one more sleep...if i remember correctly

only one more sleep until meredith arrives and pretties up this town with her very presence! (i think she said she arrived on the 30th...does anybody else remember that? apparently my memory can be suspect...or perhaps only when kendra and jager are involved...i really don't remember throwing salt and pepper..."seasoning him like a turkey"...but then neither does kendra......)

basketball night ... oof...

tonight was basketball night. not such a bad night after all. i didn't do so well statistically i guess...too many turnovers...missed some easy shots....on the other hand...hit some big shots...did a lot of intangibles - made everybody run on defense allowing us to move the ball easier and get some open shots...also found some kinda catch and shoot, spinning fadeaway that i hit every time...ok i'll take it... it's good to play ball every week. i'm wiped out now but i'm drinking a beer right now. god i love beer sometimes. sarah's laughing at me cuz i have involuntary vocalizations of pleasure with almost every sip... i don't care. tonight's beer of choice is a boddington's pub ale in a can. tomorrow's gonna hurt...partly cuz i shoulda been in bed an hour ago...partly cuz i'm 30 and when i play basketball i don't care...didn't dive for any loose balls tonight but i did hit a wall pretty hard trying to save a loose ball...maybe i should drink two beers... there are such good happy things coming up in our lives. gavin and karlene are coming back to canada to visit for awhile. they land tomorrow, and then they come back to toronto to stay with us on sunday i think and then they get married on sept 10 and that will be wonderful. sunday is also brook's birthday and we're having a picnic i think. and jeff and kendra's wedding and all the stuff leading up to it... phew...i really should drink two beers...
love to all

sorting myself out...?

phew....things have been kinda nutty lately. there was the getting ready for vacation, then the vacation, applying for jobs, getting back from vacation, getting in trouble at work (again), playing basketball, the constantines show last night, my nan in the hospital, my nan out of the hospital, a trip to cambridge...not counting the things i'm forgetting... so i guess i haven't checked in with myself lately. maybe there's stuff going on in here. cuz there's big stuff.
been to our second wedding of the summer with 2 more in the next 2 months. both of the ones we've been to have been beautiful and lovely and lots of fun and memorable and important, and meaningful and things that we've been so happy to have been a part of. there are also many weddings in the planning stages for next summer. like our own wedding. so lots of big stuff there. big feelings and big talks.
had to say goodbye to one of my favourite places on earth last weekend. sarah's mom's cottage has been sold and we won't be able to make it up again before the closing date. it was really special to have adam, michelle, dan and shannon there to send it off in style. getting good friends together is severely underrated. i love those guys.
getting back from vacation has not been easy. i've been so tired all week that i spent the first few days moving at vacation speed, but that wore off...or at least the pleasant lassitude (i think that's a word, and i think that's what it means...) wore off. things have come up this week. my sister is having a sorta rough time. her baby-daddy (former fiancee and father of her son) lost his job a little while ago and so she's real broke. couldn't make it into town to see our cousin dallas play last night (he's the bass player for the constantines). we're not real rich right now either but we're gonna try to find a little in our budget to help her out every month. wish we could make real contributions though. i honestly believe in the village raising the child idea, and we're a part of ryan's (my nephew) village i guess. he's a pretty great kid too. starting to remember us now.
of course this leads to budgetary frustration and a sense of ... something undefinable large and complicated and negative... and then the career frustrations and self recrimination of a 30 year old man as a lowly retail clerk. i haven't been able to land any promotions at indigo. i'm 0 for 7 in fact. we can throw out a couple of those cuz i probably just applied to early (without enough experience or time on the job at indigo.) and we can throw out a couple more for bad luck or bad timing (somebody better applied, or they just hired another new-to-management type or something, or they just closed a big store and wanted to find a place for the displaced employees before promoting anybody new...) but i'm getting a little frustrated.
actually it might be a moot point these days cuz since i got in trouble a few weeks ago i'm not allowed to apply for any promotions to supervisory roles (99% of all available positions that pay better...) until i prove that i've resolved my anger frustration expression issues...(no set timetable - thanx boss).
in fairness, it would seem that i do have some emotional expression issues. not necessarily news to everybody i'm sure. not necessarily news to me either, just ... a thing.... that i'm now starting to try to work harder at resolving...? runs in the family. partly it's cuz it's taken me 30 years to figure out what things i grew up with aren't normal, and to try to figure out what normal and/or acceptable behaviour is.
speaking of family - my nan went into the hospital early this week cuz she couldn't keep any food down. the suspicion was that a change in her meds had triggered it, but they needed to do some tests, and put her on an iv to get some food into her. turned out the suspicions were correct but it was a little background stresser all week until the tests came back to show no new troubles.
we went to see my nan and grandpa yesterday, and my sister and nephew. (he cheers up my grandparents. me too.) had a decent visit. they were both tired so we didn't stay too long. enough to enjoy their company and to tell them about our plans to get married next august. that was nice. they didn't ask about any church presence at the ceremony so we didn't tell them there wouldn't be any. i think they probably already suspect and are praying for us accordingly.
i had a good talk with fogel last night about a career in teaching. it was pretty reassuring and helpful. it's just so hard to hold onto any certainty about doing it. it's hard to balance the desire to make a life instead of just a living (sometimes it seems like a chasm between making a life instead of just making rent...) with needing some more immediate improvement. i feel like i have some responsibility in the present as well as in the long term, and there seem to be opportunities to increase my income now - not that i'm having much luck in that department. i wish i had some skills that somebody would actually want to use that might be worth something. and it's really hard to walk away from benefits too. what to do what to do what to do....
wow it's busy in here.
actually this was a helpful exercise. sometimes it's good to lay things out and see that actually there are a lot of sticks in this pile. get some perspective. therefore give myself a break. and/or motivate myself...?
here we go. start small. put away the clean laundry that was washed and folded 4 days ago.
yay sunday.

