Day 8
It's a Living Hell!
This day was even slower than the day before. Edmonton had lost all its appeal to me.
Let's see, first, the high points. We got up. That's one. The other one was watching Robert learning how hard it is to call an 800 number when you're in a foreign country (contrary to my original thesis, we were in a foreign country for this purpose, so he couldn't). The encore high point was watching Robert do his bills.
I got to spend some real quality time worrying about how much this vacation was going to cost. Just to cut ahead a bit: Looks like we went a bit over budget.
Quick trip back to the FBM (Big Mall) to get some 45 cent postage stamps for the bills Robert did, and for the lame postcards showing FBM from the air that I sent back to the secretary at work and the travel agent. I just sent those, and bought a couple of touristy packets about FBM just to prove to everyone back home just how mind staggeringly stupid that mall really is. One of the "Official Souvenir" books says that they get about 10 million visitors per year. Why, the way I figure it, that's about two visitors per square foot. Didn't seem that crowded when we were there.
Next, a quick trip to the Safeway to try to find some Pina Colada mix for the train. No luck.
Another nap at the hotel. You guessed it: I took a Contac that morning.
Around 2:00 PM, we took the car back to the rental place. They don't open early enough on Sundays for us to have returned the car on Sunday morning and still made the train. Robert, bless his little heart, had mapped the whole foot trip back, including a stop at a curry place for an early dinner.
As it turned out, this fictitious curry place must have recently changed their hours, since they sure weren't open when we got there, even though the travel or restaurant guide said they would be.
Back to the hotel for another nap. If this sounds somewhat wasteful of my vacation time to you, I'd like to repeat my point that this is precisely the sort of thing I like to do with my vacations. There's nothing better in the whole world than having nothing in particular that you need to do, and reciprocating by doing nothing.
We finally stumbled out sometime around 5:00 for dinner, and went to a reasonably nearby Greek restaurant, which further confirmed my suspicions that if Edmontonians know how to do anything other than shop or watch hockey games, it's eat. I had some sort of stewed rabbit that just couldn't be beat.
The rest of the night was spent watching dumb TV shows, packing and typing stuff. Like I said: Boring day. Mostly the way I wanted it.
On to Day 9, Back in the Saddle Again
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