Canadian girl out and aboot

Well, I've been in Grande Prairie since Friday, and it has been fairly interesting. After a fairly stressful day, and driving through a rainstorm, I arrived in town at about 9 p.m. at night. I drove myself to my friends' place and managed to visit with them a bit before they went to bed. In the morning, I got up and went down to see the new library and cultural centre, which was fantastically magnificent. I was in absolute awe. It's a truly wonderful building, and I got to see a bunch of Peace country friends that I hadn't seen in a while.

That night, I went back to Darrell and Debi's and ate pizza with Debi's family, which was nice because I got to meet her mom and hang out with her. D and D are getting married next month, so they're a little bit stressed and busy.

On Sunday, I got up fairly early and drove to Bay Tree to visit a llama farm and have a tea party. The owner has 30 llamas and 8 llama babies, which was pretty great. I fell in love with the miniature donkeys, who followed me around like dogs.

D and D and I made dinner and then they treated me to my first James Bond movie ever. Yes, my Bond virginity was broken with "Casino Royale."

This morning, I woke up at a decent time, and stopped in at the office to visit with a bunch of my former coworkers, which was fun. Then I drove to High Prairie, which is about a 2.5 hour drive away. I visited Kemp Honey, which is an apiary where they make body care products from honey. Pretty cool.

Now I'm staying with family friends who live in GP. They moved here right after I left. I wanted to stay with them in order to spend some time with them, and to give D and D a break so they could have their alone time to get ready for their wedding next month.

It's been really great to visit my old stomping grounds, and to visit so many interesting places while I'm here.

I have not written about all the incredible music that I saw at the Folkfest. I'm going to highlight some of the great things I saw-

Ramona and I arrived on Thursday night just in time to see Kathleen Edwards. I thought she was pretty good, but Ramona and I were mainly in visiting mode. We stayed for two more acts, which were obviously okay because I don't really remember them. Oh yeah, we saw Steve Earle, who was okay, and then Boz Scaggs, who was also okay, but not really my thing.

Friday- One of the groups that I really wanted to see was called "Hanggai." They were a group of Mongolian musicians living in China. They combined throat singing with traditional instruments and some electric ones. I was quite inspired by them, and felt homesick for Mongolia. They played on a stage with Chumbawumba who were just sort of there. I found them slightly annoying, mainly because they referred to the Mongolians as "Chinese." We saw Loudon Wainwright the 3rd, who was funny and bitter, and then we saw the Wailers, minus Bob Marley. The Wailers are high energy and really tight, but I think it's sad that they are now known as the band whose charismatic lead singer died. However, they are pretty great. This was followed by Neko Case, who gave a great performance. Unfortunately, we were sitting in a really uncomfortable location between two people who kept annoying me. I had an allergy attack and was very uncomfortable, so we left early.

Saturday- I really like Danny Michel so over the weekend we saw two showcase stages featuring him and a bunch of other people, including Fred Eaglesmith and Jill Barber. Other highlights from the group stages included a set with Kasey Chambers and her husband Shane Nicholson, and Raul Malo, the lead singer from the Mavericks. We got a much better spot for the mainstage this evening so we were able to relax and enjoy Patty Griffin, who did a great set. She was followed by Iron and Wine who delivered one of the better performances of the weekend. He's absolutely amazing and I need to get his disks. This was followed by Rodney Crowell, who used to be married to Rosanne Cash. I found his music kind of dull, so I wandered around a little while he was on stage. However, he was followed by one of the best performances I've seen in a long time. Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings put on an AMAZING show. I can't say enough good things about her and her band. She wowed the crowd, danced up a storm and was really interactive. She was 53 years old and had more energy than most people I know. I told Ramona that watching her was probably the closest I'd ever get to seeing Aretha or Tina when either was in her prime.

Sunday- I was tired and low energy. We watched a world showcase, followed by a Canadian one. Fred Eaglesmith was the host for one, and he was quite hilarious. This was followed by a mainstage show of a group called the Idan Raichel project. I wanted to like them more than I did, but found them a bit flat. They were followed by Bela Fleck the banjo player, who played alongside an African musician. This was followed by Kasey Chambers, Bill Chambers and Shane Nicholson. I really enjoyed their set and their songs' and Kasey's humour, which was mainly at her husband's expense. I tend to get along well with Australians, as they are quite raunchy. The headliner of the evening was Steven Page, former frontman of the Bare Naked Ladies. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed his set. He's a great performer, and quite funny. He brought Danny Michel onstage and they performed an acoustic version of Billie Jean, which was hysterical. We left when he was finishing up his act, and I was exhausted and took two days to recover from the crowds, the stimulation and the weird hours.

It was my first Folkfest experience and I really loved it.

