nermal

The goodness in you

2009-04-15T22:07:00.007-06:00

I was feeling pretty bummed tonight about the state of the world and the dreadful things people do to eachother and the earth. This anger and frustration and despair was built on a couple of things from the past few days - reading about Dubai and the slavery and eco-suicide it's built upon; reading various news articles on murders and assaults and the unwillingness of the US, Canadian and Australian governments to commit to any real climate change initiatives; seeing people in my office building chucking stuff into the dumpster that could have been reused or at the very least recycled... etc. etc.

After ranting at Rem and Anne for a good while each, I have been trying to take their advice and focus on the people out there who are doing good things and trying their best. Happily, I seem to know several of them!

My Gram is one such person. She makes dozens of quilts each year out of fabric she gets from places like the thrift shop and the roll ends at the fabric shops. Since I started volunteering at the Reuse Centre, I've been getting her bags of fabric from there, too. As a result, she's been delivering bags of finished quilts to me every time I see her. Usually I take the quilts directly to a women's shelter or an inner city charity, but I figured I'd try something different this time. And that's where I discovered a bunch more people willing to pitch in for good works.

I "auctioned" the quilts off for donations to women's shelters or homelessness charities and have had 12 of the 14 quilts claimed by 9 generous people. Big thanks go out to Keith, Janel, Anne, Mi, Allison, Betty-Anne, Jenn, Micah and Sophie for their generous donations. They've chosen to support the Bissell Centre, the Youth Emergency Shelter, the Women's Transitional House in Vernon, Habitat for Humanity in Guelph, Margaret Savage Women's Shelter in Cold Lake, Operation Friendship, WIN House (Edmonton Women's Shelter) and the Nyarut Village Development Project through SaveaVillage.ca.

Thanks not only for helping out these wonderful organizations, but also for helping to build my faith in humanity, folks!

Absurdly pleasing

2009-01-27T20:31:00.000-07:00

Your results:
You are Deanna Troi

Deanna Troi		75%
James T. Kirk (Captain)		60%
Jean-Luc Picard		50%
Geordi LaForge		45%
Chekov		40%
Spock		40%
Will Riker		40%
Uhura		35%
Beverly Crusher		35%
Leonard McCoy (Bones)		30%
Mr. Scott		25%
Worf		20%
Mr. Sulu		15%
Data		15%
An Expendable Character (Redshirt)		10%

You are a caring and loving individual.
You understand people's emotions and
you are able to comfort and counsel them.

Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Quiz

Bicycles and Whims

2009-01-03T21:57:00.006-07:00

Being as it's the start of another trip around the sun, there has been some talk of late of the things we accomplished in the last year. Somehow all my thoughts have turned back to bikes. Last year was the first year I actually biked all through an Edmonton winter - big thanks go to Mal for showing me joys of studded tires. We also biked out to Pigeon Lake again, with Sophie this time; and did a short jaunt out to Beaumont with her which included a portage over a mudbog. June saw us ride half of Nova Scotia, and in August I actually succumbed to the dictates of my ego and signed up to ride the Icefields Parkway with the group Rem was putting together. It all turned out to be lots of fun, though I have to admit that the Icefields trip (Jasper to Banff via two mountain passes, for those not in the know) would have been somewhat smoother had I owned waterproof gloves and sleeping pills. Next time! (Will there be a next time? Perhaps.)

So given that my head is apparently stuck in bikeland, perhaps it's not quite so stunning that I bought a new bike, completely on a whim, today. Christopher's bike shop, Velocity, was having a huge 2-day sale to clear out old stock. We went down to check it out with Sophie and discovered that they had a couple of Jamis Auroras at nearly 50% off. This is the same touring bike both Rem and Sophie have and love. It's a steel frame, so heavier than my current bike, Bouncing Betty, but also better at damping vibrations. It's also got drop bars, which I have thus far resisted getting, but which offer more hand positions. Both those features ought to mean that I have fewer problems with my hands and wrists on long rides. I've had some trouble with that in the past and have no desire to give myself nerve damage: it takes all the fun out of a tour!

So here's hoping that when I finally get to take her out some sunny spring day, I'll like my new bike even better than Betty. Just a few more months...

The picture: most of the crew at the top of the Sunwapta Pass. Chris is taking the photo and Lana the driver is already waiting for us at Parker Ridge. Holy cow was the descent from this point fun! The brown & white bike in front of Rem is also the same model that I just got.

Poetry Night

2008-08-14T22:40:00.002-06:00

My friend Matt has become a Lutheran minister at a church downtown. Though I hadn't seen him in oh, 5 years, we've emailed back and forth now and again and generally kept in touch. So when he told me he was starting a sort of discussion group that looked at various forms of media and art as fodder for a search for truth I was definitely intrigued, despite my usual avoidance of things chruch related. Tonight was the first time I could go - I think it's only the second meeting, and it was a terrific time. There was Matt, his friend from high school, two septugenarian parishoners, 4 poems, and me.

So much fun! We read through two John Donne poems and two Margaret Atwood ones and did our best to unpack and interpret them and just see where the discussions took us. It was like being in English class again except with no essays to be written! I am vastly looking forward to the next evening but have to wait until October.

I'm Melllllting...

2008-06-30T14:40:00.002-06:00

It's +31 C outside. It is approximately 900 degrees warmer in my office. The A/C apparently conked out on the weekend and they haven't got it running yet. With a fairly sealed building where people haven't enough sense to close the (admittedly poor) shades on the many windows, this has resulted in an impressive greenhouse effect. It's actually cooled off some since I arrived this morning, but perhaps that's merely since I stopped moving.

I've stripped off my last remaining article of clothing not required for decency's sake: my sandals. Unfortunately, this means when I stubbed my toe this afternoon, they had even less protection than usual. (Yes, I do this a lot.) I don't think I actually broke it, but I wouldn't rule out a sprain at this point: it really hurts and doesn't want to bend.

What a good first day back at work!

Costumes!

2008-04-12T19:21:00.005-06:00

Erik decided we needed more opportunities to play dress-up. His theme? Literary characters. Somehow my picture of Cameron as Macbeth disappeared. Be assured he cut a fine figure in his kilt.

Fear Factor

2008-03-26T11:35:00.004-06:00

I am a worrier. (You're shocked, I know. I hide it so well.) Though I wouldn't describe any of my fears as serious enough to merit the title of phobia, there are a lot of things that niggle at me. As a result I'm really big on safety - wearing helmets, crossing at the lights, turning pot handles in, not speeding, staying well back from cliff edges... you name it. All these safety precautions let me feel fairly comfortable in my daily life and even let me do things like biking in traffic which others consider too risky. But despite lots of safety precautions, there are still things that freak the bejeebers out of me.

On Monday, I ventured forth to try a couple of them anyways.

The first was wall climbing. Rem took this up back in December and he and our friend Chris have been scaling the walls at Vertically Inclined on a weekly basis ever since. They're pretty good at it, and yes, there are lots of safety features. For one thing, the floor is padded. For another, you're strapped into a harness connected to nice strong ropes with braking mechanisms. So despite climbing 40 feet into the air, even with no skills at all, you're pretty well going to be okay.

With all this in mind, I was still nervy, and looking down from half-way up the wall was initially stomach-churning. I did manage 4 climbs, though, and even made it all the way up a (very easy) route to ring the victory bell. By the end, losing my footing and falling wasn't even traumatic 'cause, hey, I could just dangle in the air.

And yeah, I think I'll go back again, now and then. It was fun. And, it's very good for the arm muscles.

Part two of my Fear Factor day was less fun but more socially redeeming. I've been trying to work up the guts to give blood for about 8 years. I hate needles. I had LOTS of them for dental work when I was a kid and they made a big impression.

Still, I figure I should give blood. I'm part of a relatively small group of people who don't have any medical reason NOT to, and I'd sure like there to be blood for me someday if I get shmucked riding in traffic. Veteran donors Erik and Lana have been talking about dragging me to the clinic for months, and finally Erik succeeded. I actually beat him there, and figured I'd better get going through the process before I chickened out and left. Fortunately, he showed up in time to distract me during the actual draining, which was very welcome. I'm not sure I'm ever going to have the nerves to do it without a cheer team.

It wasn't terribly painful, probably a little better than I expected, really, and I didn't pass out or throw up or anything nasty. I was pretty zonked, though, and my arm got rather bruised and swollen. I've got a picture -- I'll have to post it.

I did learn one or two things from my Fear Factor Day:

1) Drink lots of water in the days preceding a donation so the nurses can actually find your veins.

2) Don't go donate blood after doing new arm exercises unless you're really into compounding your pain.

3) Don't bike to the blood donor clinic as you're not likely to want to bike home again.

4) They serve donors yummy Cookies By George.

So who wants to drag me next time?

Pictures: with and without the flash. Neither shows how purple they are, though...

Poetry Time

2008-02-04T11:02:00.001-07:00

My sister passed this along to me. It was written by an Albertan, identity unknown.

It's winter in Alberta
And the gentle breezes blow
Seventy miles an hour
At thirty-five below.
Oh, how I love Alberta
When the snow's up to your butt
You take a breath of winter
And your nose gets frozen shut.
Yes, the weather here is wonderful
So I guess I'll hang around
I could never leave Alberta
'Cause I'm frozen to the ground.

Re-readables

2008-01-28T22:20:00.000-07:00

I am, sometimes, a voracious reader. Other times I am very listless reader, and go maybe a whole year only reading a handful of new books. But reading continues nonetheless! I have a collection of old favourites that I pick up again and again, whether to read only a chapter or two or the whole kit and kaboodle. That you, too, may benefit from these literary equivalents of chocolate chip cookies, they are, in no particular order:

1) The McIntyre Liar, by David Bly (Albertan!)
A delightful novel about the summer a city slicker teen has working on a farm after smashing up his dad's car. Smart ass Muskrat chronicles his adventures on his computer in the form of a gossip rag, the McIntyre Liar. Very funny. Also very sweet, with sniffy moments.

2) A Nest of Singing Birds &/or Getting Married in Buffalo Jump, both by Susan Haley (Canadian)
The first is about a philosophy sessional instructor's love affair with a fellow professor. The second is about a rural kindergarten teacher's entanglement with her hunky farmhand. No, they're not harlequin romances. There's a good amount of character development in each and even a bit of a mystery in Buffalo Jump. CBC made a movie of it, but for some unknown reason excised most of the plot. Probably decided they needed to have Paul Gross in more scenes.

3) Pride & Prejudice & / or Persuasion, both by Jane Austen
I figure these are Austen's two best and I love watching the changes that come over the protagonists throughout the stories. So many of the love stories we have now are based on stupid misunderstandings on page two which would have been solved if they'd just had a proper conversation. There's more meat to these.

4) The Stephanie Plum Series, by Janet Evanovich
Evanovich has done 13 novels and a couple of novellas in this silly pulp series about a Jersey girl bounty hunter who's not very skilled but fortunately very lucky, dating a cop and mentored by a very sexy fellow bounty hunter. A bit high on the violence scale for my liking, but it's mostly pretty cartoony. Comic supporting characters include Stephanie's hell-on-wheels Grandma Mazur, her sometimes partner filing clerk and former prostitute Lula, and cross-dressing guitarist & bus driver Sally Sweet, possibly the ugliest transvestite ever.

5) The Aunt Dimity Series, by Nancy Atherton
Clocking in around a dozen short novels, this mystery series was my introduction to 'cozies' -- mysteries for curling up on a cold day with a cup of tea and a quilt. The Aunt Dimity of the title is actually a ghost who writes in a blue notebook to her protege to keep her on the straight and narrow. I like the idea of keeping an eye on people's behaviour even from beyond the grave.

6) The Amelia Peabody Series, by Elizabeth Peters
More mysteries, this time solved by Victorian lady Egyptologist Amelia Peabody -- with help from her family, who collectively have more lives than entire herds of cats. They have many unlikely adventures in these fun romps. And occasionally I learn a thing or two about Egyptology. I think there are more than twenty books in this series and devoutly pray that there may be many more -- which might require some very speedy writing as the author is an octogenarian by this point. Happily, she's been very prolific.

7) The Discworld Series, by Terry Pratchett
I finally dove into these books in the Netherlands, years after they had been recommended to me by friends. Pratchett has created a magical world -- which is actually discshaped and flat -- where he happily lampoons damn near anything you can think of. Religion, philosophy, rock music, Santa Claus, movie stars, government, th whole works. He's nearing 40 books in the series at a youngish maybe-60, but with early-onset Alzheimers, we're unlikely to see another 40. I welcome any and all, of course! My favourite sub-series is the Night Watch books. Sam Vimes may be my favourite character ever.

Frozen monkeys plummet to earth. And shatter.

2008-01-28T11:13:00.000-07:00

It's actually gotten COLDER. It's -31C with a -46 windchill. And that's in the middle of the freaking city at nearly NOON!

I took the bus this morning. My bike doesn't work well in these temperatures and my glasses fog up too much with my scarves to allow for safe navigation on the roads. As it was I was guessing where the sidewalks might be. Since most of them are still knee-deep in snowdrifts, it's difficult to tell if I found them or not. I have a 5 block walk at the end of my bus ride down a residential road. I gave up on the sidewalks and just went for the road. It's only ankle-deep there. If it weren't absolute zero out there it'd be great sledding powder.

Holy Flying Frozen Monkeys, Batman!

2008-01-27T21:41:00.000-07:00

It's cold! Frigid, blizzarding, your-nose-will-fall-off old-school prairie cold. Cold that makes me consider life in a sweaty, humid, melt-your-nose-off tropical jungle with innumerable crawly things in a positive light. Currently it's -27C with a strong wind blowing snow and a windchill of -42. I haven't been outside all day but am considering taking the garbage out. It's approximately a 3 minute walk roundtrip and this decision requires serious thought. Rem likes this sort of extreme weather. It makes him giddy.

The really great news is this cold snap is going to stick around to Thursday at the earliest. We're looking at highs of -22C and lows of -34C, and who knows what the wind will add to this.

I read last week that about 40 of Edmonton's homeless people die every year -- mostly out of accumulated effects of living on the streets for years, but I wonder how many are suffering outside in this mess. Will anyone be found frozen in a snowdrift after this week? There are only about 800 shelter spaces for something like 2000 homeless folks. Where do the others go in situations like this? I can't imagine wearing enough clothes to keep you alive for long in these temperatures and yet there are still people who camp in the river valley.

