Thursday, March 21, 2002
Yesterday I got an email from Bryce saying that he was in town and could I meet him for a get-together at the Rivoli at 7pm.
It's been ages since I've been to the Riv, but the idea of heading across town to a smoky, cramped little bar (and then heading back from it afterwards) didn't appeal to me much. In any event Erika had something planned for that evening, so I had to be with the kids.
I proposed instead that Bryce come and see us for dinner the next night. Bill must have told him that I worked at home on Thursdays, as Bryce asked if he could join us for lunch instead.
Bryce dropped by at around noontime, arriving just after the peak of a sleet squall. We gave him the ten cent tour of "Casa S-R", and Erika served up a tasty lunch.
Turns out Bryce is making a solo trip to visit friends in Toronto during his school's March Break (he's a teacher there, not a student ;-) because his wife Aggie is currently in Beijing on a reaching exchange. The hope is that this might blossom into a full-time teaching opportunity at some point.
For the most part though we talked about the usual things: mutual friends, work and the fun sluggy things Bryce was getting up to now that he was a temporary bachelor . (Don't get me wrong, he's as much of a softie as I am, and was really looking forward to Aggie's return on Friday evening).
He stayed for a couple of hours, and I felt bad but I had to head back and do more work, as I was in the middle of a major report to be presented to the Exec when he arrived, and I had promised to deliver it by tomorrow morning, UK time. (And as it happened, I was up until 9pm that night working on the report).
The visit with Bryce really made my day though.
He told us he is also planning to go to the CFRC reunion in May, so there's a growing number of people I now know who are heading to it. And as Bryce said, "it's a good excuse to visit Kingston again".
Did I mention that it was a blustery day? Well, sometime after 4pm while working in my basement office I heard a loud "thunk" outside. Uh oh, I thought, part of a tree has come down somewhere, so I went upstairs to investigate. Turns out it wasn't a tree, but one of the 2 skylights on the third floor had just "popped out" and hit the ground. That was the thunk I heard. I went outside and tracked down the skylight -- the whole thing, frame and all, had just popped out, presumably due to some sudden drop in pressure that sucked it off of the roof. Thankfully, the only damaged caused was a few scratches in the heavy-duty clear plastic -- nothing about it was actually broken.
After much gnashing of teeth at the builder who installed it (and knowing that we'd never get anything out of him) I went upstairs to tape up some heavy-duty plastic to cover the hole, while Erika started calling around for a repairman capable of fixing it. With some help from Martine (who's husband is a house-builder and knows lots of people in the trade) was tracked down a helpful sole who was willing to do it that very evening.
It ended up costing $80 to repair, which I thought very reasonable -- especially since you wouldn't catch me heading up to the third floor of a house on a gusty day with a large kite-like object.
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