This weekend, I got stuck in a little patch of melancholy. I'm not sure why this happened. It hasn't happened since May, so that's definitely a positive thing. I think that a lot of it had to do with a little too much isolation over the weekend. I was supposed to go out with friends on Sunday, but one friend was sick and there was a severe storm warning, so I didn't want to leave the house.

There was a severe thunderstorm in a city about 1.5 hours away from here (Camrose) on Saturday. An outdoor country music festival was going on. About 75 people were injured and one person was killed during the storm. This was terribly sad news, and definitely influenced my decision to stay in when there are storm warnings.

I did do a few fun things this weekend- went to a dance party held to raise money for a film. Danced my butt off for the first time in ages. I also went to see "The Hurt Locker" which I highly recommend. It's hard to watch and emotionally draining, but it's bound to get a lot of attention in Oscar time.

I didn't take the weekend off and did a bit of work each day. This afternoon, I'm all caught up on work and am working on the second draft of some poems for the new manuscript. When I initially wrote my first book, I did a lot of things unintentionally and over a period of time. This time, I'm trying to link themes and images through various sections, and I'm trying to do it on purpose. It's been fascinating.

I went to a poetry reading on Wednesday night. It was good to get out of my house and meet some new people. I met a friend of a friend who is a spoken word artist here in town, and a guy who is a spoken word artist, youth mentor and novelist. He lives five houses away from my former house in Vancouver, which is pretty neat.

Yesterday morning I got up early to drive to Lacombe. I had to go to a field day, which involved standing around looking at plots and learning about various kinds of crops. There were over a 100 people at this field day and it was possibly one of the biggest ones I've been to in a while. I met a neat girl from Edmonton who is specializing in rangeland management.

Last night I watched "Before Night Falls", which is an incredibly movie about the gay Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas. Arenas is wonderfully played by Javier Bardem. I'm not sure why it took me so long to see this film. I absolutely loved it and recommend it to anyone who is interested in writers and the writing life. It's a sad film about persecution. I guess it was made in English, but somehow this didn't register with me, so I ended up watching the entire film in Spanish with English subtitles. Somehow this seemed more fitting.

Today is my one year anniversary in Edmonton!!!! There have been a few ups and downs over the year, but in all honesty, it's been a great year and I feel happier than I've been in a long time. I've been really fortunate to have so many good experiences and meet so many great people this year.

Last night Mari and I went to go see the local production of Titus Andronicus. I don't think I've ever had a year where I saw this many Shakespeare plays before.

If you're familiar with Titus, you might not that this play is pretty much a gore-fest. It was one of Shakespeare's first hits, and it's basically his "Reservoir Dogs." It's definitely not my favourite play, but it's worth seeing for the sheer campiness. The body count is around 14.

I won't give away the whole plot, but I will relay some of the funnier moments from the night. There came a point in the evening when the audience just started laughing because the gore was so over the top, like a bad horror movie. As one woman was entering the stage after a vile attack, a happy little ice cream truck entered the park. The juxtaposition of the vile scene on stage and the ice cream truck's happy music made me laugh. I also laughed as some poor family, complete with children, left the park in horror. One poor kid, who was about 10 years old, was even covering his ears.

At one point, when someone got their hand cut off, I couldn't control myself and said loudly, "They're putting the hand in the baggie?" By this point, the cut off limbs were deliberately fake and the whole thing was just ridiculous. When one man brought in a box that was to contain severed heads,a man in the audience behind us said, "Heads up," and I couldn't stop laughing.

After intermission, we ran into someone Mari knew, so we sat on the grass with him. I don't know what was happening on that side of the stage, but people were abnormally flatulent. At one moment, a woman eating popcorn actually RAISED her butt cheek off a picnic bench in order to break wind. She let out a particularly loud and exuberant fart. The three of us looked at each other to make sure that we'd all really seen what we saw before we burst out laughing. It was seriously bizarre. After that, some guy giving his gf a back rub also broke wind a few times. I don't know what it was about that particular play, or the area where we were sitting but holy crap, people just kept on farting until the play was over.

I got to see two friends that I didn't expect to see on my Saskatoon trip. My cousin lives in Marsden, which is en route between Edmonton and Saskatoon. Marsden is only about 1,000 people. On one trip home, I stopped in at the municipality office. I had thought that my cousin worked there. I learned from the people working there that she actually works in the office of a town about 20 minutes away. I recounted my attempted visit to her on facebook chat, and she told me that she was home and had Sesame Street characters in the yard in front of her house. So on my way home this time, I decided to drive around the town and find her. For some reason, my mind had decided that there were Mickey Mouse characters in front of her home, so I drove around the town looking for them. Finally, I found a house with Sesame street characters and chalk drawings on the driveway. I reasoned that this family had kids and definitely would know my cousin, since the town is so small. Fortunately (as you might have guessed), this turned out to be her house and we got to visit for about half an hour. It was a pretty awesome surprise for her :)


My second surprise was from [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com], who is spending June and July in Moose Jaw. She posted on facebook that she and some friends were planning to drive to Saskatoon to see Antony and Cleopatra. I was really excited about this, and so I got to meet up with her and her friends and chat with her before the show. I love randomly seeing friends! And I was very happy to finally see a production of Antony and Cleopatra. I learned that the full length play is difficult to stage and clocks in at about 4 hours. The version we saw was about 2 hours and focussed more on the romantic intrigue than the political drama. Definitely worth it.

