Canadian Conference

So, I am up in Canada for a conference, eh?

Ten years ago, I spent a week in Hamilton, ON at hockey camp with Frog. I was recently divorced, and it was a fun thing to do. Frog's daughter watched Murphy. I remember Frog hurt his back and we needed to go to a Canadian chiropractor. It was mildly depressing, for obvious reasons. I'm a bit down up here now; I miss my family, and I really don't like traveling for work. I am looking forward to getting home. I need to mow the lawn. I miss my kids and my wife. I'm worried about my Dad. I miss my Mom a lot--had a really odd dream about her. I should write that down before I forget it.

In my dream, I am riding a train of some kind to Grand Rapids. I stop at a train station, but it isn't a train station. There are little stores in there like the subway stations in Sweden. I go into a store and a young woman recognizes me. Then she says it was my Mom that she remembered. This is the odd thing about this dream. I have never recalled a memory inside a dream. In this dream, I recall a memory about my mother working in this place to get away from her ex-husband. This memory isn't real, mind you, but in the dream it is. The memory comes back to me as I speak with this y0ung woman, who is a cashier. I remember that my mother took this job far away from her home in Metamora, that she drove all the way to Grand Rapids to work in this store, just to get away from Rob. Again, this memory comes back to me in the dream--it felt just the way it feels when you remember something. The only difference is that it happened in a dream and the memory wasn't true. The young woman shows me a deformed piece of candy attached to the register. My mother put it there, she says--my Mom collected things like that. This isn't true either, but in the dream it feels real.

Canada is a cool country.

I am in Innisfil, ON near the city of Barrie. We are right on Lake Simcoe in Simcoe County. A huge battle here is raging over Area 41, a proposed landfill site.

I thought Canadians sent all their trash to Michigan!

Random Observations

• Canadians say "PRO-cess" instead of PRAH-cess. I never noticed how often I say the word "process" until I was in a room full of people who pronounce the word differently.
• Canada is just like Michigan, except for the following: Canadians drive cars with better gas mileage, they recycle more, their cities are cleaner, and they don't act like they are better than everyone else.
  
• There are more Tim Horton's stores in Canada than there are Starbuck's stores in the US, which is saying something.

I bought a pair of Reebok running shorts at the outlet mall today. My left lower leg still hurts quite a bit, so I am giving it a rest--I only ran once (3mi) and I am waiting until it feels better.