N turned an ungodly age this past weekend. Here is N with his birthday pie!
Neil and I decided it was time, once again, to load up the truck and camp for one night this weekend. So we decided to head out to Sibbald Point on Lake Simcoe mainly because it was within an hour and a half drive of Toronto.
To make the trip even shorter, we spent the night at my aunt and uncle's in Bradford Friday night. This is going to sound ridiculous -- but Neil and I both got severe sunburns while sitting on their back deck Saturday morning before we left for our camp site. Have a look:
Nasty!
Anyhow, we did manage to have a pretty good time while camping but it wouldn't be "our so-called life" if things went smoothly. Naturally there were a few hiccups on our trip.
The first being that we had reserved a site in advance, painstakingly handpicked by Neil and I to ensure close (but not too close) proximity to washrooms, water, etc.... When we arrived, we found a group of 6-8 teenaged girls camped on our site. Being the reasonable people we are, we drove around looking to see if we could come up with another site to take... but in the end, we decided to drive back to the camp office and complain. There weren't any nice sites left and we had paid a $12 non-refundable reservation fee by booking in advance.
When we got to the camp office, there were 2 girls from our site already there attempting to move?? or trying to register our site?? I'm not sure... but we were told to give them some time and that they would have to move. Neil and I agreed to this plan and then went off to explore the beach and wander around. Naturally, because this is Neil and I, and we seem to have "SUCKERS" tattooed to our foreheads, when we got back to our site -- over an hour later, the girls were still there and there had been no attempt to take down their tent. So back to the camp office we headed only to be told that the girls couldn't move because one of their cars was dead and it would be at least another hour and a half until a tow truck could come to move their car... (we think they killed the battery playing music...) Absolutely ridiculous!!
So the camp office gave us our $12 reservation fee, offered us an electrical site for no extra charge and gave us profuse apologies. We ended up taking a different site in a "radios banned" area which may have been a blessing as this park had loud and rowdy campers. Given that the sites were pretty picked over, I actually didn't mind the site we ended up with. My only complaint was that it was a fair hike to the washrooms which is not very appealing when you have to make the journey in the pitch black night. **
Finally, we were able to set up camp. After we had our site set up, we took off and walked the perimeter of the park (which was very large) and by the time we got back it was time to get a fire roaring!! The camp grounds themselves were pretty nice. The beach wasn't great but the water was clean and clear and that's always a plus. We hadn't packed for swimming so it didn't matter. I think after camping in BC, our expectations for what a camp site should be are pretty high and this one was only ok. Great for one night, but I wouldn't want to stay any longer.
Overall, the highlights were:
**To be fair to the park staff, we were very pleased to note that the park warden drove up to our new site later in the evening to offer another apology over the earlier hassle AND to bring us 2 bags of wood (a $14 value).
Just so you know, we live half a block north of St. Clair between Bathurst and Spadina. The grocery store mentioned in the article is a 3 minutes walk from our place and we shop there frequently. Neil takes the subway to work from there... read on here.
I've been super busy lately. Work has been non-stop and the classes I've been in have been keeping me hopping. That is the good news. The bad news is that I had that interview I mentioned a few posts back and found out today that I did not get the grade 8 position for next year. No one did... yet. They interviewed a bunch of people and found us all lacking -- so they are going to keep searching. I took some consolation in that. In a way, I'm not too upset because this class was going to be a handful. I think that was the biggest factor in their decision -- they wanted someone with experience dealing with difficult classrooms and didn't find anyone that fit the bill. The principal actually told me they had concerns that this class could break a new teacher and they wanted to ensure they got someone strong enough to be able to deal with it. Not that I don't think I could have hacked it, but it probably wouldn't have been a very pleasant year. I subbed at this school, a couple of weeks ago, and it was a pretty rough day.
It is a touch discouraging that my teaching experience in BC doesn't seem to amount to anything here. I have to pretty much start over trying to make connections/contacts because experience seems to amount to nothing. On the other hand, why sweat the stuff you have no control over. Neil's job in Toronto is temporary and I know I will be doing this all over again in another year or two so all I can do is go with the flow. Subbing isn't all that bad, 6AM call-outs aside.
I'm going to try to get back to posting semi-regularly here. We have found ourselves swept up in the Facebook phenomenon and my blog has suffered as a result.
We have nothing too exciting planned for the weekend -- except to shop for some patio furniture. We have a kick-ass patio with a pretty decent view. Time to pimp the space out. As expected, Neil is thrilled. There is nothing he'd rather do than shop.
Oh, and my brother gets his black belt in Tae Kwon Do and graduates grade 8 this month. Any suggestions for a kick-ass gift that could be applied towards both accomplishments.
Sometimes Boring. Usually Lame. Yet still blogworthy. At least we tell ourselves it is!!