Deep Freeze Winter Festival

The seventh annual Deep Freeze Winter Festival was held this past weekend on Alberta Avenue (118 Avenue) in Edmonton, featuring the theme "The Vikings are coming!" Some friends and I decided to check it out.

The ice and snow sculptures were awesome

Women sat around a fire in authentic costumes and did Viking handcrafts, including naal binding (knitting with a single needle)

Jane and Liz check out the handcrafting

Demonstration of a hand bellows to stoke the fire for iron working

Deep freezer races using real freezers on skiis!

Brian warming his hands at the wood heater

There was also musical entertainment, stilt walkers, an artisan market, etc.  We were lucky that it was a relatively mild day, only about -3 degrees, but the wind had a bit of an edge to it, so we warmed up with coffee at the Carrot Cafe.  A fun afternoon and a chance to embrace our cold northern climate.

My first car

One of the blogs I read on occasion, called Life & Other Crises, is doing a series where every Monday the blog author writes about a First.  As in, "first time drunk", "first kiss", "first fulfilled wish".

I wasn't particularly interested in delving into an account of any of those firsts.  But the topic of Firsts twigged a memory from my teenage years of a very significant First of my own.

My First Car.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to my first car.  A yellow AMC Gremlin.  This is actually a picture of a Gremlin that I found online, but it looks identical to the one I had.  And if that isn't the ugliest car on God's green earth, I don't know what is. 

Some time after I turned 16, I got a part time job and, since we lived in the country, a 20 minute drive from town, I needed a car.  My dad knew a guy who was a mechanic, and asked him if he knew of a good used car that I could buy.  The guy showed Dad this baby and said he could have it for $700, which my dad thought was a pretty good deal.

Now, it's important to realize that I was not consulted, or even present, at anytime during this discussion.  If I had been, I am confident I would have either burst out laughing or burst into tears.

Instead, by the time I found out about it, it was a done deal.  I was the new owner of a mechanically sound, albeit hideously ugly, yellow Gremlin, and I owed the mechanic $700.

A few days after my momentous purchase, I was invited to a party in town.  I arrived in my yellow Gremlin, which none of my friends had seen.  I quietly parked on the street and went inside to join the party.  A short while later, my best friend happened to look out the window and saw the Gremlin on the street and declared, "who on earth is driving that ugly yellow car?"

It didn't help any that she had just received a brand new Ford Escort from her parents for her 16th birthday.

I console myself with the belief that driving that ugly car was a character building experience.  You know, the old maxim, "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger."  Yup, that's me.

When you love cats

Sally loved the heat register

At the beginning of December, I made the very difficult decision to have my dear cat, Sally, put down. It was a lot harder than I expected.

Sally was my first cat (as an adult living on my own) and she was a wonderful companion. Very gentle, loving and affectionate, she loved to sit on my lap and purr.  She was a real purring machine!

I really missed her after she was gone.  The house felt so empty without her.

I knew I wanted to get another cat at some point, and with Christmas just around the corner, I decided that my Christmas present to myself would be a new kitty.

On December 27, my friends Annette and Liz and I headed off to the SPCA. Oh, my goodness, there were so many cats to choose from, and all of them so adorable.  How on earth would I ever choose?

I had decided to get one around the age of 1-2 years and had made a list of all the ones on the SPCA website that fit that criteria.

But as luck would have it, the one that caught my eye didn't even match my specifications. He was 3 years old, but was so spunky and playful, he seemed younger than the 1 year old couch potato in the same room. 

I mean, who could resist this guy?

He was named Creamsicle, which was a fitting description, although I knew I wouldn't be calling him that!

While I filled out the paperwork, Liz and Annette checked out the dogs, including this adorable 2 month old German Shepherd Rottweiler cross. So cute!

The hardest part about going to the SPCA is not taking them all home with you! 

After an initial exploratory sniff around my house, my new kitty has made himself quite at home. I have decided to name him Louis, and he seems happy enough with that decision.

He loves playing around on the stairs and batting at me when I peak at him and wiggle my fingers through the stair treads. He also loves just sitting on the stairs and gazing at his surroundings, just the way Sally used to do. Those stairs are sort of a built in cat tree, I think.

He welcomed his first visitor later that evening, my niece Michelle, and was more than happy to share his affection with her.

When he's not flaked out on my lap, he spends his time chasing this little red mouse suspended on a string from the doorway.

All in all, he's been a wonderful addition to my little home.

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You have just won $100,000 ... and a new truck!

I think we've all been the recipients of email messages informing us that we've won a big wad of cash, and hopefully we know enough to delete the message without going any further. 

But when Steven Galloway, who is a writer living in BC (you might know him as the author of The Cellist of Sarayevo) recently received one of those scam messages, he decided to have a little fun with the scam artist.  The resulting conversation is one of the most hilarious things I've read in a while!

Have a read at Writer Steven Galloway trolls a phischer.

