Month: August 2010

Last night, Vero and I had date night. She is finished with her theater practices so she has some time for herself. So we decided it was due time to find out what Vars and our surroundings were all about.

We headed over to KC’s Country Inn which is a restaurant/motel/gas station (as it says on the sign near the highway!). We had a feeling that we were not in for fine dining but we didn’t mind. We walked in to find we were the only other couple there for supper. It was classic Canadiana restaurant…vinyl covered chairs, paper placemats with advertisements from local businesses, a menu indicating the specials of the day, and interesting trinkets like Harley Davidson stickers on the fans or statues of people with rifles. It was a perfect example of Canadiana Restaurants.

Before I start off, I can only imagine the menu would go something like this: one page dedicated to pizza, another section having some Italian pasta dishes (are there any other?), some burgers, a sandwich section with the almighty club sandwich, and a section dedicated to liver and onions. Sure enough, that’s exactly what we got! We chatted with the waitress to find out the scoop with the restaurant and she said that a lot of people come in for the liver and onions. I will save that meal for Dad and Mom when they come up!

Vero ordered a pizza (which I convinced her to upgrade to a medium but I failed to have one piece because I was too full) and I had the Veal Parmwich special which came with a soup and some mashed potatoes on the side. It wasn’t anything too special…deep-fried veal covered in spaghetti sauce on a hamburger bun. The pizza looked pretty darn good though. We enjoyed the service and will remember to go to the place another time. Supposedly it’s jam packed for breakfast.

We then headed off driving towards Embrun and felt like getting to know our surroundings. I personally enjoy the look of Embrun, with it’s abundance of pizza shops and about 75 hair salons for a population of 5,000. Vero said “The people want to be beautiful!” We then hooked up towards Limoges (home of the nation’s biggest water park supposedly) and was pleasantly surprised to see that it’s a little bigger than we realized. They had a library and a few stores here and there which is more than Vars has! At least it’s only 8km away.

We toured around Vars a bit to figure out some neat bike routes to take around the country…Vero also introduced me to the trailer park which surprised me in the fact that it wasn’t your typical trailer park at all! Sure, there were some trailers, but the majority of them were small bungalows or really nice trailers. It was a really nice area of Vars and I will never make fun of the trailer park in Vars again! In fact, we were spying a trailer for Mike to purchase. Perfect for a bachelor!

A tour around our new area and some good grub is what I would like to call a perfect night with my lady.

On the luckiest of all days, I wish Mom a good birthday. Here’s to that parade in your honour!

The next day after Amanda’s wedding, we had another wedding to go to…Chantal and Jon’s wedding. Vero was the co-MC at this event for her university friend so I was wondering what kind of time I would have on my own. The beauty of this wedding was that it was quite close to Vars…it was in Embrun which is only 15 minutes away!

If Colin and Becky got married at the most amazing modern church I’ve seen, Chantal and Jon got married at the most amazing older church I have ever seen. Paroisse St-Jacques was built in 1856 and it is beautiful. If you have a chance to take a look inside, do so. I marveled at the architecture and realized that I could never be bored in a church like this whereas I can remember countless times staring at the ceiling fan at St. Mark’s back home. Wait…am I allowed to say that? I bet Mom is going to have a few words with me!

We arrived in time to set a few things up and help pass out the programs. I found out that a colleague’s brother was at the wedding so I’m wondering if he noticed the moustached man handing out programs at the entrance. Speaking of guests…this was the largest wedding I’ve been to this summer. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were 300+ people there…I since found out that that I believe the entire population of Embrum between the ages of 20-25 was invited! May I also point out that there’s something about the French…they are beautiful people!

The ceremony was quite entertaining. The groom is quite the ham and he was joking it up at any opportunity. Chantal was quite beautiful walking down that aisle with sunbeams coming in at the right time of night. The priest had some good words…I especially enjoyed his request that you share at least one meal together each day no matter what, and that you should talk to each other about each others day. Words to live by.

