Best title ever.
So I'm still living at my parent's home in Blainville, but trying not to settle in too much, due to the whole having-to-find-a-job-and-moving-to-another-city thing.
My brother's wedding went really well. Was nice to see the family all together. It's been a while since that all happened. Also got to see my cousins dance, which was a bit of an inspiration for me, and will possibly lead me to take up dancing again. I found out that the one cousin entered some kind of dance competition in Montreal, and got first prize with his partner. Huzzah!
After that, I spent some time at home doing the job-search thing. I made a new friend here. He is our neighbour and is 12 years old. I showed him some of my video games while the grown-ups were talking about grown-up things, so now he thinks I'm cool.
After this, seeing as my parents were headed down to Sarnia for a bit, I hitched a ride to Toronto to spend some time at Lisa's. For those of you who I might not be in regular contact with, we broke up (after we spent time together, not before). Me and her cat still get along, though.
From Lisa's place, Ali picked me up and took me to Lumina, where Heidi is spending the summer working. Highlights of those two days include:
-watching the DVD Heidi made of her trip from Victoria to London on her little yellow scooter
-enjoying some refreshing beverages
-meeting the friendly local law enforcement, and discussing both the cultural and legal differences between Japan and Canada
-getting served breakfast in bed
-not "losing it" after working on a crossword for 4 hours with 2 hungover girls
We wanted to leave Heidi lots of time to nap, so Ali and I took off for our canoe trip. Highlights of that include:
-delicious breakfast at Smoothwater Outfitters in Temagami
-not figuring out what route we were going to do until the day of
-spending 4 days with Ali after not having seen her for over a year
-having gorgeous weather for most of the trip
-doing several portages that weren't on the map
-swimming lots
-meeting a nice family that towed our canoe to a campsite when a storm hit
lowlights include:
-getting stuck in a bay when a storm hit, and moving so slowly that someone thought they ought to "rescue" us
-not finding the thing we were looking for in that bay, thus defeating the purpose of going there in the first place
-almost getting oursleves and our rescuers hit by lightning
-finding a campsite that had been used by a bunch of assholes that left food and garbage all over, thus forcing us to use another campsite which was, unfortunately, accessible by road, and occupied by a bunch of yahoos
-motorboats
-getting sunburned on the inside of my left knee, of all places
All in all, though, it was definately a positive experience, and although one of our days ended up being a bit of a slack-ass day, we put in two hardcore paddling-and-portaging days, and one half-day with a very decent amount of paddling. I was also impressed/surprised by how well Ali and I got along, given both the length of time we were alone together, and our tendency to occasionally be at each other's throats (though neither one of us drank alcohol on the whole trip, which might explain it).
So Ali generously dropped me off at a subway station in T.O., and I made my way to Union to catch my overnight train to Montreal. Funnily enough, I ran into Heather Farrel, who was waiting for someone else. Haven't seen her in over a year since I quit playing disc in Hamilton. Small world.
From there, the train took me to Montreal, more subway, transfer, different train line, and my mom picked me up at the train station close to the house in Blainville. Carrying my portage bags and paddle was not awkward at all, though I did get a lot of people opening doors for me, which was nice.
Just got home, and thought I'd update since I haven't in a while. That, and I wanted to prove Joe wrong. Will be here until I find a job somewhere, hopefully in Ottawa, or get tired of job searching, and decide to do something else.
Oh yeah, and I'm being audited by the federal government for my income taxes. Yay.
Best wishes.
ps my camera broke somewhere between Kameyama and Blainville. It will take 3 weeks to fix, and I'm not ready to enter into any 3-week commitment, not knowing where I'll be in 3 weeks, so sorry for the lack of pictures.
