Kanata Sports Club Party Team

This year, I am playing for the Kanata Sports Club team in the Glen Cairn Men’s Fastball League.  They are not very good but really like to party.  We go to the Sports Club to have chicken wings after every game.

Of course, Laura came to the game when she was visiting.  She made friends with all of the guys in the Sports Club after the game.  They thought she had the most interesting life.

Laura couldn’t believe how much beer the guys would drink and still drive home.

Coffee with Stan

Laura wanted to hang out with me the whole time she was visiting.  She even wanted to hang out with me when I went for coffee with Stan.  So the three of us sat in the Barrhaven Second Cup and Laura found out how boring Stan and I were.  She never would have believed it if she hadn’t seen it for herself.

Red Shirt and Hat

I had read on the internet the Ashton Men’s Fastball League was looking for players.  So Laura went out on Thursday night to see them play.  I brought my equipment with me.

When we got there, there was no one around.  We thought the game started at 7 pm.  We waited and one player showed up.  He thought the game started at 7 pm too.  There was a concession stand at the park.  The lady there thought the game started at 7 too.

At about 7:30, a few other players showed up.  We found out that because one of the teams had dropped out of the league, they had changed to one game a night and decided to start the game at 8 pm.

There was one guy I knew.  He told me to suit up and get in the game on his team.  I even pitched a few innings because they have a rule that a pitcher can only pitch a maximum of 4 innings.

Later Laura gave me some Father’s Day presents from Vancouver.  They included a red baseball hat and a red tee shirt.  Now I wear them every Thursday night when I play for the red team in the Ashton Men’s Fastball League.

Laura’s Loving Home

Laura finally finished working on her movie and flew to Ottawa on her way to Halifax.  She flew all night and arrived early in the morning.

She arrived on Thursday morning which happened to be garbage day.  We had just put out her disassembled waterbed and her dresser.  Laura was very upset we were throwing out her bedroom furniture.  She cried about it and took a lot of pictures for her memories.

Later in the day, I got up and found a note at the front door which said “Please take me to a loving home”.

I was very upset that Laura thought her home wasn’t a loving home.  I worried about it for a long time.

Later I found out, Laura had written the note and put it on the dresser to say that she wanted someone to take the dresser to a loving home not that she thought that we weren’t a loving home.

eTransfer Mixup

I paid for the plane tickets to Ireland for Sarah and myself using my Mastercard.  Sarah said she would send me an eTransfer for her share.

Sarah told me the password and I waited but never saw the eTransfer.  After a few weeks, I asked Sarah about it.  She said she sent it the day after I booked the tickets.

I asked if she might have sent it to the wrong email address.  She found out she had sent the eTransfer to my Rogers email account which was deactivated.  So she was worried.  Fortunately, she called PC Financial and worked it out with them.  I received the eTransfer shortly afterwards.

Preparing for Father’s Day

My sister was going to Ireland to take care of my aunt, who has dementia, while my cousin and her husband are on vacation in India.  She was desperate to have some company and asked all of us to come over to Ireland while she was there.

Sarah really wanted to go.  She convinced me to go with her.

We got on the phone one night to book our tickets and I realized that she wanted to go to Ireland for her birthday and for Father’s Day.  Neither of us wanted to be away for very long.  So we booked a flight for just the Father’s Day weekend.

It turned out that going for just a few days was more expensive than going for a longer time.

Mom’s Award

A while back my sister and I found out that the Retired Women’s Teachers Association wanted to give my mother an award for her service.  They wanted my sister and me to be at the ceremony to accept the award on her behalf.  My sister got a nice portrait picture on my mother made by cropping one the family portraits we had taken when my sister and I graduated from Carleton University.

My sister wanted me to make a speech.

The ceremony was being held over lunch at a fancy golf club in Burlington.  My sister and her husband and Barb and I got there early and met some of my Mom’s old friends.  My brother-in-law and I were the only men in the whole room.

The ceremony began and one of my Mom’s old friends gave a speech about my mother.  Her speech went on and on.  The whole time she was speaking, I was thinking how I could shorten my speech.  Finally, they called us up to receive the award and I asked if I could say a few words.  My sister whispered to me “a very few words”.

I had a mindmap laid out in front of me with my speech on it but I only spoke to about two branches.  We found out my mother was president of the Retired Women’s Teachers Association at one time.  My sister and I never even knew.  In my speech, I said that we never thought of my mother as a leader but she had some great leadership qualities now that we think of it.  She was a great listener and she was an extreme optimist.

I related a story of my mother with her teaching partner, Laurie.  One time, Laurie dropped a large jar of yellow paint on the floor.  My mother looked at the floor and Laurie quickly said “Don’t tell me ‘at least it wasn’t black’”.