Canadian girl out and aboot

A lot of stuff happened....


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I must say that last weekend's wedding was wonderful. The wedding was the celebration of the marriage between two of my friends; Debi and Darrell. Debi and Darrell met in the offices of the Daily Herald Tribune, which is where I worked in Grande Prairie. They have always been one of those couples that made you happy to be around them. When I'm hanging out with them, I always feel included and appreciated by both of them. You can tell that they are truly in love, that they enjoy each other and that their lives are enriched because they are together. They are both friends of mine and so I was quite happy to attend their wedding.

Of course, no wedding would be complete without a wardrobe malfunction. I was blowdrying my hair when I reached for my wrap. It clunked across the floor. I turned it around and realized that the security tag was still attached. The wrap was purchased in Edmonton and I'd thrown away the receipt. AAAAHHH. So I rushed to the mall in my dress and purchased a new pashmina to wear at the wedding. I have to get the security tag removed from my dress today.

Anyway, the wedding part had a rather traditional church ceremony, but it still had lots of personal touches. Debi was escorted down the aisle by both of her parents and they proclaimed the couple, husband and wife, rather than "man and wife." Debi and both of her parents and many of the guests cried during the ceremony.

A couple hours later, we attended the reception. This was a lot of fun because it was a reunion for many Daily Herald Tribune staff and I got to see many Grande Prairie friends. Debi and Darrell really made the reception about them. They entered to the James Bond theme, had pictures of themselves on the table settings and instead of kissing during glass clinks, you had to display Oilers memorabilia or silver coins from the years that the Oilers won the Stanley cup. Debi is known for her sugar cookies, so she made these as favours for the wedding. It was really personal and special if you knew the couple. The speeches were great and you could tell that all the parents were very happy and supportive and that they were excited that their children had found such a great partner. Everything was extremely nice; the colours were fall colours and the bridesmaid dresses were simple and chocolate brown.

Chris, Debi's brother, was the master of ceremonies for the evening. At one point, he said that many people have wondered what the future holds for Debi and Darrell. He made Debi's mom and Darrell's dad stand up and embrace and proclaimed, "Debi and Darrell in thirty years." This was really funny because both of them do look A LOT like their parents. It was extremely cute.

The wedding was also fun because the event was small, which allowed Debi and Darrell to spend a lot of time actually talking with the guests at their wedding. All in all, a lovely event. I got home a little after midnight and my feet weren't even sore from dancing even though I was wearing high heels.

I had great shoes and a fantastic dress and got a lot of compliments on how I looked, which was also fun. :)

Was great, but damn exhausting. I spent one day driving out to High Prairie, to visit an apiary. Rachel and I were surrounded by bees as I conducted the interview. She married into the family and has decided to expand and change the family business by creating honey related body care products for sale. I have some of her lavender honey balm and it's really great. It's in a solid stick so I can easily spread it on my skin.

The following day, I took off for Peace River. On the way to Peace River, I stopped in at a farm to do a story about leaf cutter bees. These bees are necessary for alfalfa pollination. The bees basically make little nests out of leaves and lay their larvae in there as part of their life cycle. Then they fly about and pollinate the alfalfa and lay more larvae. They are smaller than honey bees and don't produce any honey. It was pretty interesting. Then I had to stay in Peace River for several hours before I had my second interview of the day. This interview was with a young couple who have decided to convert their farm into a tree farm. They plant trees as people buy carbon offsets. They've done the work and have a great business plan and a lot of connections to promote their business. It's a neat succession plan.

Since I had to interview them in the evening, this meant that I got back to GP very late at night. Fortunately, my interview was cancelled, so I had a day off and watched Harry Potter 6 and wrote some stories for work.

I then got to eat at the new Chinese food place in GP. They had real Chinese food. Let me repeat- REAL CHINESE FOOD. And dim sum! It was amazing! I would have cried with joy if it had opened while I was living there.

I spent the last three days staying with family friends, which meant I got to cuddle their Yorkshire terrier and spend a lot of time catching up. Laura, the female half of the couple, is a professional artist and she teaches at the college in GP. She is doing a very cool art project about bringing green back to the parking lot. She has created greenhouses in four cars which are placed on a lot in GP. The cars are filled with dirt and native species of plants. It's really quite amazing, and people's reactions to the cars was fun to watch.

On Thursday, I drove back to Edmonton. I was happy to arrive home, but had a ton of work to catch up on when I got back. I'm still shovelling myself out from the pile of work and chores.

I returned from Rocky Mountain House yesterday and am on my way to Grande Prairie later today. I'm a little stressed out. I'm waiting for a courier and he/she hasn't arrived yet. I also had to just do a lot of planning to organize my trip to the Peace. I'll be visiting a lot of farms. Friends have yet to be scheduled, but I am staying with 2 of them, and already have plans to see a few more tomorrow.

I'm also attending the Grand Opening of the new library, and am very excited to see the new building and visit with a lot of my writing/library/arts related friends. I think it'll be a good trip. I bet that Grande Prairie will have changed a lot in the year and some since I left.

I am back and am online and mostly coherent. The whole process was long and exhausting.

1. Dad arrived at about 7:30 p.m. on July 29th. We ate supper and then he went and stayed in a hotel.

2. On July 30th, we picked up my trailer. I was worried that not everything would fit, but we ended up having a lot of room. We filled the trailer in two hours, then spent the rest of the day cleaning.

