melayneseahawk (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
melayneseahawk) wrote2006-08-29 12:25 pm
melayneseahawk) wrote2006-08-29 12:25 pm
Finally, a real post.
Ok, now that I've chilled out a bit, I can post about the Trip to the Great White North. There should be a rule that one should not be forced to have revelations about the Meaning of Life and Such Things while on family vacation. (There should also be a rule that my mother should not be allowed to contradict herself, but that's not happening any time soon.)
18th
~ last-minute packing (my father packs in a way that makes no sense to anyone so Mum and I had to repack everything before we left)
~ driving: home -> Monroeville, PA, a little town outside of Pittsburgh
19th
~ driving: Monroeville -> Niagara Falls, US side
~ shopping at a big honking outlet mall on the US side: I got a couple shirts for work and a whole pile of socks; yayfor outlet malls with sales
20th
~ Niagara Falls: lots of falling water; impressive, yes, but a one-time thing, methinks
~ driving: Niagara -> Markham, ON, CAN, a 'burb of Toronto
~ dinner with a branch of the extended family (maternal grandfather's sister and her kids and grandkids (and one grandkid's fiancee); I'm tempted to put up a family tree at some point just so I can keep track): lots of interrogation about school, trying not to burn down the house with a small campfire-y thing outside, and Dad and the male cousins gathered around the barbeque grill being Manly (par for the course, I wound up hovering at the grill, too; they were telling political jokes!)
21st
~ wandering around downtown Toronto, esp. Kensington Market, with one of the cousins (a second cousin in some fashion, but I can never figure out how that stuff works): imagine the Village, but with more open-air fruit shops with signs in any number of Asian languages, Arabic, or Spanish; lots of fun
~ Jays/Oakland game at the Skydome (can't think of that place as Rogers Stadium or whatever, just can't): as usual, I tried to keep track in the program thing, but they kept sending me on food runs and Da doesn't write things down, so I gave up around the seventh inning stretch after Oakland changed pitchers for the fifth time; the Jays were winning 8-0 after the second inning, and then they gave away seven runs during the top of the third, and the score was 12-10 Oakland at the end; disgraceful, really
22nd
~ The Ex, the event formerly known as the Canadian National Exhibition: it's basically a jumped up country fair (sorry,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
despiojarse12, but for the whole country, so I kinda glowered my way through; the Brat kept getting recruited for the Canadian military's equivalent of ROTC, and I kept teasing him about losing his US citizenship if he signed up; there was this big exhibition hall of all these products from all over the world, though it was a little intimidating, and the four-day-old goats were really cute; the best thing was this harmonica trio that played '50s music; have you ever seen a base harmonica?
23rd
~ the Royal Ontario Museum with the cousin again: the Rom was a total disappointment; the collections we saw (China, Korea, Japan on the first floor, this biodiversity thing on the second, and Egypt and Greece on the third) were very pretty, but badly set up and many of the signs in the Asian wing were reversed, so that gave me something to complain about; on top of that, they're in the middle of doing construction right now, so the Rome and Islam exhibits weren't available and there's this big glass thing sticking out of one side that they're calling art *shivers*; overall, not worth the trip, trust me
~ TheatreBooks: relatively self-explanatory bookstore, but I had to resist the urge to take the whole store home with me; I only wound up buying two stage management books in the end, but my wish list included the dialect kits, the script of Reduced Shakespeare Company's Complete Works of Shakespeare, Abridged and a book about Shakespeare that they wrote, half a dozen monologue books, the Spamalot songbook, a book of 16 bar music bits of auditions, a book on corsetry, and any number of other things; I spent the whole time inside squeaking and was bouncing for half an hour after we left
~ dinner with part of the family again at a Chinese buffet restaurant thing
24th
~ Stratford, ON, home of the Stratford Festival of Canada: backstage tour of awesome (I would kill to use their facilities); brekkie at this weird little teashop called Tango that was decorated with maps of tango steps; a really great production of Much Ado About Nothing, followed by an argument with the Brat about whether Much Ado should be played for laughs or not (I say yes, he says no, he's go no clue); poking around this exhibit they have of some of the costume designs, which was really, really cool; theatre people, if you ever find yourselves in Ontario, Stratford is a must
~ dinner at this all-you-can-eat sushi place (Centre Street Hockey Sushi, another must if you're into that kind of thing), where we ran into another cousin, his fiancee, and the future in-laws
25th
~ bumbling around the hotel, since it was too went and cold to go to the Canada's Wonderland (amusement park)
~ dinner with the family again, this time at the great aunt's apartment; finally got to see the female cousin my age, though, so not a total loss
26th
~ driving: Markham -> Mercer, PA, via Grove City, PA
~ stopped at the outlet mall in Grove City to buy the Brat clothes for school, and then had dinner at this pub called the Elephant and Castle, who had slow service, good food, and didn't know their own history
~ the Howard Johnson's in Mercer is barely fit for human habitation; never stay there *shudders*
27th
~ driving: Mercer -> home
The drinking age is 19 in Canada, so I kept teasing the 'rents that I should get a beer at the game just because I could, but I was once again thwarted by a lack of age-verifying ID. The drivers' license is definitely back on the To-Do list.
