Congrats decthirty  – please shoot me your details, and you’ll have free entrance at the door.

It’s time to get your drinking face on, and tie your bibs!

Fall is most definitely in the air, as our chilly weather and rain outside can attest, and one of the great things about fall is the return of the Rocky Mountain Food and Wine Festival!  I’ve gone the last two years, and had an absolute blast. See here for recap.

This year, courtesy of the wonderful PR team of the festival, I have a pair of tickets to give away to the Friday evening portion of the festivities (it also runs Saturday), so leave a comment if you’re interested to be entered to win.

Details:  Friday, October 14 (Calgary BMO Centre)

Hours: 4-10 pm

Notes: Tasting tickets purchased separately (0.50 ea)

Must be 18+ to attend, no minors allowed

See you there!

Cartoon from toonpool

So it’s been a while since I’ve had anything to share with y’all, and the main reason is that I’ve been swamped up to my eyeballs in schoolwork. Why schoolwork? Because I decided that now is a good time to put a few courses in towards finally finishing my degree. Which I have yet to finish. Sigh.

You see school and I have a hate-hate relationship. I think it’s boring and stupid, and it’s always told me that I have ‘potential’ and if only I’d ‘apply myself’… But I ‘ve always been uninterested in applying myself to learning stuff that is often factually incorrect (economics), irrelevant to my job (marketing), and plain ridiculous (most of management).  I still try and keep my grades up, but I don’t enjoy it.

I am a child of the digital age, and in an hour with Google I can reach amounts of information that are not fathomable, in any format I like. I love to learn and have the world at my fingertips. It’s hard to get excited about stuffy textbooks and linear approaches to learning, never mind dealing with whatever innovative (read ridiculous) approach the prof wants to take towards exams. 

But my main quibble with school and schoolwork is my own predisposition. I am a die-hard generalist who loves to learn a bit about everything, but does not relish the prospect of delving too deep into subjects. It’s my problem, not the University’s, and yet it’s made it quite hard to focus on my chosen major for the last little while. But focus I did, and have finished three courses in the last little while, and am about to embark on the bread and butter of the curriculum.

According to the student course reviews (yay Internet!), I have three brutal courses ahead of me, brutal as in brace yourself, it’ll be a wild ride.  And after that nothing seems hard, apparently.  So that’s why I’ve been MIA lately, it’s just a good bit of mental effort to work, study, exercise and have pitifully random social life. I don’t want to abandon the blog though, so I’ll definitely be around, just more sporadically than usual.

Wish me luck, please, I’ll need it.

I hired a personal trainer.  I’ve been fairly active for the last two years, but kind of freely and sporadically, and I really wanted to step up my game, and get off the weight loss plateau I’ve been stuck on. What better way to achieve that, than to find yourself accountable to a well built man who will encourage you, motivate you, yell at you or give you advice as the situation requires, right?

So I had my first workout two Fridays ago. It was a full body workout, at about half capacity, so as not to cause undue damage to my lazy muscles. By the time it was done, I was drenched in sweat, red faced, absolutely fatigued, and could not raise a glass of water to my mouth. Still, I felt good and oh so virtuous as I limped home. And then my body rebelled in the most spectacular fashion.  I don’t know if it was hormones, age, if I’m simply far more optimistic about my physical fitness level, or what, but it was sad, funny, and painful at the same time.

My girl friend sent me one of those email chains about women and personal trainers. You know the one I mean:

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A WOMAN’S WEEK AT THE GYM

This is dedicated to everyone who ever attempted to get into a regular workout routine:

Dear Diary,

For my birthday this year, I  purchased a week of personal training at the local health club.  Although I am still in great shape since being a high school football cheerleader 43 years ago, I decided it would be a good idea to go ahead and give it a try.

I called the club and made my reservations with a personal trainer named Christo, who identified himself as a 26-year-old aerobics instructor and model for athletic clothing and swim wear.