Biking in a Winter Wonderland

2007-11-26T10:43:00.000-07:00

Real winter biking season started yesterday. We FINALLY got a decent amount of snow AND the cold weather to keep it. At the end of November! I'd make the claim that this was direct evidence of global warming, but apparently yesterday's record cold temperature was last year and record warm temperature was the year before, so I guess I ought not to make sweeping generalizations on odd points of data.

In any case, riding home from Erik's last night was accomplished in blowing snow, -24 windchill, and the odd bit of ice hiding under the accumulating white stuff. I was extremely grateful for my studded tires (THANKS, MALCOLM!) and fleece-lined pants. The fabulous thing is that I was much warmer and more comfortable riding home in such conditions than I would have been taking the bus. I got pretty fed up last year with shivering in a bus shelter while Rem beat me to our destination on his bike and was warm to boot.

I still cannot claim to actually enjoy the ride particularly -- having to stop every five minutes to blow my nose puts a certain damper on my enthusiasm, I'm afraid. I pulled down my scarf last night to accomplish that very deed and it froze together. Rem laughed. Harrumph.

Rem does claim to enjoy winter riding -- he says the joy of making fresh tracks in the snow outshines the inconveniences of the rest of it. I figure at least part of this is attributable to his lack of a tap for a nose and the other part to his functioning metabolism. He has fewer inconveniences to outweigh.

For now I guess I'll just have to be content with it being preferable to bussing, walking or driving. Stay warm, everyone.

What rhymes with Yoga? Besides toga...

2007-09-28T10:06:00.000-06:00

I've been meaning to try yoga for a very long time, thanks to the rave reviews given by several friends. Since the Kinsmen Rec Center was offering free admission (and drop-in classes) last night, I finally stopped procrastinating and actually went. My friend Sophie, a kind and understanding person and yoga veteran, took me with her, showed me around the place and explained about wooden blocks, foam pieces and straps.

I normally hate the beginning of any new physical activity. Particularly public activities where you can compare your performance with the people around you. Yoga was no exception: I am not a very graceful or coordinated person, sadly. Happily for my ego, neither were several of the people around me. I learned that I'm actually fairly flexible and can touch my toes and grab my feet in positions where this is not a given and other people needed straps. However, my balance is in need of work - I wobbled and wiggled all through the stand-on-one-leg poses, and my strength is pitiful.

I also need to learn what the heck the instructor is talking about in her directions. Some of them are easy enough to understand -- push your thighs into the floor or point your arm at the back wall -- but others never made sense to me. How does one soften one's throat? Or put pressure on the base of one's big toe AND the outside heel at the same time? Sophie mentioned that this instructor is perhaps not as helpful as some of the others who use more analogies and go around giving specific directions to each person. Since I sometimes have board meetings on Thursday nights, I may try the Sunday and Tuesday classes and see if those instructor are easier to follow.

Overall, the experience was fairly positive and I want to keep doing it.

Hang in there, everyone!

2007-07-31T13:59:00.000-06:00

Boy, it’s been one of those days.

It started out with the news that my washing machine isn’t working. The breaker’s blown and won’t stay flipped back, so I’ve got to figure out why it’s overloaded and what to do about it.

Next, I got an email from my Dad that my Gram broke her wrist and has to have surgery. It was supposed to be this morning but has now been bumped up to late this afternoon -- hopefully. And she’ll have to stay overnight, which I’m sure she’ll hate.

Then I read a friend’s blog and learned his beloved Uncle died a week or so ago. I missed my friend’s phone call last night and might not be able to catch him tonight.

After that, I got an email from a friend I was supposed to see tomorrow. We haven’t managed to get together since her wedding last summer since she now lives a LOOOONG way away. We’ve made plans several times when she’s visiting but somehow something more important comes up every time and she bails. This is a long visit, so we might be able to reschedule, but if this happens again I may give up trying.

Add this to the news that another friend’s overseas grad program has been cancelled and replaced with something she’s not sure she wants... after her plane ticket’s been purchased, apartment relinquished and job posted.

Finally, hotmail has decided to stop delivering my messages for some unknown reason, the weather’s cold and grey, and Rem’s not due home until next Sunday night. I am not a happy camper.

~~~~~

In hopes of becoming a happier camper, however, I should mention that I get to go shopping tonight, my cousin and her friend depart tomorrow (letting me have my house to myself for the first time in 11 days), and I get to go on a road trip to visit a friend on Friday.

How I became Hardcore

2007-07-27T14:11:00.000-06:00

This year, Rem and I took a three-part vacation in the land of his birth, British Columbia. We spent the better part of 10 days biking around Vancouver Island (Victoria - Nanaimo - Port Alberni - (boat) - Ucluelet - Tofino), sitting on sandy beaches and visiting Rem's brother & his fiancee. After that, we attended the wedding festivities of one of Rem's best friends from way back and then spent a few days lazing around in Vernon.

The bike trip was good, though the beginning of it was difficult. A weekend of insufficient and stress-y sleep before trying to peddle a loaded bike up hills was probably not the best way to start. Fortunately, it meant that the end of the trip, where the road was flatter and I was better rested, felt positively easy.

The weather was nice - sunny and warm for all but one day which was only cool and happily not rainy. Between poor surfaces and some killer grades, we were limited to mostly highways but happily there was almost always enough shoulder to feel comfortable. The one notable exception was trying to get out of Nanaimo, which turned out to be about 20 km of strip malls and big box stores: the incessant dodging of meridians and impatient drivers trying to turn was unpleasant.

As you might have expected, Rem did the research for this trip and concluded that none of it would make me divorce him. His one warning was that between Nanaimo & Port Alberni was "one good hill". After the third "good hill" that day, he thought that we were done climbing. Then, wading in the glorious cool Cameron lake water, I got talking to a family there and was told, "I'm so impressed you guys are tackling the hump." Eh? What? The Hump? "One Good Hill" had a name. I was not pleased.

When we finally got there, The Hump turned out to be a three stage hill. The first two stages were tough but okay, but the third stage had an 8% grade. I could only go about 100m at a time before stopping to huff and puff and blow myself over. Ascension took a good while. Just as I was getting near the top and trying to avoid (yet more) broken glass, I thought to myself that it would really suck to get a flat tire up there. As soon I finished thinking it, hissssssssss. Rem had it fixed within about 10 minutes, and I appreciated the break, even if it was taken sitting on the shoulder against a concrete barricade and watching large trucks whizz by. We saw the sign shortly thereafter: 411m. A wee bit more than "a good hill"!!

I got him back, though. We spent a couple days around Tofino, biking to the beaches and hiking trails (three cheers for incredible old growth rainforest), and I wanted to stop at an observation post on the way back. I'd read the description in the book and it sounded very nice, even if the path to the outlook was 150m of steep climbing. Trouble is, I didn't think about the fact that it was an OBSERVATION POINT called Radar HILL and thus was likely to be the highest point around. The road turned out to be even worse than The Hump, if shorter (? maybe?). We weren't loaded this time, but I still had to walk up with a quarter or so of the road to go. Rem made it up pedalling but said he was going as hard as he could while standing and still
just barely kept moving. The girls at the top who'd passed us in cars commented on how they thought we were hardcore. This prompted much laughter and eventually a discussion about the continuum of hardcore cyclists as viewed by non-cyclists. I concluded that I was at the bottom and crazy Malcolm (who in addition to biking Asia on a tandem, chose to bike across Europe solo - starting from Vladivostok on the eastern coast) is at the top. Fortunately, after all that work, the "steep" path was nothing and the view was gorgeous. Too bad we forgot the camera.

Birthday pictures!

2007-04-08T16:12:00.000-06:00

Alright, let's see if this bloody thing works from Firefox since it seems to hate Opera. Lana was kind enough to post her picutres from my birthday party here

Migraine Projects

2007-03-20T13:59:00.000-06:00

Rem woke up with a migraine yesterday. When I left in the morning, he'd taken his meds and gone back to bed. When I came home in the afternoon, it was to a fixed garburator and Dutch tax forms and related documents spread out on the kitchen table.

Not being able to sleep, and having watched more than enough tv for one morning, my boy got productive. Apparently his Dad (who gets even worse headaches and they stick around for days) did the same when Rem was growing up and they called such things "migraine projects".

I hate Dutch forms, particularly tax forms. These migraines have their upside.

~~~~~~~~~

"You know you love someone when you let them go through your stuff and throw things out." -R. Milholland

2007-03-15T20:36:00.000-06:00

Birthday Feast

2007-03-12T10:47:00.000-06:00

Hear ye, hear ye! The Vast Birthday Gathering of She Who Must Be Obeyed Stephanie is hereby announced. Celebrations will occur at Steph & Rem's on the evening of Friday, March 16. All those friendly to She Who Must Be Obeyed are exceedingly welcome.

There will be cake. Possibly several kinds. Hope you can come.

Friday's Feast

2007-03-08T16:17:00.000-07:00

Just in case you haven't heard, about every fourth Friday Feast is now happening at Erik's... and is a potluck. Upon popular request, we're sharing the hosting and cooking roles with everyone. Feasters should show up at Erik's after 6pm and can contact me for address details.

Tying knots with sticks.

2007-03-05T13:09:00.000-07:00

My silence, blog-wise, of late can be largely attributed to my obsession with my latest hobby: knitting. My friend Jenn and I had been talking about our desire to learn to knit for several months when she actually went out and got some how-to books and dug in shortly after Christmas. The first book turned out to be a bust, but Jenn is nothing if not an intrepid researcher and found some on-line resources with videos. Check out www.knittinghelp.com if you too want to learn! A friend of Jenn's described it as "tying knots with sticks" and we figured we ought to be smart enough to tie knots, too.

Now, we are. Mostly. I can now knit, purl, cast on, bind off, increase and decrease. I'm just terrified of actually trying to follow a pattern so I'm making things up as I go along, with some success: I've finished a cushion cover! It was intended to be a scarf but somehow got wider than I'd intended and I ran out yarn before it was long enough to ever pretend to scarfness. Great cushion cover, though - matches our chairs. I'm now nearly done a big fuzzy shawl and then will start on a wool biking bandana for Rem.

I've spent a huge amount of time on this for the last couple months and am now happily to the place where I can knit and talk at the same time. The downside of this is that Anne's new boy, Florian (cute German fellow who's a few years younger than I) thought I was considerably older than I am... possibly because every time he's met me I've been ensconced in a rocking chair with my knitting.

I like this one better than the Supervillian

2007-02-11T21:25:00.000-07:00

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman		80%
Wonder Woman		55%
Spider-Man		55%
Robin		55%
Supergirl		50%
Iron Man		45%
Green Lantern		40%
Catwoman		40%
Hulk		35%
Batman		30%
The Flash		20%

You are mild-mannered, good,
strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Keith made me do it

2007-02-11T21:20:00.000-07:00

Your results:
You are Magneto

Magneto		54%
Poison Ivy		53%
Dr. Doom		52%
Apocalypse		52%
Mystique		51%
Lex Luthor		49%
The Joker		42%
Dark Phoenix		41%
Mr. Freeze		40%
Riddler		32%
Venom		30%
Catwoman		28%
Two-Face		27%
Juggernaut		23%
Green Goblin		19%
Kingpin		11%

You fear the persecution of those that are different or underprivileged so much that you are willing to fight and hurt others for your cause.

Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz

Flash from the Past

2007-02-01T19:55:00.000-07:00

My tv appearances on Monday had an unexpected benefit. A friend from high school from whom I've seen no hide nor hair since 1998 called me up this week. Her mom saw me on tv and clled Megan with the news that I was in fact still alive and kicking. We had a good chat tonight and are meeting for dinner on Tuesday with another good friend I haven't seen in years.

It was kind of fun giving a recap of my past nine years to her and made me realize both that a) I'm extremely lucky in my past adventures and b) I enjoy bragging about it way too much.

TV Star

2007-01-30T15:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I stood (or sat) in front of no fewer than 3 tv cameras and (I think) refrained from babbling for the most part. No doubt when I actually see the tapes I will revise this opinion. The day began at the ungodly hour of 5am as I got myself gussied up for a 6:50 AM interview with the Global morning show. They wanted to talk about a writing workshop project we did with 400 inner city kids yesterday. My friend Michael is taking media studies (or something like that - I always forget the exact name) at Macewan and was excited enough to see their studios that he volunteered to drive me. His moral support was also appreciated as I was pretty nervous.

The rest of the morning was full of more media stuff - we had the Journal and Examiner both send reporters and photographers, Shaw TV came to interview me, a student, and one of the presenters as well as to film a session, and then Global came back again to do a short interview with me and catch a session. It was a whirlwind of media and quite a new experience but I think it went well. I have yet to see any of the tv coverage and suspect I'll cringe and squirm my way through it when I do.

Hopefully this will have some positive effects on our profile, though!!

Really? Is that all?

2007-01-28T01:43:00.000-07:00

You Are 40% Nerdy

You're a little nerdy, but no one would ever call you a nerd.
You sometimes get into nerdy things, but only after they've become a part of mainstream culture.

How Nerdy Are You?

Feeling Famous

2007-01-16T13:31:00.000-07:00

I was just leafing through my work's copy of Quill and Quire - Canada's literary world magazine - and was delighted to find a two page article on Glen Huser, one of my authors. Better yet, the article mentions our organization AND our festival (old name, but still), calling it a "moveable feast" AND threw in a quote I'd given the interviewer about Glen's work. I feel very famous now. He even spelled my name right!

Speedy Appreciation?

2007-01-16T10:50:00.000-07:00

I snagged a (snow-covered) property highlights sheet from one of the realtor signs outside our building yesterday. Apparently a second floor suite of the same size and layout as our place is listed for $248 900! Yes, it's on the second floor, but that's still a $38 000 increase from what we paid! This market is crazy.

Home Sweet Home

2007-01-15T10:09:00.000-07:00

We're moved! Thanks to 13 friends and family members and their vehicles, we are now completely moved out of Newton and into our very own condo. The whole operation took less than three hours, involved two pickups, one SUV and a handful of cars. Great gratitude and future moving karma go to Andria, Anne, Chris, Dave, Jono, Kirsten, Lana, Malcolm, Michael, Na, Rhys, Simon, and my Mother.

In even better news, we're unpacked and ready to host Friday Feast again this week. Come to our housewarming feast!

