Last days

It is definitely getting down to the wire.  I did not get enough done last night, so I am not going to be able to go to Gruesome Playground Injuries, at least not tonight.  I need to have the random junk thrown into boxes.  Friday is still an outside possibility, but I wouldn't say it is that likely.  Sat. is more likely, though of course that means that that other play will be skipped.  (And maybe that is just as well.  I really hate having to travel to Coal Harbour.)

Part of my exhaustion was going swimming at Killarney Pool.  I actually tried a couple of weeks ago, but there had been a fouling and the pool was closed.  Incidentally this happened the last time I planned to take the kids to the pool.  I was really rushing, as I needed to get back to sell my son's bike, though in the end I would have had at least another 15 minutes.  I often have a fairly bad time at Killarney (too crowded and they do a piss-poor job of keeping slow swimmers in the slow lane and out of the fast lane), and this was no exception.  I do hope the pool at the community centre near where we will be living in Toronto will be a bit better, though I shouldn't get my hopes up too much.

Anyway, I was pretty exhausted and got a bit done, then crashed.  So as I said, I am behind and need to catch up tonight.

Rather than grouse about it too much, I will use this post to start uploading some photos of one of my mother's trip to the Southwest in late 1988.  She really loved it there and was making plans to move to New Mexico when she passed away (in 1996).  While she didn't get to do everything she wanted, she did manage to get a few good trips in, including a trip to see me in New York (and then Toronto), trips to DC for the display of the AIDS quilt on the Great Lawn, back to the Southwest.  And lots of little trips to rural parts of Michigan with her friends.  This particular trip seems pretty epic, flying into St. Louis, traveling through the scrublands of Texas, then Santa Fe and ending at the Grand Canyon.  I'll just post one "artsy" photo of the St. Louis Arch, and then a few more from the rest of her trip over the next couple of days as I finish scanning the rest of the photos.