We're home from our Ottawa "staycation". Other than the strip of 401 north of Toronto where all the idiot drivers live, the trip both ways was great. Sunny, dry and relaxed. Our timing was good - a major snow event is scheduled for tomorrow.
However, I must say that after two days where the high was -20 C, it's nice to be home at -2C and parked in the underground garage.
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After seeing Rowan I have changed my "50 Things To Do" list. It now starts as follows:
1 - Stay alive for several more years.
2 - Be nice to Mardi - or else!
3 - When Rowan is big enough to participate, spend a day with her at Legoland in Florida.
Legoland is on the beautiful site of the former Cypress Gardens, it's designed especially for young kids, and the cost is a fraction of a Disney park. Can't wait!
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Sister Judy is apparently uploading some of my childhood memories to a geneology site. Don't know what the historians are going to think about that, but here is instalment two of my early history:
We moved to Fruitland when I was six, and that's when my memories started. Wayne (oakennoggin) Hilts was my next door neighbour. He was four and we became best friends.
Wayne's uncle Jud had a farm on the plateau, about a kilometre as the crow flies from our houses. Often in the summer we would take off for the day, hike through the bush, orchards and graperies to the farm and then head on up DeWitt Road to make sure the natural gas flame was lit, activities that today's kids that age wouldn't be allowed to do.
We built a fort on the escarpment face and watched the Harvard trainers flying overhead, operated by young men heading to war. We fantasized about finding German or Japanese soldiers (or them finding us). Great times for young kids.
We also played baseball on a local diamond. Twenty-one and In, just the two of us. For hours.
Wayne's family was the first in the neighbourhood to have a TV and my dad and I were invited over on Saturday nights to watch the hockey game. Wayne and I would watch a show that started a half hour before the game and overlapped another half hour. If our dads were busy talking we sometimes got to watch the whole show.
We were both Glenn Miller fans and one night a week we would listen on the radio to a station from Fort Wayne, Indiana to hear their Miller recordings.
Being older, I went to high school before Wayne and started working part-time, so we drifted apart a bit and then he moved away. But we reconnected in recent years and have visited each other. Wayne lives in Sidney, B.C.
To be continued...............
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So far, we have cancelled our week in New Orleans and the first two weeks of our Florida booking. But, the next week (Jan. 22-29) we have sold to a Canadian who is presently in Florida on his first vacation after retirement.
We're kind of determined to head south for the booking that starts on the 29th. But, if not, he may get more weeks. We'll see.
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I think of Novak Djokovic and wonder what's going through his feeble mind now that he can't play in the Australian Open. Do you think he might have second thoughts? Looks good on him though.
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Stay well.
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