Morning flower

Last week was pretty busy. Bdot had a bunch of late evenings so I had to deal with the herd and feeding myself… this usually means I’m not eating dinner until well after 8. I was off Thursday helping my buddy KK move from Maple to North Vaughan. Well, that was the plan. I arrived at his place around 10AM and there was already a small army moving boxes and furniture to the massive moving truck. Everything was boxed and ready to go. Initially I was shocked to see so many boxes… it looked like they would never fit and that it would take all day to get them organized in the truck. I was wrong on both accounts. Once KK’s sister and her family arrived, boxes started piling up on the truck edge like magic. KK and I worked frantically to keep up with the pace of the box arrivals. Remarkably the house was emptied and loaded by 1PM and it all fit. So much for my spatial temporal reasoning. (or whatever part of my brain was responsible…) Once the truck was good to go, the wait for the key began. For some reason it felt like from the beginning of the day that the key wasn’t coming. There were a lot of phone calls and back and forth between KK and his lawyer and his real estate agent. Suffice it to say as the day wore on it becoming increasing clear that the key wasn’t coming. KK and his wife were disappointing – but everything was resolved the next day and they were in their lovely new home by the early afternoon. Buying a home you enter into a very curious bureaucracy. It is the most significant purchase people make in their lifetimes… I’m wondering if there shouldn’t be a little more transparency? I had to work Friday so I couldn’t help with the move into KK’s new house. I was pretty achy already… I can’t imagine how KK was feeling. I did venture over Friday night after I got home, walked the dog then made and ate dinner. Wow… I think it was worth the wait. KK is now about 5-10m closer to me in a very desirable neighbour which is also close to a school. I can see afternoons of ball hockey in the school parking lot in the future! His new home is similar to his last one but now the rooms and hallways have some badly needed breathing space. The rooms are bigger and more usable and the fixtures are updated and ready to go. Another big congrats to KK and Sandra on their new home, I think it is amazing!

We planned to be away this weekend at our friend’s in Bethany, Ontario. It is remarkable how much crap you have to gather to go away for even one night. We were tenting it so that added another dimension to the gathering. As seems to be normal we left later than we wanted to and still had to stop to pick up a cake. Well…I don’t mind being late if it means stopping at a bakery. grin We’ve been stopping at Cappucinno Bakery since we moved to Bolton and discovered it a few years ago. It has recently undergone a major reno and the place looks like a million bucks. Clean, modern with tons of food options and great service. The staff seems quite willing to go the extra mile to please a customer. We ordered a cake for our friend BBB’s birthday and mistakenly ordered a much bigger cake than we needed… Regardless the ‘entire’ cake was gone within 24h and everyone raved about how delicious the Strawberry Cake was. The Bakery is certainly one of Caledon’s gems. By the time we arrived at BBB’s it was mid-afternoon and the sun was beating down hot rays on us poor humans. The solution? Get in a pool of course and we did. We spent most of the afternoon with a bunch of friends and BBB’s family trying to keep cool. It was a fun afternoon. It helped underscore our interest in renovating our backyard and potentially adding a pool ourselves. Lazing around floating seems like one of the few ways to beat the heat outside. The thing about pools is to remember sunscreen. Just because your body is cool doesn’t mean you are protected. I sadly seem to forget this every year at least once. So yes, Sunday morning I awoke to find most of my chest, back and shoulders a nasty shade of lobster red. Gah. I can actually feel the heat emanated off my chest as I write this. Most of ddot’s friends from her hometown were at the party. Trish & Finn, Jessica and her kids and some new friends from Quebec Dave and Vicky were in attendance. Everyone got along swimmingly. *smirk*

It would have been nice to stay later Sunday and continue to chill-out by the pool but we had to get to bdot’s sister’s for our nephew’s/BiL’s birthday dinner. We stopped in Port Perry a charming town on Lake Scugog to pick up a bottle of wine and birthday cards. I could see spending afternoon at some point walking around Port Perry it looks like a interesting town. Anyway… Dinner at bdot’s sister’s almost always means BBQ, and yesterday wasn’t an exception. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned, bdot’s BiL is the King of Q. We enjoyed BBQed chicken wings and steak shish kabobs. Bill (yes her Brother in Law’s name is Bill) always has some interesting sauces so dinner was delicious. The nephews were typically wired and were bouncing all over the living room and onto each other which ultimately led to a timeout. Bill was selling a bunch of stuff on Kijiji including a wine cabinet which we took off his hands. (We scored it for cheap with delivery! How could we say no?! *grin*) By the time we got home Sunday night we both needed some downtime. Phew.

Congrats to Wiggo. Tour de France 2012 winner.

I’ve been following the Penn state abuse case for awhile now. I listen to a lot of Sports Radio and it has been a headline topic for months now. Today the NCAA’s ruling on the football program came out. Phew… Many people wanted the death sentence for the program. That didn’t happen, but I think the targeted fines and sanctions were more useful and justifiably punitive. I’m hoping the $60M in fines end up doing some good and saves a child somewhere from abuse. Brutal. In some ways keeping the football program alive to bear the scrutiny and public outcry will surely be a burden in itself for Penn State to deal with. And really who will want to be associated with that football program for many, many years to come. A sad story.

Another sad story occurred with one of bdot’s co-workers. He recently found his son deceased in his apartment. It was a sudden and tragic loss of life. My condolences to her co-worker and his family.