Congratulations/Félicitations

to

Stéphanie and Tamas jr

I'm home now. And in spite of jetlag and lack of sleep from the previous 36 hours - marathon excursion through Athens, sleeping (actually, not sleeping) in the airport to catch our 5:00am flight to Amsterdam and then hiking through their city centre all day before an 8 hour flight home - this has been one of my best trips ever (I know - I say that every time. I'm so lucky!).
Here are just a few pics ...

Our first look at our digs for the week...travel fatigue disappeared in a second!


The view from my bedroom balcony on the first morning....overlooking the outdoor dining room (brown roof), overlooking the pool, overlooking the ocean.

Night number two...

taking a break from drinking wine....

St. Nicholas port...where we launched our boats.


no tans yet....

loving it.

I woke up this morning intending to visit my parents in their respective nursing homes but never even got out of the house until 1:00pm. I was able to accomplish some stuff though - paying bills, laundry, that sort of thing. I couldn't paddle anyway so I guess it was worth it.

In the afternoon I headed over to Chrissy's MBA graduation barbecue. I picked up some flowers for her at my favourite shop on Lorne Park Rd. There were a dozen friends already there when I arrived. Oh man, I couldn't believe the amount of food her mom had prepared. Chrissy brought me a glass of sangria and I sat down to catch up with everyone. Jeff and Del were in charge of grilling and there was nothing to do but socialize.

After the amazing meal her nephew, Savaun, circulated with trays of champagne and we toasted Chrissy's success. Then there was ice cream cake.

Then there was another cake.

It was a fun afternoon and I hope to see more of Chrissy now that she's not in school.

Big congrats to the athletes and coaches for the club's performance at nationals! MCC may not have the numbers to populate every division but what we put on the water is quality!
I think the biggest bringer of points had to be our midget boys canoers. They did an amazing job, filling boats, lanes and the podium in midget, juvi and even senior (war) divisions! Nice work . Of course every other division had it's superstars - check the results for Friday and Saturday on padtrac.com

I was a bit of a waste-oid this weekend. Did quite a bit of paddling - well, until Sunday. Sometime during my Saturday afternoon paddle, I pulled something deep under my shoulderblade - it hurts to breath.

I should have known better, it's never a great paddle at that time of day on a sunny Saturday. There are so many big cruisers entering/leaving the harbour or cutting a line straight between Toronto and Port Dover that it's a constant bathtub wash no matter how far out you go. I didn't notice I had strained something until I woke up Sunday morning. I thought the strain would ease as I moved around so headed off to Memorial Park to meet up with some Barclay-Boyds and Budays.

I arrived a couple of minutes early and, as I made an uncomfortable loop around the playground, realized how out of place I looked without a child in tow. (Louise and I were laughing about it later - how I should have pulled out my camera and given mono-syllabic descriptions into my cell phone, just to complete the playground lurker image.) I was just about to go find a distant vantage point when I saw Louise and Jonathon lifting Mia and then Tristan out of the family SUV. Mia had been under the impression that the "Lynne" they were going to meet, was a new playmate.When she saw me crossing the playground, she said "Mummy, is she older than me?" Poor kid...play date let-down! Fortunately, Attila and Charlie found us a few minutes later. The guys took the girls out into the playground and that's the last we saw of them until they tired out.
Louise and I took Tristan in his stroller to a bench and got caught up. Tristan is such a sweetheart! I got a big smile right away and he's an equal mix between Louise & Jonathon - blonde haired and blue-eyed he looks more like Jonathon than Mia did as a baby.

Later that night, Carrie, Louise and I headed into Port Credit to check out the newly renovated Roc 'n Docs. It's nice and so great to finally have a rooftop patio in town. They have to shut down at 10pm because the area is residential but hopefully that will change.

So here's the scoop...Michael Bryant has hired a slick P.R. firm called Navigator to SPIN this incident. I'm picturing Ari Gold without the endearing qualities...
They're the ones digging up (irrelevent) dirt on the cyclist and dropping (irrelevent) information in news articles (social visits to Stornaway, that kind of thing).

Okay, I know it sounds old fashioned but... shame on Michael Bryant. Less than 48 hours after he killed a bike courier in a Yorkville, Saab vs bike altercation, the political spin machine is in action. But, as Christie Blatchford’s article pioints out "Details that suggest cyclist had been drinking may help former Ontario Attorney-General muster a solid legal defence – but is there room for a moral one?"

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