NCCE and a couple of days in Seattle

The last few days I've been on mid-winter break, that meaningless week of vacation recently added to our school year. Thursday and Friday I tuned in for a virtual expience of NCCE, happening in Portland. Thanks to a few twitterers and Jeff Utecht, I think I got a good picture of the event, often as it happened.

Thursday took me into downtown Seattle, in search of brewing supplies (Market Cellar Winery), and Indian cooking essentials (The Souk). Taking the bus is a piece of cake, a straight shot from our home in West Seattle, and I get a chance to get in touch with downtown, which I do not do often enough. With shopping successful, I headed back home for some good stuff from NCCE. Unfortunately, my feeling of the day, for what I was able to tune in to, was pretty well summed up in NCCE Day 1.

On Friday it was another beauty of a day in Seattle. Hoping to tune in to a NCCE Twitter gathering, I headed in to school with a buddy who was able to open the building, all prepared to make some headway (or more realistically, serious catching up). Thanks to the West Seattle Blog, and their Twitter feed, I got news of orcas in Puget Sound - less than five minutes from our school! We jumped in the car and headed off to Lincoln Park - where we ran into Mark Sears, on his way out of the parking lot, in a hurry, and hauling his boat. He's the Man, knows and has tracked the pods in the Sound for many years. We followed, as best we could. We did get a peek at them WAY in the distance, from the Alki Lighthouse. We drove a little farther and saw Mark heading way off into a fog bank - where we again did see distant glimpses. Still very, very cool. There is some video shot from a helicopter that's amazing. I guess the numbers seen in the Sound that day had not been seen in several years.

So I missed the Twitter gathering. Caught a couple of presentations on video (thanks Jeff). At the end, I was left nodding my head in agreement as I read NCCE Day 2.

Just today I got word of something that sounds much more on the money for where my interests and passions are now: The NCCE Constructivist Celebration. It's close, inexpensive, and well, there's this guy Gary Stager speaking. Think I better go....

Orca image credit: Tammy Wooley
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