If you haven't signed the petition yet, go to. For the love of all things geeky and gorgeous, please!
Angsty shit later, I suspect.
18th
~ last-minute packing (my father packs in a way that makes no sense to anyone so Mum and I had to repack everything before we left)
~ driving: home -> Monroeville, PA, a little town outside of Pittsburgh
19th
~ driving: Monroeville -> Niagara Falls, US side
~ shopping at a big honking outlet mall on the US side: I got a couple shirts for work and a whole pile of socks; yayfor outlet malls with sales
20th
~ Niagara Falls: lots of falling water; impressive, yes, but a one-time thing, methinks
~ driving: Niagara -> Markham, ON, CAN, a 'burb of Toronto
~ dinner with a branch of the extended family (maternal grandfather's sister and her kids and grandkids (and one grandkid's fiancee); I'm tempted to put up a family tree at some point just so I can keep track): lots of interrogation about school, trying not to burn down the house with a small campfire-y thing outside, and Dad and the male cousins gathered around the barbeque grill being Manly (par for the course, I wound up hovering at the grill, too; they were telling political jokes!)
21st
~ wandering around downtown Toronto, esp. Kensington Market, with one of the cousins (a second cousin in some fashion, but I can never figure out how that stuff works): imagine the Village, but with more open-air fruit shops with signs in any number of Asian languages, Arabic, or Spanish; lots of fun
~ Jays/Oakland game at the Skydome (can't think of that place as Rogers Stadium or whatever, just can't): as usual, I tried to keep track in the program thing, but they kept sending me on food runs and Da doesn't write things down, so I gave up around the seventh inning stretch after Oakland changed pitchers for the fifth time; the Jays were winning 8-0 after the second inning, and then they gave away seven runs during the top of the third, and the score was 12-10 Oakland at the end; disgraceful, really
22nd
~ The Ex, the event formerly known as the Canadian National Exhibition: it's basically a jumped up country fair (sorry,
despiojarse12, but for the whole country, so I kinda glowered my way through; the Brat kept getting recruited for the Canadian military's equivalent of ROTC, and I kept teasing him about losing his US citizenship if he signed up; there was this big exhibition hall of all these products from all over the world, though it was a little intimidating, and the four-day-old goats were really cute; the best thing was this harmonica trio that played '50s music; have you ever seen a base harmonica?23rd
~ the Royal Ontario Museum with the cousin again: the Rom was a total disappointment; the collections we saw (China, Korea, Japan on the first floor, this biodiversity thing on the second, and Egypt and Greece on the third) were very pretty, but badly set up and many of the signs in the Asian wing were reversed, so that gave me something to complain about; on top of that, they're in the middle of doing construction right now, so the Rome and Islam exhibits weren't available and there's this big glass thing sticking out of one side that they're calling art *shivers*; overall, not worth the trip, trust me
~ TheatreBooks: relatively self-explanatory bookstore, but I had to resist the urge to take the whole store home with me; I only wound up buying two stage management books in the end, but my wish list included the dialect kits, the script of Reduced Shakespeare Company's Complete Works of Shakespeare, Abridged and a book about Shakespeare that they wrote, half a dozen monologue books, the Spamalot songbook, a book of 16 bar music bits of auditions, a book on corsetry, and any number of other things; I spent the whole time inside squeaking and was bouncing for half an hour after we left
~ dinner with part of the family again at a Chinese buffet restaurant thing
24th
~ Stratford, ON, home of the Stratford Festival of Canada: backstage tour of awesome (I would kill to use their facilities); brekkie at this weird little teashop called Tango that was decorated with maps of tango steps; a really great production of Much Ado About Nothing, followed by an argument with the Brat about whether Much Ado should be played for laughs or not (I say yes, he says no, he's go no clue); poking around this exhibit they have of some of the costume designs, which was really, really cool; theatre people, if you ever find yourselves in Ontario, Stratford is a must
~ dinner at this all-you-can-eat sushi place (Centre Street Hockey Sushi, another must if you're into that kind of thing), where we ran into another cousin, his fiancee, and the future in-laws
25th
~ bumbling around the hotel, since it was too went and cold to go to the Canada's Wonderland (amusement park)
~ dinner with the family again, this time at the great aunt's apartment; finally got to see the female cousin my age, though, so not a total loss
26th
~ driving: Markham -> Mercer, PA, via Grove City, PA
~ stopped at the outlet mall in Grove City to buy the Brat clothes for school, and then had dinner at this pub called the Elephant and Castle, who had slow service, good food, and didn't know their own history
~ the Howard Johnson's in Mercer is barely fit for human habitation; never stay there *shudders*
27th
~ driving: Mercer -> home
The drinking age is 19 in Canada, so I kept teasing the 'rents that I should get a beer at the game just because I could, but I was once again thwarted by a lack of age-verifying ID. The drivers' license is definitely back on the To-Do list.
If you haven't signed the petition yet, go to. For the love of all things geeky and gorgeous, please!
Angsty shit later, I suspect.