Friends seemed pleased with my enthusiasm to get started! The club encouraged me to keep a diary to chart my progress.

________________________________

MONDAY:

Started my day at 6:00 am. Tough to get out of bed, but found it was well worth it when I arrived at the health club to find Christo waiting for me. He is something of a Greek god– with blond hair, dancing eyes, and a dazzling white smile.  Woo Hoo!!

Christo gave me a tour and showed me the machines.. I enjoyed watching the skillful way in which he conducted his aerobics class after my workout today. Very inspiring!

Christo was encouraging as I did my sit-ups, although my gut was already aching from holding it in the whole time he was around.

This is going to be a FANTASTIC week!!

________________________________

TUESDAY:

I drank a whole pot of coffee, but I finally made it out the door. Christo made me lie on my back and push a heavy iron bar into the air then he put weights on it!  My legs were a little wobbly on the treadmill, but I made the full mile.  His rewarding smile made it all worthwhile. I feel GREAT!  It’s a whole new life for me.

_______________________________

WEDNESDAY:

The only way I can brush my teeth is by laying the toothbrush on the counter and moving my mouth back and forth over it.  I believe I have a hernia in both pectorals.  Driving was OK as long as I didn’t try to steer or stop. I parked on top of a GEO in the club parking lot.

Christo was impatient with me, insisting that my screams bothered other club members. His voice is a little too perky for that early in the morning and when he scolds, he gets this nasally whine that is VERY annoying.

My chest hurt when I got on the treadmill, so Christo put me on the stair monster.  Why the hell would anyone invent a machine to simulate an activity rendered obsolete by elevators?  Christo told me it would help me get in shape and enjoy life.  He said some other shit too.

_______________________________

THURSDAY:

Asshole was waiting for me with his vampire-like teeth exposed as his thin, cruel lips were pulled back in a full snarl.  I couldn’t help being a half an hour late– it took me that long to tie my shoes.

He took me to work out with dumbbells. When he was not looking, I ran and hid in the restroom.  He sent some skinny bitch to find me.

Then, as punishment, he put me on the rowing machine– which I sank.

_________________________________

FRIDAY:

I hate that bastard Christo more than any human being has ever hated any other human being in the history of the world. Stupid, skinny, anemic, anorexic, little aerobic instructor.  If there was a part of my body I could move without unbearable pain, I would beat him with it.

Christo wanted me to work on my triceps.  I don’t have any triceps! And if you don’t want dents in the floor, don’t hand me the damn barbells or anything that weighs more than a sandwich.

The treadmill flung me off and I landed on a health and nutrition teacher.  Why couldn’t it have been someone softer, like the drama coach or the choir director?

________________________________

SATURDAY:

Satan left a message on my answering machine in his grating, shrilly voice wondering why I did not show up today.  Just hearing his voice made me want to smash the machine with my planner; however, I lacked the strength to even use the TV remote and ended up catching eleven straight hours of the Weather Channel..

________________________________

SUNDAY:

I’m having the Church van pick me up for services today so I can go and thank GOD that this week is over.  I will also pray that next year my husband will choose a gift for me that is fun– like a root canal or a hysterectomy.  I still say if God had wanted me to bend over, he would have sprinkled the floor with diamonds!!!

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

And this was my reply to her – pardon the language, I was too sore to care.

I used to laugh at stuff like this until last Friday…

Friday – came home shaky and wiped out, and passed out until Saturday, no dinner, NOTHING.

Saturday – woke up in enormous pain. EVERYTHING hurt. A lot. Stairs were painful, sitting down was painful,  brushing teeth – painful.

Sunday – more pain. Popping advil, can’t put my hair in a hair tie – hurts too much. Asked James to wash my hair. Evening I said fuck it, and took methocarbomol with codeine – didn’t really help.

Monday – still can’t do ponytails. Called and cancelled Tuesday’s workout as I’m clearly not moving yet.

