Slacky McSlackerson

Yep, that's me. I'm a bad blogger, I know. I've just been enjoying doing nothing lately, I have to confess. No real excuse.

This weekend I bought some art for my office:






And I am going to order this one from art.com to fill the last bare space on my wall:



All with nice black frames. The walls have been bare for a few months so it'll be nice to get something up finally.

I'm still trying to get up the motivation to develop some photos to fill all of the empty frames I have hanging around here. Maybe tonight's the night... we'll see. The season finale of my favourite show is on so I may not get around to it.

I'm heading to Vancouver on Tuesday for a few days after a nice stretch of being at home. Then back for Hallowe'en and we're into November. I will be taking a couple of shots at skiing at Canada Olympic Park before the real skiing starts up and I have to deal with actual mountains.

In other news, I am a student again - finally got registered in my first couple of classes at Athabasca University, hoping to finish my effing degree already. After transfer credits, I have 13 courses to go. The nice thing is that it's a distance learning university so even if we up and move again, I can finish it from anywhere.

Keep reading, I will be back more often, I promise!

Election Night in Canada

Here it is. Election Day.

As Rick Mercer so eloquently put it, the day on which there's nothing left for the candidates to do but get into the fetal position and wait for what happens.

I proudly cast my ballot today, secure in the knowledge that while I may be a little drop in a big pond, but dammit, at least someone, somewhere, will know that there is at least one Liberal in Alberta. (Gregg won't tell me who he voted for. )

So in my riding of Calgary-Nose Hill, Diane Ablonczy has won the past 5 federal elections under the Reform, Canadian Alliance, and Conservative banners. Last election, she won by 28,372 votes. This is the woman who was recently quoted in the newspaper saying that Preston Manning is her political hero.





Seriously.

I take solace in the knowledge that while we're deep down in Conservative territory here, the rest of the country is not so cut and dry. I will definitely be glued to the tv, hoping for an upset... or perhaps a coalition government??

Long time, no blog

AKA, I am all over the freaking place lately.

I haven't read the blog lately so if I'm repeating things, I apologize...

I came home from Toronto on Sunday evening after 10 days there and 5 in St. John's. St. John's was nice and a lot of fun but it wore me out. Toronto was good too but I was sure glad to see my own bed at long last. Gregg is still out there so the house is awfully quiet... minus the intermittent caterwauling a la Jasper.

But he will be flying out to meet me in Vancouver on Thursday (Gregg, obviously, not Jasper). I'll be leaving Sunday for 12 days of meetings, training, job interviews... I'm on the interviewing side this time though. It's pretty cool, I always wanted to be on the other side of the table and see how people present themselves - I could do without the pre-interview paperwork though.

When I get back from Vancouver I'll be heading to Edmonton a few days later for two more days of interviews. And then I think I'm putting a travel embargo on for a few months. It can be fun and is nice especially when you go somewhere with nicer weather, but 6 cities in two months is a bit much, even for me.

Todd, I'm sure you'll be glad to hear I'm getting excellent use out of the suitcase.

I do have lots of pictures to upload and I'll try to get around to that at some point.

Cypress Hills and Saskatchewan

The weekend of Aug 8-10, we went camping at Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park, aka Elkwater or the campgrounds of my youth. While there, we finally got to go swimming, and it was nice, sunny, super hot weather. Elkwater is 45 minutes or so away from Medicine Hat, so some friends met us out there and we stopped in the Hat for a quick visit with my grandparents too.

On Saturday, we decided to hike up Old Baldy, a small but steep hill overlooking the campground. From there, we went on a much longer than planned 9k hike through the trees and also through some (shadeless) meadows.

Here's the view from the top of Old Baldy:



I probably should have taken a photo of the lake, which was on the other side of the hill. Oops.

Here's the start of the Horseshoe Canyon Trail:



Farther in, desperate for shade in 34 degree weather:



And our reward for the trek: Horseshoe Canyon. This is the natural border between the Cypress Hills, which are quite forested and sit at the highest elevation east of the Rockies, and the endless rolling prairies.



Along the way, there was an unmanned outdoor Forestry Museum, which was kinda neat. This is some kind of antiquated forest clearing equipment:



And some of the flowers along the way:




After we came back from camping, I headed to Regina and Saskatoon for work. Didn't get much picture taking done, but here is a shot of the approach into Regina:


I regret not taking more photos, especially on the drive between Regina and Saskatoon - it really is the Land of the Living Skies. And I thought Medicine Hat was flat.

Anyway, after all that, we've just been chilling out this weekend. It was really hot yesterday and today, and then a severe thunderstorm warning was issued late this afternoon. A storm did roll in pretty intensely for about 15 minutes, then blew off.

Here's one last shot of the kitties enjoying the patio, shortly before the cloudburst:

My apologies, dear readers

I do have some updates but have been busy busy busy these days. We went out to Banff National Park to camp at Johnston Canyon last weekend, but I haven't had a chance to upload the pics yet. Look for a double post early next week, after we return from Medicine Hat and Elkwater (Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park) where we're heading off camping this weekend.

Also, next week I get to tour Saskatchewan for work so maybe I'll have a few shots of Regina and Saskytoon for ya.

Finally, the Stampede

Sorry it's taken me ages to get around to posting these.

On Friday, July 4, the Stampede kicked off in Calgary. There's a massive parade downtown and everything basically shuts down, including the roads and bridges into downtown but not including my workplace.

Anyway, after the parade we took the afternoon off and headed down to the grounds to take in the rodeo, which was actually pretty fun.

The admission gates:


Opening ceremony for the rodeo:


Yee-haw!







And this one's for Tim - the rodeo clown:


The Stampede is basically the CNE with cowboys. Midway, exhibits, new-fangled products, junky food (Gregg ate a bag of deep fried oreos and lived to regret it), gambling and drinking. The big place to drink on the grounds is Nashville North, which is a huge tent with (apparently) big name country musicians on stage. We passed it twice - once at about 1:00 p.m.:


This is the corral for the line up. That sign says: It is a 6 hour wait from this point. We passed by and laughed and said to each other naively, who the hell would wait 6 freaking hours to drink in a tent?

Little did we know, here was the scene by about 4:30:

Notice that the line extends far beyond that sign. Crazy.

The Calgarians sure like their Stampede, and I must admit that it's pretty good. All week, there are big party tents set up all over downtown and pancake breakfasts all over town, some free and some private. I actually saw cops, walking the beat and harassing the derelicts (and drinking on the job, as a matter of fact). Gotta love that Alberta Advantage.

So, back to the here and now. I'm busy redoing the guest room this weekend - paint, trim, doors, etc. I'll post a pic when I'm done (and now I've committed to all of you, it WILL be done before our guests arrive next week!). (What guests, you ask? Robyn, Trevor and Amanda are making the trip to go to the Nine Inch Nails concert on Tuesday! Whee!)

And since I just uploaded the contents of my camera, finally, here are a couple of shots of the front of our house (taken a couple of weeks ago). The majority of these plants came up this spring, yay previous owners for planting perennials.

Someone found me...

by googling "Crack Mac's".




Love. It.