wild card inside, wild card inside Well, cousin Mike is in town again on his way to Victoria, so that means a family barbeque and lots of golfing with Dalt (for Mike, not anyone else). It has warmed up enough this week that we were able to sit in the backyard at the compound and enjoy our burgers, corn on the cob, and shrimp kebabs. Ella was particularly enjoying the corn on the cob, and it was amusing to see her with it all over herself. It wasn't just 'cause she's four that this happened - the corn was pretty juicy and got on a lot of people's faces. Ella just managed to end up with it on her forehead and down her dress, so it was pretty cute.

After dinner (and chocolate cake) we sat around the fire-pit-table-thing and enjoyed the warm evening with a crackling fire. I think everybody is pretty happy it's Friday today. More pics are here.  | ¶ 11:28 a.m.

  love you forever but you're driving me insane What. EV. er.

A man who wants to run for the Alberta Progressive Conservatives says newcomers to the province must “adapt to our rules and voting patterns” or go back to where they came from.

Craig Chandler, who wants to represent the Calgary riding of Calgary Egmont, says people who have moved to Alberta have told him during his doorknocking campaign that they intend to vote Liberal.

Mr. Chandler says the Conservative culture is what created the boom in Alberta and if people don't like it, they should leave.

“You came to here to enjoy our economy, our natural beauty and more,” Mr. Chandler wrote in a recent blog.

“This is our home and if you wish to live here, you must adapt to our rules and our voting patterns or leave. Conservatism is our culture. Do not destroy what we have created.”

That's the spirit, guy!  | ¶ 5:20 p.m.

  take it slow, take it easy on me, shed some light on me please If you haven't heard about this already, it's worth watching. It hurts a bit, but you'll get a good laugh. First up, Miss Teen South Carolina:



And then, one of the creative responses she inspired:



Oh my.  | ¶ 8:28 p.m.

  there's nowhere to go but on Although they're calling for much warmer temperatures later this week, I began yesterday in Calgary with a terrible shock to my un-covered Ottawa toes. You see, I mostly packed for summer. It was plenty warm in Ottawa when I left, and I was pretty sure I'd remain plenty warm for the month of August. How quickly we forget, though, how quickly it turns to fall in Calgary. It was raining and six degrees yesterday. Today we started out with a balmy ONE degree. Eek.

I didn't pack proper dress shoes (and socks!), so I'm making due with various open-toed sandals when I go to work in the morning. My feet are not thanking me. Especially when, upon starting at my new temp gig this week, I learn that the building's heat is not working. So you can see your breath outside, and it doesn't feel much warmer inside this chilly office. Brr, brr, brr.

It was Jamie's birthday on Saturday, but most of the family was away, so we celebrated Sunday evening with a fantastic dinner. The newest gadget in the family compound is the "slow-cooker". Dalt loves it for ribs or roast or whatever. So we did both a roast and some ribs on Sunday, slow-cooked for maximum tastiness. We also prepared some nice spinach fettucine with cream cheese sauce, veggies and cheese sauce, fresh bread, and brownies for dessert. It was perfect. More pics are here.

I'm counting down now, to my departure on Sunday, back to Ottawa, the city I love to hate (or something). I'm anxious to get back to certain parts of my life there (i.e. stuff and cats), but not so excited for other stuff (i.e. the Carleton student life). I just got my mark for my summer course and I got a C which isn't fantastic, but it was a bit of a tough slug, so I guess I'm okay with it. Hell, better than a D, right..? So I've got one more semester ahead of me, and I'm hoping that with my return to Ottawa comes a return to summer (!).  | ¶ 1:17 p.m.

  watching the fire as we grow, mushaboom, mushaboom
Happy Birthday to my Dad! (Also known as the fittest man alive.)

