Civic Long Weekend Report

Only 18 more days left.

I think after the next 18 days, I will be relieved more than anything. I wanted to enjoy the planning part. I wanted to be excited and enthusiastic. All this lead up has been a load of stress and worry and some disappointment. I’m sure after it’s all over I will look back on this circus fondly… but for now, I just want to be on the beach, glad that it’s all done.

Friday:
- Worked from home so that we could leave early and drive to Waterloo to pick up a special order and buy Mike a new pair of sandals. We were in and out in under an hour. Got to see Barb again which was awesome, and chatted with Jason a bit about his wedding in Costa Rica (at the Hacienda el Fuego Papagayo?)
- Drove straight to London in order to stop at St. Peter’s before the parish office closed for the weekend. Dropped off our marriage license and left our program for Fr. Callistus to check over when he’s not feeling so under the weather. Also made sure we had all our ducks in order for the ceremony. Good news is that the scaffolding is gone and the church is as beautiful as ever. After the church we stopped at the Tourism London office and picked up some calendars and tourist guides. Then we drove to the Shanghai Restaurant to hand over a 4” stack of $20 bills to pay the balance of our deposit. That really hurt… ouch. After that we drove to the Rayner Rose Gardens again and explored a bit further into the park part of it. Found some nice trails that essentially look like Westminster Ponds, a little rock garden and found that it backed onto Springbank Park. I still don’t like this place as much as Westminster Ponds, but I guess Mike is right that we can get more “different types” of pictures at one place there. No water unfortunately - just the Thames which is brown and yucky and blocked off by a fence. Then we drove to my uncle’s place to drop off my rings for him to fix. The last stop in London was home where we left our box of favours, our picture screen and the card box.
- Continued on to Sarnia. Had fish and chips at Purdy’s Fishery with Mike’s dad and Deb. There were a lot of gay people there. I guess since Sarnia really doesn’t have any other minorities, that makes it even somehow. What gay people and fish have in common, well, that stumps me.

Saturday:
- We went to Shoppers to stock up on Mexico meds (you know… Immodium, Tums, Gravol…) and somehow ended up spending $80+! It adds up so quickly! Then we stopped at Mike’s grandfather’s place for a visit. After that we headed to Sarnia’s only mall for some more errands. I was able to find a pair of white shoes for my tea ceremony dress and got them on sale to boot (yay!). We bought notecards, plain hair pins and wrapping paper as well. Then we met up with Mike’s brother and we all went to the beach with Mike’s dad. Sarnia is a really nice place to chill out… so close to the beach you could walk there. I never had that growing up – we always had to drive to Grand Bend and then fight the crowds along the boardwalk. We had BBQ salmon for dinner and then watched a stupid movie (Forget Paris? Something like that. It was lame.)

Sunday:
- We went shopping at the LCBO for ideas on what kinds of drinks to buy for the reception. There are so many coolers and mixed drinks now! We had a list a mile long and finally decided that our line up should look like this: Mott’s Caesars, Strongbow, Smirnoff Ice, Vex of some kind, and a Baccardi Breezer of some kind. As for beer, we will have a light beer, a pilsner and an ale… specifically Coors Light, Labatt Blue and Alexander Keiths.
- Headed to Mike’s mom’s place and had a birthday dinner for his stepdad. They always over-feed us there. For dinner we had really thick steaks, side ribs, grilled veggies, potatoes and bread. Not to mention all lot of wine and other drinks. We walked to watched the sunset at the beach and then walked back for cheesecake.

Monday:
- Had leftover steak in a wrap for brunch and watched a few episodes of Flip this House before we headed back to London to help my dad paint the garage.
- First we stopped at The Shoe Company and after trying almost every dress shoe in the store, found Mike a new pair that don’t (so far) hurt his feet. Next we went to Tip Top Tailors to sort out the tuxedo situation. I have never seen so much disorganization between store branches before. We have 3 guys who still need to order their tuxes before the end of the week or else they’ll be charged an extra rush order fee. Boo.
- While Mike helped my dad sand and paint, I spent a good deal of time sorting through the junk in my brother’s old room deciding what part of it were mine and what I wanted to keep or toss. Lots of high school memories in there, though my memory is fuzzy sometimes.
- A bunch of relatives stopped by and we ducked out to go home. We drove back and went straight to Pho Mi 99 for dinner. I ate too much there… but if you ever get the chance, order the “special crab soup”… it is so good!

So that was my weekend. I'm getting exhausted just recounting it. Congratulations for getting through it all.