Now, for those of you who don’t know Chantal (and I don’t know her all that well), I think she referred to herself as Bridezilla at one point and I cringed when the acoustic guitar came up front and it was highly distorted but he kept playing without fixing it while the maid of honour sang a song. Not cool man! Readjust those settings no matter what! I felt for the guy though…I would probably be in the same boat thinking “What the heck is going on?!”.

My favourite part of the ceremony was upon exit, Jon dipped Chantal and gave her a smooch. Classy!

We headed over to the local community center and I was well stocked with everything I needed for the night. I believe my trunk looked like the part in Dazed and Confused where they show up and all there is in the trunk is beer and ice! All joking aside, I was not getting screwed over my expensive beer prices again. I also had a couple of flasks tucked away so things were in proper order. However, it was all for naught as I forgot this was a small town wedding where the beer was cheap! $4 was the going price and that’s a fair price for a bottle of beer. We rarely ducked out of the hall to grab a trunk beer and that’s the perfect wedding in my opinion.

We set up the punch bowls and cheese trays, nabbed a table close to the head table and settled in for a long night of speeches. Simon showed up just in time and we sat down while Jean-Francois videotaped the entire event. The beer lineup was insane…I managed to get a few beer for the table after waiting twenty minutes. As soon as I finished one, the speeches started with Melanie, Vero and Marie-Claude handling MC duties. They were quite good and I had a good chuckle once in awhile.

Highlights:
– I thoroughly enjoyed all of the speeches. The best man’s speech was quite hilarious as he called out a few people walking to get a beer instead of listening to him. At the very least, he got someone to get the groom a beer.
– There was an older gentleman who led a sing-along to a popular French wedding song (which I have no idea what it is) but it was a great moment. He said this song has been sung at every wedding he’s ever been to. I am a sucker for tradition.
– The DJ was a hit and miss…he got a lot better by the end of the night but that could be the beer talking. The dance floor was rocking all night long though. That’s what you get when your average age in the joint is 23 years old.
– Jon had to perform a series of tasks before he could attempt to remove the garter belt. It was quite hilarious as he had to re-enact a scene from Romeo and Juliet, identify body parts of his wife from pictures (at this point he knocked the laptop off the table. Ouch!) and a few other things that had everyone in stitches.
– Jean-Francois was acting out a scene from Taxi Driver “You talking to ME?” which was quite hilarious and that was the running gag all night long.
– Vero sneaking her head under people’s dresses!

I was disappointed for the night to end, but happy to hear that the groom and bride were having such a great time that they announced an after-party at someone’s house. I was riled up and ready to go but the others along with me were quite tired so we headed home for the night and I had a hot tub before going to bed. Actually, I shaved my moustache off before going to bed. That was the mark of the end of wedding season. 🙁

Two very enthusiastic thumbs up for Chantal and Jon’s wedding! It was off the hook and I’m pretty sure everyone went to bed quite happy.

Friday brought us to the Ottawa Golf and Hunt Club for Amanda and Nic’s wedding. I must admit that it was the first time even hearing about a Hunt Club in Ottawa and I then realized that this is clearly the reason there is a Hunt Club Road in Ottawa! Then I got to thinking about how streets are named…I mean, there’s a Riverside in every town with a river, there is always a King and Queen Street…what other common ones are there?

The Ottawa Golf and Hunt Club opened its doors to the public a few years ago (for wedding bookings only) as it’s quite the prestigious club. So prestigious that the golfers could zoom by on their carts in behind the little wedding ceremony. You would think they would block that part of the pathway off!

We arrived and found our way into the back by following the Hickey Family. They seemed to know where they were going. It was a small wedding…no more than fifty guests and Amanda and Nic seemed to have a great time. The ceremony was short and sweet, and we all wondered if someone was going to take a tumble down the long flight of stairs outside! At one point I swore the archway was going to blow away but it well anchored.

