July 18, 2007

Keeping Up With The Locals.

There are many things I enjoy about Canada. I must say that yhere are many, many things I love about our neighbors to the north. Everywhere I turn in Charlottetown there’s a young little bearded hotty worthy of many woof points. The folks of this fine province are very friendly. There are smiles on the faces of the fine Canadian people. It’s nice to be away from the depression that has seemingly tackled the Americans. The Canadians also make great beer.

Tonight I joined Jennifer and David, and Dave’s mom Janet, for their annual trek to a dinner theatre show in Charlottetown to celebrate Jennifer’s birthday. Tonight’s performance was called “The Big Fat Island Wedding Crashers”.

Dinner Theatre.

The production was delightful. Full of familiar rock and pop tunes from the 80s and 90s, this group of performers were quite impressive in that they all took turns playing various instruments and singing various parts. I had a wonderful time. They were funny and extremely talented.

As I mentioned before, our fine neighbors to the north make great beer. Tonight’s brew of choice was Labatts Blue. Now Dave, my almost brother-in-law and all around great yet exceedingly mischievious guy, is a beer drinker. Here in P.E.I. you don’t order beer by the bottle, fuck no, you order beer by the god damn bucket. That’s right, the perky waiter or waitress brings you buckets full of bottles of beer. The folks at the other end of our table, who were a very charming couple from le Province du Québec, settled for red wine with their meals. Jennifer and Janet had white wine.

Dave and I downed THREE buckets of beer. Perhaps four. I lost count. I have mentioned an uncountable number of times that I am a two beer queer. Give me two beers and I’m either easy or asleep, hopefully one before the other.

Tonight I had SEVEN. That would be seven beers. SEVEN. That means if I were to count the number of beers by way of the Pointer Sisters Sesame Street song, I would be more than halfway through the track before having to stop.

The two beer queer did it thrice plus one. Roll the “r” in “thrice” when you read that sentence. It makes it sound exotic. To celebrate, I called my mother and left her a slurred voicemail that will undoubtedly haunt me someday and then I called Earl to make sure he was still in the states while I was in Canada. It was hard to tell because the room started spinning. I think I was getting time zones confused. Oh, oh oh – I’m in a different time zone right now! Who knew? There’s another time zone on the North American continent to the east of the Eastern time zone! I guess I never realized that! It’s the Atlantic Time Zone. If I were to go to Newfoundland (which I probably won’t), there’s even another time zone that only counts as half. So if it’s 11:00 here it’s 11:30 there but it’s 10:00 home. Now that’s making my head spin. What’s odd is that I feel as comfortable in the Atlantic Time Zone as I do in the Central Time Zone or when the Eastern Time Zone is not in that fucking daylight saving time.

Tomorrow morning I leave the island and head for Québec. This is such a lovely adventure. It’s buckets of fun.

I’m going to bed.

Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

After a good night’s sleep I was up relatively early and headed into Charlottetown, which I believe is the only city on Prince Edward Island. After a brief stop at one of the local markets, Sobey’s, for some breakfast fruit, I did some touring of the downtown area and the harbor.

Here’s the obligatory self shot.

Charlottetown

I found the downtown area to be quite nice. It reminds me a bit of Portland, Maine and Burlington, Vermont to some to some extent. Everyone seems quite friendly and the sidewalks were busy. There’s all sorts of shops and businesses. There’s a pedestrian mall area with a large selection of restaurants and bars. There was even a brass quintet performing, as they give a free recital twice a day during the week.

Brass Quintet.

Being an island and all, PEI has a lot of marinas.

Lighthouse.

After touring around a bit, I decided to relax in some air conditioning a little bit, so I went to the local mall which is anchored by a Zellers. Reminicent of K-mart back in the good old days, I was delighted to see that Zellers still has a “K-mart Cafeteria” / Woolworth’s “Harvest House” type restaurant, but I skipped that culinary delight since I was meeting up with my sister Jennifer and her boyfriend David to do some sightseeing this afternoon.

Once I met up with them, our first stop was in Cavendish, home of Anne of Green Gables. Jennifer insisted I try on Anne’s hat and pigtails, so here’s a photo of the event. It’s a little blurry but there’s no spirit lost.

Posing.

I also snapped this picture of Jennifer and David as we were getting ready to move on to our next adventure.

Jennifer and David.

We then went onto the beach (there’s a lot of water around here!) where the ocean is clocking in at 17-degrees celsius, which is a chilly 62.6 degrees fahrenheit. We stuck our toes in and found it to be cold. I could swim in it after my body numbed up, I suppose. We opted to walk along the water instead.

J.P. and Jennifer.

Now I’m resting up a bit before meeting with Dave and Jennifer and their friends for a dinner theatre tonight. We might have a few drinks afterward. I don’t think we’ll be out exceedingly late though, since Jennifer is catching a plane home tomorrow morning around 6:30. It’s funny to think that she’ll be home way before I will.