We had a grand week away, my husband and I. It more than made up for me having to stay home for over a week's worth of our summer holiday while he went camping and canoeing with his buddies.
The weather was phenomenal!! Most afternoons the temperature climbed to +33C. It was the best farewell to summer weather ever!
During our time away my husband attended some excellent Diocesan meetings and we went together to the 100th anniversary of one of the churches in our archdeaconry. The people at the church thought that perhaps 40 people would show up now that the church is very small in congregation size and struggling to stay afloat. However, there were over 100 of us crammed into that wee church building and it was an excellent service. The Bishop was there, a newly retired Archbishop who had once served that parish, a couple of their former priests, the present incumbent and my husband, their Archdeacon. The narrow aisle up to the altar was jammed packed with portly, middle aged men in flowing albs, stoles, mitres and other typical Anglican accoutrements. The local community choir, robed in glittering white robes, adorned the space behind the altar and sang a beautiful anthem for us. It was quite an amazing spectacle in that place. The service liturgy was very thoughtfully planned and presented and the sermon, given by one of the former priests of the parish, in turns hilarious and moving. I am so glad I went along on the 6 hour round trip that afternoon.
The next day my husband headed to a city in the opposite direction, where he met for the first time with an English cousin and his wife. What a treat for him, although he ended up eating lunch with them at a Boston Pizza instead of his hoped for Indian cuisine restaurant. hahaha He admitted though, rather sheepishly, that BP's menu has improved since his last visit there....about 8 years ago I am guessing....and it really was quite a fine meal. hahaha He is going to have to remove BP from his complaint list about fast food chains.
His time at the clergy conference was most edifying, informative and also a lot of fun during an impromptu game of cricket with the bishop and archbishop. Well, my husband didn't play cricket this time, but he and some other clergy put on an apparently hysterical display of cheerleading! haha Rah! Rah! They stopped short of making brassieres for themselves out of paper cups, but only just.... They were also informed that there would be no budget for pompoms next year~what a bunch of crazy people. It was so good for my husband to just be able to relax and be silly for a change. He so rarely gets to be.
While he was doing his thing I was doing mine. I visited so many friends and had such a great time catching up on all their news. It has been nearly a year since I was last there. Where does the time go??
I ate too many restaurant meals, despite making most of my own lunches and a few breakfasts in the hotel room. I gained 4 pounds in 10 days due to the fat content of most of the restaurant meals.....NOT GOOD! So thankful to be home and making my own food again. Fortunately that is the end of any trips more than a day or 2 in length for the rest of this year. My diet is grateful for that!
However, on the exercise front, I excelled due to the wonderful warm weather. I walked a minimum of 5 kilometers every day, up hill and down and all around the town. It was fantastic and I felt so good every single day. The weather was like a special blessing just for me....oh, and the hundreds of farmers in the area who lost so much harvest time due to previous rains. Thank you Lord for that blessing for so many people last week.
The visits with friends this time were all genuinely deep and meaningful. We discussed all manner of local issues, personal problems and joys, spiritual journeys....it was really wonderful for me to see my friends face to face since so many of my present relationships depend on email and long distance phone calls to maintain them.
I found a few incredible sales on clothes and household items so, although I didn't do a lot of buying as I have everything I need all ready, I did take advantage of a few things that were particularly spectacular deals. eg: a beautiful beige 100% wool suit jacket on clearance for $5.99!! I decided I would never find a deal that good anywhere else...perhaps a thrift store, but then the suit jacket would have been second hand and this was brand new.
My hotel room was rather hilarious. It is an older place that needs a new coat of paint in most of the rooms and some new carpet, but it is so well built that the soundproofing between rooms is nearly 100%. Only once did I hear a loud voice from next door when a neighbouring fellow was shouting into his cell phone from the shower stall in his bathroom. The rest of the time I heard only the voices in the hallway outside my room on occasion and that was all. I was housed in the back portion of the hotel, second floor, no elevator and it was like finding my way through a rabbit warren to locate my room as the place is so large. The breakfast that was included in my room fee was really, really good and I wish I could have taken advantage of it every day in good diabetic conscience. The restaurant in general didn't have really marvellous food but the breakfast fare was delightfully far above the usual refined plastic food available at most "continental breakfasts" in lower priced hotels.
The toilet in the bathroom was a show all its own. haha At some point someone in maintenance had installed the inner workings of the tank without realizing the shaft would be too tall for the short tank. Once the lid was put on the tank, a lid that was never designed for that particular tank in the first place, it pressed down on the shaft and kept the water running constantly. My housekeeper, bless her heart, didn't speak more than 3 words of English and had no idea what I was trying to tell her about the problems with the tank. I decided to just leave it until checking out on the last morning and reported it to the front desk at that time. During my stay I simply removed the tank lid and folded an old facecloth over and around the shaft so that the dripping water would follow the facecloth down into the tank water without making a constant irritating dripping noise. I don't think that tank stopped running for more than a few minutes the entire 8 nights I was booked into that place. I didn't report it immediately upon discovery because I have had maintenance folk come to make repairs at other hotels in times past and usually found a big mess left for me to clean up after the job was done. Like so many other hotels, the cleaning staff have been given vaccums with no hose attachment so I had to request a special cleaning along the baseboards in my room. I was okay with that dirt until I realized someone's half eaten candy was sitting under the desk and then I was rather unhappy until everything was cleaned up. How are cleaning staff supposed to clean rooms properly when they are not issued the proper equipment?? I am not usually a "nightmare" guest in a hotel, but I expect, in this day of the return of bedbugs to Canada, to be given a completely clean room.
The other hilarious thing was the air conditioning unit in my room. At least twice a night it got itself so agitated it sounded like it was going to explode in its attempt to keep the temperature as low as the setting I programmed into it. haha
The front desk staff were amazing, the waitresses in the attached restaurant very attentive and efficient and all the cleaning staff very pleasant. Despite the foibles of my particular room this time, I would stay there again.
Coming home posed a bit of a challenge. About the time we were leaving for home we realized a tire was going soft on the car. Our 4 hour trip home turned into nearly 5 and a half hours as we had to keep stopping at every little town garage to pump more air into it. So happy we did make it back safely as we discovered there is absolutely nowhere in that 4 hour drive, late on a Saturday, that has a place willing to service a disintegrating, fast flattening tire. It is yet one more of the "joys of prairie living" that drives me mad! The best we could have done, had the tire packed it in completely, would have been getting a tow truck to take us to the nearest town where we would be stranded for 2 days waiting for the tire shop to open Monday morning. We barely had time to stop to grab a sandwich for supper at a little sub shop because we had to keep that car rolling until we could get home.
This morning we were unable to attend the early service at our other church because the tire was flat as a pancake and our town as well has no emergency service for anyone on the weekends other than oilfield workers. So grateful for our deacon who agreed to take that service despite his own trip yesterday to the city for diocesan meetings for which he had to arise at 4am to make it on time. This huge part of our diocese is certainly short of emergency mechanical assistance on weekends.
Despite the stress of the tire it was a lovely drive home. Today it is much cooler than we both got used to last week and most of the leaves have suddenly dropped from our trees after still being mostly green and attached a week ago. Here it feels very much like autumn and we will definitely not see any more temperatures in the +30C range until next summer.
It was great to get away. I had the rest of my summer holiday and my husband, despite it being a working week where he lost his usual days off due to meetings, had a great time of learning and fellowship with fellow clergy.
Memories of this grand week may have to sustain us through another bleak prairie winter and I am grateful to God that we have them.
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