Amanda and Nic gave me the honour of being their MC…they said it would be fairly easy…introduce some people and show people where the washroom is. Nothing to it! I made sure I knew the proper pronunciation of people’s names…if there is one pet peeve at a wedding, it’s when an officiant cannot pronounce a person’s name! That’s their job, damn it! I was armed with my handy dandy cheat sheet of the schedule of things should work out. Unbeknownst to me, it was up to me to keep things on schedule so I missed the cue on the parents speeches…ah well. Amanda and Nic seemed quite laid back at the wedding…no stress at all. Nothing phased them. My only major mishap of the evening was when I spilled some woman’s glass of water (wine?) on the table. Gah. That was not cool. Now everyone thinks the MC is drunk whereas I was taking it easy. Oh well, time to give’r at Table Six and gave’r we did. Table Six definitely had the best time out of all the tables.

Good speeches were had, good food was had, and the waitress even smuggled in some extra wine for us (kidding Amanda!). We then continued on with the classics…cake cutting, first dance, etc. We owned the dance floor although the old timers asked that the music be turned down so they could talk to each other. I believe weddings should have MSN Messenger installed at each table so those who don’t want to rock out can text each other!

Some highlights:
– Finding out that the DJ was a firefighter by day and that he once came to a wedding with his suit on. I also found out that the largest wedding he ever played to was around 5,000 people up in the Yukon. That is…insanely awesome. He was also mentioning how on Saturday he would be playing to a wedding of 1,500 people. I can’t even fathom a wedding that large. I believe the largest wedding I have been to was Dwayne and Wendy’s and if memory serves me right…it was over 200…maybe over 300 people?
– The youth owning the dance floor all night long.
– Sneaking some skis to the gift table. Classic wedding gift right there…skis. I’m all about the prank gift!

Non-highlights:
– Spilling that woman’s drink
– Paying through the teeth once again for drinks at the bar! Arghhh. $7 for a BOTTLE of beer. Give me a break. Once again, I didn’t have the chance to load up the car as I was coming straight from work. I would not allow this to happen again!

It was definitely the smallest wedding I’ve been to but that didn’t take away from the night at all! Met some fun people and had some fun times.

Congrats to Amanda and Nic!

Last night I had quite the birthday party. Before I start, for all of those who called to wish me birthday wishes, thank you! I will give you a call back tonight. I found it strange that I missed my parents call considering we were home when they called.

The craziest gift I have ever received in my life was bestowed upon me last night…Vero bought us a drum kit! Fantastic! I had a good laugh at Mike who had to brave torrential downpours to bring the drum kit over. A true friend indeed!

We had a small group of people show up for my birthday and all was good in the world when the rain stopped for awhile so I could get outside to BBQ some sausages and burgers. Yummers!

Supper was prepared by my two favourite girls from Hearst; Vero and Melissa. We had an excellent feed of corn, meat on the BBQ and an orange cake which hands down rivaled my own mother’s. Melissa was doubtful if she could beat my mom in the cake making business but she hit it on the nail (although she admitted that the icing was a little off as we had run out of powdered sugar and she had to resort to actual sugar). It was delicious and it brought me back to the days of having orange cake for each birthday!

Vero had to run to a theater practice for a few hours so we attempted to assemble the drum kit without any instructions as there were none with the kit. Rob and Mike managed to assemble most of the kit while Melissa and I struggled putting the bass drum together and then we realized that Mike’s definition of the front of the drum and our definition of the front of the drum were different so we had to take it all apart again so that the label would be in the right place.

Krista, Ben and Trish left shortly after cake and the rest of us headed to the hot tub for a dip.

Other highlights:
– Trish passing me an olive branch in purchasing a book about Bono (she loathes Bono).
– Carrie rushing around last night to get a picture of me developed and put into a frame. Classic photo of me from the cottage party weekend.
– The freaking drum kit!

Thanks to all who made it out and special thanks to Melissa and Vero for making it an amazing night!

