Ruth's weekend while I was away...

So, I took off on Thursday afternoon to spend the weekend away with the boys. Ruth was looking forward to seeing some of the girls she worked with 35 years ago when she was a hair stylist at First Choice Haircutters.

They got together Thursday evening for dinner.

Update on my condition, and weekend away with the boys...

I went away for my annual guys weekend on Thursday afternoon. 

Of course the major concern was my medical condition, but we decided that if I'm going to feel like crap, I might as well feel like crap up at the cottage visiting with my long time friends. So first things first, an update on my progress in that regard...

No, everything is not entirely okay.

Regular readers will know that I had a "medical emergency" on our flight a month ago from London to Barcelona.

I had passed out on that flight, and taken to hospital when we landed. All of my tests were fine, and they didn't tell us that anything positive came back that would have given us any indication as to what caused it. 

Shopping for a new car

In the last post, I had mentioned that I thought my sisters car was going to be a write off, and that turned out to be true.

So now it was time for her to go shopping. The only question was... how much would the insurance give her for her old car?

Just an update...

We've been meeting with friends the last few days. And lots more of that to come over the next three weeks. And yes, it's only three weeks until we fly to Mexico City!

We spent some time with my older sister on Saturday. She was in a car accident on Friday, and I thought I might be able to help a little bit given that I spent twenty years in the collision repair business.

We know so many people around the world

We always come back to the Ottawa area in September. It's definitely the best time of year here in our opinion. The kids are back in school, the weather is still nice, and the bugs are usually gone.

And sure enough, this year has been perfect in that regard. the kids are definitely back in school, the weather has been great, and we haven't seen a mosquito since we got here!

We've been here for two weeks already!

Well, apparently there's not a lot of interest in gold and silver around here! That's okay though... it proves my thesis that we are only in the third inning and not many people are paying attention yet.

We've just been relaxing here at the house for the most part. Ruth is spending a lot of time sorting through and scanning old slide photographs that were her fathers.

Investing in gold and silver miners

As I mentioned yesterday, we have been invested in gold and silver mining stocks for several years. This has paid off substantially, yet I think the really big gains are yet to come.

Studying past bull and bear market cycles in the precious metals shows that we are maybe in the bottom of the third inning... gold and silver have been rising nicely and now outperforming the stock market, but the general public are only just starting to notice. 

Gold and silver

There's sometimes not much to talk about when we're sitting in Ottawa for six weeks. So don't expect daily updates during this time period. 

Also, I'm sure most of you have noticed that there is some kind of glitch occurring with this blog and you're often getting an error message. 

If it's not fresh, it's free

We did our weekly grocery shopping yesterday. It's a fairly stressful thing for us! Even though we know to expect it, we're still getting sticker shock every time we come back to Canada. 

So on Thursday evenings, the local store flyers are issued. Some are done online, but we can still pick up the paper versions down at the mailbox at the corner. Ruth prefers the old style paper one rather than the online one.

Race Day!

One of the things that we had planned for Cameron was to take him to the big indoor go karting track across the river in Quebec. I've known of this place for several years and have always wanted to go myself.

So, we had an early lunch and then headed off across the border.

Humane society and fishing

Monday morning we went and met for coffee with Mary and Blair, a retired Ottawa couple who are now living in their Airstream trailer, however have booked this winter at an Airbnb in Mexico.

They've been reading this blog for a while now, and wanted to meet up. And we like to meet our readers!

It's a bit frustrating...

When we were in Mexico in April, I tried to buy new shock absorbers for Igor. I'm pretty fussy about what brand of shocks I wanted though. There is a Bilstein model that's specifically made for the Econoline E350 chassis, and that's what I wanted.

But I couldn't seem to find them available in Mexico. I even tried to order them in from Amazon U.S., but there was some kind of shipping problem that wouldn't allow them across the border.

August Expenses - Another expensive month

We spent the first 15 days of the month of August on a cruise ship going from Southampton, England to Greenland with stops in Ireland and Iceland.

While the cruise ship trip was inexpensive by cruise ship standards, it still added quite a lot to the monthly expenses.

We thought they lost Cameron's bag!

Lindsey drove us to Halifax Airport yesterday morning and we got there with lots of time to spare for our 12:35pm flight to Ottawa.

Oh, yesterday I said that it cost $322 CAD ($234 USD) per person for the two hour flight. And while that was true, we didn't pay a dime!