Tuesday – only the most persistent muscles hurt, the weird small ones that you didn’t know existed.

Today – residual pain around elbows and butt. Should be okay for Friday….

FML

And this my friends is why I haven’t posted lately. It hurt too much to move my fingers.

PS – On a serious note, I’ve had a few workouts since, my recovery time is getting much better, my diet is inching closer to where it needs to be, and believe it or not, I’m having fun.

I’ve always had a healthy interest in using my hands – in MAKING stuff – be it cooking, fixing a fence, growing a garden and other such pursuits. I took shop in high school and occasionally help James in his work as a hardwood installer.

But while I have enthusiasm in spades, I have an appalling lack of experience and know-how. My father is reasonably competent at building/making/fixing stuff but he’s not a good teacher, lacking all patience. My uncle is a cross between MacGyver and an artisan, and can build or make anything, including a full blown house, a sauna, a patio, etc. but alas, most of my life we were on separate continents, and I lacked say, a reitred neighbor with a woodshop next door, or something equally convenient.

So a Lee Valley Woodworking For Women course seemed like the answer to my prayers – the course was taught by an experienced carpenter, was geared towards newbies, and promised to teach many handy skills while accomplishing a fully finished product – in this case a lovely bench.  And my intrepid adventurer of a friend Jean and I, promptly signed up.

The course took two evenings and an entire Saturday, which was not nearly long enough for eight teams of women to accomplish such a lofty goal as a full blown bench, I’m sorry to say. Apparently what takes an experienced carpenter about six hours, takes easily three times as long with inexperienced people tripping all over themselves, asking questions and sharing tools.

The course started out peachy – with lovely intros, a crash course on power tool safely, a handing out of supplies, and a tour to the power shop in the back which contained one of them amazing table saws that stop when they hit flesh, you seen those ads on YouTube? Apparently it’s like magic, and they demo them with hot dogs. Luckily we didn’t have to test that feature of the table saw, although we did learn all about kickbacks the hard way.

The first day we mainly chopped up our pieces of wood into some of the required parts, glued the bench legs together, and went home. The time flew by obscenely fast, and it was lots of fun.

The second day we finished chopping up the pieces (just about), and did something else and the day was over. That quickly. Seriously, they could teach the theory of relativity at that workshop. Poof, and it’s over, what three hours?

The final day promised to be busy from the get go – we were to finish cutting ALL the pieces now, plane some of them, give them a three second sanding, glue the frames together (using biscuit joints), jigsaw some decorative arcs, put everything together, build the cushion, and stain the bench. Sounds like much? It was a marathon mixed with a comedy of errors.

First there was the ridiculous instructions of the bench blueprint that had to be ignored, and new ones written on the board. Then there was the wrong cutting of the holes with the biscuit jointer, resulting in some unnecessary wood removal, then there was the not quite precisely cut pieces that had to be held together with hope, prayer, buckets of glue and an obsene amount of clamps.  The list goes on and on. At first we were all precise and such, and as the day went on we threw perfection in the toilet and had fun just clamping and gluing stuff until it held, racing against the clock the entire time.

One of the major challenges was the lack of adequate supplies for all the students, which made getting everyone through all the steps incredibly frustrating. There were only a couple of sanders, two jigsaws, and NOT ENOUGH CLAMPS! Now I know why all those woodworking forums all say ‘buy lots of clamps heh heh’.  Those supplies would have been barely sufficient if there was a master plan that divided the class into two groups, and applied each half to different parts of the project from the get go, with military precision.  But as self-organized as we tried to be, there are major logistical difficulties in getting everyone through the single miter saw, table saw, planer with any degree of speed. Basically the project chosen by the instructor was a bit ambitious given the size of the group and the equipment, and it could have been done better if there was much more organization and pre-design of a game plan.

