A Happy Easter Weekend

Hello everyone. Compared to last Easter, this one is kicking some serious ass. My grandmother came over for a visit this weekend. It was fun to have her visit the apartment. She was impressed with all the gadgetry her financial gift allowed me to purchase as well as by the building in general. Now, she has some sense of what my living circumstances will be for the foreseeable future. Last year, right around now, I was enjoying another Easter weekend confident that I was well on my way to marrying Janene. I'll doubtless always think of her around Easter time. So much love, trust and respect built up over two years just tossed aside. So much opportunity for a future at least a little closer to the kind I had hoped for and still hope for eventually. I know I'll live an enjoyable life here. There'll be friends, social gatherings to go to, family close at hand, and provided I stay disciplined about it, no extreme financial worries. I definitely won't be starving any time soon. Once you've experienced love, however, even if it has ended in failure, there's just no going back. That sense of incompleteness and wasted potential for good just doesn't go away. It retretes for a while and then returns in force in all too frequent moments of silence and solitude. What does change for the better is one's ability to get past that and enjoy life's blessings. Tomorrow ought to be another excellent day. There's a lot going on at church including games night which I haven't attended in a while. Life does indeed move on. There are simply a lot of days where it does so all too slowly. But I get ahead of myself. I really meant to start with thursday.

On thursday, Dan came over with his family. Ava and Amia were getting into some nifty April Fools action. They had put toothpaste inside some Oreo cookies to fool Dan. I think he suspected something but went along anyhow. They brought a cake over for their grandfather who soon discovered that the cake was a cardboard box covered in icing and decorations. Everyone had a good laugh. Ava and Amia were as full of energy as ever. I think they overwelmed their great grandmother a tad. They got their Easter bunnies early as well as some rather different eggs. These were made of different colours of sidewalk chalk. They certainly got tried out on our driveway and seemed to please Ava and Amia. That night, we went to Score's for an excellent dinner.

Whenever my grandmother visits, you can bet there'll be at least one outing to a casino. This time, there were two. After an early rise and therefore quite relaxed morning, they came by the apartment to get me. I went in expecting to lose twenty dollars and this was precisely what transpired over a couple of hours. Chance favoured none of us that day. We went back to my parents' house for a rather ordinary lunch. I had been looking forward to a meal out either at the casino or perhaps a stop at Symposium when we walked there. As things turned out, neither of those occurred. Dad, my grandmother and I walked over there to show her my GPS in action and then simply turned right around heading back. Dad and I get along quite well but I find that I increasingly run into places like this where he just doesn't have the same view of what makes a day special. It would have been great to actually go in, have a drink and rest a bit. Dad just tends to always want to get home from things. In fairly short order, I should be able to get there myself and have at least one place where I can simply choose to stay if I like. One of the reasons I don't tend to gamble is so I have some spare money to enjoy hanging around a place like Symposium. It looks like it'll be a special spot for me for years to come. The first place I learned to get to safely where I made enough of a difference to be remembered by the staff there. It would have meant something to stop there so my grandmother could have gotten more of a sense of the place than just going up to the door. That just seems to be how things go though. It's one of the ways I feel increasingly divided from how my family does things. For most of my life, I've had to deal with the reality that I've nearly always been on someone else's schedule when travelling anywhere. I've had to leave an event when whoever took me there felt that it was time to go. That was one of the big reasons why New Year's Eeve parties with friends became so meaningful to me.

Mark and Wendy are two people who seem to have some sense of this sort of thing. I always enjoy visits and outings with them. They like to soke up whatever place we go to. I guess it's partly just that they're still in their thirties and my father isn't. Same with the church people I'm beginning to know. They're certainly a busy lot but still manage to truly enjoy a good time without there being an almost audible timer ticking down in their heads. A part of my sense of this has to be a product of the unusual circumstances society has seen fit to put me in where I have vastly more time at my disposal than most people but find it so hard to go to many places. I'm aware enough to have a sense of the kinds of experiences I could have but paradoxically can't enjoy alone.

At least in this immediate area, that will all start to change over the next while. I'm beginning to find new friends who seem interested in doing things with me who are astonishingly close enough to easily arrange this. It won't be an imposition to come and get me. Also, now that I've got a couple of the bus stops in my GPS, people can come to see me and I can get them safely back to my apartment. Admittedly, there will then be the bus schedule to contend with. Eventually, I may take yet another crack at getting better with bus routes. That's at least a couple of years off though. First comes everything within walking distance. Now that I'm here for what could be the rest of my life, it actually makes sense to put in the time.