hot rod angels... holy shit.

"for all the shut down strangers
and hot rod angels
rumbling through this promised land
tonight my baby and me
we're gonna ride to the sea
and wash all these sins from our hands"
from "racing in the streets" by bruce springsteen, from "darkness on the edge of town"

...holy shit. i didn't quite catch it the first time so i had to rewind and then i almost cried walking down the laneway. one of my new favourite songs...?

we're ba-ack ...part 2...

so where was i? oh yeah day 6...
...actually i think i finished day 6
...so day 7 - we wake up and hang out in the cottage, more puzzling, more eating, more swimming...later i get started making the first sangria (pineapple, lemons, limes, oranges, strawberries, one bottle red wine, some rum, some cointreau, a little vanilla...). nice and lazy day. drive into peterborough late afternoon to pick up adam and michelle and some more supplies (corn on the cobs, portabellos, steak, more booze, a ball, ... basically of stuff to feed and drink us for the next couple days - oh yeah oreos, chips, 2 bite brownies...).
when we got back to the cottage dan and shannon had arrived, so we hurried the supplies and adam and michelle and me down the hill to the cottage and the reunion of the bucks began amid many drinks and some food prep and a whole lotta eating. what a great night. it was so special to have everybody gathered together in such a great spot. we got kinda drunk. mighta been the tequila... also midnight swimming and throwing a glow in the dark frisbee in the lake.

day 8 - wake up and eat great pancakes and bacon and ... i know there was more but i don't remember what exactly... then more swimming. 1131 am adam says "1131...time for a beer". he got right into the spirit of things. and we couldn't let him drink alone now could we? a great water game for the afternoon - diving off the dock onto a floating double air mattress, dumping each other off the mattress, also diving catches off the dock where every catch is a glory catch...although we didn't manage to actually complete too many of those catches, and some of the splashes looked quite painful. and swimming frisbee. more drinking, shannon and dan paddle around the lake in the canoe, we all get lots of sun. some napping and puzzling and reading happens. i finished "the ice road" by gillian slovo. dinner becomes peppers, zucchinis, onions, and mushrooms, all marinated and put on kebabs, and steak kebabs, and marinated portabellos off the bbq, and corn on the kob and fried breads. nice wine, and a pitcher of sex on the beach. more laying around after dinner. played some taboo. another midnight swim where we saw shooting stars. does it get any better?

day 9 - breakfast is a herculean effort cuz not only do we not want to carry any food back up the hill to the car but we still need to fit adam and michelle and two tents, a cooler, and our stuff into a suzuki swift for the 2+ hour drive back to toronto....breakfast was omelettes with zucchini, onion and cheese, a mound of leftover grilled veggies now refried in butter, and some fried bread. did i mention that adam used 18 eggs to feed 4 people? (dan and shannon are vegans). we swam some more. threw the frisbee around in the water. enjoyed our last time at the cottage. lucked into a super easy drive back too.

so that's kinda what happened to us when we left the city. doesn't really tell the story of how much it meant to me. how good it was to see friends like that. how much i love sarah. if i say that people at work have been commenting on how relaxed i looked that might just start to give you an idea... maybe i'll try to explain all that stuff in the next post.