Overall Jean and I both enjoyed the course, but certainly more in retrospect than at the time. At the time there was only a frenzy of sanding, gluing, clamping, swearing, staining, and stapling.  There is a certain trade off between building something useful, in the amount of time given, and learning new skills. For those of you who speak woodworking, the bench was held together with bisquit joints, which is great, but I’d rather have learned a mortise tenon or a dovetail joint. It’s unlikely that I’d have a bench, but that’s the trade off, I guess.

But at the end of a really long day, the benches were finally finished.  I am quite sure that mine at least, should not support a full sized person, but the cat sure approves. 

Here’s Jean’s masterpiece – her chosen stain was absolutely stunning, giving the wood a weathered, old finish, reminiscent of an ‘old barn by the sea’. And she chose outdoor fabric so that the bench can be outside.

This was my hood yesterday morning.  We got our typical April dump that comes right after the first few days of sunshine and spring, just to give us that kick in the pants that says don’t get too comfortable – this is Calgary.

Right before I left my last job, (the one that was moving to the States), I had the chance to grab lunch with a couple of my co-workers, and we walked over to Trader’s Grill at the Mariott Hotel.

The Grill is past its glory days – it used to occupy a bigger space on the second floor, with large windows overlooking the city, and served a good lunch buffet. Now it’s on the main floor, and is little more than a cafe with a bar.  It was mostly empty the entire lunch, perhaps a quarter of the tables were occupied. 

The menu is simple but very well thought out. There is a decent selection among all the main food groups, and the dishes are not boring. I am sick to death of the usual assortment of salads, sandwiches and steaks that comprise many lunch menus, and was glad to see something like an omelet, or short rib pasta, or baguette with boursin, or the chicken schnitzel which I incidentally ended up having.  Apparently they have excellent daily specials as well, which happened to be grilled cheese on the day we visited, and it would have to be a heck of a grilled cheese to beat my homemade one.

The food took a while to arrive given the lack of patrons, but when it arrived, it did not disappoint.  Just look at it!

The schnitzel was piping hot, with a crunchy, well seasoned breading, and the chicken inside was fork tender. The roasted taters were very good, the salad was lovely if a bit simple, and the grilled lemon was simply genius.  It was a superb meal on a chilly Calgary day.

It seems like more hotels are expanding their restaurants, and trumpeting about them on Twitter and blogs. The Mariott on the other hand seems to be heading in the opposite direction, which is a shame, as the food at Trader’s Grill is as good as some, and better than many lunch options in downtown Calgary.  I should also mention that I can see the appeal of the large windows in the summer, it would be great to people watch while lunching.

4/5

Trader’s Grill

Stephen Avenue
110 9 Ave SE
(403) 231-4503

My grandmother passed away last week, and the entire family has been busy sending her off.  Please, no condolences are needed – she was a very respectable 85, and had cancer which left her very frail and tired at the end.

My grandmother loved entertaining more than anything, and had a full life, with plenty of drinking, eating, singing and friends.  She sang beautifully until about a year ago, and lived independently until the last couple of months. All in all it was a life lived to the full, and up until the last few days she enjoyed a teaspoon of cognac in her tea. Given that she called vodka her elixir of life, this was a concession indeed.

The funeral was very simple  – a private service, and a road trip some three hours away to a small Orthodox Convent where she was buried. The convent is located in the middle of Nowhere, Alberta and was once a place of sanctuary for a scholar turned monk.  Upon his death he turned it over to a convent, as there was a shortage of fellow monks to carry on the tradition. There is a wee church built without nails that still stands on the grounds today. The nuns live simply with the support of the varied parishioners who help them homestead on their free weekends. They also have a small cemetary where those who desire can be laid to rest.

The service was simple and beautiful. There was a soft snowfall and rustling wildlife in a remote chunks of the woods that surround the convent.  I’m not a religous person by nature, but like all people find a lot of comfort in ritual. And even though I never grew up going to church, I find liturgy calming, especially in the chanting manner of the Orthodox Church. Our priest is a very colorful friend of the family and was a great tension breaker on the drives to and fro.  Orthodox priests are allowed to marry, which generally means they don’t molest children, which greatly mitigates the disgust I have for the transgressions of the Catholic priests.

