Last weekend was one of those rare times when I wasn't out of town or had a million things to do. So, on Friday night I caught up on some paperwork (i.e. filing some of the crap I had lying around my apartment for months) and chatted with H for a while.
[DO NOT call me a loser. After chatting with a few people about their own Friday night activities, I can safely say that paperwork is on par with watching 3 hours of Buffy and going to bed at 10, or going over to someone's house for dinner and being back by 9.]
Saturday was gorgeous and I took full advantage of it...by staying inside and alternately sleeping and reading. I did manage to finally drag my butt out the door when Mark came to pick me up for some sushi in Bells Corners. I'm sad to say that going to Japan has kind of spoiled my palate for sushi in Ottawa, since everything in Tokyo was so fresh (and I imagine the stuff you get at any port would be the same), but it was great to catch up with Mark, who coincidentally is headed off on his own Asian Adventure soon. I can't say I'm not jealous of him getting to go to China
for work, no less, and in business class and jetting over to Japan. After dinner we tooled around the huge Nortel campus, then went to meet friends in Vanier for some private-room karaoke. Sadly, the place had shut down so we were forced to come up with a Plan B. Fortunately, this gave some creepy jerk the opportunity to mistake me for a prostitute (because prostitutes regularly go around in baggy jeans and hoodies and no makeup. It must have been the look in my eye.)
Dave, Sarah, Mark, Cathy and I ended up at the Shanghai in Chinatown, where Saturday karaoke nights are hosted by a drag queen named China Doll. It was quite fun, and I was working up the nerve to go up and warble a tune or two after hearing the pitiful renditions of "I Wear My Sunglasses At Night" and "Killing Me Softly", until the gang of musical theatre types hit the stage one by one, nailing performances of "Fever" and "Building A Mystery" (by a guy, no less!) And then there was Sarah, the star of our group, who is fearless and has a great singing voice to boot. She belted out "If I Can't Have You" and "Manic Monday" to much acclaim. My nerve quickly evaporated and I turned my attention to ensuring that the lychee martinis kept-a-comin' to the table (and making sure no one signed me up against my will to do "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails.)
On Sunday Cathy and I had plans to bike to Meech Lake and go for a swim, as part of her triathlon training. But those lychee martinis were hitting us back hard, so the bike ride quickly became a car ride. But because of Sunday Bike Day, the route to Meech was closed in the morning, so we diverted to Lac Philippe, much farther away but it's a nice scenic drive through Chelsea and other small towns on the Quebec side. Cathy impressed the hell out of me by swimming what looked to be quite a distance in the open water of Lac Philippe. I stayed in the supervised buoyed-off area anxiously watching for her to suddenly disappear, and trying not to think of the little organisms that were floating in the water just dying to give me "swimmers' itch". At any rate, Cath returned safely and in good shape, so we hung out on the beach just chatting and eating jerky (somehow I still have a pound left from camping, when I only ordered one pound to begin with!)
After leaving the beach we went in search of covered bridges, and happened upon the quaint little town of Wakefield, an English-speaking pocket of beauty in Gatineau. We lunched at the Pot au Feu with a gorgeous view of the Gatineau River, then browsed in the small gift shops until closing time. We made a quick stop at the Wakefield Mill and discovered Lester B. Pearson's grave in the MacLaren Cemetery. Old Les has an unassuming tombstone, simpler than you'd expect for the father of universal health care, the maple leaf flag and Canadian peacekeeping, among other important things.
I really enjoyed Wakefield and hope to visit it again many times, since it is the home of the Black Sheep Inn and the Wakefield Steam Train.
We hit the road again in search of the final covered bridge and found it just off the main highway, almost in the middle of nowhere on seemingly deserted NCC farmland. I wondered what it would be like to live out here - very peaceful, I would imagine.
Cathy dropped me back home and I drifted off into a nice little nap, waking up in time to make a phone call to Juna in San Francisco. We talked about the usual things (job troubles, apartment hunting troubles, boy troubles) and I was pleased to discover that she'll be back in Toronto for 3 weeks in the fall - it seems like ages since January when I visited her in SF. After a nice long chat I retired once more to bed.
Ah, what a lovely weekend!
