4: Bring me back

This weekend Mel and I have done something we've talked about for a long time, borrowed Aunt Lori's trailer for a whole weekend to ourselves. It's a nice way to end the summer, which I think we've really made the most of. My last post detailed a lot of the stuff we'd done together in June and July... since then we made good on our birthday gifts to each other, an Arctic Monkeys concert, which was amazing, and a showing of Mamma Mia, which was also fun; in fact, Isiah also had tickets to that very same show so it became an impromptu double date.

We also went to the Ex, which was good since I hadn't been since 2005. Eric came along. We saw some exhibits, visited some vendors, did the silent disco (which was fun) and played the gambling games (which Eric got way too into.) We didn't ride any rides or play any prize-winning games on purpose, since Mel isn't into Rides and we don't need Eric to win another giant stuffed toy.

So we're at the trailer. We got here around 8:30 Friday night, later than we'd hoped. It was sort of a chain reaction thing: Mel got away from work late, then we had to finish the job cleaning up the apartment and the little bit of packing we had left, then we missed one train so we had to take the 4:00 back to Oakville. After that we had to pick up some groceries and - bought quite a lot for three days! - and have a bit of sushi. We were also hoping to hit the chip truck on the way up, but we got there just as he was closing.

I had actually been up a few weeks ago, which involved me renting a car to drive the guys up as Mel had a bachelorette weekend with Meghan. It thunderstormed during our dinner hour, and was just clearing up as everyone else left. Having our own ride and no particular need to get home, we lingered a while longer to talk politics. When we got home, we decided to try to get some Little Caesar's Pizza, which was a fiasco when the guy behind the counter thought I'd said three when I said two. And then I scratched the rental on a column in Brandon's parking garage. Sigh.

Anyway. I've been back here enough as an adult, by now, that the time warp factor has rather diminished. A lot has changed but enough hasn't. The air still feels the same, the bucolic rustling of leaves and ripples in the manmade lake. There are still spots I can look at and say "That's where X happened." The first time Mel and I came up the nostalgia was intensely strong as the setting made me feel like I was an angsty oversexed 13-year-old again. Now I'm a little more used to it. More settled.

We've done lots - swimming twice, Mini Golf, Paddle boating, and a lengthy Gin Rummy tourney in which I pulled ahead early and never looked back. We attempted a fire last night (sad results) and made friends with one of the local spiders.

I have been thinking a lot about the past, though, thanks to TimeHop, an app I feel compelled to open daily and revisit my greatest hits on Twitter. There aren't many but I did have some cutting jibes about customers from HMV and occasionally Coles, especially during the summer of 2014, aka the Dark Summer. I'll go through it for an entire year and then, once I've been through it once, I'll stop... for a while.

Summer is effectively over... it's labour day weekend, we have no more big activities left. I am owed a few more vacation days which it is imperative that I use.  There are situations at work that I could address here but I don't feel like thinking about. And of course my lack of ability to write.

Keep on rockin'
Scotto