Surprising assassins on the banks of the Rideau

A rather lovely day, once again. Having refocused yesterday, I attacked various chores with a little more discipline than usual. It really is too easy to sink into a morass of self pity. Anyway, first on the agenda was the development of a web site for myself. The idea is to just get a page or two on which to advertise the services I provide (stop it, none of that), and to at least get my name out there again. I feel like I have retired now: there is, let me emphasise, nothing wrong with retiring. I just have too many things I want to do, and it is about time I got my act together and did them. A little too much resting on my laurels…
 
Anyway, after a good slog in the morning, I needed a break so as Mrs. Ottawacker had returned home, she had had to bike into work to do some secure printing, I grabbed her and we had lunch. Then we decided to go for a walk. The conversation, having migrated to “do you want to go down and have a look at the tulips?” (honestly, your minds), to which I had replied “no, I don’t, once you have seen one tulip you seen them all” (the annual Ottawa tulip festival is, as I think I have already mentioned, one of the lowlights of my personal calendar – alongside winter, traffic jams on Bank Street, and being forced to listen to Pierre Poilievre or Hallie Cotnam speak, and besides, there was no way I was going to volunteer my presence on any trip where I would be the youngest person by at least two decades), and seemed to imply that Mrs. Ottawacker did want to go for a walk and take me with her. (I should apologise for that sentence). So, we got in our car and drove to Hog’s Back Park, where we wandered down and looked at the falls as they cascaded into the Rideau River, and got into a subsequent conversation with three geriatric lady Dutch tourists, who were seemingly doing Canada in a week and had— for reasons I had great difficulty in believing—included the falls by the Rideau River as part of their trip. Indeed, looking back, their story was so implausible, I have the feeling I might have hit on a sleeper cell involved in an assassination plot or something. Who would suspect three elderly Dutch tourists? They looked quite shocked when I said this out loud – and started backing away towards the river. They probably had a speedboat hidden under some branches. Anyway, the thing with assassins is to know when to say farewell – or “vaarwel” in this case – and so we clambered up the hill before they could assemble the AK47s they probably had in their handbags. Honestly, someone should do something about people like that.
 
Back home, I consulted my list and noted I had included work on the photo album I am busy compiling for 2015. It’s rather slow going, I am afraid, as each day has a lot of photos. Ottawacker Jr. might well the most photographed child in history. Having done an hour’s work – and advanced TWO DAYS in the year – I flipped the switch and caught up on the blips I had neglected for the past couple of days.
 
The rest of the day seemed to be spent in a haze of activity. For dinner, I supervised Ottawacker Jr. while he made a chicken stir fry. It was very good. A few more supervisions and he can be allowed in the kitchen alone. That means I will be fully obsolete.