Moving Day!

2007-01-08T14:43:00.000-07:00

I just received that much-anticipated call from the lawyer telling me that the mortgage paperwork has finally arrived and we can go in this week to sign things - hurrah! It looks like we should be able to move this weekend as planned. I started packing last week and have become a boxhound, checking recycle dumpsters everywhere I go. We've packed up most of the living room (including a dozen or so boxes of books) but have been dithering on the kitchen and bedroom lest the moving day had to be pushed back. Several friends (some of whom have vehicles!) have kindly offered their services and we have happily taken them up on it. I think we will be owing moving favours until the cows come home. Anyone else want to help? Just call! Operators are standing by.

2006

2007-01-02T18:02:00.000-07:00

I've been inspired by Anne's post to cast my wandering eye back over 2006 in search of accomplishments. Here's what I've got:
-recruited some terrific board members, got new grants, started some new programs and increased some old ones at work. (Much credit must be given to the terrific board members too.)
-became a commuter cyclist - at least, from April to October. November's ice has scared me off but I may be out again soon.
-biked from Edmonton to Camrose and back in one weekend.
-bought a condo.
-spent lots of time with lots of people I missed while in Europe.

All in all, pretty good. Perhaps not so spectacular a list as all the countries I visited in 2005, but rather more productive, and honestly, more enjoyable. Here's to an even better 2007...

Oh, and I almost forgot: I do have a new year's resolution this time around: swear off the regular consumption of donuts. My doc says my cholesterol is too high.

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-25T11:59:00.000-07:00

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Solstice, Merciful Holdays, or whatever you celebrate at this time of the year! May you eat good things, laugh with loved ones and share what you have with others. Hope I get to see you all soon.

Lights at the Legislature

2006-12-18T21:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Christmas with my mother, sister, and their respective partners. We had a lovely day full of cookie and empanada eating, robot boxing (I rule!), Apples playing, present-opening and yes, more eating. The gang departed around 6:30 and miraculously I was still full of energy. I braved the cold to wander across the river and drag Anne out to gaze upon the lights at the Legislature building - for her second time that day. We stopped inside for a cup of hot chocolate and some Polish choir music before taking a round-about loop back to Anne's.

More Lights

2006-12-18T20:59:00.000-07:00

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-16T11:59:00.000-07:00

Last night was our Christmas Friday Feast which we celebrated by inviting everyone else to do the cooking so Rem could devote his time to creating building materials for gingerbread houses. Thanks go out to Jenn, Sophie, Young Tom, Kathy & Neil, Anne, Lana, and Beth for their culinary contributions. The gingerbread houses seemed to be a big hit, though we discovered that Malcolm has a disturbing penchant for dismembering gummi bears. Sorry to divide up the pictures so much - blogger doesn't like me to post more than three at a time. Hope you all are finding the time and energy to celebrate the holidays in whatever manner suits you. Just remember: don't drink & drive (or bike!).

2006-12-16T11:53:00.000-07:00

Gingerbread Houses!

2006-12-16T11:50:00.000-07:00

Gingerbread houses!

2006-12-16T11:32:00.000-07:00

Lana made me do it...

2006-12-05T18:25:00.000-07:00

For Sale: Wearable Art

2006-11-28T21:27:00.001-07:00

Interested in getting a funky new t-shirt in the mail every three months without every having to enter a mall? How about in supporting a really cool visual artists' collective? Or maybe you just like shirts covered with monsters, beagles, overly-eyed babies and hairy dudes in hats. If so, head on over towww.latitude53.org. They're selling the series of 4 shirts for $100 as a fundraiser and will mail them straight to your door. You can see the picture down below.

For Sale: Wearable Art

2006-11-28T21:27:00.000-07:00

Minus Freaking Forty

2006-11-28T08:15:00.000-07:00

Yoy. It's only -28C out there, but with a 17 km/h wind, it feels like -40. Or so the Environment Canada website tells me. I am unwilling to go out with exposed skin to do my own experiements. Gah! I was supposed to be driving 4 hours south today to have an end-of-festival celebration for work but yesterday we decided to cancel it. Boy am I relieved. This is weather to be staying as close to home as possible - and ideally, in bed with lots of quilts. Despite this, I am going to work, since I was out for half of last week with the flu and have grant appliations due. I can only hope the heat is on today - yesterday when I got there, it wasn't. I worked in my fleece, toque and scarf. Lilas had her little gloves on too but I have lobster gloves which are not conducive to typing. Best run and catch my ride... yesterday's 45 minute wait for the bus was rather unsatisfactory so I've started riding with my assistant again. If she would just keep her hands on the wheel I'd feel better about that decision. Stay warm!

We Bought a Condo!

2006-11-27T11:06:00.000-07:00

Yes, for real this time. I just faxed off the condition removal forms this morning. It's a two-bedroom, two bathroom condo on the first floor of a 2003 building a few blocks northwest of Oliver Square. We get possession mid-January. If you want to see pictures, look at number E3074638 on mls.ca.

We now have a large mortgage, but the appraiser at least valued it at $20 000 more than we're paying, so at least we shouldn't lose a fortune on it!

2006-11-08T11:49:00.000-07:00

My office building is shaking. I think this is the closest I've ever come to an earthquake, and likely the closest I will ever come to one in very flat, very stable central Alberta. However, knowing the shaking is not due to natural causes is somehow not reassuring. They're redoing the roof on our three-story cubicle maze building and I keep wondering what they could possibly be doing up there to cause the floors and walls to actually bounce. Maybe it's time to go for lunch and watch from Tim Horton's to see if the building actually collapses.

Flowers! Cards!

2006-10-31T14:17:00.000-07:00

So now I just had a flower delivery, too! Another of my authors decided we'd done sufficient hard work on her behalf to merit presents, I guess. This is the one who keeps promising hot & cold running cabana boys, but I suppose the market makes it just a wee bit difficult to hire good candidates these days...

We're also gotten some lovely thank you cards at the office this week and a great many compliments on how the festival went this year so I'm feeling quite chuffed. My head is also expanding and may not actually make it out the door today.

Fruit!

2006-10-25T16:06:00.000-06:00

I got a fruit basket delivery today! One of my authors decided I had "gone the extra mile" in scheduling him for our festival and decided he should show his appreciation in the form of food. I am always a fan of this idea, particularly when it involves fruit AND chocolate. I don't really feel like I did that much extra for him, but I guess stretching our booking deadlines by several days which led to his getting another $1500 in fees might have contributed to his opinion. Anyhoo, I am happily full of fruit, but contrary to my silly husband's belief, it is not because I am a fruitbat.

Thanks, Siggy!

Not a cardboard box but rather a lemon...

2006-09-18T22:49:00.000-06:00

So it seems our prospective condo has a reserve fund of $7000. Hardly reassuring when the reserve fund study won't tell us how long they expect either the heating system or the roof to last but will pinpoint the expected life of everything else at at least 10 years. We've opted not to remove the conditions and so are back to the drawing board.

In other news, my sister wrote her GMAT (grad school application tests) today and scored in the 97th percentile... ie. only three percent of people who write the test do better! Pretty good stuff, eh? Apparently she got a nearly perfest score on the verbal section. I've always said we're a wordy bunch. Go Kirsten!

Not even a cardboard box...

2006-09-15T13:58:00.000-06:00

So it seems we have just bought a condo! It's still subject to a pile of conditions like viewing the condo docs, getting financing, inspections, etc, but we've just accepted a counter offer for a place on 124 St. & 109 Ave. for $147 500. It's a two bedroom in an older building (late 60's, early 70s?) so we will have to look carefully at the various condo docs and inspections and so forth, but it's a simple 3-storey walk up with no fancy things like pools and parkades to break down and cost the moon. So here's hoping. The place has a tenant with a 6-month lease so we probably can't move in until late winter / early spring and we'll need to do a little work on it like painting the walls and maybe, if we get ambitious, tearing out the carpeting and replacing it with something else.

Oy! Scary stuff!

Oh - you can see a picture of the outside at mls.ca - enter E3068577.

Lead Cow and Chief Goatherd (or, How I Spent my Summer Vacation, part 2)

2006-08-01T14:18:00.000-06:00

Learning Spanish, dragging recalcitrant escaped goats, fighting in a prayer labyrinth, eating garden fresh peas and carrots, dealing with a very flat tire on the way to a wedding, negotiating unfamiliar gravel roads in the dark during a rainstorm, winning at horseshoes, losing at pool, and riding herd on a collection of old Circle K-ers... yup, that's how I spent my summer vacation.

This past weekend was our friends Margaret & Morgan's wedding in Melfort, Saskatchewan. 18 former Circle K-ers decided to attend, so we carpooled our way down there and 13 of the 18 stayed together at the Shady Vale Retreat. (shadyvaleretreat.com. Highly recommended.) We'd planned to leave from east Edmonton on Friday morning at 10:15 but were slightly delayed by one friend getting into a car accident on the way to his ride's house. Fortunately, he (and the group wedding presents) were fine, it was the other driver's fault, and hopefully he'll come out of it slightly richer (or at least with a newly fixed car). Despite the hour's delay, we were still on track for our 5pm rendezvous with Val in Saskatoon and made it to the BBQ at Margaret's farm by 9pm or thereabouts. The 8 hours of driving duties were split between Simon (his car), Rem and I and in-car entertainment included lap-top based handwriting analysis and crossword puzzles (would you have guessed "beadiest" as a synonym for "spangliest?"), an attempt at singing, some ipod listening, eating a great variety of junk food, sleeping, and of course lots of conversation.

The wedding was lovely, and remarkably short for a Catholic ceremony - I think it was only 25 minutes max. Since Margaret's Catholic and Morgan wanted a short ceremony, I think the compromise they came up with bodes well for their negotiations in the future. Margaret looked amazing, and doubly so when you know she only paid about $50 for her poofy white wedding dress - that was a price I could really get behind! Despite a VERY flat tire on Simon's car, we managed to limp into Melfort (about 70kms from our cabins) in time for the ceremony and get it fixed right afterwards for a measly $20 and 30 minutes. Great gratitude and carma go to Josh for carrying a car lighter-powered air compressor and saving us changing a tire on the roadside in dress clothes.

The reception was held at a really nice community hall in nearby Pleasantdale and featured pit-cooked roast beef, perogies (yum!), new potatoes, non-boozy Saskatoon berry champagne, a really good country band (!), a chocolate fountain, three kinds of wedding cake, fireworks (thank god none of those pyros got hurt!) and an open bar. The dance floor was full nearly all night and I for one had a fabulous time. We always knew Margaret knew how to party!

Driving back to the cabins that night was interesting, as we had some impressive sheet lightening to watch and some killer washboard road to navigate. Chris told us the next day that there was a paved route we could have taken instead of the gravel. Ooops. At least I missed the deer that jumped across the road in front of us. When we got back to our cabins, we discovered the power was out and wandered about in the dark trying to follow our cabins walls until our kind host found us and brought us flashlights. The poor guy was up until the wee hours of the morning helping the Saskpower guy and then waiting for Margaret and Morgan who got lost trying to find the place in the dark and eventually went home to Margaret's house and slept on an air mattress in a spare bedroom. How romantic, eh?

Seven of us decided to stay an extra day to see Margaret and Morgan, so Sunday was largely spent eating at her parents' farm, lounging around her house and watching them open our presents. We eventually adjourned to the cabins so Rem could make dinner (pizza, with salad by Val) and busied ourselves outside fooling around in the prayer labyrinth, playing horseshoes and visiting the goats. Now, I'm not much of a farm kid, really, but this crew is entirely city kids and in comparison I look like Ol' McDonald (ei ei o!). I managed to sidle into the goat pen without letting the goats out and called to the next person behind me to be careful to block the gate entirely. Thomas apparently didn't understand that I really meant that entirely part and the goats eagerly escaped on either side of him.

Since none of us particularly wanted to go tell our host that we'd released his goats, we were now faced with the challenge of getting them back into the pen. I've never herded a goat before and have to admit that their small size makes them trickier than pigs or horses. Also, we were completely without ropes, boards, halters, or other artificial means of actually controlling the animals. However, these goats were fitted with handles, so if you could get close enough to grab a horn and managed to hang on despite the head tossing, it was possible to drag it along. After a false start or two, I got a hold of one goat and dragged it most of the way back to the pen. I was running out of steam fighting it, though, so Simon grabbed it around the middle and we ran along the last two dozen steps into the pen. While I held on to Goat # 1, the others eventually managed to herd # 2 through the gate and, full of relief, we slammed the door. I didn't realize until afterward that Lana, our chief photographer, had spent more of her time taking pictures than actually trying to herd the goats!

After supper with Morgan & Margaret, we sat up and yakked for a few hours until our newly-wedded friends were falling over from exhaustion. They went to bed and most of the rest of us adjourned to the games room to play pool (Val beat me quite handily), darts (I think Chris & I lost to Thomas' team) and the jukebox.

Monday we were up fairly bright and early and made a quick visit to meet Margaret's cows before heading for home. Margaret introduced one white cow as "the lead cow - she's like Steph. When she gets moving, eventually everyone follows her". I'm trying to take that as a compliment. Rem reminded me that the analogy only works if everyone in the group is a cow which rather makes it okay.

The trip home was pleasantly uneventful, aside from Simon having to drive through quite a rainstorm with only slightly functional windshield wipers. It was a delightful 4 days but now I think I need 4 days of sleep to recover!

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

2006-07-18T11:34:00.000-06:00

... how I will spend it, at least. Rem and I are toddling down to Nordegg tomorrow to spend a couple days wandering around the area of the lovely Shunda Creek hostel and soaking in their hot tub. Yes, we are planning to do some hiking so as to DESERVE the soak in the hot tub. We're also going to head over to Rampart Creek, a wilderness hostel on the Columbia Icefields highway and see what there is to be seen. It's just a short trip - we should be home by Saturday night - as Rem's playing piano at one of the churches on Sunday morning.

More on Micah

2006-06-30T09:54:00.000-06:00

As many of you know, I won't actually be at feast tonight, as I am heading off to Pigeon Lake in an hour or so. So, if you're just now looking for Micah's address, I suggest getting a hold of Lana or Malcolm, who will also know the details. Enjoy!

