Archives for 2006

I’m in the van driving to Chicago now. I’m with my husband Chris and two of our friends, and we’re on our way to go see Bruce Cockburn play in a small venue in downtown Chicago on Saturday night.

Actually, it’s early Friday morning (12:43 a.m.) and I’m still at home sitting at my computer pre-writing this post. But, if all goes well, by the time you are reading this I will be on my way to Chicago.

There was supposed to be six of us going, but two pulled out at the last minute on Thursday morning. Our two friends that are going might find two of their friends to come … so really I might be sitting in the van with 5 other people right now … I just don’t know it yet. LOL

The two friends that are driving with us are musicians, and the van is likely full of musical instruments. Well, I know it will have Chris guitar and our keyboard. I’m the only non-musician. Finally, Mr. Fab – we’ve found something I can’t do! Well, not yet. If my husband would only give me a guitar lesson I’m sure I’d master it. Maybe, or maybe not. Either way I’m sure I wouldn’t be as good as my husband as he’s an amazing guitar player.

Now I’ve said that I’m probably in a van. We don’t have a van. We have a car.
We will be leaving the house early in the morning and convoying to Brantford to Chris’ family home where we will leave our cars and then get into his parents van and drive off.

The only problem is that as Chris’ dad was driving the van on Thursday it made a funny noise. Not only that, when they were visiting Toronto during the double wedding two weekends ago the van chugged it’s way through a busy downtown intersection much to our dismay. It turned out that someone had forgotten that the emergency brake was on. Probably because it was covered with a bunch of stuff – tissue box, sweater etc and they had probably driven from Brantford with the emergency brake on, and then proceeded to drive through Toronto for two days with it on too. So, back to the grinding noise. Chris’ dad finally decided to call a garage and the Van is going in for a check-up at 7:30 Friday morning.

If the van is ok or ends up getting fixed well be off to Chicago as soon as it’s ready. If it can’t be fixed quickly we might end up not going, as we don’t think our car is up to a 9 or so hour drive each way.

Keep your fingers crossed for us!

So, now, as you sit there reading this we might be part way through our drive, stuck in construction between Indiana and Illinois, or we might even have arrived at Chris’ brothers house. Heck, I might be sitting in his hot tub right now.

Oh, oh! If you are a regular reader of this site you probably already know that me and hot tubs don’t seem to get along. The second last hot tub event that I attended ended up with me falling outside on a weird curb and hurting my knee really bad. That was July 8th and my knee is still recovering. When I fall, I fall down hard, I don’t do anything half way it seems. The first hot tub event occured the day after our boarder from hell moved in … and well, if you’ve read the page this post is on then you’ll know how that’s turned out.

We don’t have a huge itinerary planned for our trip.

We’ll arrive in Chicago sometime Friday evening and Chris’ brother has already planned to invite some friends over, so I’m assuming we’ll be having a little party.

The next day we’ll visit downtown Chicago and walk around and see the sights. I hope to get some fantastic photos while I’m there. Then that evening, perhaps after a BBQ, we’ll head back downtown and go and see Bruce Cockburns concert. Depending upon when that ends we might go to some blues bars or find something interesting to do in the city.

On Sunday we’ll spend some time recovering and then we’ll get back into the van and start the drive home. I’m assuming we’ll leave sometime on Sunday afternoon so I don’t expect to get back to Toronto until sometime in the wee hours on Monday. We’ve got to go back to Brantford first and get our car too.

Our neighbors are going to watch the house while we’re away. Their good about that, and well their nosy too, so if they see anything that doesn’t look right, and they will be looking, I’m sure they’ll take care of it.

Hopefully I’ll have an internet connection when I’m there. If I have time, perhaps I’ll write another post and tell ya what we’ve been up to, otherwise that will have to wait until we get back. Either way the posts will keep coming as I’ve written a few to keep you guys happy over the weekend while I’m busy.