2004-05-10

Filial reconnaissance continues apace: my father and I picked up where we left off, each trying to outdo each other in supercilious displays of intellectual hauteur; meanwhile my mom is just all-around nice. Good to know I picked the right side of the family to take after. Fortunately this isn’t the parents’ first visit to Ottawa, so I’m not scrambling to assemble a non-stop roster of activities to keep them distracted from the underlying tedium of the city. They picked up on that pretty quickly, actually – I think it was only their third day here when they started saying, “Well, it’s pretty,” which is the pre-approved apologist line touted by everyone who has spent any time in Ottawa. Yes, if Ottawa were a woman, she’d be the one you’d describe as having “a great personality.”

They timed their visit right, anyway: yesterday was the true seasonal turning point, where I stopped complaining about the cold and started complaining about the heat. It was actually warm enough to spend a few minutes outside in a state of relative undress; and so I did, and typically, I got a sunburn. I’m like some delicate shade-seeking mushroom. To steal a line from Conan O’Brian, I’m genetically designed to live in a bog. I’m so pale there’s actually a paint shade named after me, right between “Eggshell” and “Alabaster”: “Robin’s-Ass White.”