Giggity Gig

We arrived home late yesterday in the pouring rain and sub zero temperatures. After basking in twenty five degrees Celsius in the Okanagan and twenty eight degrees Celsius in Kamloops, six degrees Celsius here in Prince George feels relatively arctic. As you can imagine the first thing we did was light a fire.

Rather than write a garbled summary of my holiday exploits I will update you as I slowly upload my photos to flickr.

Right now I have a mountain of laundry, unpicked ripe garden vegetables and boxes of Okanagan fruit to deal with.

Lunch Stop, no rain.

As you can see we had a picnic lunch, yesterday, in the parking lot at the Columbia icefields.

Since the weather was, still is, crap we decided to skip Banff, go there on the return, and head straight for Calgary except we couldn't make Calgary, did I say the weather is crap? We ended up in Canmore last night instead. I have never be here and I was astounded by the numbers of hotels, expensive houses and shops although, I suppose the ski crowd has lots of money.

This morning we drove into Calgary. We found a hotel, some interesting shops and a bike trail. We might get a bit wet tomorrow on the bike trail because the weather will still be crap.

Friday the sun comes out and we are heading back to Banff.

Holidays

Our little cat has not come back, I felt horrible this afternoon as I vacuumed up the cat hairs and realized there would be no more.

Tomorrow we're heading south through Alberta to Calgary, Banff, and the Okanagan.

We're visiting friends and wineries, and hitting the hiking and biking trails. Be back after labour day.

The cat came back (I hope) the very next day

Our cat is gone. She wasn't meowing to come inside this morning, sometimes she likes to go out at night. I've yelled myself hoarse, walked all over, with my eyes peeled, looking, even asked the neigbours. No one has seen her.

The cat belongs to my daughter. When my daughter was in grade nine she found an ad for a free cat in the buy and sell. We went to a trailer court to pick it up. The cat was duly named angel and she had to learn to stand up for herself in a house full of teenagers, my two and all their friends.

Our house was the pit stop on the way home from school, before a party, after a party and the place to hangout if you had a spare block in school. Wether either of my kids was home didn't matter.

My son taught Angel to fight, to climb up the screen doors and the curtains in the rec room, consequently she never learned how to retract her claws. I'm sure the cats policy is bite now ask questions later.

She is a beautiful cat, part siamese. Her eyes are either blue or black depending on the light. Despite all the hairs she sheds on everything I'm very sad she is missing. I'm still hoping to find her whining at the kitchen door tomorrow morning.

The Godfather of Canlit

I had never heard of Robert Weaver until a couple of days ago. I was plugged into my ipod while I did housework, the Ideas podcast came on and I learned Robert Weaver had devoted over fifty years of his life to nurturing the development of Canadian literature. As I listened I realized almost all of Canada’s literary talent had been influenced by this men.

I felt almost jealous as I listened to Alice Munro or Alice Laidlaw as she was known back in 1951, tell her story about her business relationship with Weaver.

Munro had heard Weaver was looking for short stories to read aloud on his CBC radio program, Anthology. She wrote him a letter and included two of her stories. He wrote back suggesting ways she could improve them and subsequently bought them both. Munro says, "That was probably the greatest moment of my life," appearing in print and being paid for the privilege.

From then on Weaver wrote her occasional letters asking what she was working on and telling her to keep writing. He also bought lots of her stories.

Why can’t I have a mentor, someone encouraging me to write, showing me ways I can improve my writing and paying me for the privilege to print it?

I recommend this podcast. Go to the best of ideas podcast page to listen to part one or subscribe in itunes.

Endings

Olympic Update: One Centimetre away from Winning

Canada's Dylan Armstrong, from Kamloops BC, had to settle for fourth place in the shot put earlier today. He threw further than he ever has before and set a new national record. Canada hasn't won any medals yet. Despite what all the naysayers around here are saying I think there is still hope.

Yesterday was my last day of work. Really the last day, I'm never doing that plant job again. It was a little sad saying goodbye to the people in the various accounts and I had to promise to go back and visit. But, I'm on holiday now and I really like that.

Hopefully there is still some summer left and I can find the sun and a deck chair to curl up in with my book.

Vintage Finds

I've been looking for a long time for a cake cake plate with a lid. I wnted someting different so buying new wasn't an option. i finally found this copper coloured cake carrier on etsy. it was reasonably priced and so was the shipping. An added bonus is the locking mechanism, fastenning the bottom to the cover, so I can take my cakes with me to parties and picnics .

I finally won an ebay auction for one of these cool vintage clocks.

Again the shipping wasn't too bad. The clock is made of brass and teak. It works perfectly with a battery and is from the Eames era 1930-1969.

Life before Internet

It started raining Saturday afternoon drowning out our BBQ party It continued to rain all night and all day Sunday. I haven't seen this much rain since I left Vancouver. To make things worse our internet disapeared sometime Saturday evening. Instead of cleaning up after the last guest left, around midnight, I thought I would do a quick perusal of my favourite sites, while I finished my last glass of wine. No way.

My ISP internet service provider is a small company, great for personalized service but on Sunday morning all I could do was leave a disgruntled message on their answering machine.

So what do I do on a rainy Sunday with no internet. I started knitting the second sock of a pair I started last summer. I start reading a new book. I drink 2 cups of espresso with milk, commonly called a latte; it's weird for me since I rarely drink coffee. I whine about the weather, restart the router, my computer and the signal receiver, more than once, to no avail. I eat a whole tin of chocolate chip cookies and go to bed early.

I can't phone them, the ISP, before I leave for work because their office isn't open, mutter mutter. However, it has stopped raining so I leave my raincoat on the peg by the backdoor. I look at the scattered bits of blue sky and wish them to get bigger. Maybe when I get back home my internet will be back up.

Good to the last second

I'm back from tromping up mountains, every steep pitch, then down again, through hellebore covered slopes, slipping backwards onto my butt more times than I care to remember. Fat hellebore leaves are a bitch to walk on especially when the slope is steep. Luckily there was enough snow and lateral moraines to keep things interesting.

Sometimes flowers like Valarian, Paintbrush Fleabane, Aster, Potentilla, Columbine and bog Orchids managed to push their way up between the hellebore leaves filling the meadows with colour.

The hike leader packed two boxes of red wine for us all to enjoy thus our campfire conversations were lively and fun until my eyelids shut and I had to pry them open with my fingers so I could see through the gloaming, back to my tent. Yesterday, the third day, we came down the Red Mountain trail. I was reminded of all the skiing I have done there and all the skiing I have yet to do there. This slope is usually covered in snow not hellebores.

Red sky at night sailors delight red sky in the morning sailors warning.

Last night I was at a goodbye party for a friend. There were a few people I didn't know so I lost no time in chatting them up to find out all about them. Of course they wanted to know all about me but I'm reluctant to tell strangers much about me, except on my blog. I should have given them my url, said, there it is and that's all your getting.

Yesterday I also talked to Gary about gravel. An area in front of the house, I meant to seed with clover has not been done. Everyone always drives their cars up here so we may as well gravel it. Now the road bans are off its time to get some gravel.

I should have known, last night when I was snapping photos of that gorgeous sunset, that it would be raining today. How like a sailor to get his adage wrong.

I've already done three things on my todo list, the rest of the list involves cleaning and packing. Cleaning because we're having long time friends over to supper, I need to cook as well, and packing because I'm going backpacking this weekend, for 3 day. The weather promises sun and hot temperatures, 23 degrees celsius. Hey its a lot warmer than minus 23 degrees celsius. There will be no newcomers just diehard gazelles so I intend to enjoy every last second of this trip.