Burlington, Pigeon Hill, and Swiffer Wet Jets I don't know what got into me this weekend. I just wanted to get outta town. Saturday, I got up at my usual hour, made breakfast, read the Gazoo and the Globe and did a bit of tidying up around the house. Then I showered and decided I'd go to Burlington and try to spend the night around there. The plan was to shop a bit in Burlington, find a hotel, and then do some hiking the next day. Kids, never, ever leave home without booking a hotel. Everything was booked solid between Burlington and the Canadian border. No big deal. I had a nice dinner, bought some stuff at Old Navy, and watched the sun set behind the Adirondacks swinging on a public bench on the shores of the Champlain. I started the drive back at around 9:30 p.m. I think I've already written about driving at night, but another thing I noticed about doing this, particularly on smaller, windy roads, is how meditative it is. Talk about clearing your mind of all thought and just concentrating on the task at hand. Very, very cleansing and relaxing. I still had the "get outta town" bug on Sunday, so I pulled out my Hiking in Quebec book and decided on Frelighsbourg, a tiny village a few kilometres from Vermont. There are some simple hiking trails just outside the village that lead you through meadows of wildflowers and beautiful forests. The most amazing thing was the distinctive smell of honey everywhere. It reminded me of when I used to help my ex-'s mom extract honey from the hives she kept. You'd get deliciously covered, head to toe, in honey. On the drive back, I decided to stay off the 10 for as long as possible. I passed through a number of little villages, notably tiny Pigeon Hill, perhaps one of the quaintest areas I've been through in a long time. Mature trees grow close to the narrow road. Modest and well-kept heritage homes sit slightly back from the road. The sun was low in the sky (it was around 6:30 p.m.), casting that amazing golden glow through the trees. Nice place to visit, but could I live there? On a domestic note, I finally found a Swiffer WetJet. This is a magical household device that lets you clean floors in heels, kicky palzzo pants and a cute little form-fitting sleeveless sweater. No buckets, no measuring cleaning fluid into lukewarm water, no mop head to wring out. Magic. This is a battery-powered device that sprays cleaning fluid from the bottle attached directly to the mop itself. When the mop head is dirty, you throw it away. Amazing. I visited many, many Canadian Tires, Wal-Marts, and Reno-Depots before finding one in the Canadian Tire in Cowansville. When I got home with it last night, I assembled it and cleaned the entire downstairs floor. I was so thrilled with it that I cleaned some of the floors upstairs as well. My floors now have a clean uniformity that they haven't had in a long time. This device could change my life.