I arrived on Sunday night at a pretty reasonable time. I didn't do much that night aside from chat with a few people and then just hang out in my room.
The next day - on my lunch break - I went to a store called the Witch's Brew that I had gone to the last time I was in Saskatoon. It's a really great shop! I bought two books on herbology there (a bit of a hobby of mine) and then went on to the Jeans Shop near the hotel. When I arrived the night before - at the very end of my trip - I had bent down to pick something up and my pants split with a rather discernible crack! Oh well, I found two new and properly fitting pairs of pants and the store had them shortened for me within 45 minutes since I was from out of town! That was really great! So now I have jeans again!
While waiting I also walked around a bit and took a few pictures. Here are my snap shots from downtown Saskatoon - well, from parts of downtown Saskatoon anyways. :)
I missed my guys very much that day, but I was also incredibly busy with my meeting. Once our meeting had concluded we went to the Mines Ministers' Gala Dinner - we had gotten invited by the Mining Association of Canada as we all sit on their Communities of Interest Panel. The food was really good. It was a buffet. They served pickerel, bison, lots of different salads, shrimp...it was all very good! I didn't stay for the whole evening as I was pretty tired and our meeting was starting at 7:30 am the next day. But I had a nice time and left after dinner was over and before the auction began. They had a few really nice items to auction off - but really way out of my budget - especially given that I would have been bidding against CEOs and presidents of mining companies.
On the subject of mining companies - I will elaborate on this at some other time as it is a huge subject. But suffice it to say for now that I am not a friend of environmental destruction. And it does also depend on what kind of mining we're talking about and where. But most places I have seen, it's not a pretty picture. More about this at another time.
The next day we started very early. The meeting went overall quite well. I managed to defend the regional Inuit seat during the membership turn over/replacement discussion - all was essentially well. A couple of mining companies presented their verified results on how they had or had not met (and to what degree) the criteria of the Mining Association of Canada's (MAC) Towards Sustainable Mining Initiative (TSM). It was interesting to hear what they had to say...
The first half of my trip back went very well. I managed to watch Ironman on the plane from Saskatoon to Toronto. I also sat beside a nice person and we were comparing stories about our kids. He seemed like a nice guy. He and his wife and their soon to be two children will be moving back to Ottawa in the fall. Hopefully they'll get in touch once they're in the area.
The second half of my trip did not go very well. There was virtually no time between my two flights. But the flight attendants on the first flight assured me that this would not be a problem - that I should just run to the next gate and all would be fine. So I did - and it was not fine. The flight attendant at that gate was - to be quite frank - extraordinarily lazy. She simply did not want to do the work to let the six of us that had transferred from the Saskatoon-Toronto flight onto the Toronto-Ottawa bound flight claiming that we could not fly without our luggage. That was a flat out lie! And the former Air Canada employee whom she would also not allow on the flight despite the fact that he only had carry on confirmed this.
Let's just say that this flight attendant was told off rather severely by yours truly - which really changed nothing, but made me feel a smidgeon better. But...not only did we not get on that flight, we had to wait for two and a half hours for the next flight AND...my luggage had actually made it on the first flight and got to Ottawa way before I did!
I was so angry that night!!!! This woman, out of pure laziness, prevented Jamie and Theo from picking me up at the airport! It made me sad and it really upset Theo as we had already told him that he was going to help and pick up Mommy!
The moral of this story is - the one that I want to focus on - don't tell a two year old anything that may not be possible to guarantee. Sorry about this one Theo! I know that you wanted to help pick me up and see some airplanes! Next time things will hopefully work out!
No comments:
Post a Comment