I haven't been on the Internet as much, because I've been actually going outside. Also, my sleep counsellor cautioned me against using the Internet at night. So I've been drastically cutting down my Internet time, and it's made a huge difference for me.!

Still, here's what I've been watching.

Season 1 of Pushing Daisies
Season 2 of True Blood


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I am reading a fantastic book called You couldn't ignore me if you tried . It's about the Brat Pack, 80s movies and John Hughes. I think it's going to inspire a little film fest over here :)

I have not updated since the Alberta Farm Writers Tour last weekend. On day 2, we went to the University of Calgary veterinary school. I proceeded to get lost on the way there, but still managed to find it, which was pretty damn amazing. I am getting better at driving in Calgary. I've also come to the conclusion that I like Edmonton way better than Calgary. It is smaller, less corporate and artsier. Ah well.

Anyway, we got to talk to some of the staff at the U of C school and learn from one of the students too. One of the most interesting things we got to see were all the models used for learning. They had a stuffed dog who was hooked up to a computer. People could adjust his heart rate etc, so the vets would learn how to fix it. They also had a learning lab in which actors were hired to play owners etc. The vet students had to learn how to tell the owners that their cow was sick/dog was dying etc. These scenarios helped the would-be vets to develop some bedside manners and skills for dealing with owners and hysterical individuals.

We also saw some really cool models such as the model of a cow's backside, which could be attached to a uterus/cow reproductive system, so that the students could learn how to palpate a cow before practicing on a living model. I thought all the models were quite neat, and I've got pics of them to put up on my facebook and flickr, once I get around to it.

Following this, we went to Business Innovations, where we saw a software developed for equine vets. I wasn't too interested in the software, but we got a chance to tour the vet hospital and see a horse in surgery. The horse was completely knocked out on anasthetic.(sp). When they were done the surgery, hooks were used to move the horse off of his back and into a padded room, where he was allowed to wake up. It was really interesting.

I spent last Thursday and Friday in Calgary at the Alberta Farm Writers Association conference. First off, I have to congratulate myself for my success in driving around Calgary. I still don't know the city that well, and in my mind, it is a big mess of urban sprawl. But I was able to drive around and only got lost once!

On Thursday, I drove myself to the hotel to meet up with the other farm writers. There were about 40 of us on the bus, and we took off the Cattleland, a feed yard with about 25,000 cattle. It had rained and snowed a lot, so the feedlot was kind of gross looking and the cattle were walking around in mud. They do a lot of fairly interesting experiments with private companies at Cattleland and we drove around the feedlot on a bus while the owner talked to us about what he does in his operation. It started to rain a bit during this portion, but we were warm and dry. From there, we went to Fieldstone fruit winery where we sampled 4 fruit wines and learned about fruit wine making. Apparently, you have to use 75% Alberta grown fruit in Alberta fruit wineries. This is to protect the Alberta industry and ensure that people are making Alberta made products. Some of the fruit wines were quite delicious. From there, we went to the Strathmore station, which was an old railway station converted to a restaurant. The food there was pretty great and the ambience was fun.

After that, we went to SemBios Systems, which is a biotech firm that is working on genetically modified organisms. They are making safflower plants that can produce insulin. This was a very scientific part of the tour and some of the info went over my head. We did get to look at lots of safflower cultures and bits of plants. We also toured their sister company, Botaneco, which is completely natural. This company extracts safflower oil for cosmetics and the product can be found in Burt's Bees and Spectrogel.

After this, we went back to the hotel for the banquet and got to listen to a speech and have a question and answer session with Ag Minister Jack Hayden. This was pretty interesting, and he's definitely a better speaker than the previous ag minister. The highlight of our meal was definitely the Vodka Caesar soup, which had a great tomatoey taste and was like a Caesar but in soup form. I would definitely have that again.

The whole day was a great opportunity for me to talk to other ag writers, network, meet new people and learn a whole lot of info. This year I will be going to my first Calgary Stampede, and I now know a lot of people on the ag media organizing committee. Networking with others really made this conference valuable for me. I'll write more about the second day of the conference in a bit.

I won a spot in a beekeeping workshop this weekend, so I spent most of the weekend hanging out there. The course was taught by a woman I know, and was held three blocks from my house at this yoga studio. I've walked by the space often and it's quite nice on the outside, so it was pretty exciting to get to go inside the space.

The workshop was pretty great. I had a good time interacting and talking with the other participants. One was a chef who just moved here from England and she is interested in making local cheeses. Another was a woman who had done 2 years teaching English in France, and was very interested in local food and sustainable communities. I really enjoyed visiting with everyone. I found that I do know quite a bit about bees, but there's still so much to learn! I've also started thinking more about beekeeping, and how I can become a beekeeper, eventually. It definitely won't be happening this year.

I did also learn that beekeeping is legal in the city of Calgary, but not in Edmonton (yet). I'm thinking that eventually, I might want to get some bees and put them out on a friend's farm. It's not like I don't know people with large areas of land in the province :) I also think I want to go and work at a beekeeper's at some point to get more experience.

Aside from my beekeeping workshop, I taught my teen writers group. We talked about submitting manuscripts and giving readings, and it was a very talky lesson. Our normal space was occupied by a group of people that looked a bit down and out. We moved to a room on the other side, and I told some of the people to send lost teenagers over to my room. One guy told me that it was a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. I've never run into one of them before, so it was pretty interesting just to see one.

