Two states and two countries later, Erika and I are back.

Victoria wasn’t exactly shining with its city motto of “City of Gardens” this time of year, but it was still quite lovely. I’m sure that the Empress rose garden and Butchart Gardens are beautiful when they’re in full bloom, but it just wasn’t the right time of year for it. Still, we had a lot of fun. We did all the typical touristy stuff–shopping, Miniature World, the Royal BC Museum, the Royal BC Wax Museum (a Madame Toussand museum, no less), etc. Shopping was fairly dull–mostly touristy stuff. Miniature World, which is just a tourist attraction with detailed miniature displays of various places and world events, was interesting. The museum was…a museum. The wax museum was pretty neat, something I’ve always wanted to see. I think that the most fun I had was tea at the Empress Hotel.

I was last in Victoria, what? Maybe twelve years ago or so? I remember seeing the Empress and my Mom telling me how elegant it was, and how afternoon tea there was the things legends are made of. OK, so maybe not quite like that, but still something that’s world-famous. I looked around the inside of the Empress then, and it was so elegant, so ornate, and so old-world. I knew I wanted to come back someday and have tea, one of those things to cross off on my mental list just to say that I’ve done it. I didn’t have any real plans when Erika and I arrived in Victoria on Monday afternoon, but I knew that no matter what we did, tea at the Empress was going to happen.

As a bit of history, the Empress Hotel was built in 1908 (about the same time as my house, coincidently), and afternoon tea has been served there since that first year. Kings, Queens, Princes, and Presidents have all stayed there, as it is the most elegant and ornate hotel in Victoria. This is a place with a lot of history. I wanted to go there. Erika started getting sick on Wednesday when we were supposed to have tea, so I called and changed our reservation to Thursday in the hopes that she’d feel better by then (she did, but she’s still sick).

I could probably write a lot about the whole experience, but I won’t subject you to reading about something that you should really do yourself. The tea was probably the best I ever had, the food they served with it was extraordinarily good, and it was the most I’ve paid for the least amount of food, hands-down. We had a window seat overlooking the harbor, and so we sat and ate tea sandwiches, scones, and our desserts while drinking the finest tea in the world. That was a lot of fun, and something I’ll remember fondly for a long time. I wish we’d both remembered to bring our cameras to have our picture taken.

One thing I noticed about Victoria is that there are an awful lot of pubs. I don’t mean bars like we have here, but pubs more in the style of McMenamins. In fact, the city seemed to be filled with three types of restaurants: formal, expensive, sit-down venues, pubs, and fast-food places (including delis and to-go restaurants). At least, those were the ones in the area we were staying in. We went to something like four different pubs while we were there, one of which had been there since 1867. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fried food in a single week. Probably haven’t had that much beer, either. It was vacation, though, so none of it counted. Right? Right.

In other news, in two weeks things are going to be very different around here. In two weeks, Erika will have left Portland for at least six months and I’ll have a new job.

First, Erika. There’s a tour program called Trek America that she’s wanted to sign up with for years, and since she’s been so unhappy with her job she decided that now was as good of a time as any. She applied, she interviewed, and they accepted her, all in less than the span of a month. I’m very happy that she’ll get to lead tour groups around the US for six months doing something that her Dad did 20 years ago, but at the same time I’ll miss her tremendously. After all, she’s going to be gone and out communication for most of six months.

Next, me. I’m changing jobs. I haven’t been terribly happy in my job for awhile, and during the period of time in which my desktop computer was malfunctioning and I was using my laptop, my biggest regret wasn’t that I couldn’t play games, but rather that my resume was stored on my desktop and I couldn’t job hunt. When I finally got things back up and running, I updated my resume, applied to a single job, and after jumping through their hoops they offered me a position while I was on vacation. My nex job will be working as a network technician for a law firm here, going on service calls to fix computers, install software, etc. Very similar to what I did in college for ITS. However, that’s just to start, and eventually I’ll get trained on their huge SQL database, their massive Exchange server, and I can help maintain their 7 terabyte storage array. It’s going to be a lot of work, but I have more potential for growth with this position than I do now. Best of all? It’s right across the street from where I work now and I can keep the same hours, if I like. The pay is a little more, the work is a little more, but I think it’ll be much better for me.

Needless to say, in two weeks things are going to be very different. I’ll be changing jobs, and my girlfriend is leaving. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ll have the new job to keep me occupied for awhile and keep me busy, but I know that the girlfriend I’ve talked to every day since our very first date won’t be coming back until around my birthday. It hasn’t really sunken in yet, but I know that things will hit me hard in about a week. I’m going to miss her tremendously.

So, on that note I need to find something for breakfast. More later.