once we checked in we set out to do our sight seeing and shopping. Weather was cold but clear, both of us were bundled up pretty good. Victoria is a beautiful place - the Legislator, the Empress Hotel - so much to see. We had lunch at a pub on the water front - the fish and chips were great. We walked around until amost 8 pm and called it a night.


Sunday - we took the tour bus to the Buchart Gardens. It was breath taking!! I have never seen anything like it and not all of the flowers had bloomed. I cannot even imagine what it looks like in full bloom. We walked around for a couple of hours and then took the tour bus back to town and grabbed some lunch. Then it was off to do some more shopping before we caught the Clipper back to Seattle at 5 pm. What a great trip!!! Would highly recommend visiting Victoria if you have not been there before.