Not much to report lately. I had a pleasant Canada day at my friend Amanda's house. We sat in the backyard around her fire and drank wine and in my case, cider. Then a group went off to see the fireworks and a few of us stayed behind to watch the fire.

I got a free ticket to see "The Comedy of Errors" and ended up going by myself. I've decided that I don't really LOVE Shakespeare. I like some of it, but really, it's not my favourite thing. I just feel that I should learn about it as it is so historically significant. That said, I've definitely got a hankering to go see "Antony and Cleopatra" in Saskatoon when I go.

I finished watching Season 1 of "True Blood". I love it, especially all the sexuality of the show, but I sometimes wish it wasn't so gory.

My weekend was rather quiet. I'm still catching up on work, and didn't have much to do over the weekend. On Monday night, I drove out to Barrhead to stay overnight so I could catch a bus and go to Athabasca. Athabasca is a gorgeous area that I haven't really explored.

Yesterday I went on a tour of a farm called Big Coulee Farms. The man who owns it pasture raises all his animals, including turkeys, pigs and chickens. It was a pretty interesting operation. I ended up getting home pretty late. I was supposed to go out of town again today, but there's a thunderstorm warning. I don't mind rain, but I'm not driving 3 hours to stand outside in a thunderstorm.

Friday- I stayed at [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]'s house because I needed to write a paper. I wrote the paper, hung out on the Drive, and then we went shopping for supplies to make pasta. Booze was consumed and movies were watched that evening.

Saturday- We both slept in super late, and went down to watch the festivities at East Side pride. Then we headed out to watch a play called "Mixie and the halfbreeds". I ran into about 4 people I knew in the theatre. The play was about mixed race identity and was surreal and strange. Some of it was a bit over the top, but I really liked a lot of it. They were talking about many mixed race identity issues that are rarely discussed. The visuals of the play were fantastic!

Sunday- Got up and met a group of about 15 friends for dim sum, which lasted about 3 hours. Much talking, laughing and eating ensued! I got invited back to the Coast for a wedding in October. I'm hoping to attend. I love my friends here. After our long lunch, [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] and I went downtown to try to catch a movie. Unfortunately, we missed it, so I came back and had gelato and fruit for dinner. Yay.

Today I'm heading out to Richmond so I can go tour a Buddhist temple. Tomorrow I head back to Edmonton.

Today I taught my last teen writers' group. I was debating whether or not to continue teaching next year, but I have decided that I would like to continue if the Writers Guild will have me. I thought I should consider stopping as I wanted to concentrate on my own fiction. However, I can do that while teaching and I have a bunch of new ideas for our group next year. I want to bring in more guest speakers/writers.

Today we had a visit from playwright Marty Chan. Canadian theatre types might recognize Marty's name from his most well-known work, "Mom, Dad, I'm living with a white girl."

I read this play a few years ago and really loved it. Marty came and shared his wisdom about playwrighting with the group, and things went really well. The kids asked some good questions. Then we did an evaluation of the group sessions we'd had and things we could do to make the entire mentorship run more smoothly.

I feel very fortunate to have worked with this group.

*****
Yesterday I went on a pint ride. Pint rides were organized by my friend Tess. The group (organized by facebook) meets at a downtown location for a pint or drink. Then we bike en mass to a south side location for more drinks. It's quite a lot of fun and a great way to socialize, bike and meet people. Yesterday I had to bike home from the event in the rain, which was pretty damn chilly, but good.

Holy crap, this week is busy and good.

Monday- Work during the day and dance class at night.

Tuesday- Work, get haircut, meet up with visiting coworkers, attend Beef Producers banquet with boss.

Wednesday- Work during the day and dance class.

Thursday- Drive to Smoky Lake, attend Grazing school for women, meet cool women and learn about composting, alternative energy sources and how to kill coyotes.

Friday- Visit with friend who I haven't seen in two years, who is in Edmonton to take a leadership training course. Hang with her. Finish assignment for school. Visit accountant.

Saturday- Take reiki level 2 course. Hang with other friend visiting from Montreal. She's an old friend from Saskatoon who is a folk singer. Attend her show in the evening.

Sunday- Go to free concert in park with Mari and dogs. Go to bbq at my friend Leah's that night.