I took this week off to relax, get some stuff done around the house, and hopefully tie up a few loose ends with my side projects. I'm a little bit burnt out right now, I've been burning the candle at both ends for quite a while, and it was all starting to catch up to me. My plans were dashed pretty quickly on Saturday, and have been thrown up in the air further as the week has gone on.
On Saturday Char and I celebrated our sixth anniversary. We dropped Kaylin off at Grandma and Grampa's around noon and went out for a little shopping excursion, picking up wood for the “soon to be built”, built-in bookshelves in the office. Of course it was the wrong wood, so we would have to go back the next day to buy thicker stock.
After our shopping we got ready and went out for dinner at a nice little steakhouse downtown called “Chancey Smith's”, which is the name of the original vegetable vendor at what is now the Market. It was a great meal, although a little filling. We had plans to go see Harry Potter or Ratatoullie, but by the time our dinner was over both had started, so we ended up seeing The Heartbreak Kid. Do yourself a favour and just avoid this movie like the plague.
Even still, we had a good dinner, good company, and we got a good night's sleep.
On Sunday morning I called my mom and dad's to see how Kaylin was, and found out that my grandmother had passed away. She was my dad's mom, and even though he put on a brave face, he was pretty broken up about it. We went over to pick up Kaylin, and waited to find out about the funeral arrangements.
I haven't seen most of my dad's family in years, we kind of drifted away from them, and other than my uncle Leonard, and aunt Marie in Nova Scotia, I haven't heard from any of them in probably 8 years (the last time being at my grandfather's funeral).
We found out that the funeral would be on Tuesday, so I spent Sunday and Monday doing some of the things around the house that I needed to try to do, but I wasn't feeling great. I was asked to be a pallbearer (probably due to my strapping figure).
Monday was my birthday, and my mom and dad dropped by with some carrot cake as Char was making a wonderful birthday cake for me, so I was fully caked up by the end of the day. I stained and sealed my work bench, and put up one wall of slatboard, which weighs about 80lbs, and is awkward as heck to work with.
As a special birthday gift, Rogers killed my internet connection somehow, and I spent most of the day troubleshooting it.
Tuesday was my grandmother's funeral. It was as pleasant as a funeral can be expected to be, I talked to a few of my uncles most of whom didn't know that I had moved back to London.
I also had a chance to speak to my cousin Billy for the first time in at least a decade, which was pretty cool. He and I have a lot in common. He's in radio out in Edmonton where he does sports for the local CBC affiliate and operates the board. Before my internet superstardom, I did some editing at TSN and had briefly considered doing some radio there (but the radio division got shut down). He rediscovered comics years ago, and has been following a lot of the same stuff that I read, so that was cool, and I got to tell him about All New Comics (which is always fun to talk about).
We got home, had some dinner, and then I went back out to visit with Marie, Leonard, Billy and Leona (my dad's sister, brother-in, law, nephew and niece respectively).
That's one of the nice things about being in London, the closeness to my parents is an amazing thing, Kaylin loves to see them, and it's nice to have “pop-overs” once in a while. Dropping by their place doesn't have to be a big deal, and we can just swing by whenever.
I've been feeling run down all week, and it was getting worse every day. Yesterday everything finally caught up with me, and I spent the day in bed, getting one out of the 15 things I wanted to do done.
Today I'm going to try to fly through a few things, and then we need to get packed up to visit Toronto.
So while this hasn't been a traditional “vacation” vacation, my body is forcing me to rest, and not do nearly as much as I had planned.
I guess that's what weekends are for though.