Office Under Water

Here is my good friend Caitlin a few weeks ago, in response to what happened at our office:
So this is a little late in coming, but I have a lot to catch up on. Our office had a flood. Vancouver has been having an extremely unusual winter, much colder and dryer and snowier than usual. The pipes froze in the suite of offices above ours, and burst all throughout our floor. All of the elevators were rendered unusable for a few days, and only one out of five is really back to working without any hitches now. The flood thankfully happened a few days before Christmas, and so quite a few people were out of town, which, as you can probably see from the pictures was a good thing. I got some calls after it happened saying not to come in to work the week before Christmas, but I went in after we got back from Oregon for cleanup. One of the calls was my boss saying, "we just poured a bunch of water out of your computer!" I wish these photos could show the damage was done, although it could have been MUCH worse. Mostly, the carpets all had to be pulled up because of mold, and this is still affecting the air quality. Besides that, and tons of ruined drawings that were lying under people's desks (two boxes of archived drawings under mine - whoops!), things are turning out fine. My computer even works! That was kind of a bummer.... I wanted an excuse to have the office buy me a more powerful computer.

To Get Us in the Mood for a little Swing....

When we started planning our wedding, we decided that because music is such a big part of both of our lives, we really wanted to have a band. And we want to dance.
This is the band we are having play our wedding, The Kung Pao Chickens. They are a Portland-based Gypsy Jazz band, in the style of Django Reinhardt. They play locally in Portland every Monday at the Laurelthirst Public House in NE Portland, so if you are in the area, you should check them out! They are really fun and vibrant, and they have such a great way with music. I am really excited that we were able to book them for our wedding. They are going to play during the cocktail reception, and then for a bit before dinner. I hope you like them as much as we do!

In Sebastien's Words

Things are starting to come together, in getting ready for our wedding.  I thought it might be a good time to plagiarize an old post off Sebastien's blog, that I already copied in MY blog, so I apologize to those of you who already read it, and I REALLY apologize to those of you who read it twice.  Sorry, but you are warned.  

For those of you who didn't read that entry, this is the story of how Sebastien and I got engaged:

"Hope and I are engaged!

....Hope and I went to see Radiohead in concert. The show was incredible. The music, the lights, and the rain all made for a very inspiring and emotional night. Hope and I were unfortunately separated during most of the show. During the first encore, Hope became overcome with emotion. While the crowd was shouting for a second encore, I found Hope. --And during the last song, as the band played the opening rifts of Paranoid Android, Hope turned to me to ask, "will you marry me?" I was pretty shocked. It was the end of an amazing show, and here, Hope just asked me to marry her. Not finding any words, I kissed her, with 10,000 people pressing around us. Of course I told her yes, and the last five minutes of the show were surreal. Smiles were plastered on our faces.

We thank each and every one of you for your blessings and support.
Love to all,
Sebastien & Hope"

That is how it happened! It was THAT easy! Hehe. All I had to do was ask....

Also, on a (sort of) related topic, if you were enticed by the links at all, listen to this concert, recorded by NPR's All Songs Considered at the Santa Barbara Bowl. The show was fairly similar to what we saw, in terms of songs, etc., but the sound quality is AMAZING. Please, if you like Radiohead, take a listen!