seasleepy | (no subject)

Oh, hey. So, I went to Canada last week, and now I'm back here in Amarillo. The trip was a lot of fun, if a bit exhausting at times.

I want to go back.

I flew up on Thursday before last. The flights were uneventful, customs was really quick to get through once they finally unloaded our luggage, I found Jerry, and we headed back off to Hamilton. Late lunch at Subway, and ended up going to improv (although there weren't too many people there), where hilarity ensued and Jerry massively geeked out about the new Prius someone had bought. (I geeked out about it too, mind you, just not as much. ;)) Then there was chinese food and sleep.

Friday, we went to Waterloo and wandered around campus and then wandered around for half an hour on one floor of the math building while trying to find an office we only knew by number (the math building at Waterloo has pretty much no system to their numbering, so while sometimes a hallway will have consecutive numbering, it'll jump a few hundred from hallway to hallway). Lunch was at a mongolian stir-fry place, which was tasty, and the people we met up with were cool. We then wandered around campus some more, where we did not see a single duck, and was amused by the on-campus bars and the tininess of the book store. After that, we headed back to Hamilton for a bit, before meeting up with

biochemgeek and Mina (? bah, too many people). We had dinner at an italian restaurant where I proceeded to shock everyone by eating my cannelloni in apparently near-record time (they were very tasty and I was hungry), and we went off to Burlington to go see Disc 4, who were really good and a lot of fun.

Saturday was one of the lighter days of the trip... we wandered over to Westdale to find some lunch, but work called Jerry, so he had to go fix things, and then we just ended up stopping off at Subway again before heading off to Shai and Nadine's pumpkin carving party. Which was fun, although Jerry and I both sort of crashed in the middle of the evening (mmmm...remixed Canadian alphabet caterpillar). But I finally got to have Swiss Chalet (the chicken was very tasty, but the sauce didn't do much for me because it reminded me of pumpkin pie (?)) and I carved the dullest pumpkin of the 10-15 pumpkins there. (Mine was the standard triangle eyes and so on, the others ranged from Dora the Explorer to a gargoyle to a ghoul.)

Sunday was busy...we drove to Windsor and had dim sum for lunch with Jerry's family (yum, I'd never gotten to have it before) and then we stopped off at Jack Astor's in London on the way back to have dinner with some more of Jerry's friends and their families (<waves to

derelict52>), which was also fun if a bit crazy. ;)

Monday, we drove up to Ottawa, which was essentially an uneventful drive, cloudy and spitting rain most of the way up there. It was actually kind of nice up in Ottawa (you know, as far as Ottawa weather goes, which means "oh my God, it's not snowing on Halloween!"), our hotel room was *huge* (the Embassy Hotel, btw...not the nicest ever, but still pretty nice...we even had a kitchen!) and the hotel was really nearby to everything, and we mat up with Dave and Gilles, which was awesome as I finally got a chance to talk to people face-to-face. After doing some wandering as nobody could think of a restaurant to eat at and nobody was desperately hungry, we ended up at Yesterday's (I think?), and then after dinner, we continued to walk around Ottawa for a couple more hours, going all the way up by Parliament and through the park there down to the bridge, around the US Embassy, and back over to Rideau Centre, where we lost Dave, and then we headed off back across the park and through city hall to the hotel to give Gilles a ride home. Things took a slight turn for the surreal as we tried to get onto the Queensway going east off of Elgin, as we crossed the highway three times, apparently passing very nearby Dave's residence, and nearly going in a circle, before we actually made it onto the highway. ;)

Tuesday, we had breakfast at the hotel, and then walked to Quebec. All the way to Hull. <g> We spent the day indoors at the Museum of Civilization, which was probably a good idea, as it started raining a bit after we got there. The only problem with this was that after walking around for several hours the previous night, proceeding to spend nearly the whole day on our feet proved rather taxing. The museum was very cool though. I geeked out at the violin stuff in the music shop in the immigrants part of the Canada hall. We got a chance to sit and relax for a while after we finished looking at everything because we had gotten tickets to the Imax (Walking on the Moon, which was cute). We headed back over the bridge and over through the Market to make sure we knew where dinner was before stopping off at Chapters to kill a couple of minutes. We headed back, and met up with a whole ton of people who I couldn't name at all. ;) It was a fun dinner though.

Wednesday, we drove back to Hamilton, and that took up a lot of the day. That evening, we went to Michael's and then to the mall briefly. Thursday was entirely unplanned as well, which was nice, because both of us needed a chance to hang out and relax.
Friday, we went into Toronto and, after some navigational difficulties, had Phil's BBQ for lunch, which was not as good as Smokestack, but what is? ;) Still very tasty stuff. We headed back into town and did a bit of shopping, ending up at the Eaton Centre for a while. We ended up taking the things we'd ended up with (some Lush and CDs for me) back to the car in order to kill some time. At this point, my feet started being very complainy again. I also made the mistake of petting one of the cats at the Hairy Tarantula while Jerry was shopping, so my neck was itchy and I got a bit headachy. (Bah, allergies.) Once we got back to the mall, we sat around for a bit, and eventually went up to Chapters for a bit, where I got mildly sidetracked and read a big chunk of Wren to the Rescue, which I really need to buy at some point now that it's back in print. We then caught up with people (Cat & a friend, Dave & Lori, Stu, and Helen) for dinner, and ended up heading over to Spring Rolls where I had some curry (mmm), and I felt like I was really antisocial. It was still fun though, and good to get to see people (both again or for the first time).

Saturday was the day for me to leave, so Jerry and I got to be mopey together for a bit, before having lunch at Timmy's, buying some candy, and then heading off to Pearson, where tried not to cry too much, and then I flew off. The people in customs hardly looked at me, which was kind of unusual. (Not like I look suspicious or anything, but normally they'll just wave at you or tell you what to do... when I went through the metal detector/carryon x-ray, there were a whole bunch of security guards standing around chatting, so I dumped my stuff on the conveyor belt, walked through, and picked up my stuff without anyone even noticing, I don't think.) I managed to get onto an earlier flight back to Amarillo, somehow vaulting over a few people on the standby list, I think. My luggage, however, didn't get on the earlier flight. Luckily the next flight didn't come in too much later so my mom and I just ran up there and picked it up.

Things that made me happy/amused me over the trip:
1. Road signs with only a question mark on them and an arrow. (And occasionally "information" in letters far too tiny to see unless you're right up on the sign.)
2. Panic is not part of the mango lifestyle.
3. Putting faces to names.
4. Helping Alex "clean up" the backyard by shoveling all the leaves that had fallen in the yard through his basketball hoop.
5. Singing along with Jerry
6. Getting several more takedowns than necessary for a gold medal in Burnout.
7. Mint Aero bars.
and of course, Jerry, about a million times over. :)

I will probably remember random things to add at some other point, but I think that this is plenty for now. <g>