Winnipeg Weekend.

We left town a little later than I expected. 17:00 is MUCH later than expected. Things kept hindering me from leaving work early. There was the 30 minute lunch meeting that lasted an extra hour. That did not help. James H couldn’t get off work until 16:00, and he disappeared for 30 minutes after that to pick up some junk food at Wal-Mart. As it were, we left at 17:00 and arrived just after midnight. Some safe driving was done due to the storm we ran into on the highway.

I had the last driving shift so I drove us into the city. It was my first time driving in the city, too. After so many years of being a passenger and a navigator, I was finally doing the driving. It was quite exhilarating. Upon arriving at the hotel we decided on, they told us they had no vacancies. Damn Super Bowl weekend. Football sucks!

We ended up driving further north on Pembina until we found a cheap motel to stay at (complete with mafia-related managers). I was originally planning for us to stay at the Fort Garry CanadInn, but James H pulled a cop-out on me, complaining about the price. Consequently, I was the one who ended up paying for the hotel room, and for an extra $30 a night, I could have had my broadband this weekend! I’m still quite bitter about that.

In the morning, we headed to the Pancake House, a restaurant that James H remembered eating at from his childhood. After that, we headed to Polo Park, where I picked up the new double-CD release of Nine Inch Nails: The Downward Spiral. We ate at the food court for lunch, and then we headed to Best Buy and FutureShop. I picked up the DVD+R 50-CD spindle that I needed, but nobody had The Village OST CD. If anybody ever watched that movie, I recommend the motion picture score, because Hilary Hahn plays the violin solos in it, and she’s uber hot too.

After that, we went to Computer Boulevard to exchange Eugene’s PC case he bought last week, because there was a small chip in the front. It’s a completely stupid reason to exchange something, and I felt sorry for the service guys who had to look at it and exchange it for me.

I forced James H to let me go to Chapters. I bought four more manga there – ARIA Vol. 1, Love Hina Vol. 2, Megatokyo Vol. 1, and PEACH GIRL Vol. 1. I originally wanted to get PEACH GIRL Vol. 2 (not in stock), and the last two volumes of Azumanga Daiou, but they didn’t even carry the title.

We went to Silver City and watched Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. What a hilarious movie – Jim Carrey was excellent as a villain. Just so you know, I never read the books, and I don’t intend to. As a side note, Violet was played by a somewhat new actress, Emily Browning (Darkness Falls, Ned Kelly). You can tell this kid is gonna be a real looker when she gets older, so keep an eye out for her. It paid off with Lindsay Lohan. ^_~

After the movie, we went back to the hotel, where James H took a nap and I did some reading and made a couple CD’s for the road on my laptop. We headed off for Hooters for dinner when he woke up, and I bought a calendar when I was there. Too bad the wings weren’t as good as they usually are. However, I’ll still go back there to eat!

I called Ian’s place, but he was working. Jazmine told me where his workplace was, so I decided to do a little bit of adventurous exploring. With some help from James H and my intuition, we made it to Henderson without getting lost more than once. Ian was sure surprised to see me (no, but he appreciated the fact that I drove all the way over to visit him ^_^), and since he was getting off work in only an hour, we decided to hang out then. James H was kinda upset because he wanted to go back to the hotel and watch some movies like we originally planned, but he was just belly-aching. I wanted him to get out and enjoy the nightlife a bit like I did when Eugene drags me all over the city at unholy hours. Anyway, we had an hour to kill, so I decided to go back to Pembina to find a rental place with James H. I took the scenic route – missed a turn, got us promptly lost, but found out where I was. It was actually kind of a roundabout way when it was all said and done, but I actually knew where I was going. Scary.

After renting the movie (I, Robot), James H did more belly-aching, but since I was the one doing the driving, I took him to 7-Eleven, picked us up some slushees, and headed back to Henderson. We picked up Ian, went back to his place to let him change, and we went to Papa George’s in Osborne Village for drinks and pizza. Lots of chatting went around, and I saw James H finally start to loosen up. I dropped Ian back off at his place, and then we headed back to the hotel room and watched the movie.

We woke up this morning and had 30 minutes to check out. The cleaning lady was early, otherwise, we would’ve just slept right until noon. We left the hotel and James H wanted to eat at Foody Goody for lunch. I humored him and went up to downtown, but we didn’t even know where Foody Goody was, so we stopped at the MTS Centre, where I found the address, and off we went. After eating (I’m never going back there again), we headed to China Town and picked up my mom’s groceries. The supermarket was packed because of people shopping for Chinese New Year’s this wednesday. My cell phone minutes ran out while I was talking to Mom about what she wanted, so that kinda sucked. I found some soba noodles and tonkatsu sauce, so I was as happy as a fish!

I wasn’t intending to get us lost, but due to the structure of the city, the connecting road I was intending to cross didn’t even exist. I had to double back and take an earlier connecting road to get back to Route 90 North. We grabbed some road food from Wendy’s, and we were off at 14:30. After some crazy driving, we arrived back home at 20:30.

Damn it. I left my DVD+R spindle in James H’s van.