I had a five day long weekend for Canada Day, so I decided to spend it in Ottawa. I got a ride into Ottawa at about 8PM where I met up with Joel, who I stayed with for two nights. The first evening was pretty low key – we went to a pool hall then hung out at Joel’s house. On Saturday, the first full day, we managed to accomplish nothing. We watched a terrible movie – There Will Be Blood. The only good thing about the movie was that it killed a lot of time. In the evening, the Supreme Master (Gary) and Executive Director (Andy) of AEPi were in town for a conference, so they took the Ottawa AEPi chapter out for dinner – I tagged along. After the dinner, Gary and Andy had to go back to the conference, but we were going to meet up with them again at the Casino in Hull, Quebec which is just outside Ottawa. Until then we went over to someone’s apartment then out for a few beers. We made it to the casino and had a good time, except for me losing money.
Sunday morning Joel had to leave at 830 to drive to Toronto for a wedding, so he drove me to Jason’s house where I spent the next day. We went downtown to a bar to watch the Germany vs Spain Euro Cup Finals. Spain won 1-0 and the game was really entertaining. In the evening we went to go see a movie. Once at the theatre, we decided to rent a movie because the movie was sold out. It took 6 of us 45 minutes to come to a consensus on a movie. We saw Into the Wild, which was another long disappointing movie.
Monday morning I woke up, and began to watch another movie; this one was actually great. I watched Catch 22, but the only problem was that I had to leave with less than 5 minutes left!!! I walked around downtown Ottawa for the afternoon before I had to meet Darryl at the train station. It had poured the previous 2 days, so to my disbelief, it started to rain again! I went into the parliament building and decided to go up the peace tower (200 meters) to get a good view of Ottawa. The long lineup killed an hour, and I managed to stay dry. Not even 10 minutes after I got back outside it began to pour. Without an umbrella or raincoat I stood under a tree for half an hour – thank goodness no lighting. The rain was coming down so hard that if I ran to a building it would have been soaked to the bone, so the tree was my only option. For dinner, Darryl took me to the best burger place in the world – The Works. I had a burger topped with Montreal smoked meat, sauerkraut and an onion ring – AMAZING!!! After that we took it easy for the evening because Canada Day was going to be a long day. We downloaded You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, which was absolutely hysterical.
Tuesday was Canada Day – the 141st. We went to a BBQ at one of Darryl’s friend’s for the afternoon. In the evening we went downtown, first to a bar then to catch the fireworks, which were great. After the show we met back up with Darryl’s friends at a bar. I had to catch the 6AM train from Ottawa in order to make it back to Waterloo in time for my afternoon class at 430, so I decided to stay awake all night. On the way home, I only managed to get 3 hours of intermittent sleep. Oh well, all around a great weekend despite the lack of sleep.
