Chronicles of Sarnia, part 2

All right, it's 7:05 p.m. and I'm now sitting safely at home typing on my Mac G5. The past long weekend, which began with a drive to Chicago on Wednesday night, is a blur in my memory now. The fact that I was detained at the border for an hour over a "commercial quantity" of books (145 books - for which I was taxed $153.50 in good ol' U.S. greenbacks) is the only real bummer of the trip. Don't take more than 10 copies of any one book or recording into Canada, my friends....the taxman lives up there, too, and he's a bastard!

Anyway, we crossed into Canada in a town called Sarnia (hence the title of this post) and we only got lost once (which was my fault). The drive from Chicago to Toronto took 12 hours there, and 12 hours back, detention and getting lost evened out the to and fro trip. We stayed in the Bond Place Hotel on Thursday night, and the rest of the weekend in the Marriott that the con was being held in. I got to meet some pretty cool people, including several small movie producers and an agent. Hopefully, something will pan out from those new contacts in "the biz". The con was the usual conbination of panels, booksellers and boozing, and I took part in all of it. Hence, I'm now tired as hell! But, the trip was worth it. I was scared to death about crossing back into the states since I'd been told the U.S. customs would be worse than the Canada side, but there was really nothing to worry about. The customs officer asked us a few questions - where we'd been, where we'd stayed, how long we'd been there, etc. Once we answered those, he handed us our identification back and said "welcome back to America". I left Chicago at 7:30 this morning (thanks to Larry Santoro for letting me crash at his place) and drove straight through with one nature and fuel breaks.

I made it home in plenty of time to go get my kids from school. Darrien, my son, loves the pirate ship I bought him for his birthday (today) and is playing with it as I speak.

Tomorrow, I go back to the bump and grind of earning a living, but the memories I made in Canada will be with me the rest of my days.