The CSI people know everything - according to Kathy, they're the descendants of Mary Magdalene

I had a fun afternoon today at Port Maitland beach with Maryn. We brought some books, snacks (gummi worms, bananas, cheese doodles - by the way I love that word doodle. Doodle! Say it over and over and see if it doesn't make you giggle) and a big quilted blanket to lie down on.

The weather was pleasant; sunny but with a nice Yarmouthian breeze - it's always windy in Yarmouth. Anyway, while Maryn read I went off for a little stroll by the shoreline. I tried to get into the water but remembering the last time I was here, I decided my "boys" wouldn't appreciate the cold intrusion so I settled on dipping my feet into the warmer waters of the nearby tidepools.

I find it comforting to take a stroll by the ocean. Something about the salt in the air and the soothing, rolling sounds of the waves which makes me feel right at home. When I was little and bored my parents used to fill up the kitchen sink with water and give me some mugs or containers and that would be it. I would spend all my time scooping up and dumping water as if H2O were created just for me. I was very easily entertained. So you could say I'm a little obsessed with water. I bet you in another life I was a fisherman. Or a merman.

Another childhood memory I have is of myself screaming when my toes came into contact with hot sand (my mom has plenty of horror stories about such incidents) but now I just love squishing sand between my toes. It's just so much fun. As you can see I'm still very easily entertained.

After relaxing by the beach Maryn and I took the car out for a drive through lots of small towns around Yarmouth such as Sand Beach, Rockville, Arcadia, and ended up stopping for a little while in the Acadian town of Wedgeport.

Driving through these small towns and looking at the scenery all around us makes me think about what it means to be Canadian. After living the majority of my life in an urban environment like Montreal it was hard to relate to the Canada portrayed by artists like The Group of Seven because the world represented on their canvases looked completely different from what my everyday experience was.

But everywhere you look whether it's in Sackville, Yarmouth, or any of the little towns in between, there are wide open spaces with dense forests and flower filled fields, shimmering lakes and rivers, which are absolutely awe inspiring. I brought my camera with me and kept wanting to capture the beauty of a moment or a piece of scenery but after a while I had to stop because I just couldn't capture it all. In seeing these locations up close and personal, I can finally understand what The Group of Seven had in mind when they made their works of art.

When we got back from our little trip we had supper with Maryn's parents and then took a walk over to the Harbour's Edge Bed and Breakfast to visit with Esther, one of the owner's of the B&B and also a very good friend of Maryn's family. I had never seen the inside of the house so I was really excited to get the grand tour. The house is a Canadian Heritage site built originally in 1864 and it is absolutely beautiful. I recommend you take a look at their website to get more information about the house as well as to look at some of the photos of the property. If you're ever in the neighborhood and want to pamper yourself, then I suggest you look no further.

The rest of the night was spent relaxing, watching The Simpsons and as you might have guessed from the title of this post, CSI.

Forget university. Everything I know, I learned from CSI. CSI and Dan Brown.