2007-11-12 - 4:56 p.m.
It's been a while since I've posted on here! It sort of seems that every time I post now I spend the first paragraph moaning about how little I post. I guess that's what I get for having a busy but rarely out of the ordinary life. I think that a big part of it is that I spend all day staring at a computer screen and typing, so the last thing that I generally feel like doing is coming home to the do the same thing.
Everything has been going fine, but it's been pretty exhausting. I'm busy nearly every weeknight with all manner of churchy stuff, and work has been super busy of late. We're putting on a conference this weekend, with a speaker coming in from Scotland, and another from Vancouver, and although there is a committee organizing it, a lot of the work has fallen on the office, things like registering people, and selling tickets mostly. It's quite time consuming, and I sometimes get the feeling that the office is somehow to blame if things aren't going that well. Add to this quite a few big, out of the ordinary services recently (All Saints, Remembrance Day) which I get to make up leaflets for, and the job is getting pretty exhausting. I still like it though, but I'm not looking forward to the next couple months leading up to Christmas! All of this has combined to feeling like I needed a weekend away- which I got!
Loyal readers may remember that back in March I spent a lovely evening at a timeshare resort up island, in Parksville. James' parents are owners, and they had offered to book some time for us to go on the long weekend. We've been planning this since August, which is about how far in advance you need to book this resort. It's a nice place. We had a three room suite, with two beds and two hideabeds. There were two bathrooms, three TVs and a little kitchenette. We were on the third floor, looking out over Nanoose Bay to the mainland.
James had gone up on Thursday, and spent an extra evening there, and then Doug, Jeff, Kirk and I joined him Friday night. There are three hot tubs- two outdoor and one indoor, (one is 24 hours)and we made good use of them. We woke up early Saturday, for no good reason, but made the most of it. The resort has a bunch of kayaks, and they are free to use if you're staying there. I've been kayaking once or twice in my life, mostly on Twin Lakes near Rocky, so I wasn't sure what to expect. The weather was wonderful, sunny and not too cold (considering it is November!). When we set off, I was having quite a bit of trouble getting my boat to go in a straight line. I'm used to not being that great at sporty things the first time around, but I thought this was worse than usual. I couldn't figure it out, and had to go in circles to get where I wanted to go. We stopped at some rocks that were below the high tide line, and got out to explore. The rocks weren't exciting, but when I went to get back in, I realized that the back rest of my seat was folded down. I flipped this up, and all of a sudden I could go in a straight line. This minor embarrassment aside, it was fantastic. We were out for an hour and half, just paddling around the bay. There were a couple of bald eagles, right over our heads, not that far up.
The rest of the day was spent cheerfully doing nothing. Actually, the whole weekend was like that. Kirsten and Sherri came up after work on Saturday, and we stayed till Monday morning. It was really nice to get away from the city, get away from normal life, and not have to do anything. We took a trip to Coombes, famous for having the store with the goats on the roof. The goats weren't out, but all the cheap touristy crap was. Not very exciting, really. I would have like to go out kayaking again, but it rained pretty hard all day Sunday, and I didn't have the gear to not get soaking wet, and didn't feel like catching hypothermia.
We left this morning, and stopped by Jeff's parent's place for lunch. They had been away for the weekend too, but that didn't stop Sarah from making a big pot of chili and a carrot cake!
It was a fantastic weekend, although looking back, not too exciting (kayaking aside). I read a lot, which is really what I wanted to do, played some cribbage, and watched the Oilers beat the Flames Saturday night. All in all, a relaxing weekend!
