Watching news happen

This afternoon I took Bella swimming at this super great off leash swimming area along the Elbow River. Nice pebbly beach, water deep enough for her swim but not swift moving, lots of dogs to play with and a great place to wear her out with fetch in the water. We got there about 1:00. About five minutes later firemen, EMS and police start trooping along the water in pairs. A few asked me if I had seen any clothes by the water (I had not). Then the helicopters show up and start flying in low circles along the river. Something was definitely up. Come to find out, some rafters had found A DEAD BODY floating in the water about 200 yards from where we were playing and everyone was out searching for it. I suppose by "clothes" they really meant "dead body." Yack! At least we were upstream from the decomposition germs.

CTV Calgary - Body Pulled From Elbow River

Under Construction

My neighborhood, that is.

Three houses down they are building a new house and this week there have been GIANT bulldozers tearing up the street and digging big holes. For unidentified reasons. I can only assume they will soon be filling them back in.

My next door neighbors are re-siding their house (actually, putting up stone on the front), redoing their sidewalks and landscaping and fixing the edges of their roof. Yesterday they jackhammered the sidewalk up for about 4 hours and today the cement mixing truck showed up at 7:00 am. And all the while they have also been flinging junk down from the roof. Also, since their house is about 2.5 feet from ours the guys climb around on MY roof in order to be able to reach the roof-junk they are then flinging down. And they blast classic rock at about 900 decibals all day.

AND THEN....

This afternoon I got home to see MY OWN BACKYARD full of dangerous equipment such as table saws, etc and a dude on my garage roof (technically not MY roof, we are renters after all). A quick phone call to my land lord revealed he is re-roofing the garage. Starting today.

Not that I mind. But a heads up would have been nice. I would have picked up the dog poop. Instead, since Landlord Mike didn't choose to let me know in advace about this invasion, they can wade around in the poo.

(Not really. I'll pick it up tonight when they leave)

Voyage of the Dawn Treader

J'adore...

(why the title is in Spanish, i've not a clue, the trailer isn't). Enjoy!

WTF

Would you please check out this monstrous bite on my foot?

It's huge and very swollen (though you can't really see the swelling in the picture too much). I have not a clue what bit me, but I think it was not a poisonous spider because:

a. I'm not crippled by fever and vomiting

b. I'm not dead

So that's good news.

BUT I also think it was not a mosquito because it doesn't itch. Nor do I think it was a bee because I don't recall any kind of a stinger situation.

It's a mystery.

And it kind of hurts.

And it kind of really hurts to wear flip-flops.

Which is a total bummer because it finally stopped raining in Calgary.

100th Post

Finally! Only took me two years to get to 100. In celebration, please enjoy this little gem:



I do so love Newsies...and Lady Gaga...

OSU Socks

This is my knitting basket. It's full of junk (amazing since I only started knitting a few months ago). Knitting books, leftover yarn, Lily's blanket (yet unfinished), two new balls of gorgeous wool I HAD to have though I don't know what to do with, and right on top my latest project, OSU Socks for Peter.

I like the way they are turning out, though I hope blocking (washing and shaping) will do the miracle for these socks that it did for my lumpy sweater. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Far in the future, because I have to make another whole sock when this one is done (imagine, a pair!).

They are not difficult, necessarily, but they are done on double pointed needles (which means I use 5 at a time to knit different parts, that's what makes the squares) and the needles are TEENY.

This is the goal (except orange, obviously):

I'll let you know how it goes!

Road Trip!

There is a commercial here (for beer, I think) that says something like "Canada has more square feet of awesomeness per person than anywhere else in the world." I'm going to go ahead and agree. We just got back from a road trip to British Columbia and I'm IN LOVE with that province now. Let's move. No Baker Hughes operations there? Oh well. Let's open a B&B and vineyard.

First we drove to Summerland, BC which is a teeny little town along the Okanagon Lake and this was our view:

This area is Canada's wine country, and it is LOVELY. It pretty much looks like this where ever you go:

We stopped and had wine-tastings at many wineries along the lake. All of which have different specialities (you can't get THIS anywhere else in the Okanagon!) and different personalities. This one was my favorite because it is teeny and very cute. It's called Elephant Island and they make fruit wine (surprisingly delicious!).

We had  a beautiful lunch at this one called Hillside and sat out a little rainstorm.

This is a shot from the bottom of that little tower:

Peter's favorite (I loved it too, but it's numero 2 for me) was Mission Hill which was just on another level. It was very beautiful but very commerical. They have worked hard to ensure every detail of the place is pristine and enchanting. We took a tour here including a lovely "viewing" cellar and had another wine tasting (natch).

BC is so green and the wild flowers are gorgeous! For the purple ones I made Peter pull over on the side of the highway so I could take some pics. I could have just set up a tent and lived there. The smell was gorgeous!

And, of course, the highlight of the Okanagon portion of our trip was seeing the lake monster Ogopogo, cousin to Loch Ness. Who knew it would be bright lime green (with antennae, apparently)?

Then we drove to Vancouver to meet up with our friends Tim and Christine (of whom I have no pictures...I promise they were there too).  It's so super cool there. Mountians, ocean, huge parks, very dog friendly, great shopping and restaurants, super hip downtown. I'm packing right now...

We were privilaged to take Tim's Driving Tour of Vancouver in which we saw the University of BC, some beaches and ocean...

A BALD EAGLE sitting on her nest (I'm sorry the pic is tiny, we didn't have our zoom lens with us - damn!) right in the middle of a neighborhood...

and Granville Island (a sweet little island with a farmers market and loads of hippies)...

We had an AWESOME time in Vancouver. Seriously, I'm loading my stuff into my car right now.

Then we drove home. And was it a boring long drive, you ask?

Nope.

We saw a Grizzly bear

and a mama Black bear and her two baby cubs!

Lucky lucky lucky!

We're so blessed to get to live in and explore such a beautiful country!