6 Randoms

1. Shingles

 I helped shingle a playhouse at the beginning of summer and discovered that I'm a mean, lean shingling queen.


2.  Victoria Awake

At the end of April I helped organize an artistic night featuring photography, video and music.

Victoria Awake played some tunes for us.

3.  Babies. 

 I think there's something in the water.  Babies are being born left and right.  I made a diaper cake for the last baby shower I went to. 

4.  Cookies

I wandered into the organic section in Superstore and found this:

Pomegranate Flavored Bran Wafers.  

5.  Fruit.

I signed up to bring food one Sunday morning.

I thought the fruit would offset the calories in the cinnamon buns I brought.


6.  Giddy Up

I was asked to photograph a cowboy themed staff party.  I discovered that I love wearing a cowboy hat and that it is very fun to watch adults play tug o' war.

~b~

Confession

I've been sick for over a week and all I want to say is that not having cable sucks.

CTV online, my MacBook Pro, and Mad Men helped me through the first part of the week as I languished in bed.

I had a brief respite from the confines of my house last Thursday to see Massey and the Fergusons play at Taste of Saskatchewan.

Watching these guys play was the cultural highlight of my week.

I have now been watching The Hills and Paris Hilton's My New BFF Season 1.

Please help me.

It can't get any worse than that.

I'd better get better soon.  

~b~

Off the Bookshelf - Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell

The book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clack is set in the 1800's where there is a revival of magic in England.  This return of practical magic is spearheadedby two men.  Mr Norrell is a recluse who is has amassed a vast collection of books on magic and who believes in acquiring the knowledge and theoretical aspects rather than practicing magic.  Jonathan Strange, who is quite limited in knowledge and books of magic, but rather possesses a natural ability to performing magic, believes that magic should be practiced.  The opposing viewpoints of the use of practical magic strains the relationship between the two magicians, and they go their separate ways.  The schism between the two magicians is limited to both sides publishing scholarly articles, as keeping with the manners and etiquette of society.  The use of magic is reserved for practical purposes, such as aiding England in the war against France.  

Sometimes my mother would show me all the pictures she had taken that had been recently developed.  The first few would be interesting, a picture of my grandparents, or a place she had been while on vacation.  Each picture required elaboration, from who the individuals in the picture were, to some anecdote connected with the picture.  She would show me picture after picture: people I don't know and will never meet, a picture of the front of her house, a picture of random flowers.  She would show me the pictures that were blurry and out of focus, the pictures where she had missed including their heads in the composition, or a double of a previous picture.  The pictures soon blurred together and nothing stood out and I only had the overwhelming urge to leave.  


This is how I began to feel towards the middle of the book, I had the overwhelming urge to finish.  The detail of this book is tremendous as it follows the individual journeys of both Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.  It includes footnotes throughout the narrative which gives background to events and elaborates on references made within the story.  It took me a while to finish this book, as the details on the journeys slowed down the story line.  Towards the end, as the plot includes The Man with the Thistle-Down Hair and the Faerie world, my interest revived.


~b~

Fun at the Playground

One hot and sunny afternoon while they guys went fishing, us girls took our kids to the beach.   It was such a nice, fun family afternoon which was spent lying in the sun, playing in the water, and hanging out at the playground.  

I find it so hard to take pictures of children, they are constantly moving, and never seem to want to look up.  I was so happy to finally get a good picture of Macy.  This picture shows her face, is in focus, and she is smiling, rather than her usual look of determination and concentration which I mistook for a scowl for the longest time.  Albeit a cute scowl.

I also caught my son playing on the slides.  It is also hard to take pictures of teenagers.  They are constantly running away from you when they see your camera, they never want to pose, and smiling would just be too uncool.

My son  will kill me if he ever finds out I've posted this on my blog.

I think my days are numbered.

~b~

Flin Flon July Long

I spent the long weekend in Flin Flon with friends.  I was both excited and anticipating adventure, and nervous and anxious, as I always am when I travel with other people for the first time.

I had a blast.

I don't think I stopped talking about Flin Flon for about the first 3 days back in Saskatoon.

When I got home I told everybody about how Flin Flon got its name.  Tom Creighton (Creighton, SK is adjacent to Flin Flon) found a book in the wilderness called The Sunless City.  The town was named after the main character of the book, Josiah Fintabbatey Flonatin.

Flin Flon is located on the Northern Shield and you can see the rocks everywhere.  The buildings are built on top and around rocks.  I even drove by one house that had built a bridge to walk from the street to the back door of the house.  The streets are hilly and curvy and really fun to drive on, I kept thinking how fun it would be to cordon off the streets and rally car around the city.  

The first thing you notice in Flin Flon the the tall tall stack, which, I found out is the tallest free standing structure in Western Canada, it stands at 825 feet (Calgary Tower stands at 626 feet).  It had closed down permanently about a week before I arrived.

One of the best surprises was The Orange Toad, a cute, trendy little coffee shop that is located downtown and also sells books.  The Trout Festival was on that day and we spent an afternoon watching live entertainment, walking around the main street and eating delicious Kettle Corn Popcorn.

We also fished.

I have to admit, I was a little nervous taking my son on a fishing trip.  The beauty of fishing is in its simplicity and requires patience and perseverance.  Fishing is where time can linger and you can fall back in love with the world around you.  Where you notice the cloudy sky and the wind kissing your face and where nature will meet you when you see glimpses of animals on the shoreline and the birds flying overhead.  Fishing is the excitement of getting that tug on your line and then your world instantly shifts into action.

Fishing is not playing COD and watching You Tube videos in a world that is not tangible, but rather digital.  I was worried that video games and the internet had ruined any appreciation my son would have of fishing and that he would be grumpy and rude and offend our gracious hosts.  The first day we went out, we came home with no fish, but it turns out he loved it!  So the next day, we arranged to go with the guys on some crazy adventure through the bush to get to a great fishing spot.

The trip in to get to the lake was epic, and definitely a great memory my son will have for a long time.  He and and Kent sat in the back trailer, which we called the coffin.  I was lucky to get a seat on the back of the quad and every joint wrenching bump we hit and every tree branch we dodged, I was thankful to be sitting behind one competent and crazy quad driver.  I definitely have a new appreciation for quads and the type of terrain that they can drive over.  Every now and then I would scream at my son to sit down, in fear that the coffin would tip over, but I did try to bite my tongue every now and then and let my boy be a man.

There is so much I could talk about, from the fantastic meals made by Chef Kent, to the day at the beach, or my very first drive-in movie ever, but this post would never get published.

So I will leave you with a picture that reminds me of the North:

Flin Flon.  I will miss the trees and the water and the great company, but definitely not the mosquitoes, horse flys or spruce beetles.

~b~