TV-land

I've been watching North American TV in the evenings here at the cottage and I have to say that I am appalled at the of the adverts sposnored by the drug companies. For 30 seconds they try to promote some new drug, but 12 seconds out of the 30 is taken up with warnings of risk and possible side effects. 'Lunestra', a sleeping pill, was the most amusing, with warnings to "be in bed" when taking it. The untold story here is that if you take it standing up - you'll fall over like a ton of bricks a few seconds later. You could be anywhere, doing anything at the time. I could see Orest coming into the kitchen the following morning finding me with my head firmly lodged in the refridgerator, with the rest of me sprawled behind. Pretty strong stuff! Some of the other drug adverts are plain scary. When you hear "possible liver damage" or "anal leakage may occur", would that induce anyone to take these things?
Another major difference in television over here is the timing of the commercials. In London, I'm able to load the dishwasher or make myself a drink during the breaks. Here, I've just gotten up from the sofa and the program's started already.So the dishes have suffered, because the soap keeps caking on before I have a chance to rinse them during the break. I'm sure by the end of the summer, I'll have this licked. Or, worse still, I'll get it so speeded up that I'll have to sit through more advertisement crap in London. Horrors!
The girls have been out of camp for a full week and for one reason or another we've stayed at the cottage the whole time. This has made staying clean a bit more difficult, due to the amount of unwashed clothes around here. Already, I've been forced to do a laundromat run and purchase new knickers at Walmart to save having to launder them all again.
We've had lots of visitors - Marta, Peter (my bro) and Tom. We've also had a chance to reconnect with lots of friends whose kids are at the camp: Zaraskas, Dmytryshyns, Kos's and Dubczaks for example. But it's transient in nature and eventually we all have to go back to the city, for work, or in my case, clean clothes.

Same week - Different Stuff

Just wanted to complete the news of 2 weeks ago with a visit from our cousin Marta. It was nice to have the company, even though the weather was not nice enough for Marta to tan with, and the pool was yet opened (a catastrophe of major proportions!) to hang around at. Hopefully that won't stop her from visiting again.
The weekend came with Orest visiting on his round-the-world ticket. (He'd been in the Far East on business and came North American-way instead of back across Asia.) It was only a 48-hour visit, but he managed to pack in a lot. Visited his parents and trimmed their hedges, went to the cottage and saw his daughters at camp on parent's day, put up the badminton net (bright pink, no less!), fixed various bikes and helped get the pool up and running. I'm hoping for more of the same when he comes at the end of the month for his proper holiday.
The second week was much better - weather-wise and pool-wise. By the end of the week, we were in a full-on heat wave, with the pool helping to cool us down.
Now the girls are out of camp, so I'll have less time to blog and have to spend more time entertaining them. In fact as I sit here, the 3 of them are arguing and causing me 'styd'! Can I return them to camp?????

Back in the Old Country

I'm sitting here in an internet store in downtown Cobourg (pop. 12,000), trying to update you all in less than 15 minutes, so here goes.

The girls and I arrived in Canada July 1st, and all the flight over, we listened to England get clobbered in the World Cup by pilot updates. It was a bit unnerving to know that the pilot was passing this information to us. "Shouldn't he be flying this plane, or something equally important?", I thought to myself.

The morning after we arrived, the older two were off on the camp bus for two weeks of mosquitoes, dirt and sunburn. They weren't completely on their own however, as Adriana and I joined them up at our cottage, which is next door to the camp.

This was the first time I had to 'open' the cottage on my own, as my in-laws had normally taken care of that before we arrived. What an eye-opener! The mouse droppings were prolific, and the pile of mouse fur and skeleton in the doorway of one of the bedrooms a clear indication that someone, had a great time over the winter and expired after gorging themselves on Saltines (which were hidden in the stove) and sesame snacks (left in the open fridge). Adriana and I were so grossed out by the party left-overs that we huddled together on the only clean sofa in the place and fell into fitful sleep, interrupted only by the racoons coming to the back screen door to see if we had left anything delicious for them.

By Friday, we were ready to pick up Orest from the airport for his whirlwind weekend with us. I'll have to tell you more later as my 15 minutes is up.