Take me back to old New Brunswick

What a weekend!

1_2_ready_go and I spent the weekend in New Brunswick visiting with family and friends, traveling on Aeroplan points thanks to our house's canny (and common) ability to suck money out of our accounts.

Awake at 5am Saturday, walk to the subway -- with the legally required stop at McDonald's of course -- and here we goooooo!!! (thanks Zach!)

Saturday saw us:

• fly to Saint John
• get our rental car - a Mazda 5, for those curious
• get lunch at the Saint John Superstore
• drive to Fredericton
• visit simplisticton and purplemartini and their chilluns Z and K
• drive to Scotch Lake, which is out past Mactaquac Dam, outside Fredericton, to stay with Vin's mom
• eat too much

Sunday saw us:

• eat breakfast at the Diplomat (the (in?)famous 24-hour Chinese-ish-and-Canadian restaurant beside the SheratonDelta
• go for a 40-minute run (Vinny only)
• Visit the UNB campus and walk around in the throes of nostalgia (Cam only)

Visiting campus was fun. I walked around Head Hall, the engineering and computer-science building, which really consists of a Frankenstein's Monster combination of many different additions. The biggest building on campus, I think. Anyway, I wandered around the newest piece, the Information Technology Centre (ITC), which didn't exist yet when I was attending UNB. I found various familiar professors' names on doors -- they had been moved out of the crappy older bits of the building once brand new offices were built -- and I also spotted something else familiar: a Safe Space sticker.

When I was at UNB, I (along with a couple queer-friendly administrators) started the UNB Safe Space program. Stickers on office doors to say you're cool with the queer kids. Fredericton went through some rough times in the late 90s for us GLBTQ* types (phobic mayor, nasty letters to the editor, freaking-out residence Don, blah blah blah) so it was a fight back tool. I'm still a little thrilled each time I visit the site and see that it's still in operation, although I think it's fairly quiet now -- once there were many stickers out there, it's hard to do much else I guess.

Next I visited Memorial Hall, the campus theatre where I sacrificed at least a half point of my GPA over four years or so. No regrets! The theatre itself was locked, but the rest of the building was open so I wandered around, clearly the only soul in the building (this was 10am on a Sunday of a long weekend during the summer) and yet free to wander. I love Fredericton. Anyway, I wasn't able to break into the theatre by any of the many ways I knew, sadly. I wandered the basement and into the utility areas that led to the Green Room under the stage, and the stupid room was locked. (as it should be, really. Drunken theatre junkies make messes.) I did see through the door's window that old Theatre UNB production posters have been mounted on the walls of the Green Room under plexiglass, including in a nice high spot my show Lilies (yes, the John Greyson movie one). Yay! That made me pleased too.

Truth be told, I could have wandered campus for another two hours without getting bored, so next time we visit I'll have to try to make it a weekday so I can visit people I know. Maybe Vin can plan a two-hour run or something. But it was time to pick him up from his run by this point, so here we goooooo!!!


• off to find samosas (which are only assembled correctly in Fredericton -- I don't claim to understand, and I don't claim authenticity, I only claim absolute truth. Is that too much?)
• next to Memere and Pepere's house. Say hello, refuse food several times, and fail to fix the allegedly universal remote control (Cam only)
• off to Future Shop to find a better universal remote control without any USB-ness (Vinny's grandparents are not in the target market for Harmony remotes)
• remote works, first try. yay!
• O'Dell Park (no more fenced-in deer!)
• Superstore (low-fat but let's be serious not really healthy either coffee cake!)
• Ben and Jackie's for another quick visit
• back to Scotch Lake for dinner

On the way back, we passed a small cemetery, which has been there for many years. Except this time, there was a brand new cheap pinewood box sitting by the road, approximately the shape of a casket delivery box, if there is such a thing. We did not stop to investigate.

Monday included lots of tiredness, a drive back to Saint John, enduring a bit of inanity on TV, some tasty Chinese-ish food, and now we sit in the airport bored to tears. Damn you Aliant and your wifi hotspot that is neither free nor linked to any other hotspot systems!

Update later: On the approach to YYZ, around 9:30pm Eastern, we had the lovely sight of hundreds of towns, cities, and backyards setting off fireworks for Victoria Day! Nothing is so lovely as seeing an entire metro area twinkle and sparkle quite like that.

Hope everyone else's weekend was fun!