Home Alone

My wife has left me. Lord willing, until Sunday. Sharon is traveling to Ontario at this moment via Chicago and Detroit to attend a friend's wedding on Friday - this friend of hers came to ours last year and if I remember correctly she arrived on the Friday night, we were married Saturday morning, and this friend was back home by Sunday some time. So it was really not a question when Sharon got an invitation as to whether or not she was going to have a go at getting there for this coming weekend.
So my plans for this coming weekend are centered around painting Sharon's parents' bathroom before their guests arrive next week. This bathroom had an unfortunate altercation a number of months ago with a foster child of theirs who decided to express himself therein with a permanent black felt marker, and now needs some sealing primer and a good coat of paint. And I volunteered.
I think the grossest paint job I ever had to do (and considering it's never been a career for me, I've done a lot of painting) was at an apartment building that was being recovered by Union Gospel Mission in Seattle. It had been taken over by drug dealers and others and they had all but wrecked it. The police cleaned them all out, and the property was eventually sold to UGM, who were renovating it to use it for their programs. There was still some interesting things left over there even when we arrived, and by that time most of the nasty stuff had been dealt with. Anyways, in one room there was blood splattered all over a wall and up onto the ceiling, and my job was to cover the blood with primer so that it could be covered and painted. Well, apparently one does not just prime over blood and go on his merry way. It just kept soaking through and I just kept painting it. Nice huh?
Sharon and I discovered a park in our neighborhood yesterday evening. We decided to go for a walk in the evening as it was beautiful outside, and we walked over to the next block that is cut short by a wooded ravine that cuts through the middle, and we walked over to it and found out that there was a park hidden at the edge of this ravine. So we walked through and it was the strangest park in Burnaby that I have seen. It was mostly secluded, with a weird playground looking thing plopped in the middle of it which obviously had been neglected for some time, and after walking past that we walked down a small hill to discover an old basketball hoop erected with a small concrete pad right at the edge of the ravine - also showing significant neglect. At least for the purpose of playing basketball that is: there was firewood there and apparently people go there and have fires. The grass was long and there was obvious tread marks down to this run-down basketball court. Our assessment of the park was that it is a place where teenagers come to drink and do other things they shouldn't. That seems to be a theme for Burnaby parks -what's up with that? My dad and I used to jog through Central Park, also in Burnaby, and across the street from where I grew up. We always avoided the park after dark but one time I remember jogging through there as it was getting dark and dad saying to me "if anything happens to me you keep running okay?" I immediately decided that there would be no running away that night, we were either going home for ice cream afterward or we were dying together in that park. As the story goes, nothing happened (that night or ever) and we went home for ice cream. So my new motto for Burnaby parks is this: "Burnaby Parks: Just Don't Go There At Night."
Well, I think that's it for now...