My awesome day, which was awesome

Michael's following some keener Boston marathon training guide that says you need to run on Saturdays and Sundays. So I'm trying to keep up with him given that... uh, I don't have a job and I really have no excuse to not be in the best damn shape of my life since I could, conceivably, exercise for several hours every day.
Last night he said he would call me today and we'd go for a run. And call he did at 10am when I was still in bed, drooling on my pillow. I was like "uhhhhnnnn, no" and he's like "right, I will be there in a moment, so get your ass out of bed". It was COLD this morning and I thought that we would be doing a thirty minute easy run like we did last Saturday, but no, we did 45 minutes which I thought was steep because (I'm a baby and the world's laziest marathoner) we have to run 14 miles tomorrow. But it was good. It felt good to stretch my legs and we had a nice run and then went for a coffee and a nice chat before he had to leave (he has to work late tonight). He said, "What are you doing for the rest of the day?" and I really had nothing on the agenda.
I get home and there's a message from my mom saying that my brother is coming in to visit her and they were going to go pick out a spot on the beach for a bench for my father and did I want to come. It was perfect timing. I jumped in the shower and headed in to Vancouver and Jay was already there and I hadn't seen him in a month so I really didn't want to miss the opportunity.
Jay brought some photos that he had taken when he and I visited our dad at Lasqueti a few years ago. I didn't really know the photos existed and it was really cool and touching to look at a couple of photos of me and my dad exploring Spring Bay and another one of me and my dad playing against the backboard of the tennis court he built up there.
As I was driving in to Vancouver I thought "I'm going to see Carsten". Carsten was the run leader when I was training for my first marathon with the Running Room. Nicest guy you'd ever want to meet. Super encouraging and friendly and funny and he had more faith in me than I did. I actually bumped into him shortly after crossing the finish line in Victoria in October and we had a bit of a chat then.
So we're walking along the beach and checking out various places that we think my dad would've approved of having a bench in his honor and I think the place that my mom picked was the best: near the Maritime Museum and I was taking a picture of the view from there and I turn to my right and... there's Carsten. It was too weird! So we chatted for the longest time and I was glad that he got to meet my mom and brother.
Then we continued on and it was just a really great day to be going for a stroll along the beautiful Vancouver shoreline and we went back to my mom's and I said I was going to go but then we all started chatting about any number of things and then we all ended up going to a nearby Japanese restaurant which was really good and then my brother and I took off.
It was just the perfect day. A great run in the morning and a fun, conversational coffee with Michael, and then spending the afternoon with my family. Just perfect. Totally unplanned.
We have to think of what we want to write on the plaque on my dad's bench. That's a hard one. We joked that we would put "Get me some ice cream, ya fat slut" cause that's what he said to Jay once (when he weighed 80lbs or something). He said "Take it easy" a lot. I think that might be appropriate. He wasn't one to say "I love you" very often or anything even remotely sappy (which is why I kept that note that he left on the windshield of my car that said "Who loves ya baby? Your daddy does").
I don't know. It's a tough one. What do you say to commemorate an amazing life lived?
We'll figure it out. It'll be nice to have a place to sit and enjoy a cappuccino (he was a cappuccino fiend) after walking through the neighbourhood that he grew up in. Enjoying the ocean he swam in, the beach he played on, the pool he life guarded at.
Yeah. It was a strange, impromptu but appropriate retrospective today.
Miss you, Daddy.