art for lunch. this friday.

So I will be doing a presentation about what I did on my Summer Vacation on Friday at noon at the UofR. If you are free/in town/at the university bring a bagged lunch and watch me sweat... profusely. 

I'm going to talk about tie dying parties, making fake blood, buying mini trampolines, branding cows and my future plans to learn taxidermy. And you can ask me questions about how that's art and i will sweat... profusely.

* this talk just got postponed until november 4th! I have time to prepare!!

mild tues

on the widows walk

who dreams shall live.

I'm in true love with you.

show me your regina!

I'm home in Regina. What's next? Working three jobs at once? Pinata parties? Trips to the farm? Trips to Saskatoon? So much fun my head explodes?! omg are you psyched? I am! I also bought glow in the dark thread this week, holy shit right?! This week has been really fun, super exhausting but also a total confirmation that I am doing everything right. right? right! 

show us your edmonton day six!!!

Today was our last breakfast in Edmonton. sadly but truly. But we ended the week on a really high note with local artist/activist/ photographer Ted Kerr he's a really wonderful guy. I really loved the way he talked about Edmonton by using a lot of metaphors about the cities landscape and architecture to define the city as an entity. We ate at the early bird diner. The food was good, inexpensive but Robin and I ordered the French toast sandwich and it kind of just turned out to be bacon and eggs with a side of french toast, a pretty loose sandwich. delicious none the less. We had a really lovely talk about the city, the river valley, prospects of leaving Edmonton and of course we had some laughs.

After breakfast Ted decided that we should take a walk through some of the city's downtown back allies. This is a really amazing way to navigate a city (a personal favorite). Tedd took us into the river valley and up again. I can't really give a great description of where I was and how I got there, i sort of got so distracted by how wonderful parts of Edmonton look (scouts honour-Edmonton is pretty wonderful looking) that I realized half way through the walk that i was totally lost. Then at the end of our walk I found my way again. I will just give a brief description of a few of the pictures.

This is behind the library downtown. Turns out this space can't hold the weight of a lot of people on it so it can't be used as a festival or performance space like it was intended.

I liked this house. There is a chow-chow on the top deck. I loves me a chow-chow!!

This was the final destination for our walk. We went to the top of a parkade to a 'secret' spot Tedd and his friends call City Trust Beach. Its a really great spot to get a nice view of the city. and I could imagine myself going up there from time to time if I lived in Edmonton.

Then we went to a place in one of the many malls in the city for cookies!! I can not for the life of me remember the name of the shop where we got the cookies... for shame! But the mall was quite odd. honestly. look at this ceiling. the area below it was mostly empty i felt like maybe there was a human sacrifice planned to happen there later in the day.

I took close to 80 photos today. So it was hard to narrow it down. luckily we made another podcast!! click on this and it will lead you to an audio version of our day!

show us your edmonton day five, in lieu of a podcast.

show us your edmonton day five!!

Oh my God Edmonton!
What a great day!! I was on another solo breakfast this morning. I ate at Dadeo with Rachelle. Dadeo serves traditional creole food and if you know me you know I long for the day I can go back to New Orleans. This place makes really authentic creole food. If I lived here I would eat there all the time. We both ate breakfast po boys with coffee. Delicious!

We talked a lot about farming and agriculture. Rachelle is a student at the University of Alberta and she works at the U of A farms in 'cereals'. so her job is to process wheat, barley canola ect. and test their proteins? okay that might not be the best description of what she does but the farm is pretty amazing. The university has a fair amount of land (i saw one field that was 250 acres) as well as a dairy farm where students do research and learn how to milk cows and take care of them. We got a tour of the dairy farm and the research facilities. I didn't take any photos of the space because i was requested not to. But the cows looks like regular dairy cows so don't worry.

You have to wear these plastic booties to see the cows!! I put my camera away once these were on. but we saw some calves and some cows and we learned a lot about what happens in the dairy farm from our impromptu tour guide a man whose name is pronounced RZA.. yeah! We also met a younger guy named Eric who talked to us about the differences between this dairy farm and other dairy farms he had worked on and different milking techniques.

While driving away from U of A farms Rachelle suggested we go somewhere she had never been before. So we went to check out the Whitemud Equine Centre that Robin and I were looking for on the first day. It was wonderful. We met Jane a T.A at the center she gave us a quick tour of the stables and told us about the kinds of classes they teach there. If you are an adult and you want to learn how to ride you should call them up. If you used to ride and you like children and horses they love to have volunteers working at the centre with kids ranging in ages and they have a program for children with disabilities. I highly suggest checking out the centre if you live in the city. If you are passing through and want to see some horses also stop in but check in at the office first.

podcasts day 3 and 4!

This is a one eyed cat I met at a book store on Whyte Ave. when I met up with my Aunt, cousin and Uncle for dinner and coffee. I was going to steal him. we were in love.
also...
this is a link to Show us your Edmonton! day four! and this is a link to a recap of Show us your Edmonton! Day Three! Click and Listen! Listen all the way through. then check out Robin's blog. It'll be good for you.

show us your edmonton day four!!

Today we met Mary at Padmanadi. What a wonderful day. We had a really amazing vegan breakfast. Robin had a chance to eat some fake bacon and eggs benny, two things he can't normally eat and i ate ginger waffles (something i normally can't eat at restaurants) Mary ate a delicious looking tofu omelet. Mary is an American dressed in Canadian clothing. She will hopefully be a Canadian citizen in the next year or two. She works as an archivist and curator for the Sisters of Providence at Providence Centre. And she studied library studies at McGill University.

For our adventure Mary suggested that we ride the LRT (Light Rapid Transit) or Little Raphie's Train) from the north end of Edmonton to the South end and back up again. This was a really nice adventure. We did a lot of people watching and we got out to look at a few sites. We tried to go to a library but they don't open until 1:00pm. Mary was telling us that the Edmonton Public Library is a pretty well known library in "librarian circles" for being a pretty good one. Go Edmonton!!
We also looked at the little rain-forest in the citadel theater. I think I would hang out there on cold winter afternoons if I lived in Edmonton... when I live in Edmonton.
Is this a project that we are doing so I can figure out which city I want to live in next?

don't forget to click here and read Robins version of our day.