What a day!

If we're friends on social media, you'll already be aware that Joyce and I celebrated our 33rd anniversary last weekend. It's truly mind boggling that she's put up with all of my passions, faults, and shenanigans over the 37 years we've 'been a thing', but loves me she does, and the feeling is unquestionably reciprocal. It's a cheesy thing to say, but we truly do love each other more with every passing year, and now that the kids have their own partners and lives, we spend a large amount of each day's minutes wallowing in that affection.

We're generally not much for making plans for birthdays and anniversaries, but our daughter Maddi covertly unhatched a plan to have our nuclear family (our kids + spousal units) make the trek to the Big Smoke for Shrek: The Musical at the Princess of Wales theatre, and when one makes the trip from northwest Simcoe to Toronto, it makes perfect sense to do a dinner as well. She broached the subject, organized the family, bought the tickets, and even made the dinner reservation! 

Kinda makes your parental pride swell a bit, eh?

The least we could do for all of her work was to offer to drive and pay, and with a quick pit stop in New Lowell to pick she and Chris up, we set the arrow due south with the plan to use the TTC to make the journey since this old curmudgeon doesn't drive downtown anymore, if he has the choice. As luck would have it, the weather front that stormed (no pun intended) across Ontario that day caused a host of traffic woes on the 400, prompting a back roads course for us. Although we had planned ample time to arrive at our reservation in the theatre district, the traffic woes combined with the back road km's meant that we arrived a few minutes later than we wished. Catching a TTC train went off without a hitch and we settled into our seats chit chatting about the upcoming performance.

Wouldn't you know it, the weather was wrecking havoc with the TTC as well, and we slowed to a snail's pace. Embracing the adage that one should only fret about things within one's control, we shrugged our shoulders all the way to St Andrews station, arriving a few minutes after 5:00, and chalked it up to being 'fashionable'. HaHa!

Upon entering the Elephant and Castle and finding KP and fiancee Jess who had already arrived, the smiles, hugs, and kisses were interrupted when KP said, "I think that our old dentist is around the corner". A quick peek revealed the Cheshire smile of the infamous Johnny Cool (his actual name), his dad Dr Kevin Cool, and Johnny's brother and former student, Dr Derrick Cool plus family. Yep, you read that right, their family has 3 Dr Cools ... Dentist Kevin and Medical dynamic duo of Derrick and wife Aurelia ... topped off with Uncle Johnny Cool! What a treat it was to catch up since Kevin, wife Linda, and Johnny had moved away from Barrie a number of years ago to London, ON, to be closer to Derrick, Aurelia, and their two cherubic children.

Following the smiles, hugs, and reminiscing, we enjoyed some scrumptious British inspired fare before making our way to the POW theatre for the main event.

So far so good.

Having spent the majority of the trip down discussing how the producer was going to pull off the jump from an animated movie to the live stage, we posed a number of potential issues that were quickly laid to rest as the musical played out before us. In the end, it was exactly how one would expect, being cute, humourous, full of songs, and an over all wonderful way to spend a Saturday night. Were there some criticisms of this little bit or that? Sure, but our group came away with rave reviews for the sheer entertainment value.

The show started 30 minutes late, then proceeded to run 3 hours, so we were in a bit surprised by the late hour as we made our way back to the TTC, with what seemed to be half of Toronto alongside of us. Boarding our train we were shocked to encounter a young man passed out in an awkward position on the floor of the train. It's one thing to see such a scene on a show or movie, but it's quite unsettling to be faced with it live and up front. As the train filled, the passengers gave a wide berth to the young man for fear of the unknown, but it was easy to see that he was still breathing, quashing the worst possible scenario. The word quickly spread that the TTC officials were informed and on their way, but as they arrived one here, two more there, addressing the issue by unsuccessfully attempting to wake him, the murmur of the crowd slowly rose as discussions about what was transpiring in front of us plus the potential for delay became the elephant in the room ... or car.

So much for the quick trip home! Our kid's fur babies were going to have to cross their legs!

Twenty-five minutes and two shots of Narcan later, the young man was roused enough to accompany the EMTs and relocate to the platform, allowing the TTC to press the GO button again, much to the relief of thousands since a stopped train northbound meant that all of the trains in both directions had been put into suspended animation. 

Fortunately, the remainder of the day's events transpired as one would expect, we got Maddi and Chris home to their unsoiled but very anxious Remi, and we finally laid our heads on our pillows at a God awful 1:30 am. A text from KP and Jess confirmed that they had arrived safely back in Guelph and they too had no doggie do's to deal with. 

Yay!

Many, many thanks to Maddi for all of the time and effort she put into making our 33rd a memorable affair. We so rarely get the chance to sit a visit as a family and the opportunity was both uplifting and satisfying.