Since Dad, Barb, and Kate just passed through Calgary this past week, we were able to have a family dinner with an early celebration before they headed back to Moncton. With so many of us being in Calgary, it makes sense for them to come here now and then, especially if they want to see their grandchildren before they grow up. Ella was still a baby last time my father saw her, and now she's this four-year-old in-your-face little girl, so there's lots to get to know about her. More pictures from our dinner at the Cheesecake Cafe are here, if you want to see.  | ¶ 4:06 p.m.

  pass me by, I'll be fine, just give me time I'm beat today. And no, it's not just 'cause I worked five days and I'm the big slacker who can't handle it. Actually my job has been nice and manageable, so I'm rather pleased that I get to come back to the same place next week. It's that, on top of trying to work eight hours a day, I was mentally struggling with the looming due date for my major term paper, the last assignment for my summer course, but a heavily-weighted one, so yeah, ugh. Add to the week's events the fact that my father, step-mother, and half-sister were visiting from New Brunswick. So this added a bit to the demands on my time. It's the first time they've travelled West to see the bulk of the Ryan clan who reside out here, so it was an exciting week. We had a nice family barbeque at Bowness Park last night after work (or after rafting, if you were one of the lucky ones not working). Some pics are here.

My step-mother has started making jewellery out of her massive sea glass collection and it's quite beautiful stuff. She presented some of us girls with some earrings and pendants for a necklace and it's pretty nifty. I took this shot with my camera-phone, so it's not the best colouring, but you get the idea.

After last night's barbeque I finished my paper. I hope my prof realized that it was still Thursday in Calgary, not Friday in Montreal (that's where he lives) when I clicked the "send" button. You should also know that I managed to throw in a Star Trek reference in my Rousseau paper. I was doing a critical analysis of a passage from the "Social Contract" that included the phrase "forced to be free", and the more I read, the more it reminded me of the Borg collective ("resistance is futile" and all that), so I had to throw it in there. We'll see if he's familiar with the show.

For those that know my academic habits, the fact that this paper was only emailed in only one day late might come as a shock, but it's true. I stayed up late (and got up early) for two days in a row to get it done. It's kinda catching up with me today, so I can barely keep my eyes open. The end.  | ¶ 3:34 p.m.

  there's no explosions here Last month, when I was reading Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, I was amused by this excerpt in the introduction written by John Gaskin.

In early 1608 Hobbes graduated BA, having for no ascertainable reason spent one more than the then normal four years at the University... In the thirty years after 1608, Hobbes published nothing but a translation of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. It is strange to speak of the formative years of a man's life as being between the ages of 20 and 52, but so it was with Hobbes. Before 1640 he had probably written no original work. Between 1640 and his death, his philosophical works in English fill seven massive volumes in the Molesworth edition... But the grounds for this extraordinary late flowering were being prepared through what, for Hobbes, counted as his long youth. The biographical chronology is somewhat difficult to establish, and the personal details are fragmentary, but the preparation clearly included Hobbes's knowledge and experience of the forces and events which led to the outbreak of civil war in 1642, together with a number of intellectual stimuli encountered piecemeal in his reading and travels.

I think that, just like Mr. Hobbes, I'm still in my "long youth", the "formative years". But wait for it, something big's gonna happen.

Tonight, that big thing is the "exegesis" I'm writing on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract. It hurts my brain, so I won't get into it now. Send me your good paper-writing vibes, though, 'cause I gotta grind it out.  | ¶ 8:14 p.m.

  gonna close my eyes, gonna watch you go I had to buy new shoes today, to replace the ones I discussed with froo just a couple months ago, when I put this image on my flickr page.

froo: good shoes
Chief: they're my new ones
actually a little tippy, rounded bottoms or something
froo: do they stay on okay?
Chief: mostly
i mean, I don't run in them
froo: i wouldn't either

She predicted it, that they would fall off. I was walking down 7th Avenue today on my way to the library when I suddenly was standing sideways in my shoe, stretching out the leather straps and unable to take another step. The people on the c-train platform across the street must have thought I was drunk or something. It annoyed me sufficiently that I immediately changed my destination to a shoe store - this is not the first time this has happened, but this is the worst incident. Payless had nothing good, so I hit up the Bay, where they are having a crazy sale. My new brown sandals were regularly 60 dollars down to $26. I don't know if they're super-cool, but neither am I, so what the heck, eh.

