August 3, 2005

August 3, 2005

West Hawk Lake day 78 of 113

YEAR 2 DAY 47

 

Today started out sunny, hot and humid again, but it got cloudy, rained lightly for a few minutes, and cooled off, around supper time.

This morning after showering and morning chores, I read, and sipped coffee, until I fell asleep again, sleeping until noon. I am now reading East Of Eden by John Steinbeck. I wonder how a story so badly written became a "classic". After lunch I worked on repairing a broken day / night shade in the bedroom. Sometimes the jobs that appear to be the easiest turn out to be the hardest. I did some more review of Misty Venture's fiscal year end accounting, to prepare for my telephone meeting tomorrow morning.

Joanne went to do some laundry, then I drove over to Major's Service Centre to buy some stamps, and a Priority Post envelope to mail all the corporate fiscal year end documents back to Eric. The woman at the Post Office at Major's sold me the wrong envelope. It's a "regional" envelope, and I'm going to have to mail it in Ontario, since its destination is in Ontario. I sure hope there's a mail box at the Ontario Border Information Centre a few miles from here. We took Bo for an obedience training walk, but as soon as we got started, Joanne got distracted by a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers, then Bo wouldn't focus, then we got distracted by a late arriving camper. I gave up on obedience training, while Joanne went off to deal with the late arrival. I cleaned up the tennis courts while waiting for her. Every time I encounter copious litter, I get more irritated at the clientele of this campground. The litter problem here is gnawing at me like an ulcer. We have camped everywhere, from remote wilderness, to urban campgrounds in large cities. Never have we encountered litter like here. And it's not as a result of a lack of effort to keep it clean. It's as a result of a "society" of campers who seem to consider it quite acceptable to toss anything, anywhere. I don't know if that attitude prevails in Manitoba, or Winnipeg, or if it's a demographic / socio-economic issue. This campground is very inexpensive, and close to a large city. The only other place that we've seen as much littering was on Texas road sides, but not in campgrounds.

We had borscht and holuptsi ( cabbage rolls ) for supper. The borscht was made by my sister Sharon. It was very good. We purchased the holuptsi from a road side stand near Richer. They were tasteless ! After supper I went to the picnic shelter behind our campsite and forced the two teenaged boys in there to clean up the horrible mess they had made, crumbling a huge piece of styrofoam packing into little tiny bits, and tossing the mess all over the picnic shelter floor. Then I went over to the men's bathroom and fixed a broken faucet that wouldn't turn off. I have no way of contacting maintenance after hours, and it didn't seem sensible to just let the faucet run until tomorrow morning.

My colitis seems to have taken a serious turn for the worse tonight, or I've got stomach flu or food poisoning. I'm in a bad mood ! I wonder if there's a chicken and egg question there ?

DSK