Friday Feast

2006-06-28T16:23:00.000-06:00

Our lovely Feast host for this week, the Marvelous Micah, wanted me to remind everyone that there is indeed a Feast this week, though at a new location - Micah's place. Please email me for the address. Please show up after or around 7pm and as usual, everyone's welcome. Well, everyone we know & their friends, that is. Random people off the street may be forced to answer a skill-testing question.

Change of Plans

2006-06-25T23:28:00.000-06:00

I went away for two little days and the plans got mightily changed. Sadly, Rem's dad has had to give up pedalling for a while due to Achilles tendon issues. He took the bus back to Vernon today and will be meeting Rem tomorrow with a 4-wheeled vehicle and acting as a support car rather than a biking buddy. He's planning on sticking with Rem until Thursday when he gets to Rocky Mountain House and then has to depart for Calgary for a good friend's funeral.

I'll be meeting Rem in Pigeon Lake on Friday night and coming back with him Saturday. Whether I bike down or get a ride from my sister depends partially on the weather forecast and partially on whether I can find a biking buddy to come some or all of the way with me. I'm a little nervous about doing a long day on my own though Kirsten has graciously agreed to rescue me should the need arise. I have neither bike tools nor bike fixing abilities as Rem took both of those with him so really would be useless in the face of a breakdown.

Yup, they're still fine...

2006-06-23T11:12:00.000-06:00

For those of you who may be looking for such information, I heard from Rem yesterday that he and his dad are doing well. It was a long day - something like 145km (groan!) - and complicated by some construction that required them to ride in a pilot truck over a very goopy road, but no real troubles. I'm going to be out of communication with them for a couple days due to our trip to Crimson and their moving into a dead zone for cell phones, but hopefully they will continue to behave themselves even without me checking up on them.

Over the mountains and through the woods

2006-06-21T23:24:00.000-06:00

Okay, maybe they're not actually to the woods yet, but there was definately mountainous terrain to be traversed on Rem and his dad's first day of biking from Vernon to Edmonton. They made it safely to Kamloops on schedule, with some minor difficulties.

It seems Clare's cycle had been repaired by a slightly potheaded bike mechanic who evidently felt that aligning derailleurs fell on the optional side of maintenance so Clare spent the day manually helping his gears to shift. Fortunately, he's riding a recumbent tricycle with a plastic tube chain guard and the chain in easy reach so this is actually possible. He and Rem spent some time this evening realigning everything. Hopefully their work will solve the problem and tomorrow will be an easier pedal.

Of course, the two large bags o' stuff that Clare's abandoning with a friend in Kamloops will probably also help. After hauling a whole lot of weight up some pretty steep climbs, the benefits of packing very lightly have become a whole lot more real. Abandoned items include: an electric razor, a large flashlight, and bear spray. Although I like the idea of their having some defense against a bear, it seems unlikely that the bear will be courteous enough to wait while the bear spray is dug out of the panniers. I guess they'd just best keep moving through bear country!

So that's the news at 11...

No Friday Feast - June 23

2006-06-18T21:14:00.000-06:00

Crimson lake, here I come! Anne, Lana, Anne's friend Sophie (I do love that name) and I are heading out to Anne's family's rustic but charming cabin on Crimson Lake this Friday and so there will be no Friday Feast. At least not in Edmonton. We will probably be feasting on S'mores or possibly S'Malcolms out in the mountains, though.

Feasts resume next week, this time guest-hosted by the marvelous Micah - email or call me for the address. Festivities start at 7pm unless you wish to join Micah earlier at the Critical Mass ride.

Biking with Cell Phone = Very Bad Idea

2006-06-16T23:51:00.000-06:00

No, the title does not refer to me.

Rem and his dear friend Mark went out cycle camping around Vancouver this weekend. Mark needed to call his girlfriend for whatever reason and was cycling the 10km or so to the nearest landline as they didn't have cell reception at the campsite. Unfortunately, while doing so, he was also holding his cell phone to see if he could get reception before going all the way to the phone booth.

Lo and behold, along the way he noticed a full bar of reception, got all excited and braked suddenly - on a downhill slope - with his left hand only. Now, for those of you who don't cycle, the left hand is your front brake, and a sudden stop of only the front brake, particularly going down the hill, is very very likely to send you head-over-handlebars. Which is exactly what happened to poor Mark.

He landed on his hands, smashing the cell phone but generally preserving the skin on his right hand. His ungloved left hand, however, was apparently pretty road rashed. More importantly, he managed to slightly fracture both elbows. Yup, the poor fool will be in slings for three or four weeks. Good thing he already wrote his final exams.

Two lessons may be taken from this:

One, dismount before attempting to do anything at all with a cell phone. Please!

Two, wear gloves. Or protect your hand with a cell phone.

Get better soon, Mark!

Perspective

2006-06-13T17:33:00.000-06:00

I just wanted to note for the record that my life is pretty darn good. (knock on wood.) My job is interesting, challenging and rewarding, my husband is loving (and cooks), my friends and family are near and dear, my health is great and I love my city. Thanks, life.

Further Fabulous Friday Feasts

2006-06-10T10:36:00.000-06:00

Anne's Morrocan themed feast did an excellent job of kicking off June as Guest Chef night yesterday. Chickpeas, couscous, chicken and a sweet potato & squash ragout were eagerly consumed by the waiting crowd. The majority of attendees were attired in variously coloured t-shirts and jeans, with the highlight of the fashion scene most decidedly being Malcolm's leg brace. A wonderful time was had by all.

NEXT WEEK: Lana takes on the guest chef challenge. Come cheer her on!

Further Friday Feasts

2006-06-05T21:16:00.000-06:00

Good news! Friday Feasts are filling up!

Anne is making a guest appearance in our kitchen this week (June 9th). We may have cous-cous! Hurrah!

Micah and Malcolm have also graciously agreed to guest-host a feast in the absence of our mighty cook Remkes. June 30th's Feast will be held at Micah's place - email me for the address, those of you who don't know it.

That still leaves next week to be claimed. Speak now and save us all from my so called cooking.

Some of you may have noticed I'm not mentioning the 23rd - since I shall probably be away that weekend, it's not been a high priority for me. However, if someone would like to host for that weekend, I'm happy to advertise it here!

Coming Home

2006-06-05T16:11:00.000-06:00

One of Rem's comments about being back in BC today resonated and reminded me of a quotation I came across the other day. It's from Northern Exposure, a slightly off the wall television show from 10 or 15 years back.

'As you may know, I spent the last three months in Africa. A wondrous, magical place. But as shadows lengthen across the KBHR window, thoughts turn to homecoming. Journey's end. Because in a sense, it's the coming back, the return which gives meaning to the going forth. We really don't know where we've been until we've come back to where we were. Only, where we were may not be as it was because of who we've become. Which is, after all, why we left.'

- Bernard
Stevens, 'It Happened In Juneau', 1992

Spills, chills and thrills...

2006-05-27T22:16:00.000-06:00

Yup, we had all three of the above on our trip to Pigeon Lake yesterday. Granted, the thrills would have to be attributed to seeing actual homemade pie on the menu at the Eco Cafe, but that was sufficient for me.

The spills... well, there was really just the one. Our benevolent and bikey friends Mark and Micah joined us for the first half of our ride yesterday, despite the rain. They rode one of Mark & Jen's two tandems and were leading us over to Keillor Road, north of Fox Drive. I'd not been that way before so when Mark took a sharp left off the bike path onto the road, my first inclination was to follow him - at short notice. In the span of about a second and a half, I started to turn, thought the better of it and attempted to straighten out - while on the border between wet concrete and wet asphalt. Not a good choice: concrete is slippery stuff. The bike went out from under me and I took what must have been an interesting wipe out. (Wish I had a video!) I don't know what happened exactly after the bike slipped as it was all rather speedy but I ended the fall with a rather nice roll and have only a very slight bruise on one knee to show for it. Since I frequently get much worse bruises by whacking my calves on the pedals, I'm quite pleased. My helmet doesn't even seem to be scratched, which I can't quite figure out as I would have guessed it would at least have brushed the concrete when I rolled.

The bike is also fine, though the bell, light and shifter tops are all a little scratched - I'm not sure how that happened as it would seem to imply the bike actually landed on the top of the handlebars...? Now you see why I want a video! In any case, I was up and pedalling again within 5 minutes - the delay only caused by having to fix my slipped chain.

And as for the chills... well, it was raining when we started out, though that happily quit after 15 minutes or so, but it remained cool - say 5-8 degrees? for the whole trip. I was quite chilled by the time we got to Calmar for lunch and never did really get comfortable. It was a good temperature for Rem to be riding with just his jacket and no sweater - which of course means it's freezing for me. I was VERY VERY happy to get into the Village at Pigeon Lake and order some tea at the Eco Cafe. OF note, if you ever want a nice day trip by car, head out that direction, enjoy the pleasant wetlands scenery, have a wander around the provincial park or a paddle on the lake if you have a boat, and be sure to eat at the Eco cafe. The food is fantastic, the decor is lovely and the service very friendly. We'd happily make it a favourite stop if it weren't 118 kms away.

We stayed at the By the Lake B & B, which was also highly recommendable. Really nice hosts who welcomed us with tea and homemade cake and fed us a fabulous breakfast this morning, and a beautiful house facing out on the lake.

So, the numbers:
118km
Average speed 20.?? km/h
5 hours, 45 minutes pedalling time
10 hours of trip time ... with a good stop in Calmar for lunch and a long, long stop at the eco cafe for supper
Max speed: 43km/hr

Times Steph's sugar crashed when Rem had gone on ahead, thus risking being torn limb from limb by his ravenous wife when she finally caught up: 1
Beavers watched: 1
Species of domesticated pasture animals seen: 7 (Sheep, goats, cows, horses, llamas, donkey, buffalo)
People who randomly invited us for a pit stop in their houses: 1
Lebanese former professional cyclists turned pizza makers met: 1
North Saskatchewan River crossings: 2 (once by the Whitemud, once on the highway getting into Devon)

Pedalling to Pigeon Lake

2006-05-24T13:28:00.000-06:00

Some days I'm certain I'm masochistic. Not two weeks ago I was swearing I would never move again and here I am now planning to bike to Bentley via a B&B at Pigeon Lake, despite a forecast of rain. I have new rain pants which would definitely come in handy, and I'm now considering buying a new pair of rubber gloves at Safeway... it sounds ridiculous, I know, but they'd be good and grippy, keep my hands protected from the wind and rain and maybe not be so hot as insulated winter gloves... and they'd match my yellow rain pants, too!

We're leaving Friday morning and returning from Bentley Saturday night with Rem's mom and her bike-carrying SUV, so sadly, Friday Feast is cancelled this week.

Day 2

2006-05-16T15:05:00.000-06:00

So yes, there was a day two. Against my better judgement and inherent laziness, I agreed to venture out again. I must admit that Sunday was significantly less joyous than Saturday. There was a lot less "ooh, look at that great sky! what incredible colours! I love this place!" happy pedalling and a lot more staring at the road going "keep pedalling. just keep pedalling. if you take a nap in the ditch surely someone will phone an ambulance and they'll spoil your rest anyways".

Sunday's ride started at 10:30am as we weren't on a tight schedule so we had time for a lovely crepes and blackberries breakfast with my mother and her beau. We got home at about 5:45, after about 5 hours of pedal time and 2 and a quarter of rest time. Our average speed was down slightly - about 22.06km/hr (not sure about those decimals - #'s at home) but less than I expected consiering we were pretty sore and tired and had a lot more headwind to contend with.

By happy accidental timing, we met up with Malcolm, Micah, Mark and Jen in Beaumont and received a pep talk about the last 25 or 30 kms. Jen tried to convince me that it was a 40 minute ride all downhill with a tailwind. I didn't believe her but I liked the idea! Turns out she was wrong about the timing (I think she overestimated our speed rather a lot) but pretty accurate with the grade and the wind - thank heavens!

Sunday night was filled with a lot of sitting and a lot of whimpering every time I had to sit or stand up. Not moving was my preferred activity for the evening. Pleasantly, my muscles were feeling much better by monday morning and are quite fine today. Hurrah! And it is still sunny and gorgeous and I get to bike home soon. Double hurrah!

So the bike tours will continue, but I am still far far far away from thinking it would be a good idea to bike up a couple of mountain ranges as my nutbar husband is planning to do in June. Be careful, nutbar!

Camrose Expedition: Day 1

2006-05-13T22:14:00.000-06:00

Today was our frist long-distance Canadian bike excursion. Rem has done some very long (120km) days in Taiwan and we did some lesser (50-70km?) trips in the Netherlands but we'd yet to attempt similar feats on our home soil.

So today we filled up our pannies, strapped on our helmets and biked to Camrose. We stuck to secondary highways for the most part, taking Malcolm's advice on a route to Beaumont and then catching the Rolly View road a few klicks out of town there. From there, it was straight on to Miquelon Lake and then a slight jog to Camrose. All told, it was a pretty good day. The last home stretch from the Lake to town started well but I was picturing it being closer and the adrenaline ran out a little early. Probably should have stopped for some food and water but the mosquitos were feasting on Rem's exposed flesh and I REALLY wanted to get there.

The day was wonderfully sunny, the scenery amazing, the wind frequently at our backs and the traffic fairly mild. All in all, a lovely day. Just don't ask me about the current state of my knees.

Today's ride by the numbers:
Trip length: 108 km door-to-door
Ride time (time when the bike was actually moving): 4 hours, 46 minutes and 50 seconds
Average speed: 22.64 km/hr
Max speed: 54.99km/hr
Actual trip time, including breaks: 6.5 hours

Progress Report

2006-05-04T14:15:00.000-06:00

My mother gave me a little bike computer last year when we were in Utrecht. Due to laziness and then the theft of my piece o'junk bike, it never got installed. I finally got motivated to put it on my beautiful birthday present a week or three after I got it and a few weeks later it even started working (it was a little moody at first). So now I can report some numbers:

Time it takes to get up Emily Murphy Hill: the longest 3 minutes I experience all day
Usual speed going up Emily Murphy Hill: 9-10km/hr. (She's like the wind...)
Usual speed going up Groat Road: 15km/hr
Usual cruising speed on the flats... depending on the wind, 20-25km/hr.
Fastest speed noticed (going down Groat Road) before I decided I'd best brake: 40 km/hr. I could probably go a heck of a lot faster than than going down Emily Murphy on the road rather than the bike path as I don't have to dodge pedestrians then, but I probably don't want to be sure that I could break the speeding limit on a bicycle.
Distance to work: a little over 7km. (That's actually due to viamichelin.com. I haven't figured out how to reset my odometer yet!)

