hellfire and brimstone

Yesterday as I was sitting down to eat my lunch while watching the news there was a knock on my door. I answered it and there was a young couple standing on the other side. I was asked how I was, a natural beginning to a conversation, and I returned the greeting. Then I was asked if I ever thought that all the fighting and war was ever going to end. This young couple was full of doom and gloom and asking me if I knew what was going to happen in God's heavenly government and that the Jehovah's Witnesses do in case I wanted to know. (Chris pointed out later that heaven probably doesn't have a government because government is a human construct)

Most of the time I am quite patient with those that evangelize at my front door, but not that day! I politely tried to say that I was in the middle of eating and that I actually had to go. The young gentleman (maybe I should just say man, because he wasn't very gentle) persisted in grilling me on whether I knew what was going to happen. I then proceeded to say in a pretty snarky tone "I have my own beliefs and I don't want to hear about yours. See you later and have a nice day"

Wow, I've never reacted like that before, but I really wanted nothing to do with this guy's hellfire and brimstone in the middle of my lunch.

Afterwards I thought of all these things that I should have said that would have been good challenging remarks but at the end of the day I just wanted him to go away. I wanted him to take his poor people skills and go away. I think that in the end I despised his approach more than anything. Playing on the fears of people to convert them is, in my opinion, poor form. I had little patience for it. Maybe it would've helped if he had more of a segway between, "Hi how are you" and the end of the world.

sushi on the sea

My apologies for slacking on the blog front but I was travelling the world and having a "west coast experience".
After moving out of our house I suddenly had NOTHING to do and found myself in a state of boredom. Chris came home from work and noticed this and told me I should take a trip to Vancouver. I reluctantly agreed with him and set out last week. Some highlights from my trip include:

1. Sushi on the Sea. A man named Captain Ralph has the most amazing sushi restaurant/B&B on his sailboat that is docked in Sooke. My aunt and uncle took me there and it was a definite highlight of the trip. This man has had quite the life and he and the chef came and had their dinner with us. They have two sittings on the weekends, one at 6:00 and one at 8:00 so you can end up having dinner with a whole group of strangers which I think is fantastic. Here's a picture of the signage to help you find your way and my aunt and uncle inside the boat.





2. Learning how to crochet. I have known how to knit for awhile but I've never crocheted. I'm not sure just yet, but I think it may be superior to knitting for the simple fact that its easier and faster. Maybe I find it easier because I have a knitting background though and its a sidestep. Here's a picture of Lisa's necklaces that she's been making and her drilling the seeds she brought back from Guetamala and Nicaragua.




3. The Butchart Gardens. Now you might be thinking, that's an awfully cheesy tourist destination, but let me explain. The Butchart Gardens used to be a limestone quarry. Think of smoke stacks and decimated landscape. The lady of the Butchart household, Jennie decided to reclaim it and make it beautiful. She succeeded. An example like this makes me hopeful when I walk into forests that have been mowed down or see old mine sites that are a wasteland lacking any life. Even though humans have the ability to completely rape and pillage a landscape, we also have the ability to make it beautiful again.



4. Beachcombing. When I lived on Thetis this was my very favourite activity. I love lifting up rocks when the tide is out and discovering all the creatures underneath. I love that when you look at the landscape when the tide is out it looks wretched until you crouch down and take a closer look.



It was so great to be in a great city like Vancouver and it made me quite excited about the upcoming move to Ottawa. To be in a place that has curbside recycling, a transit system that is superb, organic coffee and oh so many wonderful things that our little city doesn't have made me realize how nice it will be to be in a place that does these things.
To finish, a funny picture of Lisa and Lisa. This was the one I took before they were ready. A classic.

Canada Day, moving and other such stuff

Happy birthday Canada! To celebrate we went and visited the great outdoors. What a beautiful country we live in. Tom's dad has a cabin in the woods and we stayed there for the weekend. Frisbee, tea drinking and campfires were all had. We had an amazing thunderstorm on Sunday night and proceeded to take a hike in a swarm of mosquitoes freshly hatched because of all the rain. This picture shows us somewhat composed but moments after the shot we were swatting like crazy to keep them off of us.



Earlier last week we were preparing to move out of our place for the end of the month. Its amazing how much stuff we accumulate over time.





Chris' favourite moment of the day was strapping our bed to the roof racks of the Volvo. We got some swanky orange ratcheting tie-downs at Home Depot and they worked like a dream. Ah the pleasures in life!

it's 1983?! Oh crap.

I've had some people ask me about the title of my blog. For those that don't live in Lethbridge, there is a piece of graffiti that is on the side of a building downtown and I stole my title from this. Or so I thought! I went to go and take a picture of it so those that aren't here could see it and understand the origin of my blog name and what did I find? It's not 1984, its 1983! Crap. I didn't get it right. I'm not changing the name of my blog, but here's the graffiti anyways.

feminism

I recently read a post on a blog called "a dress a day". It talks about an artist who is wearing the same brown dress for a year in an attempt to make "one small, personal attempt to confront consumerism by refusing to change my dress for 365 days." The artist then goes on to say "But on a feminist note, let's stop agreeing that the best way for women (in particular) to "express themselves" is by purchasing new wardrobe items and putting together daily outfits."

The blogger responds with this:

I am proud to call myself a feminist, as I believe in equal opportunities for women and men. Last time I checked, feminism didn't have a dress code, and, in fact, now that we're on the subject, I am fed up with people who claim that women who enjoy wearing dresses can't be "real feminists". Yes, dresses are traditionally feminine, but really, part of being a feminist, in my opinion, is finally internalizing that "feminine" does not equal "bad" or "weak" or "unworthy."