It’s been awhile since we could go to Katie’s cottage for a full weekend so it was gearing up to the event of the summer judging from the amount of people invited to the event!

We picked up Carrie and instead of sitting in traffic for a billion hours, we decided to get our grocery/beer/dinner shopping done. We ended up going to Istanbouli’s Schwarma for dinner and it was excellent as always. It would have been good to know that they moved onto Parkdale though!

The trip was fairly uneventful other than hearing about Carrie’s decision to move to Berlin. We were quite excited to hear this as Carrie has been talking about moving abroad for approximately ten years! I can’t believe it’s actually happening!

We arrived and the party was in FULL force. At 11PM, you can only expect to encounter a few people who have been drinking all day. Katie was quite happy to see us and I believe the entire lake heard her! The rest of the night descended into campfire antics, skinny dipping by some, and all around happiness as we have been away from each other for a long time. There was a full complement on hand this weekend: Katie, Wilkins, Paul, Sarah, Lydia, Sabrina, Pete, Adrianna, Karen, Tania and Val with new boyfriend in tow!

Saturday was our day of getting breakfast ready. French toast was on deck and everyone loved us for it. I really enjoy Katie’s schedule for food items. Instead of everyone bringing their own food, they are tasked with a meal (and maybe an appetizer during the day). So there is usually a breakfast, afternoon snack and a supper and people go all out…we aren’t talking about just any burgers on the BBQ…we are talking mega-burgers made with love, and corn and whatever else you love in the world.

We decided to try and swim across the lake. I must admit that it was always a goal of mine and figured it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. Katie was smart enough to have some people canoe next to us in case we ran into trouble. The first quarter was going fine although I was basically doggy-paddling the trip…no intense swimming on a cottage weekend! By the time we got to the other side, I was quite winded but not down for the count. The trip back was a pain in the ass as my leg was cramping up so it was hard to swim any longer. Then the current was taking us off course most of the time.

By the time we got back, there was some good appetizers happening and Val and her new boyfriend Jamie had arrived. We chatted music and best albums of all time and he was quite entertaining to chat with.

The rest of the night brought us an amazing dinner, a game of Werewolf and we finally put on Shark Attack 3: Megaladon. It was described to me as the ‘worst movie ever, but so bad that it’s good.’ I love a good b-movie so we were entertained by bad overdubbing, incredulous situations of sharks attacking and what can only be described as the single most ridiculous line uttered in any film. Ever. Really. It was THAT ridiculous. So the movie went over the top awesome after that point and it was definitely the hit of the weekend. Talks of Sharks Attacking were mentioned at every moment.

Sunday has us load up the canoe for an epic trip. Adrianna, Tania and I were in one of them, Carrie and Vero in the other and Sarah was in the kayak. We weren’t planning on going too far until I realized that we could probably try and make it to the fabled beer bottle in the tree. However, Philipp was the last one to see it so I have no idea where he placed it on the river. So we gave’r for awhile, went over a few beaver dams “Ride! RIDE!” and eventually gave up the quest for the beer bottle in a tree. Plus, our beer supply was dwindling so it was time to go back.

Seeing that it was late afternoon, I decided to haul out the guitar to entertain the masses while others played a game of Koob. My hands were cramping up quite badly from the swim yesterday and the canoeing that afternoon. I had to power through a couple of hours of playing, but the crowd loved it. Vero even got on the plastic pail as the drums and it was excellent! The voice was shot, my hands were shot…it was time to call it a day!

That evening we watched [REC] which is an interesting horror movie. I can’t say it was over the top awesome, but the concept was neat. It deals with an apartment building which ends up in quarantine and even the rescue officials don’t know what the heck is going on while they are trapped inside it. It’s all filmed with a news camera so it has that ‘shaky-cam’ feel. Not over the top amazing, but there were a few scary spots.

The next morning we packed up and headed home after a weekend of amazing sun and fun! Thanks once again to Katie for the amazing weekend!