Past few entries:

I suck, you suck, everything sucks - 2005-03-17

Hurray! - 2005-02-22

Good year coming - 2005-02-10

Fat - 2005-01-27

Bleh - 2005-01-11

Other lovely places to visit:

Andrew
Dave
Diaryland
Hangtime
Jackson
Jeffy
Loobylu
Lurgee
Marn
Neonjunkie
Out of order
She speaks good english
Spacegirl
Tanzy
Velcrometer

2004-07-24

My family came up last weekend to visit me along with two of their friends. The bed and breakfast that my family stayed at was absolutely beautiful. It was a new house set on a point along the shore so two sides of the house were surrounded by the lake. The rooms had four poster beds that you need a stool to climb up to. My parents' room had a balcony, and my aunt and grandma's room had a mini-jacuzzi (which they didn't use! Sacrilege!).

It is impossible to think that someone is more anal and insane than my dad, but he exists. And they brought him up (along with his wife) for the weekend. Since my dad's friend is a super anxious driver, it took them almost 5 hours to get up here. (It takes normal people 3.5 hours.) When they arrived, he was super stressed from driving so long so he needed a rest after lunch. He complained about the long drive and how far North Bay was, but my parents never asked him to come with them in the first place.

He was also a terrible follower. He drove super slow and didn't even try to follow my dad, who was already driving extra slow to try to accommodate him(this was way below the speed limit). He kept falling behind and getting stuck at red lights. It was very irritating and took forever to get anywhere in the city.

After checking into their separate b&bs, we decided to meet them at the beach so we told them to drive out to meet us. It should have taken them only 20 minutes to get out there. Instead, they didn't meet us until almost an hour later. Then after sitting for only 25 minutes, they wanted to leave to have dinner. Argh! It was so irritating since it wasn't even 6pm then. My dad's friend was just anxious about having to drive back to his b&b at night through roads without streetlights. But it doesn't even get dark until 10pm!

We had a barbecue at my family's b&b. The owners were nice enough to let us use their big barbecue instead of having to rely on the small portable one that my parents brought up. Dinner was good -- chicken wings, huge sausages, pork chops, hamburgers, and potato salad -- but we had a lot of leftovers that they left with me (I will now have a lot of food to bring home next week because of that).

Before I had even swallowed my last bite of hamburger, my dad's friend had already packed up his car and was ready to go back to his place. It was only 8pm! Since I had to get a ride with them back to my house, I had no choice but to go as well. After I left, my family saw a beautiful sunset along the lake. Sigh.

The next day, we met them after breakfast and took a drive around the city to see the local sights. It's like my parents' friends were expecting a Chinese bus tour, where you stop for five minutes at each location to take pictures and then travel to the next destination.

We stopped by the waterfront, which has a beautiful boardwalk along the lake and two lovely beaches. They walked far enough to take a few pictures, then turned to ask me, "Where to next?"

I quickly got directions to a set of small waterfalls nearby and took them there. My dad and his friend walked up a set of stairs, which took a whole of 30 seconds, then walked back down. There were too many mosquitoes apparently. This was true, but at least us women were troopers and ventured farther along to at least see the waterfalls before backtracking.

The last place I took them was the "Gateway to the North" sign so they could take a picture. That was it. There were no more sights to take them to since they never wanted to actually stop at any one location.

My dad's friend wanted to leave anyway (they kept asking me all morning if that was the last place I was taking them) so they left at 2pm. It was retarded. They only arrived at around 1pm the day before -- hardly 24 hours stay for a 10 hour driving trip!

I was super annoyed after that terrible weekend so I got home and immediately left for Temagami to go hiking with my housemate. At least I did something that felt a bit more productive (although we only managed to hike for 20 minutes because of mosquitoes and inability to get around bogs).

This weekend, I'm all by myself since one person moved out and the other one went to Toronto. And I am supposed to be on call so I can't venture out of the city to sightsee. Just one more week left!