I also told the teens that I won't be teaching the group next year, partially because I want to concentrate and work on my own fiction. I know that one of the kids was kind of sad about this, because we've really built up a bond and I could see it on her face when I announced it. I'm sad about this too. I hope she stays in touch with me. Some of the other teens will be turning 19, so they won't be able to take the program anyway.

I did try to make it a positive thing, and said that the new instructor might have interest or expertise in areas that I don't do. One of the kids said that it might be exciting to have a new instructor, but it has also been nice to work with me the past 2 years. I was pretty touched by this.

After my busy day, I went to the gym and pushed myself pretty hard. Then I came home, talked on the phone, watched some episodes of "Skins" on DVD, read and vegged. I ended up having one of the best sleeps that I've had in weeks. I've stepped up my scheduled exercise to four days a week, and intend to keep it this way. I definitely want to see if it affects my sleep and my ability to sleep.

It seems that I am going to multiple workshops in May. This weekend was Edmonton media camp. It was the first one ever and was attended by about 180 people. The event was free and was held at the Shaw conference centre downtown. My friend Darrell drove down from Grande Prairie, so I got a chance to chat and hang out with him, which was cool.

The workshop was attended by numerous journalists, PR people, communications people, bloggers and all sorts of new media people. It started off with a panel discussion, then we jumped into the "unconference." I've never been to an "unconference" before, and think that the format could work well for other subjects. What happens is that people pitch their topics and write them down on big sheets of paper. Then these pitches are compiled into groups. So then you pick a topic that is of interest to you and go discuss it. I sat in on sessions about "creating a local food movement website", "how can we convince executives to use social media to market", and one on "change and new media." All interesting stuff. I met a lot of people and thought it was a good opportunity for media people and journalists and PR people to get together and learn from each other. We were encouraged to livetweet the event, so I did. All in all, it was a good event.

I spent most of last week being sick with a bad cold, which sucked. This is my first cold of 2010, and it's still going away. I wasn't able to go to dance class on Friday last week, but I should be able to go again tonight.

I also spent part of last week at the Alberta Agricultural Economists Association conference, which was highly academic.

In other good news, I won a spot at a beekeeping workshop! So I'll be spending part of next weekend learning how to take care of bees.

This Saturday, I went to the Edmonton Permaculture convergence, which was hosted at a local community hall. The day was supposed to give participants a taste of permaculture and only cost $35. I've heard of permaculture due to some of my food security courses and wanted to learn more.

Here's a brief definition Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in natural ecologies. It was developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren and their associates during the 1970s in a series of publications.
The intent is that, by rapidly training individuals in a core set of design principles, those individuals can design their own environments and build increasingly self-sufficient human settlements — ones that reduce society's reliance on industrial systems of production and distribution that Mollison identified as fundamentally and systematically destroying Earth's ecosystems.

I am mainly interested in the food security components of the concept. I was expecting about 30 people to be in attendance, but I walked into a room of about 120 people! I ended up sitting at a table with the keynote speaker, who is known as The Urban Farmer . He conducts workshops on how to grow food in your backyard, and also hosts tours to Cuba to learn more about organic agriculture or permaculture in the country. I found out that there is funding available to handle the costs of one of these tours! I also talked to a landscape naturalizer, a dance artist who was creating a memorial garden, and lots of other interesting people. The sheer number of people was simply overwhelming, as I wasn't prepared for it, so I spent a lot of time listening to the other people around me.

There were sessions on backyard chickens, keeping and maintaining bees, food projects and gardening in schools, picking fruit trees for urban backyards and creating eco-sustainable communities. All in all, it was a very informative day.

I should also mention that there was a potluck and everyone had to bring a food item, clearly labelled with ingredients. As a nut allergic person, I can't say how much I appreciated this! I'm going to ask for this at any event that I organize. Anyway, the food was phenomenal. I had some cold soba sesame noodles and spent part of yesterday looking for the recipe so I can duplicate it at home.

I was in Calgary for five days this past weekend. I managed to do a lot of work, and a little bit of socializing. A and I were good Calgary tourists. I finally made it to the Glenbow museum , which is both an art and history museum. It was pretty darn great, except that we got museum-ed out and didn't see the whole thing.

I personally really liked the Alberta mavericks exhibit, the Asian art exhibit (duh) and the Kent Monkman exhibit. The Monkman was over the top and risque and portrayed with the stereotypes of native people in art and cinema. It also inserted tropes about gay culture into the art.

The next day, A and I went to the Crossroads market to meet up with two of my friends from university and their amazing 3-year-old daughter. She was wonderfully chatty once she warmed up to us, and was generally just a really nice and sweet girl. I haven't seen her since she was about 6 months old, so she was quite a treat.

I'm back in Edmonton for a while, which is nice. Last night I went to a dinner hosted by my publishers. My publishers are putting out 10 books of poetry instead of their usual 4, so they invited all their past Edmonton authors to come out and meet the new poets. Tonight they'll be hosting the actual launch of the new books. Should be fun.

In other news, I'm embarking on what I'm calling "a lifestyle change." I'm going to start eating better and doing some strength training. At least, that's what I'm planning to do. I want to be healthier and more toned. So my diet will include more whole grains, and less processed foods, less wheat, and less cheese and junk. I am looking into the strength training based on what [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] has told me about the program she has been doing based on a book called "The Female Body breakthrough", which I read yesterday. So it's just all starting slowly so that I can adapt to everything, but I'm kind of excited about it all.