I had big plans for a fun day today. I woke up at 5:00 raring to go even though I’d only had six hours of sleep and I forced myself to get another hour before getting up.
Some unexpected work came in a couple of days ago, so I needed to put in a few hours of work before leaving. That failed spectacularly because my Windows computer crapped out on me (something that would be user diagnosticable and fixable on a Mac, but needs professional help on a Windows machine) and then the stupid software I use for transcription because there are no other options also refused to work.
I ended up wasting the entire morning troubleshooting things that were working fine yesterday and finally had to leave because I had an appointment to pick up something I was buying off Kijiji.
First stop was the bank where the ATM started to spit out my money and then broke down. Seriously. Am I cursed or something???!!! Thankfully, the machine gave me back my card and a receipt saying that nothing was deducted from my account. I went across the street to the TD and paid almost $10 in fees to withdraw from them. I’m sure CIBC will reimburse me though; I’ll call the Assiniboia branch Monday morning.
I then headed west out of town to meet up with the Kijiji seller. She had originally asked me to meet her at a grocery store in Lafleche (The Arrow), a town about 45KM west of Assiniboia but had emailed me in the morning asking to meet her at the entrance to Thomson Lake Regional Park, near Lafleche. I sent her a Google link to make sure I had the right place and she said that was it, so off I went there since it really wasn’t a detour. Except that Google was wrong and SK apparently doesn’t believe in signage. There was NOTHING in the area indicating that Thomson Lake Regional Park even exists. Google and Apple maps were both sending me to the wrong place.
I drove a ways past Lafleche and then went back, doing in total almost an extra 40KM, which was way more gas than I could afford to burn. So I knew I had to cancel the touristy part of my day. 🙁
There was a trucker fueling up just outside Lafleche and I asked him if he knew where the park was. Yes, and he gave me excellent directions. There is ZERO signage all the way to the turnoff for the park and even then, it’s just a little brown sign with absolutely nothing written on it. What a well kept secret! I am going to research it more and see if it’s a place where I could go kayaking since it’s really not that far when you know where it is!
Thankfully, I had left early and was only a few minutes late. I ended up meeting the seller’s father. She lives in Swift Current, which is six hours away round trip for me, but he was spending the weekend at Thomson Lake, just two hours away round trip for me, and offered to bring the item. So I know I got off lucky in terms of extra driving today!
By this point, I had a bad headache and was no longer in the mood for adventure so I didn’t even care that the rest of my day was spoiled. I headed back to Assiniboia where something finally went right with my day (well, besides the exchange actually taking place!). The home store had what I needed to effect a permanent repair on my bypass and the grocery store lost leave of its senses and was selling absolutely gorgeous bananas for just 69 cents a pound rather than the usual 99 cents. The 69 cent bananas tend to be so ripe and disgusting I wouldn’t even want them in a banana bread, much less a smoothie. These were still good enough to eat as is!
I got home and somehow managed to wrestled my unwieldy purchase into the rig. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to tell y’all what it is. 😀