A Night Out

Reece called me up this afternoon and said, "Hey, I have the car--you want to do something?"

I love impulsive, impromptu get togethers. Nine times out of ten, those work better than actual planned events. Not that I'm against planning or anything. Because I do love planning and organizing.

Anyway, she came and picked me up and then we headed over to Aunt T's house to see if Carolyn could do stuff with us too. Care and Aunt T were just getting ready to have a coffee break, so they invited us in for a few minutes before we headed out to...well, we hadn't decided yet what we planned to do, but that's the joy of being impulsive. Or the curse of being indecisive.

The majority of our time was spent talking about politics and history. The debut of HST--"harmonized sales tax" was during my years teaching, so it has taken me a little bit to get used to. To form the HST, the powers that be combined the provincial sales tax {which our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper has lowered from 7% to 5%!!} with the goods and services tax {8%}...so we are now taxed 13% on everything. Regardless of whether or not it was exempt under the separate taxes. I say we get conservative, money-wise leaders in office for our province. Good thing elections are this Fall :)

We also talked about WWII and specifically about the Holocaust. May we never forget.

After, Aunt T showed us her pictures from their anniversary trip. They traveled up through the northern part of Ontario and into Quebec. Canada is such a pretty country! And I just love our nation's capital building. It's so full of character and is so majestic. I hope that I can visit up there soon. My province houses the capital of Canada, so I should be able to make it up there...right? It would make for a good road trip :)

So, back to our impulsive night out...

Care couldn't come since she was already expecting a guest, so after the pictures we said our thank-you's and good-bye's and headed out. I should mention that Dave and Reece just got a different car several weeks ago. A little gray Toyota...that is standard. Poor Reece {and me!} is still trying to get the hang of it, and let me tell you we had an interesting car ride. Care has a standard and drives it effortlessly, that I was convinced driving standards was a breeze...not after riding with Reece tonight! I see that having 3 pedals can be confusing, and stalling on busy roads during evening rush hour on a Friday night is absolutely terrifying! It's exasperating trying not to have to brake, but just coast along...only to stop on a hill for a red light. My heart was in my throat the whole time because I was afraid we would stall in the middle of an intersection {Thank the Lord we only stalled at the stoplight and stop signs!} or roll back and hit the car behind us. In one particular spot we were in a valley. And we stalled throughout the whole light. I look back now and I can laugh, but it sure wasn't funny then! Reece is pretty good at driving a standard, but having a lot of people lay on their horns as well as rolling back into someone on top of a stalling car, played on her nerves. Finally I just told her to put her hazard lights on and people could just go around her. I told her she could take as long as she needed and just to concentrate on getting us out alive. I didn't care about the horns, the stares, or even the obscenities as long as we made it safely up the hill. And she did. And I know the more she practices, the better she'll be :)

One major lesson I learned from our "impulsive" night out was to not "impulsively" buy a standard!