And now for something I was going to post last year but didn't because I got DQ'd in the red jersey and didn't want to bother if it wasn't going to count

People come up to me and ask, why is it that I look so fondly back at the 90s like a theme park vacation, maybe I should explain why by talking about the Summer of 1998 that led to everything changing

I’ve spent my summer of 1998 at three different day camps, one of them at a community centre, another at the Y, and another two weeks at some kind of hospital program (I wasn’t sick I have a disability) where I’ve met a very good friend of mine who I have been friends with for the past 26 years, then after that I spent another two weeks with a respite group and we went everywhere, the weekend I was done I spent the night with two different relatives because my parents took off to Sandy Lake for a weekend, so my weekend wasn’t boring and with two weeks left to go that summer I made sure that it was all worth it before I hit 4th grade, but maybe I should say everything in detail

I don’t remember much about my week at the Terry Sawchuck area but what stuck out was we did quite a bit of crafts (yeah kind of boring), I do remember playing some sports but I don’t remember much of that either

The week after I spent a week at the Y it had a great day camp there, and the pool was the best it had a waterslide, I liked it so much that I did two more years there, and the week was capped by a trip to Fun Mountain (it was a water park, it’s not open anymore because the last owner was an idiot anti-vaxxer, I wish it did get a new owner it was the only real water park Winnipeg really has, I mean there’s one in Transcona but I haven’t gone, I’ve driven past it though) and it wasn’t my only trip there that summer, more on that in a bit

The rest of July was that two week group thing where I met my friend on the last 26 years (I don’t call her my best friend because I don’t like to play favourites) we had been in an out of contact for most of the 2000s but a common interest had us doing more stuff together starting in 2006, and sometime that week we did our annual hotel vacation, but this time rather than our usual two days we only spent the night there (I didn’t really understand at the time but my dad had been laid off for several months and didn’t return to work until the Spring of 1999, we did try again to do a two night trip to that same hotel, but……I did something I kind of regret, I wanted to go home because the hotel did NOT carry Teletoon) this again was back in the day when hotels had arcades, the Brandon Victoria in had one but it wasn’t as nice as the one at the Holiday Inn in Grand Forks that they had at the time, but it was probably the first time I noticed that they had video game consoles in hotel rooms at the time (god I miss those days even if they did cost money to use)

Now August like I had said I spent with this hospital group with other kids that were either on the Autism spectrum or had ADD or ADHD (I didn't really realize it at the time because I didn't really understand that I had this disability but my autism is so high functioning that no one knows I have it unless I tell them) One of the things that stood out to me those times was when we went to the now closed Skinners Wet n Wild (yeah we can't declare Water Parks historic landmarks especially if it costs too much money to fix up) and the last day we we had gone to Grand Beach, I hate that the older I get the less memories I have of the best stuff, though pictures were taken of those two weeks, at the end of that week my parents went to Sandy Lake to visit mom's relative's and I stayed with one of my aunts overnight. The next night I would be spending with my cousins at a different house (because one of their birthday parties was that weekend my parents would pick me up from there) I also begged my respite worker at the time to take me to Fun Mountain and I had fun there a second time....I didn't go again for four years with my school. Anyway my respite worker dropped me off at my aunt's house and we watched rented movies (it was one of the Land Before Time films and the animated version of Babes in Toyland...oh yeah and we also watched Spice World....sure it's dumb but it's a fun distraction and now I watch it every new years eve....I'll explain why another day)

so for the last two weeks of that spring break (this was back in the day when school started on the last monday in August rather than several days after labor day) I spent it doing stuff randomly, I don't know why but I asked my dad to hook up my master system downstairs for a week, back in the day we had a rule that my gaming system would only be hooked up for two weeks a year (another reason why I looked forward to Christmas because that's when it was normally hooked up) well long story short that two week rule thing and my decision to have it hooked up for a week bit me in the butt by the time christmas came along (maybe I'll talk about that holiday break one day)

I spent my final week before school started watching Treehouse tv in the basement because hey they had stuff I used to watch in my youth I really grew to enjoy Ants In Your Pants which was about the puppet monkey VJ that hung around his tree with some ants that keep wrecking the tree and yet in the second season the ants became his friends (I don't know what happened there) one of the music videos stood out because it had clips of a show I used to watch at the time Uh Oh which was a game show that every canadian kid was addicted to in the late 90s early 2000s...sigh but if I knew that YTV was going to change it's campaign from You Rule to Keep it Weird I would have watched alot more YTV (oh that reminds me I did spend time taping Stickin Around because the first half of season 2 was pretty damn funny, the show still holds up today but it's a show you couldn't make today, oh it's not about wokeness those kids would have been so hooked on their devices their imagination wouldn't get anywhere)

Well one week after being at school I caught a cold and spent that long weekend watching Teletoon for the first time in it's entirety maybe one day I'll try to remember the first episode of everything I saw on the channel

Me and you have something in common. Like you I have very high functioning Autism. I did not find out until I was in my mid 20's. My Autism is high functioning like you most people do not know until I tell them. However, I'm shy socially, and I do not like screaming sounds like fireworks or screaming kids. Thunder is the exception.

1998 was eventful for me because I saw and was in my first tornado. The summer of 1998 was very stormy in my area. Plus it was a very active hurricane season in the summer and fall. I also got to watch a lot of baseball during the summer months.

I wish I could remember the weather from those two months but then again I don't remember major weather events in the 90s like that (I don't live in Quebec or Ontario believe me I think I would have remembered THAT ice storm)