Road trip to Edmonton

This weekend Zen and I blew off the Fort and headed south to Edmonton for a couple of days. We drove down on Saturday morning and came back Sunday evening. It's about a 4 hour drive each way, depending on road conditions and traffic. It was worth it to get away, though.

When we first got to Edmonton, we spent a bit of time driving around to find the House of Tools. You can guess which one of us was most excited to go there. Our finding of this place was impaired by the fact that the street that it's on - 50 St. - stops and starts again without warning. We eventually found it, though, thanks to the help of our waitress at the lunch buffet place at which we ate. Zenon bought a bunch of stuff and seemed happy. After that, we went off in search of the hotel. Now, we had booked our hotel room in advance after doing some research on the internet. I made sure that Zenon looked up the address for the hotel before we left (I have learned from experience), but we found that once we were on the proper street, we couldn't remember the name of the hotel. We came to the first one on that strip (there was a row of them) and puzzled over whether it belonged to us or not. "I remember the hotel having "executive" in its name," I said. "Really?" Zenon asked. "I thought it had the word "royal" in it." "Well," I said, "Since this hotel has neither word in its name, let's keep looking." The next hotel along the way was the Royal Executive Hotel, so we were pretty sure it was ours.

After checking in, we spent the rest of the evening at the West Edmonton Mall. We went back there again on Sunday too. Man, that place is huge. We didn't get to do nearly everything that we wanted. We never got around to the water park or laser tag, but we did do glow-in-the-dark mini-golf and we saw the dinosaur exhibit (very informative). We also spent a lot of money. My favourite purchase was the collection of "Heaven 'n' Herb Herbal Packs" that we bought. They are like magic bags but better, and they smell like herbal tea when they're heated. I am wearing one on my shoulders now because they are so soothing. There we were, two crazy kids in Edmonton, and one of our larger purchases was a collection of healing packs designed to help ease aches and pains. You'd think we were 80 years old or something.

On Sunday we visited Zenon's cousin in Edmonton before coming home, which was nice. Peter makes a mean bowl of chili, and his girlfriend is nice too. The drive home was tedious, although not too snowy until the Mariana Lake area. It is not nearly so much fun driving home as it is driving away for a mini-vacation. It was a mini-vacation that we both needed, though. Work has been crazy busy and stressful for me lately, and Zenon is still working 6 days/week (last week being an exception). We both agree that things will be better once we have our own place, and have more space for ourselves. We are taking steps to make that happen, and are looking at 2 places tomorrow night. Wish us luck!