Katie’s Cottage Weekend

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!