In fact, I think that’s a great contribution of religion, to provide a framework for celebratory and solemn occasions alike.  We are social animals and have developed a number of rituals to mark special occasions in life, from the vision quests of puberty to elaborate wedding ceremonies and funeral rites.  Which is great at connecting a community and providing guidance when dealing with charged emotions. It’s a template for behavior, when you badly need one.  In a multicultural country such as Canada, different cultural groups have less of a sense of community to bind them, so belonging to a religious community provides continuity of culture.  But enough with crazy theories.

After the service we had a colorful wake, joined by family and friends, and toasted her often.  All in all it was a wonderful way to say good-bye. May she rest in peace.

We’ve barely emerged from a very deep freeze here in Calgary, and the sharp wind that ushered in our Chinook barely feels like an improvement. It’s + 2 C outside, but feels much colder, and frankly I’d take -20 with no wind any day. It’s a cold cold wind.

Matters appear to be equally wintery in other parts of the world, and our US neighbors are also not spared their winterland adventures, while Australia battles a huge hurricane. Like my co-worker poetically phrased it: ‘everyone’s getting bent over this year’.  Crude but right.

So if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to take a moment and escape. I’d escape to the tropics, but even CUBA plunged down to a memorable +1.6 a few weeks ago, and people, their homes have no heaters. Imagine an unheated concrete box and how much that would suck.  So in order to properly escape, I’m going back in time, to the height of summer and a lovely garden stroll in a very unique inner-city garden of Calgary.

It’s unique because of it’s odd location, it’s sandwiched between the chaos of the Stampede grounds and the quiet of a large old cemetary. The garden literally flows down the hill in meandering pathways and is a tiny hidden oasis in the bustle of city traffic.

It never used to be there, I’ve spent some time walking around that cemetary and where the garden is flourishing now used to be a messy tangle of vegetation and not much else. It was restored to former glory quite recently and my brother and I took some time to explore it.

The topography of the park is rather crazy – neat wooded paths lead to steep hills and cliffs and quite a bit of terrain is covered in such a small area. 

There is a little wooden bridge:

A lovely pond (with some empty beer bottles), c’mon people!

And a ton of native vegetation, all of which I know not the names of, but thanks to reading garden blogs, I did identify all some of the hostas! Aren’t you proud of me? The flowers range from modest prairie flowers like these:

And these:

And these:

To some pretty exotic specimens, that likely didn’t see too much life on the prairie: (Unless they did of course, my knowledge of botany ends with color.)

I don’t know what he was, but he was gorgeous, and HUGE!

And I sincerely hope that’s a peony:

And did I mention I got the hostas number? I betcha no one else was as excited by hostas as I was. Familiarity breeds love you know.

As well as some of the largest leaves of… something known to man. Seriously, I could make a bed of one of those.

Of course there were some hilly sections where you got to climb. All those stones criss-crossing the hill are actual narrow paths. You can play mountain goat:

And they’re steeper than they look, at least 30 degrees I’d say.

But very pretty:

And once you’re at the top, you can have a lovely rest in a shaded oasis:

Then you meander some more, a bit lost really, which is hard to do since you’re in a pretty small space, but the layout FEELS like it.

Well hello there – who’s pretty in pink?

And how exotic is this?

And find some oddly tucked away chairs to ponder life in:

Until eventually, you find a glimpse of the rebuilt house of the guy who started the garden – waaay back when.

The house is now a cafe, and I’m sure it’s a great spot for a drink, although we weren’t in the mood.

Overall I loved this garden more so than many others, and the crazy meandering layout is largely why. I hardly ever get the opportunity to get lost in the city,  to follow an unexplored path, or to find something hidden from sight. Most parks are lovely spaces, but much more open and with way less flowers of course.  Many gardens are more formally laid out with straighter lines and stricter paths. It’s very neat to find yourself a bit disoriented, it’s like a small adventure with plenty to see on the way, and a drink at the end.  Sure beats winter.