Hopefully in a month or so I will have improvements to report. Already I have noticed improvements as I find it easier to use higher gears and cruise at 20-25 more often than 15-20.

~~~~~~~~~~

In other news, I am pleased to welcome back some long-awaited friends. Stephen and Meaghan arrived back from BC (well, Montreal via Vancouver for M) on Tuesday night and will hopefully be making a great many appearances at Friday Feasts and other gatherings. We must appreciate them while they are home. Hurrah!

Spring!

2006-04-18T22:07:00.000-06:00

After immersing myself in 40+ pages of course reading about political leadership versus business managerialism, I quite contentedly donned my earphones and wandered out into a lovely spring night to find a bank machine and deposit my hard earned dough. On the way, I was quite struck by the excellent timing of this song and particularly the highlighted passage below.

Mayday- Jason Webley

you hear that sound
the rain is coming down
it says there's a ripeness setting in
the children spin around
'til they crash into the ground
singin' welcome home forever once again

And when you hear the spirit's call
There ain't no use to fight
And if you want to eat tomorrow
You better sow your seed tonight
You better sow your seed tonight

you feel that fire
lift your body higher
an old old dance is growing here
better kiss me soon
while the blossoms are in bloom
or you might just have to wait another year

And when you hear the spirit's call
There ain't no use to fight
And if you want to eat tomorrow
You better sow your seed tonight
You better sow your seed tonight

(instrumental awesomeness)

You feel that beat
Come on move your feet
Old Man Winter's dead and gone
There'll be wiggling of the toes
There'll be taking off of clothes
There'll be silly naked dancing on the lawn

And when you hear the spirit's call
There ain't no wrong or right
And if you want to eat tomorrow
You better sow your seed tonight
You better sow your seed tonight

Granted, few of the folks who live in our neighbourhood actually have lawns, but there has been much spring-inspired cavorting nonetheless. I have been much amused to note that, where about 3 weeks ago, Anne and I claimed a (rather beat up) sled, I now see people playing frisbee in shorts and sandals. Damn, I love this country!

Happy Easter!

2006-04-17T21:01:00.000-06:00

Hope y'all had a pleasant long weekend. We celebrated easter with three big dinners. Our usual Friday Feast featured lamb this week, and then we (who am I kidding? Rem cooked.) did a big ham for Saturday lunch with my dad, stepmother, gram and aunt Polly. Sunday was a big dinner at my mom's and today I feel like you could roll me down the hall. So much food. So little biking. Lots of housecleaning and homework, though, both of which need to be done. Yes, I'm blogging as a direct result of procrastination.

My only other news this week was an email from a long lost friend (last news from him was a wedding announcement a year ago) who is apparently now a father... boy do I feel old! (And too young, all at the same time.) Poor guy is away from his wife and new baby for two or three months while she's far, far away with her family grieving for her recently passed mother. Sad situation all around. Having spent a large amount of time away from my significant other, I've got lots and lots of sympathy for him.

Okay, end of procrastintion.
Stephanie out.

Hurray for bicycles!

2006-04-07T14:33:00.000-06:00

I tried to write a celebratory entry here on my birthday but ran into technical difficulties and promptly forgot about my good intentions in the face of birthday revelry. What I intended to celebrate here was not in fact my birthday, though it was closely related. Rather, I wished to announce my acquisition of a brand-spanking-new bicycle! Thanks to a birthday present sponsored jointly by Rem, Dad and Joan, and our friend Malcolm, I am the very proud owner of a new black Specialized Sirrus cyclable! It's a beautiful hybrid bicycle set up for road riding with a pleasantly high handlebar set up so I'm less bent over than I would be on most bikes. It's nice and light and has 21 gears and functional brakes! The brakes are a lovely change for me, as is the decreased amount of inertia to deal with. The guys at Revolution cycle (very helpful folks!) kindly set it up with very civilized looking fenders and a handy back rack so I can take my Dutch bike bag around with me again. Mom and Don sponsored the accessories, so I'm all set up with lights, locks, gloves, helmets, and reflective chickens.

And... with this surprisingly early and wonderful spring weather we've had this week, I've actually become a bicycle commuter, too! I'm now riding from home at the University to work at the Percy Page Center every day - and back again, of course. It takes me about 30-35 minutes to get to work and 35-45 to get home. My route takes me through the river valley, mostly on bike paths and residential roads so that I avoid all the traffic and extra lights and stop signs downtown, but of course leaves me with the challenge of biking up Groat Road and Emily Murphy hill. Now, this is likely to astonish anyone who remembers my adventures biking with Amie, Mathilde and Steve in France last year, but by golly, I can do this!

Slowly, mind you, and though Groat Road is okay, Emily Murphy Hill is a painful 10 (?) minute climb where joggers leave me in their dust. Still, after only 4 times (yes, I'm counting!), I'm already noticing an improvement - I no longer spend the following 6 hours coughing my lungs out. I've now figured out how to use the gears on my bike and have hopes that someday I will be able to make the climb without having to psych myself up first. Rem claims that he started out having the same difficulties I do but now can ride it without too much trouble. We'll see!

The commuting is also good training for a mini-road trip we're planning to do at the end of May. Rem's cousin is getting married in Beiseker, way down by Calgary, and we're considering biking down for it. It'll take about three days and then we can get a ride back with Rem's mom for the return trip. I got a little spooked when I realized that somewhere in there we'll have to cross both the Red Deer and Battle River valleys - which of course means hills - in addition to whatever foothills we come across, but am still hopeful that it's doable. It would be nice to try!

Rem and his dad are going to bike from Vernon to Edmonton in June (sans me!) and though I envy the fabulous scenery they'll be going through, I can't imagine an entire day of climbing. Actually, that's not true, I can imagine it - it's just such an unpleasant thought that I'd rather not!

Anyways, though I still have a long ways to go before I become quite as crazy of a bicycle person as Malcolm or even Rem, it's nice to be back on those two wheels.

Cyclables for Stephanies!

2006-03-16T19:59:00.002-07:00

Thanks to a fabulous birthday present from Rem and my Dad and his wife, I am now the proud but slightly intimidated owner of a lovely new bicycle. And when I say NEW, I really mean it this time. This is not a pre-owned heavy piece o'junk with highly questionable brakes. This is a shiny new Specialized Sirrus (for those of you in the know) with lots of gears, a lovely seat and light enough components that I can lift it over my head with one hand and carry it through our apartment. Wow.

I actually did ride it home from Revolution Cycle today, which was a bit of a challenge and convinced me to wait until the snow clears some more before attempting much distance. As the store is near Jasper Place, we went through the river valley to get home and I learned that my fairly skinny road tires don't like snow and ice. Coincidentally enough, neither do I.

Nontheless, I did make it home, and even managed to RIDE all the way up Emily Murphy hill. I honestly didn't think that was possible. Like I said, all these new gears are miraculous. Now I just need to figure them out.

SO yeah... I'm officially attempting to join the ranks of the bicycle people. Wish me luck.

2006-03-16T19:59:00.001-07:00

2006-03-16T19:59:00.000-07:00

I know a gold medalist!

2006-02-13T22:36:00.000-07:00

Yup, that's my claim to fame this week: my old roommate's sister won a gold medal at the olympics on Saturday! If you live in Edmonton you might have seen it in the papers as she's from Spruce Grove: Jennifer Heil, sister to the illustrious Amie Heil, apparently aced her runs and handily trounced the competition. I have yet to see it as I had to be at a convention all day Saturday, but some excellent friends (Thanks Jenn & Michael!) taped it for me so I'll watch it this weekend.

Oh, right...

2005-11-28T17:49:00.000-07:00

Hi folks,
It's been brought to my attention that my poor blog readers have been sorrowfully neglected... yet again. Yes, I am home in Alberta, although I use the word "home" somewhat loosely as I've been crashing with friends and family since my arrival back in the Great Frozen North. Thanks go out to my Aunt Sharon, Mom, Sister, and friend Sarah for their wonderful hosting. My sister and her fiance in particular will be saddled with me for a week or more... good thing they've got a big house.

I started back at work today and was actually delighted to do so. Hopefully that delight will last for a good while yet. Thanks also go out to my Gram for lending me her car so I can commute from my sister's place in Devon to my work in the middle of Edmonton. I get possession of our apartment in Newton on Dec 1 and will hopefully be able to move in shortly thereafter. If you're reading this and you haven't heard from me yet, please don't be offended... without my own place to host from I've been mostly focussing on getting things like health care arrangements done and am only slowly managing to see my beloved people. Can't wait to see you all though!

Rem returns from the Low Lying Regions of the world mid-December but doesn't make it out to the city until Dec 23 as his family is appropriating him for ten days... I am reluctantly allowing this. :) I'll also be out in Vernon for the weekend of the 16-19 so do get to have a short visit with them too.

So that's the news! Yes, it's good to be home.

Airports

2005-11-17T23:52:00.000-07:00

I'm bored out of my brain, mildly nauseaus and horribly impatient. My flight was supposed to leave 50 minutes ago but won't go for another 4 hours. Fabulous. I now officially hate flying and I want to come home.

Too bad I haven't any gouda to go with my whine.

Home again, home again...

2005-11-15T11:53:00.000-07:00

I'm employed!

2005-10-20T01:57:00.000-06:00

I've got a job! Hurrah!! It's not completely official - I haven't signed any contracts yet (and there will probably have to be a small amount of negotiation on that front), but the board has approved it. What's the job, you ask? Well, it's essentially the one I was doing before I left Canada - without the crazy incompetent boss, and WITH the actual title. My goodness, I'm going to be an Executive Director! Wowzers!

By Popular Demand

2005-10-17T10:26:00.000-06:00

I've been getting hassled (yes, I mean you, Chris!) to start posting again, and I suppose there is quite a lot to catch up on. I've become increasingly slack about writing, both email and blog entries, mostly out of laziness, I suppose. But I shall quell the laziness for a time and attempt to catch up on a few news items:

1) Rhys and Carmen's visit: Rem's little brother and his girlfriend skipped the first two weeks of university classes and came to visit us instead. We dragged them around to various attractions in the area, including Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Den Haag, the other cities of the Randstad. I took them biking (and didn't even get lost) up through the Plassen near A'dam - it's an area of man-made lakes constructed as a result of all the damming and water management projects the Dutch are so good at. One of the roads we took actually goes through the middle of a lake - there's a few feet of grass, trees and brush on either side of the road and bike path, and then lots of water. At one point, the land widens so there's actually a town along the street - a rather narrow town as there's only enough space for one building between the side of the road and the water. All told, we think the route we took is about 60km long. Rem and I did it in the summertime, too. I'm still amazed that I can bike 60km (or more, actually) in a day. Who knew?

At any rate, the visit was great fun and it was really nice having a chance to get to know my brother in law a little better.

2) Visit to my Great-Uncle's Grave: When I was first moving here, my grandmother gave me the address of some people who have been taking care of her brother's grave. My Great Uncle Sam died in WWII when he was only 20 and is buried in one of the large military cemetaries. I finally (bad me for procrastinating!) got around to contacting the caretakers in September and Carmen made the pilgrimage with me to visit Bill and Mary and Sam's grave. Bill and Mary turned out to be lovely, friendly people who plied us with cake and tea and stories about their nine visits to Canada and then graciously drove us to the Canadian Military Cemetary in Holton. It's a strangely beautiful place, tucked into some relatively peaceful woodlands but surprisingly full of visitors. Bill and Mary told us that whenever they go, there are always a fair number of people there. I think I'd expected grassy but blank fields filled with white crosses but instead there were a good number of trees, identical grey headstones and lots of plants and shrubs around each stone. The place is perfectly manicured but not unwelcoming. It's maintained by the Dutch state, I believe, and they do a lovely job. I was more affected by the sight of Sam's gravestone than I expected to be, given that he died 35 years before I was born. Seeing the stone among the rows and reading the inscription, I did feel connected to this man, and to this loss. Each inscription was individually chosen by the families and Sam's read: "A silent thought, a secret tear, keep his memory ever dear. Remembered by family." There I was, part of the family, remembering the idea but not the person. My loss was not the same as my grandmother's, or of the contemporaries of the many soldiers laid out in rows around us, but it was a loss nontheless. I lost the opportunity of knowing this man and I didn't even realize it until I stood at his grave.

I had more to update on September, but it seems frivolous just now, so I'll leave it for some little while.

The Slacker Lives

2005-09-01T13:47:00.000-06:00

Greetings, faithful readers.

It's been an embarrassingly long time since I sat down to write anything and I find I'm long on news but getting fuzzy on details. Bad me.

August was a pretty busy month. Our friends Jason (one of Rem's old roomies) and his fiancee Alanna, came to visit us for the better part of the month. We did our best to introduce them to Dutch-Canadian life in Utrecht and then shipped them off to see Paris before joining them in short tours of Northern France and Belgium. In retrospect, this was probably not the most intelligent of orders: it's pretty hard for anything to compare to the romance of Paris!

Nonetheless, we did have some fun travels. Rem organized our itineraries so it should not surprise you to learn that we started our France trip in Amiens at the cathedral. It was a a very nice cathedral, I have to admit, with some really lovely swoopy abstract paintings - an unusual sight in Catholic cathedrals. Since there wasn't much else to occupy us in Amiens, we continued on to Arras, which looked surprisingly Belgian (it's the gables). We'd planned to go visit the Vimy Ridge memorial, but the public transportation to the site is sporadic and requires a lot of walking. Since both Jason and Alanna were rather sick at that point, spending six hours getting to and from the site seemed like a poor idea. We were also informed that the monument is currently covered up and bring restored, so it was hardly a good time for a visit in any case. Next time!

Instead, we wandered around the city and visited the British cemetary from WWI (and WWII, sadly). It was predictably moving, seeing all those names carved into the stone walls and on the gravestones. Many stones didn't even have names, just inscriptions like "A Soldier of the Great War". The cemetary was softened somewhat by the presence of a variety of meticulously maintained flowers and shrubs around the headstones, but it was still awful to think of how many people were there who should have been buried many miles away many decades later. Appropriately, it rained while we were there.

Not far from the cemetary is a (still functioning) fort. We walked around the perimeter of it and saw the monument to the roughly 200 members of the French resistance executed against the fort walls during WWII. There were plaques to each of the victims - the youngest I saw was 17.

