Vacation to BC, Day 5
matt and j

“Dad, the butter is not a dip”
    -me

I’ve been storing boxes at my sister’s place for a couple years now. Old toys, possessions… pretty much my entire childhood. The plan was for me to pick it all up when I came back to live in BC but since it looks like I may be living in Ontario for a while now, my sister kind of wanted me to sort it all out. I started out with about ten boxes and I managed to sort it down to three boxes of stuff to keep (one of which will go back to Ontario, the other two my parents will keep) and the rest is labelled to be sold in a garage sale or thrown out. There’s also a lot of recycling.

But there were some cool old toys of mine in there.

Star Trek action figures? Who bought those??

I also had four big boxes stuffed with computer games boxes. Laura and I collapsed and folded them all together to make a big box of cardboard recycling and threw out all the CD cases. I saved a number of game manuals that were cool looking or from awesome games (read: Blizzard and id games). I was kind of sad to throw out some of those boxes, though. I mean, it’s silly to save them, but they look so cool!

Somewhat relevant with the recent release of SiN Episodes: Emergence was the box for the original SiN game:

Complete with Elexis Sinclaire’s giant breasts!

I also found the box to my old Voodoo 3, which will help my mom pack it up to give away.

Oh! And my old Coke collection:

I put all the cans in for recycling. It’s interesting how big a difference in weight the aluminium cans make as compared to the old tin ones. The glass and plastic glasses I kept, as well as the Coke bottle opener, but everything else was thrown in for recycling.

To celebrate my birthday with family, we went out for dinner at the Birch Grill. The chef and owner there does everything himself: He serves, cooks, talks to the patrons, you name it. The menu is whatever he feels like making that day, just a white board with eight or so different entrees. Whatever he could find locally that’s fresh, etc. He really loves to cook and you can tell by how excited he is to tell you all about the day’s menu items.

It was an awesome meal. I had the scallops and they were incredibly fresh.

I also sampled Laura’s cod, mom’s lamb and dad’s pork chop. All were quite good, but mine was better.

The meal was probably around $200 for the seven of us but it was delicious!

Oh, and seriously, my dad didn’t just spread whipped butter on the last piece of bread, he scooped up as much of it as he could, like it was a friggin’ dip.

After dinner, we drove back to Louise’s for a dessert of homemade strawberry-rhubarb birthday-pie.

Geoff, my brother-in-law, recently bought himself a new bike and it’s pretty sexy.

After dessert, we took some pictures and then returned to Penticton.

Matt bought a Jeep about a year ago. I had never seen it in person but I’ve seen it in his MSN display picture. As we were driving down my parents’ street, I saw what could have been his Jeep in a parking lot and wondered if it was him and J. You see, I told them months ago that I’d be in Penticton in July and gave them the dates I’d be there. But any time I asked if they had the time off, I got the run-around. They weren’t sure, forgot to check or whatever. Eventually I gave up asking. I figured they either didn’t care enough to check or they were trying to surprise me (the more likely option).

I was right with the latter: As we were unloading my parents’ car in the driveway, the Jeep pulled up and I was viciously mauled by the man-love of Matt and J.

Laura and I dropped our stuff off in the guest room and then headed out with them. Our combined hyper-excitement probably lasted thirty minutes, during which time I was worried that Laura might be freaked out. She seemed to be okay with it though.

We tried driving up to Munson Mountain to look out over the city but they close the gate at night now so we didn’t bother. Instead, we drove back into town and went to the Lakeside Casino.

Laura had never been to a casino before and JJ gladly donated a few quarters so she could have her first casino experience.

That excited expression? Entirely fake. Slots really aren’t that interesting. What is interesting is that her face reminds me of the ads I see around Kitchener-Waterloo advertising the local casinos. Apparently everyone who pretends to enjoy casinos has that same fake-excited look.

The other exciting thing was when Matt gave JJ a $10 to use on a Star Wars slot machine and JJ managed to convert the $10 into $1 with one pull of the lever by placing the max bet on like a million crazy lines at once.

Even at 11 o’clock at night, the seniors are there, blindly pulling the slots.

That was JJ’s impression of the creepy, mindless zombies seniors.

I threw in the old picture from 2003 because it kind of goes with the one from tonight. When we were walking down the hall, JJ remembered the picture and decided we needed a new one, with Matt. He wasn’t as into looking dumb as JJ and I. Loser.

From there, we drove over to the Rose Gardens and walked around. We checked out the bridge at the top of the channel and then walked along the beach and pier.

It’s the giant peach!

…and Laura humping the giant peach!

We grabbed drinks at the 24/7 corner store near the old high school and then went to Tim Horton’s so the guys could get something to eat.

(Look! It’s my birthday!)

From there, we went down to Skaha beach to walk around. I took a picture of JJ peeing on a sign and then we went home.

5-4-3-2-1 let’s start a fire

[Complete pictures can be found here]