Return of the fat bastard - Squidly gets to town.

July 20th 2016

Say What??

      Today is the day that Squidly gets to town. After graduating from George Washington University in St. Louis he embarked on a world tour. Africa the Middle East, Bali, Australia and New Zealand. Last stop, Vancouver BC. to hang out with his cousin the lovely Lisa and her wonderful husband, Me. I had a pretty busy day. I loaded up the truck with stuff for value village and the chair I posted on Facebook and my friend Sandi wanted it. It worked out perfectly.

Goodbye Chair, 25 years I had this chair...almost never sat in it.

I met Sandi on Commercial Drive and gave her the chair and chatted for a while. She used to be a casting director and is a great gal. We've kept in touch over the years largely through Facebook. But face to face every once in a while. She was chatting with a fellow named Steve who had done some acting. A brief conversation about life in general and I was back on the road. Chef Boy R Lisa had me running an errand for her. I had to go by the Great Canadian Warehouse on Kingsway to pick up more of the Dawn degreaser. I tell ya they don't make it easy to get into their parking lot. Double yellow line tons of oncoming traffic and it's right at the corner of Royal Oak and Kingsway. A pretty busy intersection. I was an Esso Asshole, only in this case it was a 7/11 I cut through their parking lot to avoid the no left turn and then dashed across 4 Lanes of traffic into the parking lot of the Safeway. There was no access to the wholesale place through the Safeway parking lot and you can only right turn away from the store if you went back out onto the street. Hey I got a truck, it's a RAV4, it's all wheel drive I just hopped the curb between two Japanese maples into the parking lot of the Canadian Wholesale club. 6 - 4 litre jugs of degreaser later I was on my way to the airport to pick up cousin Squidly. He was flying in from Auckland, New Zealand and boy are his arms tired! Bada Bing! His flight was landing at 2:40. I didn't expect to see him till after 3.

Squidly!Traveled the world with just a backpack.

I parked the car in the parkade as close to the terminal as I can get. in 31 minutes and $8 later Squidly and I left the airport heading for Steveston to drop off the degreaser and have lunch with the lovely Lisa. The timing was actually perfect. We got to the set of Once Upon A Time just as they were serving the first of the crew.

Squidly with Chef Boy R Lisa

 The main crew were on a 3 hour push. It was great Chef Boy R Lisa actually sat down and ate with us....for a bit. She kept looking out the tent to see how it was going even though the line was nearly empty. Ten minutes later after raiding the desert bar and having a glass of chocolate milk we left Steveston and placed our fates in the hands of Google Maps. Mistake number one! It took us through every back road in Richmond. Traffic was horrendous, blah, blah, blah. That's funny I was just thinking as I was writing this, Why do I think you want to hear about Squidly and I stuck in traffic in Richmond. I don't want to hear about it! That's why I wrote Blah, Blah, Blah.
      Time flew by thanks to Squidly and his inquisitive mind. 22 years old. He is just finishing a 60 day world tour that took him to 9 countries on 3 continents. He's a really bright kid and a well rounded kid too. A lot of really bright kids are socially awkward, not Stephen. He's a definite people person. Oh yeah, and a corperate hack sellout! For three years while he was getting his degree, his summer jobs were with NASA and the European Space Agency. Now he has his degree where is he taking his immense talents....Wall Street! That's right Greed is Good. Better money and the chance to live in Manhatten. Maybe I would too. He told me all the guys at the company he is going to work for are Hillary supporters. I guess so! They didn't pay her $600,000.00 for a speech on how she was going to shut them down.
      It was 6:00 by the time Squidly and I got back to Casa Lisa. While he was in the shower trying to stay awake long enough to reduce the Jet Lag after a 13 1/2 hour flight from Aukland, New Zealand.
Now just as an aside, what happened to the Auks? And where is Old Zealand located? I was out back exchanging cars with Christian. He has a 7 passenger Van and we may have a herd coming back off the island. It's that time of year again "Hillbilly Hoedown" at the Devlin place back of Elk Falls in Campbell River. I was halfway done putting the back seats back into the Rav 4 when Shaun, Dr Dans wife dropped off Julia who is coming to the "Hillbilly Hoedown" with Dr Dan. He reserved a spot on the 06:20 ferry from Horseshoe Bay on Saturday morning. We're going to try for the 5:00 tomorrow night and hope for the best.
      Shaun and Julia got out of the car and after exchanging Hi How Are Ya's, Shaun got all Goo Goo over Elvis. Elvis was originally their dog. A series of unforseeable events resulted in us Doggy Sitting Elvis for a couple of months. When they came to get him back we said no. He had bonded with our 12 year old Sammy. Not really bonded, more like tortured Sammy back to life. Sammy lived almost eight more years and Elvis was his best buddy. Meanwhile back at Casa Lisa it took twenty minutes of wrestling to get the car seat out of the car. That left me two  or three hours to amuse a three year old girl. She spent the first couple of hours playing in the sand box, trampolining and riding on the big wheel.

Julia

      Chef Boy R Lisa was picking up Dr Dan at the airport at 8:30 after she finishes work. They got to our house at 9:30. we had a quick bite to eat and work out the logistics of our upcoming Island Adventure.

Squidly, Dr Dan and Julia

We sat up talking until after midnight. Idiots!

That's all I've got
Till next time
Peace out Y'all