The last couple days of the AWP 2023 Conference were a success! I attended about 12-13 in-person sessions, and plan on watching some of the prerecorded sessions during the remainder of this month while I still have access. I learned lots, and came away from the conference with MANY books (but lots of them were free!) and over 40 pages of handwritten notes. It was an amazing experience to be able to attend this conference in a city not too far from home and gather inspiration from some of the best writers, educators, and innovators in the business.
Outside of conferencing opportunities, we were able to do some fun stuff around Seattle. On Friday, we spent some time in the Starbucks Reserve Roastery so Dakota could log onto a meeting and I could take some time to myself to read and decompress from all the social contact I had experienced in the last two days (said the introvert). The interior was very grandiose, and had a bread counter as well as a bar in addition to the expected Starbucks counter. It smelled marvelous, but the line out the door and my grumbling bank account deterred me from grabbing anything. Afterwards, Dakota and I walked up the street to Twice Sold Tales, a used bookstore that has a number of live-in cats prowling around the shelves. This was the perfect place to visit after we found out how much it costs to go socialize with kitties among the cat cafés. After lots of browsing and kitty cuddles, we walked away with a few treasures and down to Bathtub Gin & Co., which is a speakeasy not too far from our hotel. We had some difficulty finding the entrance, which was of course in an alley. The atmosphere inside was cozy but lively, and we witnessed a few unfortunate slips and trips that resulted in 3 glasses being dropped and broken in front of us -- all at different times during our visit! I had the "Fuzz Blossom" cocktail, which was made with gin, Narano Bitter Orange Liqueur, Japanese fruit liqueur, lavender bitters, and lemon. Dakota had a sweet "Sound and Color," made with gin, blueberry, lime, and Cava. They were both quite tasty. We were entertained, had some great conversation to go along with our $15 cocktails, and departed for the evening.
On the way back to the hotel on Friday, we stopped to get some snacks at a gas station, and then enjoyed our cheap eats while watching The Black Cauldron. I had never seen it before, but it was a great watch--a classic Disney film that flopped from retaining a spot in the canon of beloved princess movies. Then we hit the sack to catch up on some much-needed beauty sleep for tomorrow.
As a side note, Friday night definitely proved to me that I'm still a full-time college student: I spent more on alcohol than I did on food. But can you blame me? I've got about two months left to relish in that kind of irresponsibility.
On Saturday we decided to sleep in a bit and take the car to the convention center, as we had plans of traveling to Bellevue after the last session. We struggled to find parking, and ended up parking in a public garage just across the street from the center. After looking up rates, we were a bit sour to discover that we would be paying $57 to park there for the day. However, we were already three minutes late to the next session for our debacle with Seattle traffic, so we bit the bullet. Upon our return to the car, however, we were pleased to only be charged $18. What a win! From there, we traveled to Half Price Books, another bargain bookstore in Bellevue. We stopped at Starbucks beforehand and spent the last of our gift cards on drinks and cake pops. The bookstore was amazing, and we both made some great purchases, and even set budgets for ourselves, which usually doesn't happen! We are both very poor right now. After this, we went into the Barnes 'N' Nobles next door. I didn't buy anything, but took the opportunity to enjoy the cozy, modern aesthetics of this new BNN. I took lots of pictures of books that I really liked and added them to my Goodreads list, which is linked
here.After this, we headed home and feasted on Mac 'n' cheese and mandarin oranges. Dakota had not seen the Paramount movie adaptation of The Little Prince, so we found it online and watched it. This is one of my favorite movies--the story is a must-read and a fantastic book for children. The movie adaptation does an amazing job of bringing the tale to life: it's touching and so, so wholesome. After that, we watched Marley and Me because I had never seen that one. I have decided that this is also a great movie, but I was sobbing by the end of it. So sad!
Sunday arrived, and our plans to wake up early and take some photos together fell apart like a house of cards in the wind when we woke up at 10:57 AM (3 minutes before checkout time...whoops). We whisked our belongings out of the room faster than I could have imagined. We made great time getting home, and the drive flew by via episodes of the podcast "Book Talk for Booktok" and my fervent grading of 7th grade argumentative essays. We even found some time to jam out to T-Swizzle, which led down a rabbit hole of researching Adam Young's response to her song "Enchanted," which she wrote directed at him. There's no better time to learn trivial facts about celebrities than when you're in a car driving through Uniontown, Oregon.
All in all, we made it home in one piece to tell our tale. I would call our trip a success, and I can't wait to go on my next conference run at the end of the month, as I'll be presenting my thesis research at the 2023 Sigma Tau Delta National Convention in Denver, Colorado! More to come soon.
Happy trails, folks!
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