My Weekend Getaway

Just what I needed after 2 weeks on-call! I headed out to Halifax shortly after I finished up some things at work and got to see my girl again! The non-resident teen and I took off for the grocery store to do her shopping, since it is such a drag to lug around groceries on the bus…I remember it well. It was great just seeing her, knowing I had the whole weekend to spend there. After grocery shopping, we picked up the boyfriend and went out for supper….first stop was Montana’s but it was so crowded with a waif of 45 minutes, we went elsewhere to East Side Mario’s, an old favorite from Waterloo. The food was quite good, and service just as good. We were so stuffed when we left. After that we headed over to the pet store where the cozy couple wanted to add to their “family” by buying a snake…that is until they saw how expensive they were and found out how big they get. So IXNAY on the snake, and some consideration for a leopard gecko, which was still out of budget range. I convinced them to at least wait through the weekend and see if they still want to spend that kind of money on a pet, especially one that they would have to truck to the pet store every week to buy crickets for. They reconsidered and decided no go for now.

Saturday we spent shopping around town for things for all of us…they bought a barbecue so we went back to the steaming apartment to make potato salad to go with the steaks we planned on grilling that night. I also bought the happy couple a beautiful print for their living room as a housewarming gift. My friend and her daughter were in from Waterloo for the week, so over they came, as well as Amber’s cousin, Belinda and we had a lovely dinner. After that, we headed over to her hotel to take a dunk in the pool to cool off and it was amazing. The younguns also went in the sauna and the hot tub, then cooled off again outside.

Sunday was all about touring – my friend and her daughter piled into my car and we drove along some of the south shore – Peggy’s Cove, Mahone Bay, and Lunenburg. It was fabulous weather and we saw a lot in a short time. We even went to the beach at Queensland, where it was wonderful to swim. When we got back that night, we rested up and then I drove down to the waterfront with the younguns again and watched the fireworks. They were awesome, but very short. There was one young kid there standing just behind me that cracked me up – he was obviously from Toronto – that TO accent is hard to miss, and he said partway through the display – “you’d never get THIS in Toronto, would you dad?” and then as they kept shooting them up into the air, he commented “how on earth do they afford this? They just keep going and going!” This kid was about 7 years old. It was hilarious! They had some fabulous fireworks that I hadn’t seen before, but it only lasted about 10 minutes or so.

This morning, I packed up the younguns again and took them out to breakfast at Smittys…we stuffed ourselves, AGAIN, and then I headed for home. It will be nice to sleep in a bed again tonight. I tried it on the leather loveseat at their place…which was comfy enough, but leather is noisy and HOT to sleep on in such weather, so I didn’t get much sleep the first night. The next day I headed out in search of a hammock and bought a cheap one at Canadian Tire and two hooks. I slept somewhat better the next night, but got a little chilled. Apparently you need just as much blankets underneath as you do above J . So last night I was prepared and actually had a pretty good nights sleep…except for the dumbass above us who played heavy metal at 3am and talked to himself all night…but the earplugs filtered out most of that.

I even bought a hammock for myself, a much nicer one made of parachute cloth. I had a little swing in it earlier today, but the horseflies were driving me mad, and it was too hot out. Tonight will be GREAT! Its hanging right under the tree next to the house…hope the birds don’t poop on me.