Reality Bites

Gah. It's back to work tomorrow after a glorious period of vacation that I'm reminiscing about fondly already. I'm still mired in cold symptoms which put a bit of hamper on the Canada Day festivities, but we did manage to get out to Symon's Valley Ranch for the ARGRA Rodeo Barn Burner dance on Saturday night. It was a lot of fun, but the time flew by and it was all over for another year.






My one big complaint was about transportation. The ads for the event were all touting this awesome bus service that would transfer on the hour between the bars and hotels downtown and Symon's Valley Ranch - return ticket for $15. So Joe and I got to the Texas Lounge around 7:45pm and were told that the bus for 4pm had shown up over 2 hours late, and chances were there was no 6pm bus (obviously). One did finally show up at 8:30pm or so, so I bought return tickets for Joe and I, thinking they might have the service back on track by the end of the night. The last bus was supposed to leave Symon's Valley Ranch at 1am, but do you think it was there? No way - we waited outside for about 20 minutes before Skybar came out to his car. We hopped a ride with him back to town, and then took a $40 cab ride home. Transportation to the dance and back? $70 for two. What a rip. The bus drivers had no idea where they were going (where any of the pickup spots were downtown), and we had to direct him to the Eagle. What a ripoff. I'll drive the bus next year. How hard is it to run a service between Point A and Point B? I mean, really.

Anyways, that's ancient history now.

I'll be busy tomorrow getting my new work contract finalized and sent to Markham while trying to settle the severance package with my soon-to-be previous employer. Once that's out of the way, I'll have to get some catch-up work done this week before heading off to Montreal on the 11th. Whoo-hoo! Another vacation! I just can't get enough! Okay, there's some serious stuff going on at the beginning of that one in Bromont, but then after the 15th, I have a week to hang out in my favorite city in the world!

The Calgary Stampede officially starts on Thursday night, hard to believe, I know. I'm hoping to get a ticket for the company party on Friday afternoon, since that will probably be my only exposure to the Stampede frenzy for this year. I'm entered to run the half marathon at the Calgary Marathon on Sunday, so this week is definitely going to need to be a recuperative one.