Going By Too Fast

I can’t believe it’s nearly mid-July. The past couple of weeks have gone by particularly fast. I shouldn’t complain, since my busy time at school consisted of three assignments last week, and two presentations this week. I’ll have a couple more things per week to finish things off.

On Thursday evening was the picnic for the Statistics and Actuarial Science department. Sarah was able to convince Leo to come along, so he made the trip to Waterloo from Simcoe with her that afternoon. After our classes, we drove out to the middle of nowhere where one of the profs has a farm and was hosting the picnic. Oh, I’m not a country person … it’s so desolate out there! Most of the time I had no Mobitex coverage, and my phone was in Emergency Service-only mode. Shiver.

Considering attendance was expected to be about 150, they did pretty well with only one barbeque. It also helped that as others hesitated, we made the first run for cooked meat products. The potluck was a good idea, as we complemented the bbq’d goodies with lots of different dishes. Mmmm … spring rolls, dumplings, cookies (Sarah’s contribution), pecan pie (!), and more. Besides some sitting around and chatting, we also played some catch. It’s been a while since I gave my baseball glove a workout.

When Sarah & Leo dropped me off, I managed to leave my phone in their car. Good thing I realized quickly and was able to call my cell. Man, I felt dumb.

Dean was in town for the weekend, having driven in from Ottawa. We got together for lunch at Ethel’s on Friday with some friends from RIM: Sarah, Marissa, Patrick, Kelli and Richard. Part of what made me realize how quickly the summer is going is that I haven’t seen them in so long …. the last time I went for lunch with Sarah & Kelli was towards the end of last term. I haven’t seen Marissa & Richard in ages. I can’t remember when I saw Fog of War, but that would have been the last time I saw Patrick. It was good to hang out with them again, I’ll have to try and do it more often. Greg is also now back at RIM, and Sarah (the other one from previous paragraphs … I just realized that may be confusing!) will hopefully have a job there soon back in her old department, so I’ll have to get back in the habit of infiltrating the RIM buildings and going out to lunch with former coworkers.

I spent the rest of the afternoon on various mini-adventures with Dean. We went to the Phillips’ place where Norma was making final preparations for her and the kids to join Mark over in the UK that evening. We took her and Meagan (damn, how do they spell that kid’s name?) to the Honda dealership where she sold their minivan — I guess I won’t be driving that vehicle anymore. Then we brought Jose over to Zellers to buy a game for his GameBoy, ideally to keep him occupied on the flight over. We said our goodbyes and wished them well. I have no idea if we’ll see them again, but if I’m ever in the UK, I’ll have a welcoming place to crash.

Dean’s friend Heather recently quit RIM and was having a party that night. She and her husband (who’s still with the company) have an awesome place in the Seagram Lofts … I’d so love living in a place like that! Anyway, Dean and I helped Heather with some setting up, and we went to some artsy restaurant around the corner for a light dinner. The place was complete with snooty waiter. The food looked good, although I didn’t have anything big. I might bring myself to go back there someday.

Mike came over on Saturday night. We finished watching The Corporation (we got through 2/3 last weekend when he, Sven and Mandy come over to my place, but we started watching it too late and three hours is a long sitting). A marathon game of Crib Wars broke out to the soothing background sounds of Family Guy … the game has many equalizers, and I blew a big lead. After that, we watched Dark City, which was a pretty cool movie. Interesting setup, and it’s important to note that it came out *before* the Matrix.

Before Dean left town on Sunday, we took some time for some disc throwing. It seems that I’d always mooched off others, as we found ourselves without a frisbee. A quick trip to Canadian Tire fixed that, as I got a good disc (optimal for Ultimate, apparently, so that’s a bonus). I did something funky to my ankle at one point, but it only hurt when I bent it in certain directions, so I didn’t notice much. It’s fine now, just over a day later.

So, that’s been my past few days. Oh, and all the work I did in between those activities. But like I said, I can’t complain.