After Arras, we headed to Boulogne sur Mer where we hiked the dunelands between the city and Wimereux, the next village. It was gorgeous!! Rem was feeling pretty ill by the time we got to the town, so we turned around pretty quickly and headed back and he crashed at the hostel for the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening. The next morning we did a quick tour of the old town and then headed to the train station for the trip home. I have to say, having Alanna along was definately a boon as her French is much stronger than mine, Rem's or Jason's. As a result, she got to deal with all the Francophones and it was much more efficient! Thanks, Alanna!

After three days at home doing lots of laundry, we packed up again and headed south again. Our first stop was Antwerp. Unfortunately, it was Sunday and thus pretty dead. Someday we'll learn to avoid travelling on Sundays and Mondays on this continent. Oh well, by the time we got to Gent we were all the more impressed by what a cool town it was. Gent was definitely the highlight of Belgium: a very pretty old town, complete with picturesque canals, centuries-old buildings, a castle and even churches (for Rem) full of gorgeous modern stained glass (for me). We celebrated out first wedding anniversary there with Belgian chocolates (of course!). Our final stop was Brugges, not far from Gent (20 minute train ride). Brugges also had a charming and attractive old town but was absolutely crawling with tourists (besides, us, I mean!) which was a little tiring. Still, we had fabulous weather while we were there so I was inclined to forgive that.

Other things done in August: I finished the second course in my degree and found out last week that I passed (it's pass/fail) and my prof even liked the parts of my paper that I thought were pretty weak. Hurrah! I'm not taking any more classes until January as the fall term would have final papers due about the time my life gets rather chaotic.

This month, we're looking forward to hosting Rem's brother Rhys and his girlfriend Carmen. They arrive on Saturday for a two week visit; it'll be great to see them. They're our 17th and 18th visitors here (I believe) and I expect will be the last ones, barring some surprise trip.

A week after they depart, we get on a plane ourselves. Rem and I and our Australian friend Cathy are going hiking in Ireland. We're taking 6 days to wander around the Donegal area in the north. Ireland's been on my really-want-to-see list for a long time so I'm tickled pink that it's actually happening!

There's probably more to be said, but there's a strange smell wafting in from our balcony, so I think I'll sign off and go see about it.

Take care, all. And thanks to everyone who's emailed me out of the blue these past couple weeks!
Steph

Italy I

2005-07-28T01:43:00.000-06:00

Ahh, Italy... land of sun, surf, sand, gelato, and a whole lot of steep, high hills. Or so was indicated by the week we spent there. We arrived midday Wednesday and eventually made our way by very hot bus to the hostel, about 2km up a switchbacked hill. We were pretty worn out already from the shock of the heat (Italy's weather being a distinct improvement on Nederland's!) so we just took an "easy" (read: slow but steep) hike up the rest of the hill above the hostel. It was all parkland so we had plenty of peace and quiet and nice views of the valley behind us. When we got to the top, we hung around appreciating the sights (such as a castle) and avoiding the used condoms on the ground. I guess it was a popular "drive and park" location. We wandered along the ridge for awhile longer and located some ice cream - the packaged kind, so not nearly as good as true gelato, but welcome nonetheless.

We ate at the hostel that night, one of the few "real" meals we had in Italy: pasta with local pesto sauce - very nice, and pretty cheap, too. My dad wondered once how young people like us can afford to travel. The answer is complicated, but a big part of it is that we stay in hostels, travel by hot bus, and eat a lot of bread. In Paris, it was baguettes from the boulangeries. In Italy, it was foccacia from foccacerias. We had breakfast included at the hostels, but this too was bread - normal white crusty buns with butter or jam and a hot drink. Lunch (and sometimes supper) usually consisted of foccacia or a panini sandwich. We took a chance the second day and just ordered something random off a sandwich board which turned out to be a ham and cheese sandwich. After that I remembered to pull out my little Italian phrasebook and learned some helpful words like crudo (raw) and cotto (cooked). Stephanie cannot live by bread alone, however, and so there was gelato. A lot of gelato.

Italian ice cream is a remarkable thing. Not only is it smooth and creamy and full of flavour, but it's also reasonably cheap. We could get two medium sized scoops of gelato for 1.30 (a little over $2). For Europe, this is nuthin'. We ate gelato at least ten or eleven times. Some of the flavours I tried really were full of fruit so I figure it might count towards my vitamin intake for the week. I ate chocolate chip mint, plain mint, strawberry, chocolate, chocolate-banana, watermelon, pineapple, raspberry, hazelnut peach, and I can't remember what else. It was sooooo gooooood.

But back to the plot... we didn't stay long in Genoa, but took off to a resort town on the Italian Riviera. As a side note, I had long assumed that the French and Italian Rivieras were located on some sort of river. I'd never looked into it before and so was distinctly pleased when I found out that "riviera" is Italian for coast and that I would be spending two days on sandy beaches on the Mediterreanean. Sweet!

But I've really got to break for food, so this shall continue later.

Transportation Woes

2005-07-03T14:58:00.000-06:00

In the last couple of weeks, I've not fared particularly well in the transportation department. First, my bike was stolen. It was securely (ha!) locked by wheel and frame to a bike rack near my friends' apartment. I was gone for less than 3 hours on a sunny afternoon in a busy neighbourhood and not a bit of it remained. Not even my 25 euro (~$40) chain. And the most ironic part? It was right in front of the "Justice in the Neighbourhood" office.

After that, I bought a 20 euro transit strippenkaart ticket, used 2 of 45 strips getting home, put it in my pocket and then promptly washed the pocket. 20 euros quite literally down the drain. Dumb. Very dumb.

This week, I went to Amsterdam on Wednesday as per usual to do my cleaning. After the first place, which is within walking distance of the train station, I discovered that the city transit workers were all on strike and I wouldn't be able to get to the second place to clean there. Annoying, though sort of nice to go home early.

So I came back the next day, bought my ticket to A'dam and then discovered that there was work going on on the tracks between Utrecht and A'dam and trains were being routed through Hilversum. Not a huge problem, but it meant that the trains went only every half hour and took another 20 minutes. Vaguely inconvenient but okay. On the way home, however, the train stopped unexpectedly in Hilversum and we were told that the train was too long and due to renos at the Utrecht, all the platforms there were too short. Eh? Wtf? Who planned that? So they stopped in Hilversum to figure out what to do about it. Five minutes later, they added a second problem: due to a recent heat wave, all the canal waters had been heated up and couldn't be used as cooling for the electrical generators at the train station in Utrecht (apologies if my details are messed up - I got the translated version from a fellow passenger). Essentially, the power was out and no trains were going in or out of the station. Gah! After much fussing about, they finally decided to let us off in Hilversum and send the train back to A'dam. Of course, no one was sure when the power was going to come back on at Utrecht, so 200 of us decided to take a bus. Fortunately, this actually worked. The buses (we had to transfer) were jammed, but we did all get back into town eventually. It took me over 3 hours to travel 50 kms! Craziness!

Anyways, after all of this, I was rather wishing I had my own car here. But then I reminded myself that if I'd had a car stolen I'd be much more upset about it all, and that if I had mechanical problems with my personal vehicle, I'd have to deal with them - I wouldn't be able to jump ship and take a bus home. So there are certain advantages to this too.

Concerts: Compare and Contrast

2005-06-27T09:34:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I went to Parkpop, a free pop concert festival held in Den Haag. I was attracted by the presence of Elvis Costello on the performer list and joined up with some friends for a day in the sun. The weather was perfect: warm and sunny but not too hot, and the company was great. I quite enjoyed the first two performers we saw: a Norwegian guy by the name of Thomas Dybdahl played some nice low-key sort of folky-pop, and then Belgian Gabriel Rios did some lovely latiny salsa/rhumba kind of dance music. Very pleasant. Other than that, I wasn't terribly impressed by anyone. Most of the artists there were into heavy, crashy kinds of music that I don't really enjoy.

But what this post is really about is how this festival compares with the Edmonton Folk Festival. Put bluntly, it doesn't. Which really ought to mean I don't compare them, but it's my blog, so by golly, I'm going to do it anyways.

Both festivals seem to do a good job of featuring a variety of performers in their chosen niche without pigeonholing themselves too terribly. Each has a pretty nice park area for a venue. Folk Fest is the luckier in this regard, however, as it benefits from both the natural amphitheatres of Gallagher Park and the venue separation provided by the trees. Sound bleed was a problem for the two main stages at Parkpop. There seemed to be a significant amount of space farther over in the park, so it looked like the stage could have been located better, but perhaps there were other issues I don't know about. Both festivals feature a pretty good selection of food and "stuff" vendors. Parkpop even had a bungee jump crane set up, which was an entertaining diversion when the music was bad. Each festival has a good transportation set-up, with frequent buses running back to a more central area. Parkpop might have the advantage in this area, as the buses ran to all the train stations, from which there are excellent bus and tram connections. This is more a factor of the Den Haag public transportation system being better than Edmonton's, however. For these factors, both festivals rate reasonably well.

Where I show my biases much more strongly are my appraisals of the audience and to some extent, the organizers. I have a much stronger appreciation of the Folk Fest audience and its organizers. Parkpop audiences are inconsiderate slobs. Although there were garbage cans located around the area (though more would have been useful), most people treated the ground as their personal dump site. Among the usual food booths were beer vendors, and sellers with backpacks of booze even wandered the crowd dispensing their wares into plastic cups which, once emptied, were simply tossed on the ground. We actually walked through one particularly bad area near the vendors that was ankle-deep in garbage. There was barely anywhere you could step that was actually bare ground. I was mortified.

Further, we arrived pretty early in the day and spread out a couple blankets reasonably near the stage, though not really close. It was a fine location through the first act but shortly thereafter we were surrounded by standing, jostling people dropping garbage on us, tramping across the blankets, drunkenly slamming into us and generally making it exceedingly unpleasant.

We (5 of us) picked up and moved considerably farther back on the field but unfortunately discovered that the sound quality wasn't that hot farther back. They only had one set of speakers and video screen (at the stage) and nothing farther back so when Elvis Costello finally came on at the end of the show, it was a little disappointing. We could have tried to move in closer but noone seemed very excited to brave the crowds again. Aside from the rude and often drunked people, there was also an incredible amount of smokers. I know this is pretty typically European, but I was sitting in a park and I felt like I was in a bar, for the amount of smoke I was inhaling. Blech.

Now we come to the toilets. As elsewhere in this country, it was Pay-to-Pee. Yes, they'll let you come to the concert for free, but it's 50 eurocents a time (or a 2 euro daypass) to visit the portapotties. Delightful. Couple this with a complete lack of foresight on how to manage the lines, and you've got 200 people pressing to get in, 100 people pressing to get out, and 3 or 4 staffers trying to moderate the whole works. It was disastrous.

Dutchies don't know how to do line-ups. This sounds like a terrible generalization, I know, but it's true. Check out the mobs of people trying to get in a train car here and you'll see what I mean. No wonder all the banks/government offices/large service desks/etc ALL have take-a-number machines. It seems to be the only way to institute some order on the population. With that in mind, I would have thought that the organizers of this festival (after 25 years experience) could have at least figured out they needed a separate exit and some sort of line-up fences at the porta-potties. Apparently not. A further irony around the outhouse issue is that they had all sorts of awareness-raising posters up about the cholera, typhus, etc, that runs rampant in places where they don't have adequate santitation facilities but they had no washing facilities whatsoever at the festival. There were two (half-litre sized) empty hand sanitizer dispensers tied to the wall. That was it. There were no washstands, and water was only available from the food vendors.

Contrast all of this with the Folk Fest: many, many garbage cans around the site, emptied frequently by volunteers. Most people pick up pretty well after themselves, and others stick around after the end of the day to grab the rest of the stray trash before going home. Drinkers are confined to the beer gardens and their cups also make it to the garbage. People are generally very polite and orderly about staked-out tarp space and it is considered exceedingly unmannerly to tread on someone else's tarp, unless it's the very edge and there's nowhere else to walk. Stuff can also often be left unattended on tarps without worry (though leaving valuables is still inadvisable). People line up for food, buses, toilets and bag checks without mobbing. Porta-potty use is free (though the 4 days of concert costs ~$100) and there are washstands nearby as well as a major watering center if the washstands run out of supplies. Though there is smoking in the crowd, it's not nearly as prevalent and there is even a non-smoking area in a decent part of the hill. All in all, it's a much friendlier, better organized festival with a well-trained audience. And boy, am I sorrowful that I'm missing it this year!

House hunting

2005-06-14T09:20:00.000-06:00

I don't think I've announced it on here yet, but it's official: we're moving back to Edmonton come November or thereabouts. Rem's got a PhD position lined up at our old alma mater and I've started half-heartedly browsing the Charity village job listings. It's a little early to really be job hunting seriously, but we want to purchase some sort of domicile when we return, and having a steady source of income is generally required for a mortgage.

In the spirit of starting things too early, then, I've also been browsing some of the real estate listings currently posted. I was originally gunning for a house, but after checking out what seems to be available in our price range around the university, I'm swiftly being convinced of the wisdom of buying a condo. Not shoveling snow is also a good incentive.

One thing is for sure: we won't be moving back into my old house in Strathcona. My old roomies are selling it and the list price of $619 900 is just a tad out of our price range. You can check it out here. It's the dollhouse looking one at the top.

If that damned link still isn't working, copy & paste this: http://www.realestatesprucegrove.com/753_propertydisplay.jsp?URL=%2FmyRealPage%2Fsearch_results.jsp%3FID%3D753

Hats are like Rabbits

2005-06-02T02:52:00.000-06:00

I have come to the conclusion that my hats are like rabbits. They have this tendency to multiply. I came to this country with two hats and currently have ten.

Rem doesn't believe my theory and points to his own hat collection (still limited to two) as evidence. I think maybe his hats are sterile.

Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?

2005-05-24T12:11:00.000-06:00

A week ago, at this time of night, I was eating a quintessentially French dish in the dining room of a 200 year old estate house in Auvergne, France. Classical music on the record player, a fire roaring in an immense fireplace, and three old friends completed a fabulous evening.

France! What fun! I thought I was going to Dijon last week when I boarded the Thalys train in Rotterdam, and indeed, that's where the trains eventually ended. The trip actually covered much more distance - but by car, a mode of transportation which has somehow become foreign to me!