Getting back to my apartment for the afternoon seemed like the best idea. Everyone else seemed ready to nap or rest anyhow. I figured I'd get a coke and go out onto my balcony for the afternoon. I brought out the netbook complete with lapdesk and speakers to test out how well it would all work while I didn't have an actual table out there. I went back to retrieve the full glass of coke classic I had poured and put ice in. That was where things took a turn for the worse. I misjudged where the glass was by a little and knocked it backwards on the corner of my desk where I had left it. The good fortune so conspiculusly absent at the casino stood me in miraculously good stead here. The torrent of coke was first thwarted by the paper towels I usually keep weighted down by the soapstone bear ready to deal with what are usually minor spills at my desk. These towels absorbed and slowed the coke in its headlong rush for the cable-rich area behind my desk. The Shamwow which I keep ready to hand also did an utterly astounding job here. Unless you face a circumstance like that, you'd just never believe how effective the things are. I spent around an hour I had looked forward to relaxing in cleaning up all that cola. Miraculously, I seem to have succeeded to the point where mom couldn't see any remaining for her to wipe up. Note to self; Next time, take the coke out first and stash it safely in a corner of the balcony out of the way. In dire need to relaxation at this point, I went out with a fresh coke and sat on a lawnchair. Sadly, I soon discovered that my lapdesk wouldn't work due to the arms of the lawnchair and the cable of my USB speakers was too short to have them rest on the balcony with the netbook on my lap. Before I spend any serious time out there, I'll need a set of patio furnature with enough weight so that wind won't blow it right off over the railing. I eventually got my small netbook case which doubles as a lapdesk. This doesn't allow for the speakers but at least rendered the netbook and WIFI adapter useable. The adapter worked splendidly in tandum with my new router giving me terrific Internet speed. I got CBC Radio1 streaming perfectly via Winamp and put up with the less than stellar sound of my netbook's built-in speakers while at last enjoying an ice cold Coke Classic. It'll be a great setup when I have a table to asemble everything on. As it was, I didn't stay out all that long. It's just a whole lot easier to enjoy oneself seeted in comfort in front of a desktop PC with Bose Companion3 speakers, plenty of room for a drink and nothing precariously pirched.

Later that evening, we went to Jim and Carol's for dinner. That was a very good meal. The cardboard cake made another levity-causing appearance. Before they started watching TV shows and playing cards, they brought me back to my apartment. I don't take an interest in either the particular shows they like or in card games. Both activities tend to somewhat inhibit conversation. My old friend Minney phoned so I spent some time out on the balcony while talking to her. She seems to be doing well but be very busy. I have some faint hope of her visiting within the year. I don't intend that to sound as crass as it might. She's just one of those people who never finds the time. Life sweeps her along as she tries hard to make ends meet. She's the only friend who I've kept in touch with from the Clearview church. Thank goodness I seem to be doing quite a lot better at the Meadowvale CRC in the friendship department. It makes a substantial difference.

Today was another very good day. I ended up breaking even at the casino so I effectively only lost twenty dollars. I'd have paid that to treet to a meal or go somewhere else on an outing with family so I don't mind that. We took my grandmother to Bright Ontario where she'll visit her sister Kay for a while. We had a good lunch there. She was happy to hear about my new apartment. Coming back to the apartment, I soon heard from Fernando. He had tried to call me from his balcony but another person on the ground was also talking to me so I didn't figure out that it was him and wasn't even certain until later that he spoke to me. However, I called him on the off chance that he had. That was fortuitous. He brought over some beef and chicken he had barbecued along with some salad. He's a splendid cook. I enjoyed an impromptu early dinner and treeted him to a couple of beers. It felt great to have him over for a good talk and a couple of drinks like that. Our conversation was pretty wide-ranging and most enjoyable. I look forward to many more such with him and his family. After Fernando left, I tidied up a little and then though to open my balcony door. It got quite windy this evening. Standing out there with so much air moving around was rather neat. I must confess to have been sorely tempted to get one of those Glad garbage bags and let it rore off propelled by one of the strong gusts. Of corse, such acts are sublime when contemplated but lose their lustour once perpetrated. I know I would have worried that the bag might have made someone else's day more difficult than necessary. Still, it doubtless would have sounded nifty.