(no subject)

[electricland]

Yet another less than productive day at the office... the trouble with long weekends is they utterly sap my motivation. Pool tournament, Gary got revenge for last month (3-2, it was a hard-fought battle) and I went home early. Very wimpish.

Gorgeous weekend though. Drove to the cottage Sunday by the back roads, it took forever (partly because there were storms and I got slightly lost in Lindsay and very turned around in Holland Landing -- I found myself going east again, headed straight for an enormous and perfect rainbow, just as the Seek button found a Christian station and the radio started singing "Jesus, your love is all I need, hold me in your arms forever and I'll be satisfied" to a rock beat -- I was not amused). However, got there just in time for dinner (turkey, then strawberry-rhubarb pie) and in time to see pariah_ink before he had to drive down to the city.

Monday perfect and lazy with very few boats out on the lake, and the ones that were there were fishing boats rather than the gin palaces of my youth. Didn't do much -- enormous breakfast, admired the dogs and the garden (there's an absolutely gorgeous wild rose my aunt put in a few years ago, it's going gangbusters -- small white single flowers and a knockout scent, I have no use for a rose with no scent), helped get Pippa out, read Ms. and Time and wrote a bit, ate leftover turkey, tried Jen's kayak, baked banana cake, ate spaghetti carbonara and Oriental salad with marinated pork tenderloin and strawberry shortcake for dinner, played an inconclusive game of Trivial Pursuit and went to bed.

Tuesday much the same in general outline except I helped Daddy fasten the stays in the new (as yet unnamed) boat, painted my toenails pink, put some more photos into albums, played Yahtzee and swam. There were a lot of dishes and cousins somewhere in there as well... Finally left at 5:15, much later than I meant to, but made it in to Montreal around midnight which wasn't bad considering I stopped for about half an hour for gas and food. Took back roads as far as Peterborough and then went down to the 401 -- I don't believe the route through Ottawa is as efficient as I'd like to think although it's great if you're going farther north.

I always forget how absolutely gorgeous the countryside is in Southern Ontario. We don't have drama but it's hard to top us for rolling hillsides and fertile fields. Especially right now, especially the bits that haven't been wrecked by strip development (this is the great advantage of skipping the 404 and the 401 as far as Port Hope). One thing that never fails to make me furiously, impotently unhappy is the grim northward march of Toronto's suburbs; there's almost no space between them and Newmarket any more, compared to when I was little.

Watching The Philadelphia Story in memoriam.

Comments

[bryghtboy.livejournal.com]

I love your cottage up on Lake Simcoe... just a very comfy feeling prevades the entire place. Even if it is built on a swamp. Nothing quite as satifying as leaving the every day and going up to somewhere that your biggest worry is what nice food will be put on the table next :)

It shocks me every time I leave Toronto, its at least an hour just to get to where the concrete starts to thin out... and then another hour or so before real farm country gets started. I guess it makes a certain amount of sense though, the biggest cities start out in the most fertile areas and then keep growing for as long as they can get enough food. Really pisses me off that all of the development that surrounds the city is either poured concrete or super-shiny glass... its like there is a spot sitting at the center of the city that the further away the building gets the uglier.