I was met at the station by my old roommates Amie, Steve and Mathilde, and Mathilde's very sweet beau, Julien. Mathilde et Julien do live in Dijon, but shortly after I arived, we headed out to her parents' farm in Montceaux l'Etoiles (sp?), a village about 2 hours south of Dijon. We were very well hosted from sunday night to Tuesday morning by Mathilde's family, and since they don't speak much English, I was doing my best to dredge up my high school French. Although I still couldn't have a conversation, by the end of the visit I was pleased I could come up with the odd sentence which actually made some sense. Mathilde's mom obviously had more confidence in my French than I, and kept trying to engage me in conversation, but alas, I stared at her in rapt incomprehension more often than I replied coherently.

While at Montceaux l'Etoiles, we went to an outside market. Though I've become accustomed to such markets here, this one had a novel feature: live animals. Turkeys, ducks, chickens, bunnies, various furry rodents, colourful squaucky birds and even goats were carried off by a variety of customers. Steve took a picture of a fellow holding a toddler with one hand and the legs of a flapping turkey in the other. I hope he didn't have far to go!

The other highlight of our time in Montceaux l'Etoiles was a bike ride. When Mathilde mentioned bike rides, I thought "great! I like bike rides!" When she said "16 km", I thought "heck! I can do 60km easy!" When she said "forest", I thought "Oho! Paths through the forest! How lovely!"

Right. Except for a couple things. First, I neglected to remember that the landscape was hilly. Very hilly. Everywhere. Second, I forget that I was going with Amie and Steve, the two most athletic and energetic people I know. (Mathilde's no slouch, either!) Amie was a national-winning skier. Steve is one of the top amateur soccer players in Edmonton. Mathilde is very fit and grew up biking in this area.

I, on the other hand, am me. At my best level of fitness (which is not now!) I can't even begin to rival this crew at their worst. It's a good thing they were patient.

This 16km ride was tough. I've never biked a hill in my life, prairie girl that I am. Going uphill was painful, and though we had geared mountain bikes, I never did quite figure out which settings were which - and I realized afterwards that my setting was not the right one. Ooops. After about 4 pedal strokes, I ended up walking up every single hill. The rest of them did a lot of waiting.

You'd think going downhill would be great in comparison. But instead of being tough on my legs and lungs, it was tough on my arms and heart. Either we were whizzing down a reasonably smooth road at uncomfortably (for me) high speeds, or we were hurtling down a very rutted and rather steep mountain path which required a whole lot of evasive steering and plenty of braking. Oh, and did I mention we didn't have helmets? Yikes.

At one point, we crossed a little creek on a footbridge and were riding on a stone wall maybe two feet wide and three feet tall - essentially an overgrown ramp for the bridge. There was brush on one side and either water or a couple feet of grassy bank on the other. For some reason, Mathilde stopped suddenly, and Amie stopped suddenly, and I followed suit by falling over. Into the bush, fortunately. Further on there was barbed wire to land on, and earlier there had been nettles, so I picked a good location. The lack of helmet turned out to be okay in this instance as I landed on my well-padded rear end - it's still bruised, but no other damage, happily. So there I was: sprawled in the brush, bicycle on top, laughing so hysterically I was crying. Yes, this is how I keep up with athletic types. I got Amie and Steve to take a picture for posterity and when they return from Europe in a month or so I'll try to remember to post it.

Still, we did survive, and the country was gorgeous, when I remembered to look at it. We also drove around a fair amount and wandered around parklands and churches and monasteries and lots of pretty places.

Tuesday morning we piled into the car and headed out to Mathilde's grandparents' aforementioned summer house outside of St. Flour, another 3 hours southwest-ish in Auvergne. More incredibly beautiful territory! It was pretty cold that day so we wandered around St. Flour and area for a while and then retired to the house to make a roaring fire and hot supper. It was a tremendously neat experience staying at that place - I'm regretting not taking more pictures of the inside. Maybe we'll get to go back and I'll take the opportunity then. The house was full of incredible old furniture and the whole place would be a museum if it were in Canada, but to Mathilde's family, it's just the place they go in the summer.

We spent a few hours on Wednesday climbing one of the volcanos in Auvergne. Very old and or course dormant, they provided some pretty striking views. Mathilde figured the one we climbed was around 1900m and that we'd started at 1200 or 1300m. I've been living at sea level for the last year and a half - and I did notice the difference. We ate lunch halfway back down the mountain in the shelter of some rocks: baguette and cheese, tomatoes and salami with fresh strawberries, pears and chocolate. Yummy. We ate a lot of cheese on this trip. A lot.

Wednesday afternoon we dropped Amie and Steve off at a rental car in Clermont-Ferrand and headed back to Dijon with a stop off at Mathilde's parents' for supper. I knew I'd been living in the Netherlands too long when I commented to my mom that we drove a long long way and she laughed at the distance.

Thursday morning I wandered around Dijon's old town and hopped on my first train home at noon. Three trains, a subway ride and a short walk later and I was home after one truly awesome trip. I loved the French countryside - thank you Mathilde for showing it to me!

Things I'm Going to Miss

2005-05-08T09:14:00.000-06:00

This post is quite premature, I know. We're not going back to the old country for another 7 months, but we've been discussing our destination so much that it seems our departure is much closer. Consequently, I've been getting antsy to go: discussing all the things (and people) I'm looking forward to in Canada has not been great for getting me to appreciate this experience while I'm living it. So, in an effort to know what I've got before it's gone, here are some things I really like about this place:

-the flowers. Spring starts in February and everything's covered in flowers and green stuff until about November. Even then, we did see some very hardy window baskets and such in December and January. The Netherlands also grows about 90% of the world's flowers so we have flower markets every Saturday selling tulips and roses at about 10 eurocents a stem. That's about 15 cents Canadian. Not that you buy them in stems - usually you get them 50 for 5 euros. We had to buy several vases just so we could put 50 tulips in water.

-the proximity to everything. We live a 5 minute walk from 3 grocery stores, a 15 minute walk from the central area of town and the train station and a max 30 minute bike ride to the edge of town.

-the green zones between towns. Federal legislation here mandates a green belt between every city/village and the next. As a result, we can go for a ride through green fields (and yes, they're pretty much always green - they do a first cut of hay here in May) and canals and trees with minimal trouble.

-the bike infrastructure. There are bike lanes and lights and even long distance routes all over the country. It's magnificent. My only complaints about them are that we share with some pretty powerful scooters and that some riders and just inconsiderate.

-nice architechture. Most of the buildings I see here are pleasant to look at: they've got archways, tiled detailing, stained glass windows and just generally have been built with some concern for their appearance. That's a lovely change fromt he neo-brutalist style so often used in western Canada.

-really good public transit. This is definately made easier by the size of the country, but it's pretty doable to never own a car here because the trains and buses make a reasonably efficient and comprehensive system.

-Dutch cheese. Most of what we get would be called Gouda back home but the price and the quality of it here seem to put it in a different category altogether. Flavourful and reasonably priced, we've used Dutch cheese to replace cheddar and mozza quite happily. It's soooo good.

Queen's Day

2005-05-01T14:57:00.000-06:00

Saturday was Konninginnedag. That mouthful of a word means Queen's Day: theoretically, this holiday is a celebration of the Dutch Monarchy, the house of Orange. While the Queen does visit two different towns each year, in most places, Queen's Day is a combination outdoor flea market and party. It really starts the evening before, as people stake out sidewalk and street space in the center of towns all over the country. By 6pm, the designated areas of town are packed with sellers of junk of all sorts and Dutchies in search of a bargain. While in recent years commercial marketers have become more common, the old-school sellers are just residents cleaning out their accumulated stuff. Usually, even private "stuff" sales are taxed here, but on Queen's Day it's a Vrij Markt, or free market - no taxes necessary. Consequently, most Dutchies get their garage sale fix this one day of the year.

The domestic area of the market starts at the end of our street, about 3 buildings away. The sales drop off when it gets dark and then the street party takes over. In addition to the selling, plenty of stages are set up in front of business and houses featuring actual bands, karaoke, recorded music and lip synchers. Other people drag out couches and coolers and have private parties on the sidewalks in front of their houses. There are beer and food sales but people seem to be pretty well behaved, as a rule. Friday night's party went on until about 1:30, and the only problem I noted was the humungous mess people left behind. They set up porta-potties, barricades and signs directing people around but they really out to set up more garbage cans: these partiers are not neat people.

Anyways, we wandered around for a few hours on each of Friday night and Saturday afternoon and picked up the following items:
-blue juice jug
-purple sweater for me
-coffee maker pot (and likely broken maker) - we broke the one downstairs.
-impossible 1000 piece forest puzzle, still in the plastic
-250 Magic the Gathering cards (for Rem)
-necktie
-Janet Evanovich book #1

All this for the bargain total of about 11 euros. Pretty good, eh? Last year we bought a lot more stuff - glasses and tables and chairs and whatnot, but we're pretty well stocked for household stuff this year and mostly trying to not buy things we can't take home.

Anyways, I took a bunch of pictures of the event and if I get my butt in gear and arrange them, I'll post them on Rem's site someday.

The more fool I

2005-04-22T17:19:00.000-06:00

I just finished my term paper! The latest draft, anyways. This draft actually has a conclusion, however, so it feels like I'm finished it. Tomorrow I have to fix it up and write up all the work cited stuff and then I'm done. (I'd better be, it's due!) Hooray! I'm still not sure how I feel about it. Anne and Rem both kindly edited it for me and made suggestions but I'm not sure I did very well in fulfilling those suggestions. Still, I'm feeling less hopeless about it than I was last week. Now, I think there's a slim chance the prof won't think it's crap and flunk me. Yes, I'm worrying about this. I have really hated the pass/fail system of my course thus far because I have no idea exactly how well I've passed on the previous components. Was I well above the flunk level or only just? Given how poorly I felt I understood several of our readings, I do wonder.

And I wonder at myself for being so dependent on grades for my own self esteem. This is just foolish.

900 Words!

2005-04-14T15:18:00.000-06:00

Not that you're likely to care, but I have reached the fantabulous milestone of 900 words in my 2500 word paper. I just have to tell someone. Gah, I hate living alone! The food sucks, there's no one to poke, and I've started talking to myself. I know, I'm overreacting. It's been all of 6 days of peace and quiet. I should be enjoying this. I'm not. I miss my husband.

I have re-learned, however, that the best way for me to write papers is

1) Know exactly what I want to say before I sit down. This does not mean writing outlines or whatnot, but just somehow knowing.

2) Have a scary, sanction-full deadline looming. No deadline = no work. The paper's not actually due until the 24th, so I'm trying to construct an artificial deadline on Rem and Clare's return. It's helping somewhat.

Okay, 1600 more words....

**Edit: It's Saturday afternoon and I'm up to 1541 words. Hurrah! Of course, I've changed my mind about my thesis three times in the last 24 hours, but hey, you can't have everything.**
**Edit 2: Monday afternoon, 2:15pm: after two days off from writing (Rem's back! yay!), I'm up to 1697 words. 800 more to go...**

Research is scary

2005-04-12T06:41:00.000-06:00

I'm writing my term paper on the paradigm shift that is gay marriage. As probably all of you know, I'm firmly on the "for" side. As such, I've been having a hard time writing about the "agin" side with any kind of accuracy. I thought maybe I could remedy this with more research, so back I went to the internet to try to find more info. Mostly I found vituperative hatred that just made me angry and sad. One site, put up by a Christian Church, astounded me with just its illuminating address: godhatesfags.com! So much for love they neighbour. Fortunately, I also found an excellent site: www.religioustolerance.org, which I think does a pretty good job of summarizing and contrasting conservative and liberal Christian views on same-sex marriage and homosexuality (and lots of other stuff, too, though I didn't read all 2500 essays) without making me scream. I still think the "agin" side is very very wrong, but then, that's what paradigms are all about: my facts and their facts are opposite.

Nontheless, at least I finally found a reading of the Bible which doesn't continually offend me. This is progress.

Starkers & mustard

2005-04-09T13:38:00.000-06:00

Rem and his dad departed early this morning for Croatia. They're going kayaking for a week. I am not. This is to be a bit of a bonding trip for them, the practical considerations of my (lack of) kayaking experience and looming term paper aside. So I hope they have a wonderful time, and I'm glad to have some solitude to concentrate on my work.

That said... I must admit that they've been gone only a little over 12 hours and I'm already going a little stir-crazy. I'm supposed to be just working on my paper and other class stuff this week until I get it all done. This is a self-imposed duty but I am now reminded that I'm going to have to seek out some company soon. I learned in university that I go nuts if left alone for even an entire weekend... but it's been so long since I've done so that I'd forgotten. Oh well. At least it's the weekend and I can catch people back in Canada.

In other solo travelling news, I'm going to Dijon in May! Amie and Steve, two of my old roommates, are going to be in Europe in May and are going to drop in on Mathilde, another of our old roommates who helpfully lives in France. So I'm crashing the party and we'll have ourselves a mini-reunion. The timing is somewhat unfortunate on this - I'm going from May 15-19, which is right in the middle of Rem's mom's visit. This does give Rem some bonding time iwth his mom, too, though, so I think it all works out. I'm quite looking forward to the trip- so far in our travels we've mostly seen cities and only glimpsed the countryside on our bike rides in the Netherlands. Mathilde's family lives in a rural area, though, and we're staying with them. French countryside! Cool, eh?

Oh, my supper bell just went. Rem left me enough lasagna and spaghetti sauce to get me through to the middle of the week... after that, it might be frites for me!

Catching up

2005-03-28T13:53:00.002-07:00

I've been lazy. Time to make up! Since my last pathetic attempt to describe Edinburgh, I've been to Paris. Yes! City of lights! City of baguettes! City of snooty French waiters! Or so we thought.

The lights part probably fits, actually, though we generally had early nights due to walking multitudinous numbers of kms all day and being exhausted as a result. Ditto the baguettes: lots of people (including us) wander the streets of Paris armed with a two or three foot long stick of narrow French bread. TASTY narrow Frnech bread, I might add. I became very fond of Boulangeries in the short three days we were in Paris. not only do they have exquisite bread, but they also have some of the most delightful pastries ever. I tried a chocolate and almond paste concoction that was heavenly. Anyways, two of the Paris myths turned out to be true. The third that I mentioned, however, was demonstrably false. French waiters were great! Friendly, helpful, polite, and patient with our butchered attempts at their language, they were the opposite of all the reports we've heard. We came to the conclusion that it's likely all in your attitude: if you go to Paris expecting service staff to speak flawless English to you immediately and get snarky if they don't, you'll probably be treated accordingly. If you attempt their language and resort to smiling and pointing if it doesn't work, you'll probably get much farther.