we're ba-ack

day one - drive to kaarin's family home near mansfield ontario, in mulmur township, leaving toronto a couple hours later than planned but still on time for the wedding. the setting was very pretty. a nice big house set a ways back from the country road, surrounded by trees and hills. they had a short ceremony under the spreading branches of a huge old tree, performed by an elderly couple - a practising buddhist and a christian minister. and then so much food, all made by the bride's mom (half dozen turkeys, a few hams, a pork roast, a salmon, and a smoked whitefish and tons of vegetables, all awesome). after all the eating, and a few speeches (short and funny) there was dancing and drinking. me and mark bury ended up dj-ing with our ipods after the light jazz band finished up. it was pretty fun actually, and we conjured up some pretty good sets. it was beautiful watching sarah with her eyes closed in front of the speaker, just dancing herself away to the cure and the violent femmes... slow dancing to marvin gaye with her... later after she faded out to our tent up in the pine woods, and after i got drunker, i was dancing a lot myself. partly i blame robin for what happened. see we got a little crazy and were having too much fun maybe, so when i suggested he should do the worm (remember how to breakdance folks?) he tried it. he dove into it only he just hit the dance floor. flat out. so it was only fair that i also make an honest attempt. luckily i "remembered" how to do the worm myself. and i was so loose and solid that i hit it perfect the first time. the second time maybe not so smooth. dove into it too far like i was not 30 years old, and i feel it in my back kinda but luckily i was very very loose at that point. third or fourth time - i'm not so clear - i hit the worm pretty hard and bruised both kneecaps. fifth, maybe sixth, seventh,....lots more times i think i was ok. dance until 4 am. sarah complains that i woke her up when i landed in the tent. mark and kaarin were both hammered and dancing up a storm. kaarin was a beautiful bride, and mark looked pretty sharp himself.

day two - a nice brunch spread too. turns out sarah's grandma, who we knew lived close by, actually lived around the corner and is really fondly remembered by kaarin's family. we drove by the old fairley farmhouse on the way out. and sarah got to walk down memory lane cuz the new owners were very generous. apparently fairley's drive past the farmhouse every once in a while.
we drive up to killbear provincial park, north of parry sound, and set up camp. it's pretty up there. all georgian bay shield rock. the water is amazingly clear. we swam the first evening, and went to bed early.

day three - more swimming, and walking along the shore. later some cliff jumping. everything is pretty nice up there. drive to a store outside the park for ice cream cones. the most amazing sunset i've ever seen turns the cliffs red and the sky a million other colours. we watched it from the beach after a rain storm.

day four - sarah's dad joins us, bringing steaks and more beers. and we have a nice visit with him. more swimming and cliff jumping and diving. i wish i coulda gotten pictures of sarah jumping. she says she'll be one of the really cool moms cuz she'll be jumping off the cliffs with our kids too. she's pretty great obviously.

day five - (i think) we wake up and as we consider making brunch the sky turns darker and darker and darker and as we rush to pack up and load the car, it starts to rain, and it only gets harder and harder and harder, and we get wetter and wetter and wetter. the rain is in fact so ridiculous that if it had stopped the moment the car was loaded we wouldn't have surprised.
and we drive to the cottage. settling in there around dinner. more swimming. after dinner i had a beer and start on a puzzle. vacation is now in seriously full swing.

day six - we drove into peterborough for some brunch and some more groceries. return to cottage and swim some more and eat some more really good food. drink more beers and do more puzzling.

to be continued tomorrow .... or some time soon...

vay-cay-shun...things to do ...

ok so ya won't be hearin nothin for a week or so. today we leave town for a wedding near creemore ontario, then tomorrow we continue on to killbear park until wednesday, then we go to sarah's cottage for the rest of the week where we'll be joined by a couple other folks. all along the way there will be beers to be drunk, and lots of nothing to be done...sort of...
see you when i get back

wisdom? i'm not an old man but i play one on the basketball court

well folks, long time no posts....sorry bout that...i was busy turning 30 and celebrating my friends bbq of love and playing basketball and dying in the heat and drinking drinks ... not in that order i think...actually i'm drinking a nice manhattan right now...another sign of being old...?
ok so here's the big sign of my advanced age...i played basketball tonight and i didn't dive for a single loose ball...old guys don't bounce so good on concrete...that's wisdom right...i could've gotten to a loose rebound too if i'd hit the dirt but i didn't...hmm...sarah will be so proud...or did i miss that rebound cuz my reflexes are too slow now that i'm 30? doh....
i better get to bed cuz it's almost 11pm and i need my beauty sleep.

ps. happy birthday jen. and if you look anything like a soccer mom then that can only be a good thing for soccer moms. don't mind my silly musings...