When I was a teenager and in my early 20s this is the form of feminism I adopted: I thought that femininity was equal to weakness. I never wanted to be the kind of girl who couldn't do things for herself, or needed to ask for help. I was always trying to prove myself by changing my own oil and doing typical "manly" jobs myself. Skipping ahead a few years I believe that my rejection of femininity was to my detriment. Being female is a beautiful thing. Women are DIFFERENT than men and that is to be celebrated. In the same way, men are to be celebrated for their uniqueness as well.


In my true nature of swinging from one extreme to the other, I have a strange preoccupation with the icon of the 50s housewife!

digging for dinosaur bones

This weekend Chris and I went camping with Anne-Marie and Tom to Drumheller. Chris and I had never been to Drumheller before so we set out on Saturday morning eager for the adventure that lay ahead. I don't know why I've never been to the Badlands before, but I knew we had to remedy this before we left Alberta.





As all camping trips start out we found a place to camp and ate watermelon.

Then we hiked down into the badlands and went hunting for dinosaur bones. They were everywhere! I couldn't believe it. It gave such an eerie feeling to be digging up bones of these ancient animals.









Our best find was the top half of a shin bone, at least that's what we think it is.


The icing on the cake was the cactus in bloom. There were huge patches of them everywhere.




The next day we headed down Dinosaur Trail to the Tyrell Museum.



As we were walking through the museum I couldn't help but think about how all this information we have about dinosaurs could be completely wrong. How all the skeletons are largely put together by human's imaginations. I know that they often find bones in situ and that they know a lot about anatomy but really...they're putting bones together that they're digging up out of dirt. I'm a bit of a skeptic but its still really fun to go and look at them. It was funny to see how the conception of what the dinosaurs looked like changes over time. The newer Albertosaurus that Chris is standing beside is skinnier compared to the old one that I'm standing in front of.



This is the classic Albertosaurus from the 80s. Its skin felt like a golf ball.

the graduate

This is getting to be old news now but Chris graduated from University with his BA in Geography. I'm a proud wife. It was a great occassion to get together with family and celebrate the conclusion of four years of University.



My Mom and Dad brought champagne and so for the first time I let the champagne cork fly. (I usually put a tea towel over the cork so I don't make a mess). It was really fun!





This weekend was a very exciting one as there was everyone and their monkey in town visiting. Marc and Kylie were here for Shareen's wedding, Chris and Cathy were here to pick up the Airstream trailor that she will turn into a retail space (look for it on Baker St. in Nelson in the future) and Lisa V. returned from her trip to Guetamala. (Note the airstream trailor in the picture above)

Its funny how so much time passes between visits with good friends but it just doesn't really matter. You can have conversations as though you saw them just a few days ago.

And now for pictures of Iris. This girl really works the camera.

Croquet anyone?

The sport of croquet has been revived by Neil and Michelle! After a beautiful dinner of epic proportions we headed out into the field for a jolly good round of croquet. Much fun was had. Classic lawn sports such as this should really make a comeback. I should maybe start an organization with a catchy acronym like SOCK: Society Of Comeback Kids- Bringing back lawnsports to the next generation. Who will join me in this new revolution?



International Croquet Team: Lethbridge Division
From L to R: Neil, Chris, Michelle, Lisa (missing Katherine)



Croquet Sisters Unite!

garage sales are my new secret passion

Now you might think to yourself, Katherine loves garage sales, this is no secret. I've gone over to the other side now. Chris and I had our first garage sale today in an attempt to weed out all unnecessary items before the move out to Ontario. In preparation for this very first garage sale we had the most necessary item: the balloons to mark the signs.

I took 20 min the night before to blow all these balloons up and attach strings to them so when we went out at 7:00 the next morning they'd be all ready to go. Turns out they got tangled and we didn't even use them but here's a nice picture to go along with the story.

We had an excellent day and I can't describe how satisfying it was for all the unwanted things in our household to be taken away one at a time. The best part was when people gave us MONEY for our unwanted goods. It made me almost believe in the capitalist model, but only for a moment. Then I remembered that I'm a socialist at heart. It made me want to go into my house and price more items so that I could see them go to a new home. Here's another picture of the sale "in action"!

adventures in Canmore

Chris and I went to Canmore to visit a friend of mine from high school, Kristy and her boyfriend Davide. Fun and exciting to say the least.

On Sunday we went up to the Columbia Icefields where I had never been before. On the way up we were passing another vehicle when out of nowhere we hear this engine coming up behind us. It was a yellow Lambourghini and it was passing us on the shoulder as we were in the passing lane. Then a whole gang of them came whipping by us. My comment to this is that Calgary has too many oil tycoons with money that they spend on expensive cars that make others feel as though their lives are in danger.


As we arrived we heard a crack off in the distance. I then said "Was that thunder?" We turned around and saw that on the mountain across the valley there was an avalanche. It really does sound like thunder just like they say. You can kind of make it out in this picture here as a puff of snow.


Some other intersting tidbits from the trip include:


Kristy and Davide are working on a sound project where they are going to record nonstop for 365 days. They are then going to compress the sound into 365 seconds. Its called the 365 project. Here is a picture of Davide wearing his recording gear in front of a waterfall.

In other news we're having a garage sale on Saturday. Come one, come all.

Cast in glass

This is a picture taken at the Canadian Clay and Glass museum in Waterloo. We went there in April to check out U of W and so Chris could meet his supervisor.
I didn't believe Chris when he told me this skull made of glass was the same size as mine. Turns out he was right.

The revolution has hit me.

I've been spending quite a bit of time reading blogs of my friends and I've decided with much trepadation to start one of my one. I figure I'm not a luddite. I'm hip and cool and I too can have a blog and hopefully I'll be able to amuse others as they have amused me. I also consider it a timesaver as Kylie (and Marc) have pointed out, I'm banking future time.

So here it goes. Wish me luck.