We survived a few days in Canada at the Fallsview water park, the kids had a good time, despite eleven year old recovering from some uri she came down with when camping with the Girl Scouts, and six year old being left alone at times.

The border crossing were stereotypical, the Canadian customs didn't ask for our paperwork and was laidback, I could imagine asking the bearded dude where to buy weed in Niagara Falls. It may have helped that I dressed like a Canadian, with dungarees, a beer t-shirt and a flannel shirt ( I couldn't find red and green suspenders, else I would have worn khakis). The American customs official was no-nonsense; he wanted our papers and to see inside the minivan. Considering the headaches we caused by splitting up the kids between two minivans and transporting a English citizen (though permanent resident), it could have been a lot more time consuming.

The waterpark was nice, it was part of the Casino Niagara Complex, on top of their parking garage. It was 95% indoors, with a wave pool, inner tube rides (which Mrs. Ha and I got to enjoy), water slides, a splashpad, and a few hot tubs. Outdoors was a heated pool, and for the first time since college I was able to rest in the water outside with snow falling on me (in college it was a portable hot tub, with girls my age and drinks). The water could have been a little hotter, my head got cold from the cold breeze and I was surprised my hair never froze.

Demographically, it was similar to our local waterpark, but with more Asians and fewer blacks, and maybe less overweight people. It was more crowded on Monday, due to the new secular humanist Canadian holiday, Family Day. It's a sign of my dormant libido that I didn't really notice the MILFs much.

We were in the cheapest attached hotel (there are three), which really catered to families, giving us waterpark tickets for both days, and an 8 pm movie in a covered courtyard. It was Surf's Up, an animated film about surfing penguins, and it was enjoyable, the CGI water and surfing was very well done.

Dinner was originally penciled in for the Hard Rock Cafe, but newspaper_mom successfully lobbied for a cheaper diner AF_dad had to leave early Tuesday morning for a meeting, so we took AF_mom and her youngest daughter back with us, her older daughter and our two rode with the Porsche family. He's done and being reassigned to a TLA in NoVa at the end of March, they'll probably move sometime soon after.

All in all, a good time, though now I have a split on my index finger from all the swimming, and I'm exhausted from sleeping poorly at the hotel (it was noisy and the beds were hard).

In other media news, we saw two movies this weekend, though only one to completion. Why do directors think muting the color for a movie set in the past works? Like the Black Dahlia,
Hollywoodland has muddy muted colors, and is a confusing mess. We never finished it, and don't really care who shot George Reeves.

Mrs. Ha really liked Personal Velocity, three short movies about women in crisis, loosely tied together. The first one has Kyra Sedgewick as a woman who flees an abusive marriage, the second as Parker Posey as a nympho in a boring marriage, and the third as Fairuza Balk as a pregnant punkish woman picking up a hitch-hiker. I found it more nuanced than a Lifetime movie, but not quite my cup of tea.

While we were in Canada, I suffered a major financial disaster. The Toyota needed $1100 of work to pass inspection and stay safe. I had the money in my checking account, because I got paid on Friday and hadn't paid any bills. Right now I'm robbing Peter to Pay Paul by submitting lots of medical claims to pay bills. I will probably take another 401k loan to get caught up, I'm not sure how that will affect the Financial Aid for the Catholic middle school, am I like to get more with an extra $5k in credit card and $5k in the 401k, or with that $5k removed from the 401k to pay credit card debt.

In other school news, the audition for the art school is next weekend, we're pushing eleven year old to be ready, i hope she is.

I was able to keg my honey lager, I'll probably tap it tonight or tomorrow. I decided to use an old full keg of bad beer, after a year or three in the keg it had fermented even more, and ended up with a taste between a lambic and vinegar. I don't regret pouring that down the drain.