I got my first paycheque in Calgary yesterday for 258 dollars, and because of my prolonged penniless status, it actually felt like a million dollars to me. Obviously it doesn't make me a millionaire, but I think I can afford twenty-six dollar shoes.  | ¶ 6:27 p.m.

  if it's a dream, don't wake me up Something finally worked out as I planned it. I came to Calgary to camp and work. I camped. And now I'm working. Like the golden land of opportunity, all I had to do was make one phone call to an agency I've dealt with before and they've got me all set up on three temp assignments through to the end of August.

I started my first day of work by setting off the car alarm in my mom's van. Luckily I've done that before and know how to make it stop (lock the door with the key you just used to unlock it) - I think there's some glitch in the anti-theft mechanism on that thing, 'cause it doesn't make any sense that the van's own key can set off the alarm. It was smooth sailing the rest of the forty minute drive, though.

Tonight froo's new cat Poncho is arriving from Winnipeg. She and Shiny are pretty excited to get a new playmate; after the frailty and ultimate passing of Sparky, the breeder has assured her that the new guy is "stocky" and healthy. That's good news. Stay tuned for new kitten pics.

It's gotten damn cold here in Calgary and I want to remind myself of summer, so this is a video from when Devin and I went camping a couple weeks ago.

  | ¶ 8:02 p.m.

  push the pedal down, watch the world around fly by us I feel less bloggy when I'm in Calgary. Maybe it's because a lot of the people I write for are here, so they know what I'm up to and what's going on. It's probably also that I'm not in my own space and it's hard to relax into a sharing frame of mind, but here's a brief report anyway.

It's been very settling to be here, in a way. So much familiarity, so many recognizable faces, home-ish. I'll probably have work soon, and that will be good. I miss my home and my roommates (i.e. Devin and kitties), but I've been a guest in Mom's basement so many times these past few years that it's something of a "home" anyway. Just the rest of my stuff is missing. And kitties.

It was too bad that so much rain fell on us during camping on the weekend. It poured that second night and we waited it out, huddled under trees and Keri's tarp. But in the morning, just after I'd finished wiping down our wet picnic table area and started breakfast, it started again. My efforts were wasted and the drizzle wouldn't stop. We forfeited the fight and headed back to sunny Calgary. I have to admit that sleeping in a warm bed was pretty satisfying. I couldn't bring my new sleeping bag from Ottawa (too much luggage already) so my camp bed was not so toasty.

froo did a nice bike ride around the lake and recorded this cool nature video - fun to capture a chatty loon, I think.



See more of my camping pics here. froo's pics are here.  | ¶ 10:20 p.m.

  Camp Scene   | ¶ 4:44 p.m.

  stop me from drowning, baby, I'll do the rest It gets tricky when you camp in Alberta or BC - being close to mountains generally means it cools off a lot at night. I froze my butt off (and nose, and hands, and toes) the two nights at Crimson Lake.

More camping stories to come later, but I'm just reporting in from Calgary for now. I arrived Wednesday night with my mass of luggage (hey, I brought my tent!), spent the night at froo's, then the next morning we ran around doing pre-camping errands (wait 'til you see her shiny new bike rack), and hit the road for the two-hour journey to the town of Rocky Mountain House (Crimson Lake is just west of there). After hearing that we might be in for prolonged rain, froo and I bailed on camping and came back to sunny Calgary early. It's kinda too bad about the weather, 'cause it was a cute little campground.

I already had a nap in a soft warm bed at my mom's and it was heavenly.  | ¶ 1:04 a.m.

  no, Salsa, you can't come with me...   | ¶ 10:01 a.m.