I know this will make me sound old and unable to adjust to how things are done these days. That's okay, I am, after all, hoping to see a "spinster" box to tick on forms instead of Mrs. Ms. Miss - because, seriously, miss?
Yesterday, I had 45 minutes before my next flight after I cleared customs and straightened out boarding passes and all, so I went to the Maple Leaf Lounge in Montreal. To my utter delight, that lounge has a designated cell phone free zone. Sure, there were people emailing on blackberries and texting and I had my laptop open, but one of the things I have always hated about the lounges is the legion of self important little men in cheap suits shouting their importance into portable communication devices.
Two minutes after I sat down, of course one of these conversations started up. I, being a big chicken, just sat there and seethed. Some other dude, in a less cheap suit no less, took one of the many cell phone free zone signs that were on all the tables and placed it in front of the phone shouter and asked him if he could see. The offender took off in a huff, phone in hand.
My faith in the suits is restored.
(Also? Swiss upgraded me to business class on an eight hour flight. That *never* happens to me on Air Canada.)
And lookit that, it's fall already. Well, maybe when I monkey with the saturation levels on a picture, the fall part is very dramatic, but still... summer? over. Sigh.
That picture, by the way, is from a float down the Beaver River from Heathcote in a 14' Necky kayak with a giant cockpit and no sprayskirt. No sprayskirt = damp lap the entire time. The trip itself is fine. In the upper reaches, there are a few beaver dams and logjams that require a bit of wiggling and/or rocking - hence the rental shorter plastic boat is a better call than a 19' glass sea kayak. That section was reminiscent of the Minesing Swamp. You don't really want to get out of the boat here, since it's all ankle-sucking muck and slippy banks. In the lower reaches, it gets a bit boring after a while - lazy meanders and cows and geese. There is one so-called rapid, with a big red warning sign on the river. You would be overstating the case to call it Class I.
Still, a pretty fun way to spend a Sunday. More fun than, say, sitting in my backyard taking a screwdriver to the non-functioning part of my vacuum cleaner (no success, but then, we don't really expect success when I take a screwdriver to anything), which is what I did for part of Saturday. And, realistically, I best get to liking these sorts of daytrips because that's all I'll have time for in the coming months. Summer is over. Sigh.
