I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA!

Sunday was a little more straightforward... we all got in the car just after 3:30 p.m. to get to Ottawa. I got my Game Boy Advance and CD case ready but left them on the fricking kitchen table, so I just read a bit of the Cowboy Bebop manga on the way down to Ottawa, about a two hour drive from Pincourt... well, slightly less than that, but you have to take into account navigating the streets in eastern Ottawa, around the Merivale and airport areas, sort of a medium-density built up area with a lot of "campuses" for various computer giants as well as the usual strip malls and franchises, though this seems to be a bigger "maze" of them than, say, Pointe Claire here in Montreal. I got a cheap thrill from the signs for a convenience store chain that said "Quickie"... I have a dirty, juvenile mind. Before I say anything else, I do have to say the Cowboy Bebop manga is much better than I heard. I guess a lot of anime fans don't like it so much because it has too much comic relief compared to the series, but I thrive on comic relief. We got our car to her apartment (well, more of a 3 storey multiplex, which she shares with a couple of freinds) just before 6 p.m. My father needed some Scotch tape to do a temporary repair on our Hyundai Sonata, as the little black panel at the corner of the rear left window had come off somehow, and it was making a terrible rattling. Alison opened her birthday presents while I played with her cat, who's much smaller, skinnier and less hairy than our own tabby, but she has a long tail and looks almost like a cat from Egyptian art. She is very shy, but I found a blue, fluffy cat toy attached to a string and I did mangage to get her to come for me, take one swipe and then run away several times.

Since we didn't have too long, we took Alison away to the car, and she drove us to the nearby Red Lobster... except there was a line-up outside. Meh... I was wondering if she could drive us to the Red Lobster wherein we ate birthday dinner last year, but she thought it was too far. (It wasn't too far before... never mind...) So we (well, she) decided to go to the Swiss Chalet across the street, which was still fairly busy for a Sunday evening but not full. I'm not the world's biggest Swiss Chalet fan, but they do decent food. I had fried pierogis for an appetizer, and I had to test both my father's and sister's Cokes to make sure they were diets because my father's now diabetic (I hope I at least have 2 decades left of sweet candy goodness before I have to worry about that). My father's certainly was diet, my sister's... indeterminable, so we had the waitress take it away and bring her a new one. For my main course, I didn't feel like either chicken or ribs, so I just had a beef burger, which was actually very tasty... well, I guess this is a proper restaurant with waitresses, so they have professionals cook the burger. My father had some sauteed mushrooms as a side dish but they were still cold under the surface layer, so he got a little huffed, but they took it away and microwaved it for two mintues and everything was just fine. After dinner, I wanted to walk over to the nearby Blockbuster and get a bottled soft drink for the ride home, but my sister said they had cans of Coke at the apartment, so I waited... We got back to her place, and had her birthday cake, which was cherry chi[ with jam... very pleasant, but I was full, so I only had a tiny slice. We left Ottawa around 9 p.m. and had a long, boring ride home. I tried watching my TV a couple of times, but there weren't any decent stations I could pick up, and, obviously, it was too dark to read manga, so I flirted with unconsciousness in the front passenger seat. And, when we got back, well, our two dogs had left us several "presents" all over the basement, but only on the carpet, not the laundry room floor, so it's harder to clean and smelled like the washrooms at some campsites. Also, I had aciddentally forgotten (well, we remembered on the way to Ottawa, but it was too late) that my cat was still in my bedroom, since she was snoozing on the bed, so she had scratched at the carpet by the door, pulling it up and making the bedroom door hard to open. At least she didn't pee or crap anywhere in my room, or at least anywhere I found.

That's about it...

Oh, I did download and watch the first episode of the live action Sailor Moon and it is, as I expected, a lot of cheesy fun... maybe I'll have more comments tomorrow or some other time. Good night!

posted by Steve Brandon @ 8:57 AM