Catching the kitty that lived on my porch through -30 C (-22F)  temperatures has kind of consumed my spare time for the last few weeks. Well, that, and my birthday on Monday, and the midterm that I wrote, and the holidays of course.

But kitty took precedence. Even though he came and went a bit sporadically, he was usually on the porch waiting for his meal when I came home from work.  After watching him shiver and huddle on the yoga mat, we got smart and bought an outdoor heating pad which we enclosed in a lovely big box with styrofoam inside, and draped with a blanket to keep snow off.  Then we got a second heating pad as a side wall, and kitty moved in pretty permanently. We probably would have gotten a third and fourth heating pad as well, but finally, finally, kitty deigned to walk into the cat trap that was thoughtfully placed there by our perennial favorite cat rescue group – The MEOW Foundation.

Food didn’t do it, either. He was too leery of the trap to be enticed by food, and circled it carefully, electing to go hungry rather than chance being eaten by crocodiles or whatever his kitty imagination came up with.  Plus it doesn’t help that food freezes in about two minutes in these temperatures, offering very little in the way of temptation in a short while.  It was a healthy sprinkle of catnip that lured him in, a substance that proved irresistible. Kitty went in, the trap went slam! and a mournful meow later, we had a very apprehensive prisoner.

Of course this happened at about eleven last night, and of course the vet where we dropped him off was clear across the city, and of course I’m exhausted today, but also quite elated that kitty will spend his first warm night inside, in… forever? The vet will neuter him, and fix up any cuts and injuries, de-worm him and vaccinate him, and he will go to the MEOW Foundation to recuperate. There they will determine whether he’s fully feral, or just shy, and will decide whether his future lies in being adopted or not.

At the very least he’s warm, fed and getting used to people, and while his empty box sits on my porch I sleep better at night not worrying whether he’ll get hit by a car today, get eaten by a coyote, or where in the world his latest injury came from.

My homeless kitty remains stubbornly uncatchable. He has eluded cat traps, clever maneuvers to catch it, and offers of cod liver.  He still comes by every day for food and water though, and has finally deigned to sit on a yoga mat provided for him to keep his furry orange butt off cold concrete.  I decided if I can’t trap him, so be it, and ordered an outdoor pet heating pad, which has gotten rave reviews on Amazon.  I figure if he takes to the heating pad, (and he’d have to be sick in the head not to), perhaps we can work towards some other shelter, like a styrofoam cooler and a plastic bin? We can hope.

Image from plupetstore.com

Bread baking has progressed to sourdough which turned out wonderfully, and now I have a bowl of bubbly starter in my fridge which I feed regularly. For some reason I find this hilarious and call him Bubba. Bubba the starter has to be fed the night before you bake bread, so the two day process remains unchanged. I also bought some rye flour at the local health food store, since a good rye bread is one of life’s greatest pleasures. 

And speaking of great pleasures, one of the largest and best  traditions of eastern Europe is sauerkraut. The crunchy fermented cabbage is full of natural probiotics and is one of the healthiest winter stored foods, not to mention utterly delicious.  Our family often puts some up in the fall and gleefully consumes it in soups, sides and stews until it’s gone. From bratwurst and kraut to adding a zing to borscht, it’s absolutely fantastic.  And one of the best bowls of this soup in Calgary was found in a wee little restaurant called Praga Cafe across from Chinook Mall.

Their version of the soup was thick with potatoes, golden from paprika and so addictive that I could have kept eating it until I burst.  I had to stop as we ordered a main dish too, but that soup was something else, and I’ve kept craving it since.  I really should see if they’ll part with a recipe and I’ll share it with the world.

That’s about the exicement of the week, and my next post will take you back to the summer, cause I could sure use a break from winter. Happy December y’all!