Overheard on the way to work

So, I'm riding the LRT (light rail transit) to work this morning and can't help but overhear a conversation between two 20-something young women, whom we'll call Tiffany and Ashley. They obviously know each other from way back but haven't seen each other in years, so they're catching up on each others' lives.  The conversation goes something like this:

Tiffany:  Wow, it is so great to see you.  How are you?
Ashley:  I'm actually really sick. 
Tiffany:  Oh, no, that's too bad. 
Ashley:  Yeah, but other than that I'm okay.
Tiffany:  Wow, I haven't seen you in ages.  How old are you now?  20?
Ashley:  Yeah.
Tiffany:  Oh, wow, I feel old (she looks like she's no more than 23).
Tiffany:  Wow, it is so good to see you.  I heard that you broke up with your old boyfriend.  Have you got a new one now?
Ashley:  I did have a new one, but I broke up with him and then I went back to the old one.
Tiffany:  Oh, great.  Wow, it is so good to see you.  How's your mom?  Is she seeing anyone?
Ashley:  Yeah, she's seeing a guy.  He's really nice.
Tiffany:  Oh, that's great.  I LOVE your mom; she's so great.
Ashley:  Yeah.
Tiffany:  And did you hear that my parents are getting back together again, for the second time!  Isn't that so crazy!


At this point, I'm thinking: Wow, I live in a completely different world.  And I think I like it that way.

Presents from a prairie childhood

Jenny Lawson, the author of The Bloggess, wrote a great blog post today called Best present ever. Worst present ever, in which she detailed, as the title suggests, the best and the worst presents she had ever received.  She asked her readers to share their stories of best and worst presents and more than 500 responded, with hilarious results.

All those stories took me back to some of the Christmases of my childhood.  My parents were pretty good at Christmas gift giving, and quite generous as well, considering we grew up being reminded on a regular basis that "money didn't grow on trees". I honestly can't remember any disappointing gifts I received from them.  Although come to think of it, I never did get that above ground swimming pool I drooled over in the Eaton's summer catalogue.

I distinctly remember one year when my brother Gord and I were teenagers.  We both received identically shaped boxes which turned out to contain Agfamatic pocket cameras.  Now that was a great present!  I loved that camera.  I'm sure I took it with me on my Treble Teens choir tour to Germany and Austria the summer I turned 16.  I still have those choir tour pictures somewhere....


Another gift that stands out just as clearly as that camera was one I received at least 8 or 10 years earlier.  I think this gift was specifically for me, but it could have been a joint gift for both Gord and me.  At any rate, it required two people to use it and we both got tremendous play value out it!

The gift was a plastic walkie talkie toy.  I wish I could find a picture of it, but when I looked online, all I could find were vintage walkie talkies from the 80s that actually looked quite realistic.  The toy that we got was not exactly realistic looking.   There were two "receivers" made of soft green plastic that would actually squish together if you squeezed them hard enough.  Included separately was a length of plastic tubing approximately 12 feet long, the ends of which you attached to each of the receivers.  Gord would go into one room with one of the receivers while I went around the corner about 12 feet away with the other, with the plastic cable suspended between us.  Gord would whisper into his receiver and, if I had my receiver clutched to my ear, I would hear the message come whispering down the tubing (not to mention a ticklish sensation in my ear). Talk about modern technology!  It was amazing.  I have no idea what secret messages we transmitted back and forth to each other but it certainly kept us entertained.

And finally, one more gift memory I have to share!  When I was a kid, my mom's side of the family, the Schmidt side, used to get together for a big family gathering a few days after Christmas.  There were five families and about 20 or so cousins of various ages.  I'm not sure if all of us cousins exchanged names for gifts, but definitely the youngest ones did, because I distinctly remember the year that my cousin, Leighton, had my name.  Leighton was the youngest cousin and was about seven years younger than me.  He was probably about 5 or so, which means I would have been 12. 

I remember him handing me my gift and him absolutely vibrating with excitement as I opened it.  And what did I find inside?  A plastic bag full of water and a gold fish!  Wow, for this little farm girl from the sticks, that was a pretty cool gift.  But the thing that made it so memorable is how excited Leighton was to give it to me!  He kept hopping up and down asking, "Do you like it?  Do you like it?"  All these years later, I still get a kick out of remembering his excitement at giving me that very special gift.


So what about you?  What kind of presents do you remember?  Good ones?  Bad ones?  Share your story in the comments below.

A cold December Saturday

It's been very chilly here this past week. So what does one do on a cold December Saturday? I decided to do a few things around the house to get into the Christmas spirit.

 

I have a lovely large artificial Christmas tree but just didn't feel like going to all the work of putting it up this year. Instead, I set up this little 3-foot tree that I picked up last week at Its A Crock Country Store in Leduc. I had thought I'd put a few small decorations on it, but I actually love it's rustic simplicity with just a string of mini lights so I think I'll just keep it like this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used to do a lot of card making throughout the year, but in the last while have gotten away from doing it. I almost decided I wouldn't make any Christmas cards this year. But in the end, I decided I would make them again for one more year.

 

 

 

 

And finally I baked some Christmas cookies. This recipe for Ginger Sparklers is one my mom often used to make, not just at Christmas time, but throughout the year. The wonderful flavour of ginger, cinnamon and cloves has made it a particular favourite of mine for Christmas.

 

 

Ginger Sparklers

• 3/4 cup butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup molasses
• 1 egg, beaten
• 2 cups flour
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. ginger
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. cloves

Mix together butter and brown sugar, then add molasses and beaten egg. Add dry ingredients and mix all together.

Shape into balls and dip tops into white sugar. Place on cookie sheet leaving room between balls for cookies to spread.

Bake at 375 degrees for approximately 8 minutes.

 

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