Is it time for another weekend update? I think it is. Here we go...
I'll start with Canada Day weekend - July 1st. Around that time we had been experiencing severe air quality warnings due to forest fires happening in the province of Quebec. They had been occurring off and on for several weeks and it carried into the holiday weekend.
You could visibly see the smoke and smog in the air and there were a few days that it smelled like a camp fire, even indoors.
To get an idea of the difference, here is a photo on a clear day without a warning (above). I took these photos from my office window.
Canada Day Weekend
We spent Canada Day on Lake Ontario on my cousins boat. The smokey smog was still thick in the air that day and we could feel the effect of it the next morning when we woke up. A few people commented that their lungs felt heavy when they breathed in and out. There was an air show over the water but you could barely even see the plane in the air through the haze. The pilot stopped after only 10 minutes or so.
My cousins birthday is that weekend and his tradition is to host a big deep fry party, which is basically a backyard party where he deep fries a ton of food, including:
French fries or "chips" depending on where you're from, deep fried pickles (delicious), mozzarella sticks, corn dogs and funnel cake.
Everything was very tasty but my chest definitely felt a bit tighter and my heart beat a little funny after eating all that fried food. There were some vegetables that day but not enough to counter the deep fryer.
Mother's Day Weekend
This one is going back a little ways but on Mother's Day weekend we spent the day helping my mom do some yard work in her garden.
My sister made us Caesars when we finished the work. For those of you who don't know, a Caesar is similar to a Bloody Mary but it's oh so much better. Instead of tomato juice it uses a base of Clamato which is a mixture of strained tomato juice with a touch of clam juice. It sounds weird but its pretty incredible actually. Then there is vodka, Tabasco, Worchestershire sauce, salt and pepper, and a rimmer of celery spice.
Garnishes are very big and important with Caesars as well. In this case my sister did a pickle, olive, pickled beet, lime and a shrimp.
We made steaks that day and I cooked them on the BBQ. Notice the hatched char marks on them. Thats Skillz right there.
My wife made her black forest cake again and it was quite delicious.
Average Weekend
On a typical weekend that we don't have plans I would be working on my mudroom project. But before starting I always enjoy a cup off coffee in the morning.
My entertainment is watching the squirrels on the deck taunting my cat and dog.
They sit there on the railing for a bit, or dig in our flower pots and then move into the tree to chirp at the animals.
Speaking of coffee, WTF is with Tim Hortons these days? The quality gets worse and worse everytime I go there.
Now what? They don't even fill your cup up with coffee!?! Twice in two days they only filled the cup 3/4 of the way full. They even print a goddamn fill line right on the cup for fucks sake. Gotta save 2.5 cents per customer I guess right? Fucking corporate jackasses.
Last Weekend
The weekend just passed, we went to the US to a small town where a member of my wifes family has a cottage.
They are about to start renovating the place and asked us to help remove the deck out front and out back.
We spent a few hours on Saturday finishing up the work that was started by my wife's sister and her husband two weeks before.
We ate pizza for lunch that day and my wife took this delightful photo of me putting food in my mouth while three dogs sat staring at me hoping for scraps. Maybe it's the way that I eat that they liked so much?
At night we played this pop trivia game and my wife worked on a puzzle off and on.
They always keep a puzzle going in the house. There is a stack of different boxes that have been collected over the years and when one puzzle is finished they grab a new one to start. That was the just of our weekend. It was fairly simple but ended up being a lot of fun.