Wild Windsor Weekend

[ED. NOTE: Yes, this is long overdue.. but there are elements in here that need to be covered, otherwise I'll just have to go into long explanations down the road... and by down the road, I mean in another couple of posts I'm hoping to have up soon. Ideally this will all become clear as time passes, or it won't. Whatever... this isn't fucking reading comprehension!]

So I already covered the ridiculously expensive (I refuse to say "overpriced", as it was totally worth it) jacket that I bought a couple of weeks back in order to complete the ensemble I had planned for Maya and Ian's wedding. Well, I had to go pick this up from the lovely sales girl (who now that I think about it, I really do need to go back and visit... maybe buy some pants..), and then I would be off on my first road trip with the new wheels. Good times.

I finally get the call around 2pm that everything's ready. I head over, stammer in front of my new crush for a little while (turns out she had recently bought a new car, too....), pick up some stuff from the LCBO, and I'm on my way by about 4ish.

I won't bore you with any details of my drive, but seeing as I was pulling off the 401 in Windsor by about 7:30, you can tell it was a relatively uneventful trip. And by uneventful, I of course mean fast.

So knowing that Patty, Melissa and Pat weren't leaving Ottawa until 4 or 5, I had planned ahead to fill my time. Only a couple of weeks earlier, some friends of mine (Brian, who I used to play in a band with and his sister Wendy) had been down for a piping contest, and I had asked if they were going to be around and willing to entertain me for the evening. Fortunately, they were, on both counts.

So we meet up and head over to one of their favourite places in Windsor, Patty O's. There, we met up with a drummer in Brian's band, Jessi, and her bf. Good times ensued. Drinks were had, and then we hopped over to the Beer Market for a change of venue.

After hitting up the Kildare House, Wendy and Brian were nice enough to make sure I was at least heading in the right direction to Patty's (where I was crashing Friday night), and so we decided to hit up Johnny Shotz in Tecumseh. Unfortunately, we missed last call, but it was getting late, and there was much more fun to be had the following day, so I called it a night and headed to Patty's.

Following some minor excitement that I had actually been to Johnny Shotz (it's pretty much the only bar in Tecumseh, and is apparently a bit of a big deal), we hit the hay.

The next morning, Patty and I amazingly woke up with in minutes of one another, and proceeded (still in our pj's, of course) to hit up Timmy's. Once we got back, her mum was around. You know those moments when you meet people's parents, and suddenly everything makes sense? Well, this was the first of two of those that day where suddenly Mrs. Paterson's eternally happy disposition, adoration of hosting, and joy in getting right down to semi-serious discussion shone through, and suddenly the fires that helped to forge Patty were becoming clear.

Not long after that, Patty's mum took off to see her mum, and then Pat and Melissa showed up (they had been at Melissa's parents place in Leamington... maybe 30-40 miuntes away, and also where Ian grew up, as they hadn't been back to see her parents since they got engaged). When the girls went off to get their hair "did", that left me and Pat alone in the Paterson household. With booze. And not just our booze, but also a directive that the liquor cabinet was very much ours to ravage.

One minor problem being that Patty's dad was due home soon, and it had been made known that he wanted to take me and Pat out in the boat (did I mention this house was located on a small river/channel just off of Lake St. Clair? No? Well, that probably makes the previous sentence a little less peculiar). Well after a case of casars (it was barely noon) and a coupla Guinness, Mr. Paterson got home (I'm not typically a "Mr./Mrs." kinda guy, and I believe they did introduce themselves with their first names, but as of this writing, they escape me), told us to bring our beers with us, and he was going to take us out for a spin on the lake. Good times! This was the second instance of "parents explaining kids". Patty is exactly the way she is because of her parents. It's actaully really adorable. Anyway, I could seriously have gotten really really used to having a damned boat in my backyard. Would have beaten the shit outta "riding bikes" as a kid, huh?

Once we got back to shore, the girls were back, and weren't entirely impressed that we were a little better lubricated than when they left. I'm not sure what they were expecting to have happened, but we were hurried in and told we needed to get ready ASAFP.

Needless to say, while I can get ready quickly under normal circumstances, after a few beverages and thoroughly relaxed from a cruise out on Lake St. Clair, I was not exactly moving very quickly, so this resulted in everyone standing in the foyer almost literally tapping their collective feet watching our punctuality buffer evaporate.

Eventually, I saunter down and we get on our way. I note that we have about 10 minutes until the ceremony starts... or at least until the time we think it starts, as nobody remembered their invitation (to be fair, nobody is Melissa, Pat and me, as Patty - a.k.a. the responsible one - is actually my date, and thus had to invitation to forget). Thankfully, Patty's sister got married at the Windsor Club the previous year, and thus as our driver, she knows exactly where we're going (do I know how to pick useful dates, or what?). Only a few scant minutes late, Patty drops us off figuring that as the actual "invited" guests, we should be the ones to show up on time, and she can sneak in as necessary. Turns out there was ample time for her to park (amazingly, just around the corner from Patty O's, where I had started my little excursion the night before!) and make her way in before the ceremony kicked off.

[Ideally the preceeding paragraph was never to be known by Maya or Ian... but seeing as they are regular readers, and I'm in a full disclosure kind of mood, I guess they'll know soon enough.....]

The ceremony itself was lovely, as well as exceptional in its brevity, and so we headed off to the casino to check in to our room and such. Having abandoned Melissa to schmooze, the two Pats and I made our way back to the Windsor Club, now secure in our post-reception plans.

For the sake of brevity, I will just say that the dinner was excellent, the speeches alternating between funny and touching, and of course, the music outstanding. One interesting note was that earlier in the day, Patty and I found out our mutual, and generally uncommon for our age group, love for Motown... and I guess since we were in Windsor, and with music being so prominent in both Maya and Ian's lives, there was all kinds of great Motown and similar-type music spinning, which actually managed to keep us out on the dancefloor and away from the bar. No small feat!

I will spare Fridge a detailed description of why tall people, dance-offs, and low hanging chandeliers make for (ever so brief) bad times. ;)

After eventually booting us from the Club, we head back to the Casino, where Melis crashes, but the Pats and I still manage to make it to one of the lounges for a couple of martinis to cap off the night.

Now distanced even from the late night snack, we decide to grab a bite at the casino, where we rather oddly had to wait for a table at about 3 or 4am.... well, maybe that's not quite so odd. After our solving-the-world's-problems/way-too-serious-for-our-mental-state snack, we finally crash.

***

The following morning:

I groggily wake up..... I hear Pat get up. I hear him move more quickly than usual, especially for Pat in the morning.

He pukes. Twice. Fucking lovely.

"Hey, Pat...? If you have to do that again, would you be so kind as to put on the fan?"
*moan*
"Thanks, dude!"

After collecting our respective vehicles at Patty's, I actually tagged along to see Melissa's parents in Leamington, as I hadn't seen them in a long time. Great people, of course.... so I actually kinda missed them. As much as anyone can miss someone else's parents, I guess....?

And that was my Essex Excursion.