Exeunt to Kanata, pursued by metaphorical bear

Up around nine after an awful night’s sleep. I’d moved to the basement again as we are all on different times at the moment, and having found a mouse in the trap yesterday, I spent several restless hours hearing mice in the furnace room and in the vents, preparing for a full-scale invasion. I was in that horrific half-life space where you hear a noise and integrate it into your dreams. When I finally got up to check, the furnace room wasn’t covered in a soft, heaving carpet of mice and mice excrement; the trap was pristine and empty; and I wasn’t infected with hantavirus. As I crawled back to bed, my mind worked out the combination of issues that led to these dreams. I’d been talking to David about the hantavirus and transmission from mice in Yosemite Park (he’d just got back from California, so was fully au fait with the facts); I’d just released mouse #2 from our trap (I take them to a local-ish park on the other side of the river); and Ottawacker Jr. had been talking about mice just before he went to bed. Why, then, do I dream about mice and not he? Oh well.
 
Easter Saturday, nonetheless. I caught up with my blips – I’ve been shamefully missing them since I had the translation in – while Mrs. Ottawacker took the boy on one of their epic bus rides. Did some work on the 2015 photo album, and when they got back, cooked an egg fried rice with leftovers from a couple of days ago, and finished the laundry. Around 3.30 p.m., we left for Kanata. Ah! Kanata! I have, as I might have mentioned, a complicated history with Kanata, but as Mrs. Ottawacker’s brother and Ottawacker Jr.’s cousins live there – and as Mrs. Ottawacker’s sister and niece had come out for the afternoon – it was to there that we hied for an Easter dinner. And very nice and pleasant it was too. I managed to bore everyone rigid with my stories and analysis of Crime Scene Kitchen, which I put down to their not having seen the show, and ate far too much turkey. In fact, I ate far too much of everything, which caused me to fart uncontrollably later on in the evening. Still, what’s a good toot among friends?
 
Towards the end of dinner, I got into a conversation about Ottawa with T., who is, among many other things, well placed in Canada’s National Trust. My take on Ottawa is well documented: it is perhaps the most boring city in the country, which quite possibly ranks it as the most boring city in the world. Not surprisingly, she being from Ottawa, she took umbrage. So, I asked her to give me her top 5 of things to do. They were all good enough: Parliament Hill, museums, etc. But, what is there that drives people here? the History Museum, for example, is an excellent museum – but it is expensive ($23 admission per person) – yet, it is not a reason to come to Ottawa. So what is? We had a few good possibilities – but I remained unconvinced. I so badly want to like Ottawa – after all, this is where I have to live for the next 5 years at least – but I am really finding it difficult… Answers on a postcard to Ottawacker Towers, please. My guess is that this bear is metaphorical.