We headed out from Ohio after dinner last wednesday (the 16th) and got back to A’burg around 1:30 am. This is to give us a day between when we arrived and the day that we were planning to go up to Tobermory. Tobermory is a small village at the tip of a penninsula in semi-northern ontario, and is the gateway to Manitoulin Island, where I spent a week or two every summer in cabins on Elizabeth Bay. Two of my uncles have cabins on the water there and we were planning to spend a week of relatively down time in the between times of family and weddings and the like, although most of my immediate family came up – two of my sisters (and their husbands) and one brother (and his girlfriend) came up with kelly and I and the kids, and my mom. We got up early friday and drove from around 6AM till after lunchish. The drive was pretty good, the kids didn’t freak out too much :) I have really been looking forward to this trip, hoping for some real down time. It’s monday afternoon and we’ve been here for 3 days and I wish I could stay here forever. we’ve got 3 more days and it already seems like too short a time. Things have been really good so far, very low key. My uncle Kerry is a professor or department head at the U of Guelph and is also up here (at his cabin across the road) for 2 weeks and is staying one more, so I’ve been out fishing with him and my distant relative Jigger (Third cousin once removed, I think.) I’ve also had some great time with the kids, swimming and fishing and stuff, just kicking it, as well as time to read a few comic books. Jeff my brother in law is also a comic collector and we have both brought stuff to read and discuss. We keep planning to have a discussion of Watchmen vs Dark Knight returns and who is better, Alan Moore or Frank Miller.

I’ll detour quickly into what comics I’ve read this summer:
Uncanny X-Men 199-248
Daredevil 168 (whole story about this – tangent)
Black Cat/Spiderman Kevin Smith arc (The Evil That Men Do.)
JLA 1-8 (more on this too.)
Secret Identity (this was great).
Captain America 1-8 (Winter Soldier)

back to the cottage! It’s very quiet here, despite living with 11 people and 2 dogs in the same hizzouse. It’s on the water and we can canoe and kind of swim (the bay is very shallow and there are rocks instead of sand, so you basically have to go off the dock instead of the shore because they’re quite sharp and covered in very slippery algae. It’s also a bit cold, getting up to perhaps 66 on a good day. The first morning I went in early for a bit of a polar bear dip and it was quite refreshing. Then that evening, the Byrne Men Polar Bear club went in during a wind and rainstorm with the water temperature hovering right around 62 and the air temperature a bit below that. Another notable thing that happened was that we found that we had bats. They had apparently decided to exploit a small hole in the chimney and fly down and roost in the woodstove and it’s attached pipe. We decided to deal with that, so we got a fishing net to put over the pipe hole (so nothing could fly out into the cabin) and a pair of salad tongs (Cause those things bite, and my sister once got rabies from a bat bite. yes, really.) We removed 3 that night, then 3 the next morning and checked the pipe with a mirror and it was all clear. By that evening there was a whole frickin family back in there. I also got the chance to take a quick day trip down and visit my college roommate Rob, and that was awesome, a blast from the past. Vince, my brother in law got to see pre-marriage and kids Tom.