The Blogger Meetup

Sun­rise, 8:05 AM, Sun­set 4:17 PM. The Win­ter Sol­stice has come and gone

Some of the Van­cou­ver blog­gers gath­ered togeth­er at Subeez, on Homer Street (I wish I could write that street name with­out hear­ing Marge Simp­son’s voice, or rather, Julie Kavn­er’s voice, to be pre­cise) for a lit­tle get-togeth­er before the hol­i­days. I got there a lit­tle ear­ly, feel­ing a lit­tle weak as I’m just still get­ting over a lit­tle cold and flu. (I sus­pect I got it because I’m not used to the par­tic­u­lar bac­te­r­i­al soup that is my new work­place. It’s not that the place is par­tic­u­lar­ly dirty — it’s not — it’s that I haven’t yet devel­oped resis­tance to the bugs that are there yet. This is pret­ty com­mon.) Rather than go for a brew, I had to set­tle for some Chamomile tea and hon­ey. It’s a bit of a relief when restau­rants can be under­stand­ing about these sorts of things. I felt bet­ter as peo­ple arrived.

It was a small crowd, but we all got com­fort­able and I think every­one was in a pret­ty good mood. Despite the lack of sun­light, we all seem to be cop­ing pret­ty well. The con­ver­sa­tions drift­ed from com­ing hol­i­day trips to the Van­cou­ver Coop­er­a­tive Auto Net­work (which I’ve writ­ten about before) — Susie Gard­ner and Travis Smith think it’s great, so I’m now more inclined to think more seri­ous­ly about it, hav­ing known no one up to this point who had actu­al­ly joined it, much less rec­om­mend­ed it.

For those who did­n’t make it to Subeez, the report from here on the venue is: A lit­tle loud on the music, but great, funky decor, much bet­ter food than Steam­works (and I’m prob­a­bly not the only one to say that), and a more var­ied menu with bet­ter prices. The ser­vice was excel­lent and they dealt quite adroit­ly with all of the com­pli­ca­tions of stag­gered orders and mul­ti­ple cheques. We’ll be back there in Jan­u­ary. I would­n’t give up on Cal­houn’s, though. That might be good to try in February.

Here are the blogs of the Meet­up attendees:

Wal­ter Selen­t’s Web Page
ono­matopeia
Web2
Buzz Mar­ket­ing wit­th Blogs
Unvar­nished
Mak­taaq
DaneBrown.org (in 2 weeks)

I uploaded a few hol­i­day snap­shots of us around the table to Meetup.com. The cam­era flash was pret­ty extreme, but there’s not much you can do in a dim­ly lit place. Besides, it was after all, the solstice.

Besides all of the hol­i­days and besides all of the dark­ness, it’s also that time of year when many of us (myself includ­ed) grin and say ‘See you next year!’ at the end of evenings. We aren’t being par­tic­u­lar­ly clever, but it’s fun to say it all the same.