3. We left Grande Prairie bright and early on July 31st. The drive was non-eventful for me, but Dad's battery died and he was stuck in Whitecourt for several hours.

4. August 1st- We carried everything out of the trailer and returned it in Edmonton. We then unpacked boxes for the rest of the day. For some reason, I was absolutely exhausted.

5. August 2- More unpacking, followed by a trip to Ikea. Dad hadn't been to Ikea in years and was stunned by the sheer amount of stuff in the store. I pushed him through and ended up buying a bed frame and mattress, a new dresser, four chairs, and a sofa bed. Yes, I spent a lot of money. We assembled the chairs and then started on the bed until we ran into a problem.

(more later)

My last day was uneventful. I actually did have some work to do, cleaned out my desk and said goodbye to a lot of people. I told the receptionist I was going and she said, "Oh, shit, honey", which made me laugh. I felt really and truly appreciated at this job, and will miss a lot of the people. I organized my own going away party and will be drinking on a patio this evening. One of my coworkers wasn't working today, but came in specifically to say goodbye to me, which was incredibly sweet. My Filipina coworker told me that I should "Have a good life and get married", which is very stereotypically Filipino, and sweet.
*****
Yesterday I drove out to Worsley, to do a story on a historical barn. The barn was built in the 1930s. Some members of the Historical Society were there, as well as the original owner of the barn. The original owner is a man named George. He is still running 40 head of cattle and operates a mixed farm, even though he is 88-years-old. He was in incredibly good shape, and drove me out to the barn. Afterward, he took me to meet his wife, and the three of us went for lunch. They were incredibly nice people, and we sat and chatted about their history, and growing old, and travelling, and all sorts of things. It was a lot of fun.

Later that evening, I biked over to the Vietnamese restaurant. I ended up meeting some people I knew and I got to have dinner with them and their children, which was a lot of fun. That's one of the things that I'm going to really miss about GP. I'm going to miss running into people I know and interacting with them all the time. Still, I feel incredibly positive and happy, and very excited for the future.

Some day I have to learn to post photos in an entry. Unfortunately, today is not that day.

Last week I did a story about a hinny. Hinnies are the opposite of mules; they are the offspring of a female donkey and a male horse. There's only a 20% chance of conception occurring when a female donkey and a male horse breed. (The more common pairing is known as a mule which is a male donkey and female horse)

Hinnies have more horse-like faces. This one had a more horse like gait and was fairly skittish. In all cases but one, hinnies were sterile like mules.

Female hinnies are also more rare than male hinnies.
All of this means Heidi the hinny is a bit of a wonder

They seriously posed like that for the shot. I don't know how they could have been any cuter.

(This breeding happened because Mabel, a 10-year-old donkey was in a pen with a miniature horse stud. The family that owned her had had her for 5 years, and she had never bred during this time. So they were surprised when she got pregnant. I'm not sure how the miniature horse managed to knock Mabel up. He must have been hung like a horse)

Yesterday I did a story about three GP guys who are going to be kayaking the Grand Canyon in August. Since the Grand Canyon is protected, you have to enter a lottery in order to be allowed to kayak its river system. One of the GP guys has been trying to get on the river for 14 years, and his ticket was finally drawn this year.

Anyway, we were talking about all the conservation involved. Apparently, anyone using the river system is required to accept a regulation container to pack out their excrement. This group will consist of eight people, who will be on the river for 8 days. That's a lot of shit to carry out.

(For some reason, I found this really funny)

The apartment therapy book and the constraints of my very small apartment inspired me to do some major purging this weekend. I took a bunch of stuff to the Salvation Army, donated books to the library, threw out a few things and recycled some more! I'm still not completely done, but my space is lighter!! I realized that I hadn't even gone through some of the boxes since I'd left Vancouver, and it was time to get rid of things.

I don't have much to say lately- work is fine, the weather here is rainy like Vancouver, I'm reading and watching a lot of movies and I haven't been having any particularly deep thoughts or weird revelations lately.

One thing I've noticed about people in Grande Prairie is they haven't figured out how to pick up their cans or bottles. A lot of people even throw them in the trash or dumpsters, which drives me nuts. Today I walked the equivalent of about 5 blocks downtown and picked up about 13 cans and bottles. Unfortunately, one of them had beer in the bottom, which I didn't dump out properly, which means I was walking around smelling like beer while doing my daily errands.

I don't drink beer, but one of the beer cans that I picked up was for Dude beer. If I was a beer drinker, I would totally drink Dude. You could make such jokes as "Dude, where's my beer, Dude?", "Pass me a Dude, dude, and answer "What are you drinking?" by saying "Dude!"


Tonight I have to attend an event called "The Chair affair", which will be organized and put on by a group of non-profit social organizations called "The Community Village." The event will raise money for social programs in GP. At risk indivuals in the community built Adionrack (sp) chairs, which were then decorated by artists in the community. The chairs will be auctioned off tonight to raise funds. I'm going to be taking pictures. I'm looking forward to the event, but am not really looking forward to being outside in the rain. I'll just dress warmly, and hope they will be serving hot chocolate.

I am going hiking to Eaton Falls this Sunday. Eaton Falls is near Grande Cache, which is in the Rocky Mountains, about an hour and a half away from Grande Prairie. I have no idea why I didn't drive into the mountains or explore that area last summer.

I can't even remember the last time I went hiking. I strongly suspect it was back in 2003, when Dad and I went to Grey Owl's cabin.