What I Did For My Summer Holidays.

This will probably go down in family history as the summer that wasn’t. Even the beginning was ominous, with our yearly trek to Haliburton and the in-law’s lovely cottage. One hour from home and we hit the first of the countless thunderstorms that plagued the summer months on an almost daily basis. That alone wouldn’t have been so bad if the temperature got above the thirties, but it didn’t and the water really wasn’t warm enough for a wuss like me to swim.

The rest of the summer didn’t exactly go downhill, but kept a steady line below the level of ‘officially summer’. Sure, the nights were pleasant for sleeping, and plenty of rain kept the grass green, but new by-laws for weed control also equaled tons of dandelions and ragweed to keep my nose running pretty much 24-7, and mosquitoes in the middle of the day? Come on! This ain’t the Russian tundra.

For us summer ends with a trip to some exhibition or venue of equal status. This year we went to Canada’s Wonderland, formerly Paramount Canada’s Wonderland, formerly Canada’s Wonderland, formerly a nice meadow north of Toronto. Wonderland is similar to, say the Six Flags type theme parks in the US. Again, a disappointment, but then that just might be because I’m old. Passing through metal detectors just to get into the park, having security guards rifle through bags looking for contraband namebrand products, (no food or pop in the park, please), waiting an hour/ride for some 30 secs of thrill. Bah.

Now, I was willing to go through all that, because I understand that’s just the way it is at Wonderland. BUT! To have a single attendant to load passengers, check for safety, run the ride (all of 30 secs), wait for the ride to come to a complete stop, unload passengers by unlocking safety belts using a key only the attendant has, then repeating the process, well, sorry, that part is just a bit ridiculous. For God’s sake, Wonderland, you’re charging 10 bucks for a burger, fries and pop, you gotta have some money kicking around to hire an extra minimum wage summer student to make things run a little smoother.

Like I said, I’m just getting old.

And that was it. Nothing overtly exciting. Writing has been sporadic. Nothing new on the publishing front. It was fun to have the kids together, though I’ll never admit it to them, bwahahaha! And, of course, Kat had three weeks off, which was cool, but otherwise . . .

Oh, I did manage to get the garage cleaned out, and we had a general getting-rid-of-all-that-extra-crap-that’s-been-in-storage-forever. When that’s the highpoint of your summer, you know it sucked.

Mike