Father's Day Scare

Matt, here.

A quick update from the East Coast.  Last weekend, I got a bit of a scare.  Health, financial, mental, emotional, all wrapped up into one.  Luckily, it was very brief.  You see, Karen surprised me with a card on Friday night.  In the card, it said, "Happy Early Father's Day", and then she said something along the lines of, "We have to make some decisions, and relatively quickly."  

And then there was silence. (Confused and frightened silence on my part, I think).

I thought to myself, "Hmm, Father's Day is in June, right?  And this is...March?  Yeah, March Madness is on.  This is March!".  I quickly realized that such logical conclusions were not really helping me figure out what was going on.

I then looked at her, looked at the glass of wine that she was drinking, looked back at her, and thought to myself, "Hold on, Big Guy, if she was pregnant, she wouldn't be drinking wine, right?  Right?" It had been a while since I read, "What to Expect When You're Expecting", so I still was not all that confident.

I finally realized that I had no idea what was going on and knew that she was waiting for a response, so I replied with what I am guessing was somewhat of a tentative, "Ohhhh Kay". 

Once she figured out what her little surprise had done, she laughed at me.  As it turns out, she knew that I was getting tired of my music mix and that, seeing as we had some long distance drives in our near future (Cape Breton, Toronto, cottage, etc...), she wanted to get me SiriusXM for Father's Day, but didn't want to wait until June.

Everyone together: PHEW!

So, on Sunday, with our trial version of Sirius XM in hand, we took off for a centuries old fishing village on the Dartmouth side of Halifax Harbour.  On the way we listened to some Springsteen (live in Sydney, Australia, from this past February) and some of the Margaritaville station (had never heard, "Too Drunk to Karaoke" before, but Jimmy Buffett sure knows his target audience!).

We got to see Halifax from the other side of the harbour, got to eat some of the "Best Fish and Chips in Atlantic Canada", as approved by the Federal Government of Canada, and we got to check out the sights, sounds, and smells (turns out BC isn't the only province with a weed fetish) of a traditional fishing village.

Magnus waiting eagerly for the "Best Fish & Chips" in the Atlantic

Bathroom sink that I want for back home!

 

Magnus lounging on the boardwalk

Easier to see from sea?

Anchored ships with Halifax in the distance

On a side note, there was also a lot of historic information about the village, the surrounding islands, and the people that had passed through it over the past 300 years (Union ships from the Civil War, islands used as immigrant quarantine camps, English vs French conflicts, etc...).  From this information I have decided that the Mi'kmaq are some of my new favourite historic Canadian peoples.  You see, the Mi'kmaq had originally sided with the French.  After the French got scared and ran away and took off to Fort Louisbourg (north up the coast to Cape Breton Island), the Mi'kmaq were surrounded by English and were pretty much screwed.  So much so that the English put a bounty on their heads.  Not a bounty on the heads of the chiefs, or on some of their top warriors, but a bounty on the whole damn lot of them!  If there's a bounty on all of your peoples, you've got to be pretty kick ass and I think that it shows you've truly earned the respect of your enemies!  

Too bad they didn't have good antibiotics, though.

Well, there's your Grade 5 history lesson for today.  Turn in next week for: Cape Breton...is it really an island?