We lived just two blocks from the beach in a dirt floor bungalow. Butterflies bolted outside the living room window. The dog will chew up any shoe left lying on the front stoop. Let the screen door slam on your way out.

2005-08-31 at 4:55 p.m.

Josh Ritter makes everything better so he'll be here a while as we all recover from our (non) vacation.

It included various outings like a three hour trip to buy a gigantor tv for the son of the people who we were staying with.

It also included me being bitten repeatedly on the shin by their dog Harley.

There were a few high points though. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston was one of them. Me and Kim found Rogier van der Weyden's St. Luke Drawing a Portrait of the Virgin particularly enjoyable.

It was probably not appropriate to stand there laughing at the baby Jesus and his splayed fingers and toes. We did anyway. The Dutch painted so many ugly baby Jesuses.

We did manage to get to the beach once. I don't know how we spent most of our childhood in the ocean because the water is freezing.

And then, on the last day of our trip, some woman cut off my mom and dad on their motorcycle. They scraped along the side of her car and then tipped over. My mom got off the ground, checked if my dad was ok and went immediately to yell at this woman, who said she didn't "see them". She later told the police that my dad was speeding. Not smart, woman, when you a) caused the accident and b) admitted that you didn't see them and c) hit people who are staying at the house of a police man / city prosecutor who also happens to own a motorcycle himself. They weren't speeding. She was charged.

The end their vacation included hospital visits, police reports and calls to insurance companies.

We got home and made a quick trip to IKEA the next day with Jason, who was in Ottawa for a chemistry convention of some sort. He pushed the buggy dutifully but not enthusiastically. Shopping with Kim takes stamina and induces many sighs and rolling of the eyes.

After all this we got company of our grandma, uncle and his girlfriend, and their new dog. Also named Harley.

This Harley didn't bite me and slept in the crook of my arm instead. We brought him in to meet James, who is safely three times the size of him. You know your cat is big when your uncle walks into the room and yells: "Look at the SIZE of that monster!"

We sent them off and then drove to Oshawa to move Kim into her new apartment. It's a little ghetto but will be nice once she fixes it up. The toilet, which you need to flush twice before anything goes down, is an especially nice feature. The "crack whores sniffing turpentine and pitbulls raping eachother" line in Garden State can probably be applied to most of Oshawa. However, Kim lives in the North - good part - of the city so we'll see how things go.

I just got the "Kris, maybe can you come over tomorrow?" call. It took less than 24 hours.

speaking at length + speaking in lines