Rem, Kirsten, Tom and I arrived in Paris March 15 and departed the 17th. In between, we split up, Kirsten and Tom intending to do more shopping than our budget could consider. We saw most of the tourist highlights, I think: the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysses, Sacre Coeur, Montmartre, Notre Dame, the Pont Neuf, the Seine, the Tuileries gardens, the Obelisk, the Louvre and its amazing grounds, the Arc de Triomphe and that crazy traffic circle, the Latin Quarter... I can't remember what else! We walked and walked and walked and probably covered at least 15 kms of ground in all the wandering we did on the Wednesday alone. Enough walking to make up for all the bread and ice cream and pastries we were eating, at least.

My favourite part was probably, cheesy though it may be, the Eiffel Tower. I was surprised by how pretty 10 tons of steel girders (and that's really all it is!) can be. We actually went twice. I had intended to go up it on Wendesday but changed my mind when I saw a huge tour group massed by the elevators. It suddenly seemed less desirable and the 4-10 euros fee for the elevators (1st floor - 4 euros, 2nd - 7, top - 10) turned me off. We walked around the grounds for a good while, taking many, many [a href="http://www.remkes.ca/Photos/Books/Paris/paris0.html"]pictures[/a] and enjoying the gardens. I was thrilled that the tower was planted amongst gardens and duck ponds and parks and trees: I'd pictures sterile concrete with innumerable tourist vendors. There was concrete and vendors, but it was still much nicer than I'd expected. Anyways, later that day I regretted not going up, so Rem and I returned the next day and ascended to the second level. I'm glad we did: it was quite a view! And it was fun to get kissed on the Eiffel Tower on my 25th birthday. Nice commemoration!

Possibly the biggest disappointment was the Louvre. By now, i've been in enough art museums that I know my enjoyment limit is at most 3 hours, unless it's a style I really like, in a comfortable, quiet environment, etc. Still, I had some expectations that the Louvre would be more magical than it was, so that was one illusion shattered. Oh well. I saw the Mona Lisa, and had to laugh at the massive crowds around it. Tom took a picture of the crowd with nine hundred cameras pointed at the most famous painting ever. I was surprised that it was so small: it was maybe two feet by three feet. I'd expected something at least two or three times that size. We didn't have much patience for the crowds in that section of the museum, so headed to less popular areas. Though I didn't care too much for the Italian paintings, I did like the sculptures I saw - including the Venus de Milo: whoever modeled for those had some really nice muscles. We spent only a few hours in the museum, which was fine with me, but we managed to get lost in our attempt to find an exit. We stumbled across an American couple who were also looking for an exit but had given up all hope and collapsed onto a bench. It's a HUGE museum - housed in a Palace, I guess we should expect that - and even the maps can lead you astray.

I won't give you detailed descriptions of everything else: plenty of writers have beaten me to it and done a better job than I can. It was really fun to finally see the places I've heard described in books and now have an idea where they are in relation to eachother. I'm still having trouble replacing my old imaginary images with the new real ones, though, and I find when I think of a book I read pre-Paris, it's with the same pictures as before, inaccurate though they are.

Catching up

2005-03-28T13:53:00.001-07:00

Catching up

2005-03-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

Scotland continued

2005-03-09T13:51:00.000-07:00

Scotland! Right, still have to write about that. As I said, Edinburgh was tremendously cool. The Old Town was full of amazing castle-ish white stone buildings, good free(!) museums, blossoming crocuses and daffodils braving the late snow, and best of all, a castle on the hill. I have a bit of an obsession for castles. It's nowhere near as pronounced as Rem's church fetish, but that's at least partly due to the fact that churches are much more common (and cheaper to get into!).

Thursday afternoon and Friday Rem and I wandered around the Old Town while Anne was at work and amused ourselves with the Writer's Museum, the Museum of Scotland, the National Art Gallery, the Museum of Childhood, the Princes Street gardens and just generally the Old town architecture. I was pretty sick at the time so spent at least as much time observing these museums from whatever bench I could find as I did actively wandering through them.

Saturday we split up so Rem and Anne could go to the Whisky Heritage center while I toured the castle. Unfortuantely, the whisky tour took only an hour and I hadn't considered how much there really is to see in the castle so I was sort of running around trying to take it all in in an hour. I didn't succeed terribly well (and was even half an hour late to meet them) and it's all a bit of a blur. I did come to the conclusion that I wouldn't like to live in a castle and that my favourite trashy romance novels ask for even more of a suspension of disbelief than I had anticipated. The castle was packed full of things to see - the Prisoner of War museum, a war memorial full of stained glass that they wouldn't let me photograph, a military prison museum, a really old chapel (the oldest in Edinburgh or Scotland, I can't remember - I didn't find it, sadly), Mary, queen of Scot's quarters when she gave birth to James, and the warfare museum. My main impression of the place was that is was imposing, windy, stony and cold. And I want to see more castles!

Oh yes, and I got to see the Crown jewels of Scotland - along with a briskly moving crowd of Japanese tourists. Interestingly enough, during WWII, Germany was sufficient threat that the jewels were actually buried in the castle in a very damp and dank sort of cave in the castle for safekeeping. Only 4 people were informed and given a map of their location. The Prime Minister of England and two other UK government officials (which ones, I have forgotten already), and the Governor General of Canada! Apparently they figured that if the other three were captured, the Gov Gen would still be safe and sound over the pond. My brain is empty and I'm going to go to bed but I know I'm not doing the castle justice. See here for some more info, 'kay?

Post-script: It occurred to me this week that I currently have the most lucrative job I've ever possessed. Ironically, I was prepared for it before any of my recent (and expensive) post-secondary education. Yes, I am referring to my job as a cleaning lady. I have two clients who pay me roughly $16-17/hour (depending on the exchange rate), plus reimbursement for travel costs. And remember, this is sans deductions so I do indeed net $16-17/hour! And all this for some vacuuming and scrubbing. Thanks mom.

Scotland: Land of kilts

2005-03-04T11:41:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true. Scotsmen really do wear kilts. And hot damn, they look great in them, too. When I told people here that one of my main goals in Scotland was to see boys in kilts, I got a lot of eye rolling and comments that they don't really wear kilts in Scotland. Pish tosh, say I! They do. Granted, it's not the everyday streetwear a la blue jeans, but we actually saw lots of bekilted males in a variety of situations.

Other than the street corner buskers in full regalia, pipes a-blowing and some random people on the streets, we saw kilts in three main circumstances.

The first: apparently kilts and rugby shirts are a very common fan outfit for (what else) rugby games. Anne's apartment is near the rugby stadium and we saw a huge number of sports fans making their way to the game all dressed up kilts, team shirts and occasionally team scarves. They usually had the long socks, too, but it was pretty cold - they were going to have nippy knees in any case.

The second: another sports scenario. We saw a curling club at the airport whose dress outfit for guys included kilts. Very swanky. I really wouldn't want to wipe out on the curling sheet in a kilt, though. Particularly if worn, ahem, authentically commando.

And finally: at the ceilidh! (Which I will rave about at length later.) Males from teenagers to men in their 60's or 70's were all sporting kilts, and I have to say, it's a great look on most people. The socks really make your calves look nice, and the shape of the kilt is pretty forgiving for spare tires.

So my goal was fulfilled. Men in kilts! Hurrah! I loved Scotland.

Just FYI: We were in Scotland from Feb 24 to March 1. I'll write more about other parts of the trip later. Rem's also covering the excursion at www.remkes.ca, of course. Oh, and that's where the pictures are going.

Toys!

2005-02-17T10:02:00.000-07:00

Rem and I returned this afternoon from my least favourite store in Utrecht: the Media Markt. A gigantic electronics and appliances store, it's where we've obtained our computer, oven, printer, electric mixer and toaster. As useful a place as it is, I find it unpleasantly crowded and difficult to get good service.

Today, however, our expedition resulted in a very diverting toy, so I am pacified. And quite pleased.

We have a new digital camera! Hurrah! Our old one started acting up the Christmas before we came here and eventually quit taking pictures altogether by mid-summer. Hence, no pictures since before the wedding. My mom kindly sent me back here with her old advantix and I used it for a couple shots at Christmas and in Oslo: two rolls of 25 shots cost me 25 euros to develop! Good heavens! After that, it became pretty obvious that we needed a new digital since we do want a photographic record of our travels.

Our new toy is partly my birthday present and I've even been reading the manual this afternoon (gasp!) to figure out all the great things it does. We got one with 3x optical zoom and it even does macros - close-ups. I've been wanting to do close-ups ever since I saw a dewy spiderweb one sunny morning on my way up a Taiwanese mountain. Hurrah! Now I can!

Trials and tribulations of the two-wheeled type

2005-02-14T11:26:00.000-07:00

That clinches it. My bicycle is jinxed. In the roughly one year that I've owned it, my poor fiets has had a seat, a quick-release and a water-bottle bag stolen, the front brakes disconnected, a series of bolts removed, and today I discovered the back wheel has been mashed. We're talking curb-stomped kind of mashed, despite it still being locked up. This, added to three or four flat tires, Rem dropping my bike lock and keys into the canal and my riding it into a post. I don't know what I or my bicycle did in a previous life, but it can't have been good.

We've been discussing replacing it anyways as it has also developed squeaky, only-semifunctional brakes and grinding, slipping gears which the bike mechanic could only improve but not fix. It still worked, just not very well - not quite up to standard for the longer trips we want to do when it warms up. So, I guess it's now settled and we shall go bicycle shopping this week.

But I'd still like to throttle whoever's reponsible for this. At least I didn't get yelled at, too.

Sickness and lights and trips, oh my!

2005-02-13T13:58:00.000-07:00

It's been a fairly boring week, I'm sorry to say. I got really, really, sick last Sunday - we're talking delusion-inducing fever - which didn't really go away until Friday. As a result, I spent the better part of 5 days asleep or reading on the couch. Friday I was fortunately much much better and went in to Amsterdam to start my first day as a black market, illegal alien cleaning lady. Yes, I have moved to Europe to fulfill my dream of becoming an illegal migrant worker. Wowzers. After scrubbing out my friend Keith's place, I met with another former Genzyme colleague to discuss the details of cleaning her place. A second client already! Business is booming.

Yesterday, we tried to improve the lighting conditions in our apartment by replacing the ceiling bulbs with 100-watters. This was not our most brillant idea and we proceeded to blow the breakers. Ooops. We tried flipping the switches in the fuse box downstairs (by candlelight as my flashlight cut out about 2 minutes into our self-induced blackout) but to no avail. Unfortunately, we didn't think to unplug things before doing the breaker flipping, so of course they flipped right back. In the end, we were forced to call our landlord and throw ourselves upon his mercy. And now we're downgrading to 60 watters. I still think it's ridiculous to even put 40 watt bulbs in ceiling lights.

And finally, the only exciting news in this post is that my sister Kirsten and her fiance are coming to visit! They discovered Tom has some extra vacation days to use up quick and have decided to make use of the free accomodation, fine dining and tour guides at chez Stephanie & Rem's. So, for 11 days, we've got them at our mercy. Not only are we going to show them the sights here in the Netherlands, but we're going to take a quick jaunt down to Paris for three days and then spend a day in Antwerp on the way back. I've never been to Paris and now I'll be there on my birthday! How excellent is that?

Were a little chagrined to find out that buying international train tickets is rather complicated. There are about 6 different fee scales with varying degrees of ticket changeability and corresponding costs but there are only a certain number of the cheap seats on each train. We thought we had to book at least 3 weeks in advance to get the cheap seats. And that is, in fact, the rule. But saavy travellers have learned to book THREE MONTHS in advance in order to make certain they get cheap seats. All in all, we did okay, and the train tickets probably still cost us less than flying, but it was a lesson learned.

Books!

2005-02-04T15:23:00.000-07:00

With all this time to read, you're probably expecting that i've plowed through a great many books in the last two weeks. I'm sad to say it ain't so. My textbook reading does take up a fair amount of time, though it's a pretty easy read for a text book. The class is on using theory in general (I still haven't really figured out what they mean by that), but our first text is about medieval European history. It's called The Civilization of the Middle Ages and is by Norman Cantor. It's a popularly published book and I actually quite recommend it if you've got an interest in this area. My only knowledge of medieval history prior to reading it was due to my father-in-law's encouragement to read Eco's The Name of the Rose and Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael books. (The latter I recommend without hestitation - the former - it helps to have the background FIRST.) At any rate, Cantor has an easy narrative style that uses larger-than-life personages from various periods to carry the story along. While I still stumble around some on what Papal doctrine said what, he's given me a much better understanding of European history than I had before.

The other volumes on which I've spent my time have been much less edifying, I must admit. I devoted most of a day and a box of kleenexes to some excellent trashy drivel, Nora Roberts' Chesapeake Blue; followed by another day on Diana Gabaldon's escapist romp Dragonfly in Amber (skipping some of the most unpleasant parts - ah the joys of selective rereading!). Today was given over to Elizabeth Peters' latest (?) Amelia Peabody book, Guardian of the Horizon. I was quite delighted to find that in the library yesterday. Now if they would only hurry up and get the latest Stephanie Plum book, Ten Big Ones by Janet Evanovich in, I'd be most pleased. I reserved it yesterday though, for the princely fee of 1 euro. So maybe soon.

Noticing some decidely low-brow trends in my reading list? I must admit to being a disciple of the read for pleasure school. Someday I should give Foucault's Pendulum or somesuch another go, but it's just so satisfying to zip through a fun, easy read. Aside from my trashy fiction, I just got a book from the library on tips for travelling the world. It's from 1997 which doesn't seem so long ago until you get to the section where he says that email is not a very useful way to communicate with people back home. It may yet have something useful to say. We shall see.

And now to start a new book. I did actually get something a little more intelligent out yesterday - a book by Annie Proulx, the author of the Shipping News. here's hoping it's worthwhile.