last night i returned home from my long weekend at the cottage, and now my morning coffee is helping me get over the tiredness. michael and adele took loads of pictures but i haven't got them yet so they will be posted later. but you should look forward to me as a wizard. its awesome.
james and i made it to the cottage around 9.30 and our first game of trivial pursuit started shortly thereafter. i'm not entirely sure how it happened but the game turned out to be a pretty drunken event. although dave and i didn't win i have to say that we put on an impressive display. we got "i'm a doleman" but missed "viagara falls," which was a bit of a disappointment, but i think the funniest wrong answer had to be given by rob and adele. the question was something along the lines of "which 7 000 000 residents of new york have sex up to 20 times a day?" the answer, obvious to the rest of us, was "rats" but they spent quite a while deliberating between bunnies and hookers. in the end they went with bunnies. it was a big mistake.
friday was cool and rainy and i had a hard time sleeping in. mostly i just spent the morning reading magazines and lounging in the family room that the boys had converted into a studio. when risk made its first appearance adele and i took our cue to leave. we drove out to shannon's cottage to have a visit with her, robin and kalen. k regaled us with camp stories and we left tempted to go home, put on a fireball shirt, and build a fort to play board games in.
we stopped in westport on the way back to pick up some necessities: a robertson screwdriver, some fake cheese, and fireworks. they were not used in combination.
we ate a big barbecue dinner and the band had a jam/recording session for most of the evening. james, adele and i played some more trivial pursuit (james won with the help of his vast knowledge of sports trivia) and i think you can hear the shouts of "bernie parent" in their recordings.
the rest of the fam came up to the cottage on saturday to spend the day lounging and eating. rebecca painted my toenails a hideous combination of pink and red and shane fell in the lake. comedy! the weather was still sort of garbage so dave and i spent at least an hour working on the globe and mail crossword. i love a good nerd-out. actually, i think i'm going to retract that sentence because even though i love nerdy things, spending a rainy afternoon at the cottage reading mcsweeney's and doing word puzzles isn't even nerdy, its just awesome.
people were telling travel stories over dinner and peru was a bit of a hot topic since my parents just got back. i think it was when shane said "i'd really like to go to peru but dave's already been" that i knew they were officially h.l.p's. dave was quicker to embrace the "heterosexual life partner" than shane was but i think in the end they were both on board. i enjoy that the term is starting to catch on. and, for the record, it really isn't a bad thing.
after m, d, and r left we went for a little late-night swim. the water was cool but perfectly calm and it was just generally a really nice night. we busted out the cranium when we got back and although the questions were ludicrously easy (save for the manet) we had a good laugh. james did a hilarious rendition of puff the magic dragon that michael couldn't get enough of. i'm sure in the near future there will be a recorded version of what michael thought he heard. and rob just seemed marginally disgruntled. "i have a french name, i'm a lady, and i may as well be a bollywood actress." is the answer "marie antoinette"?
and yesterday was just more of the same. eating, hanging out and just general chillaxing. shane, dave and michael went for a canoe ride and came back with a crayfish in a t-shirt. they were pretty excited about it but i'm pretty sure my dad was just waiting for them to leave so he could return it to the lake. its not like they were going to do anything with it other than put it in a bucket and feel proud of themselves for their prowess.
we all made our way back to the city last night and i hope everyone agrees with me that it was a totally solid weekend. i was exposed to the "war of the worlds" rock opera that shane grew up listening to on family trips. its overwhelmingly cheesy but at the same time fabulous! i'm pretty sure that michael will love it when he hears it.
now i'm at work, thinking about creating a chart to illustrate the differences between ian mckellan and richard harris. or maybe i should do some
actual work.
p.s. rk, good luck with the mouth!
