Ali & Andrew
xo
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Movin' On Sideways
I'll have to put off telling you about Alison's grandfather's birthday and some of the other pleasant times we've had between then and now, because time's flying by and there's one very important piece of information I haven't been able to convey yet.
I guess just about everyone who would be reading this blog knows this already, but for anyone who hasn't heard, we're moving back to Halifax. I got a job working for a photographer, so it's so long, beautiful Annapolis Valley; hello, foggy, cold, mouldy metropolis. Are we crazy? Perhaps.
However.
This job of mine at the university has not been the exciting career-builder I'd thought it would be. I've been responsible for putting forth the institution's brand clearly and consistently, even though no one has ever come up with a clear statement of what that brand is. Why not? There are too many different political interest groups with too many different ideas of what the main point of the university should be, so no one dares to come up with any clear definition of its public character. That's fine, though — means I can visually express what I take the brand to be and just try to stay consistent with myself. Except that my hands would keep getting tied at every turn, and I'd be expected to just do whatever any individual wanted for their particular ugly marketing piece and forget about building any kind of brand, or else go along with whatever half-baked and ultra-expensive one-off campaign an outside agency would be hired to produce, and then shake my head in wonder along with everyone else when the question arose why there were not enough students enrolling to keep us from acquiring a massive debt. All I could say was that it certainly wasn't my salary that was causing it.
And then there's the town of Wolfville. Beautiful and charming. Lovely weather. Politically progressive. But just not very interesting. Where are the hipsters? Why is there no record store or college radio station? How come, with such a great music department at the university, the only bands that ever play around town are all composed of two guys simultaneously strumming acoustic guitars and maybe a woman earnestly whacking some bongos? I.e. where's the RAWK? Plus it smells like cow poop all the time, which is just extra depressing if you're already not into the vibe. I don't know. Maybe when we're ready to retire we'll want to move back here. "Retire". Good one! It is quite lovely, though, especially in the summer. Can you tell I'm ambivalent about this?
This'll also, hopefully, allow Alison to get some more work because she won't have to commute an hour in either direction. Which means maybe we'll be able to afford this somewhat expensive apartment we're about to rent. Sure has been nice having a whole house to rattle around in...
So anyway, we've found an apartment, I've quit my job, and we're set to move Haliward after we get back from a week in Maine, starting Saturday. This I can't wait for. We're meeting my parents and sisters and their families and another family that's friends of our family's, all at the same beach/cottage community we went to a couple of years ago and where we've been going sporadically since I was a little kid. Alison and I are driving, meaning Alison's driving. It should take us most of Saturday. I'm loading up the iPod right now, we're going to make some egg salad sandwiches, and the maps are in the glove compartment. Gobo's gotten an oil change and the thumbs up from our local mechanic, and Alison figured out why the high beams weren't working (they were actually the low beams and the low beams were actually the running lights; we drove all the way home from Chester at one in the morning Saturday night like that). I have the latest Believer and a new Kazuo Ishiguro book. Everything's set. Look out, rich white liberal Americans, here we come!
I guess just about everyone who would be reading this blog knows this already, but for anyone who hasn't heard, we're moving back to Halifax. I got a job working for a photographer, so it's so long, beautiful Annapolis Valley; hello, foggy, cold, mouldy metropolis. Are we crazy? Perhaps.
However.
This job of mine at the university has not been the exciting career-builder I'd thought it would be. I've been responsible for putting forth the institution's brand clearly and consistently, even though no one has ever come up with a clear statement of what that brand is. Why not? There are too many different political interest groups with too many different ideas of what the main point of the university should be, so no one dares to come up with any clear definition of its public character. That's fine, though — means I can visually express what I take the brand to be and just try to stay consistent with myself. Except that my hands would keep getting tied at every turn, and I'd be expected to just do whatever any individual wanted for their particular ugly marketing piece and forget about building any kind of brand, or else go along with whatever half-baked and ultra-expensive one-off campaign an outside agency would be hired to produce, and then shake my head in wonder along with everyone else when the question arose why there were not enough students enrolling to keep us from acquiring a massive debt. All I could say was that it certainly wasn't my salary that was causing it.
And then there's the town of Wolfville. Beautiful and charming. Lovely weather. Politically progressive. But just not very interesting. Where are the hipsters? Why is there no record store or college radio station? How come, with such a great music department at the university, the only bands that ever play around town are all composed of two guys simultaneously strumming acoustic guitars and maybe a woman earnestly whacking some bongos? I.e. where's the RAWK? Plus it smells like cow poop all the time, which is just extra depressing if you're already not into the vibe. I don't know. Maybe when we're ready to retire we'll want to move back here. "Retire". Good one! It is quite lovely, though, especially in the summer. Can you tell I'm ambivalent about this?
This'll also, hopefully, allow Alison to get some more work because she won't have to commute an hour in either direction. Which means maybe we'll be able to afford this somewhat expensive apartment we're about to rent. Sure has been nice having a whole house to rattle around in...
So anyway, we've found an apartment, I've quit my job, and we're set to move Haliward after we get back from a week in Maine, starting Saturday. This I can't wait for. We're meeting my parents and sisters and their families and another family that's friends of our family's, all at the same beach/cottage community we went to a couple of years ago and where we've been going sporadically since I was a little kid. Alison and I are driving, meaning Alison's driving. It should take us most of Saturday. I'm loading up the iPod right now, we're going to make some egg salad sandwiches, and the maps are in the glove compartment. Gobo's gotten an oil change and the thumbs up from our local mechanic, and Alison figured out why the high beams weren't working (they were actually the low beams and the low beams were actually the running lights; we drove all the way home from Chester at one in the morning Saturday night like that). I have the latest Believer and a new Kazuo Ishiguro book. Everything's set. Look out, rich white liberal Americans, here we come!
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Winnipeg » Saskatoon
We're in Saskatoon now, and have been for a couple of days. Alison's grandfather's 100th birthday celebration is this afternoon, in the seniors' complex in which we're staying. There is actually wireless internet here! It's sporadic, but it exists.
I have notes on the drive here from Winnipeg, which I was going to work up into a proper post, but there never seems to be an extended period of time for that. So I think I'll just give you the point-form version essentially verbatim, along with some photos and video:
• Rained the night before, so no Red River photos possible. But here's a shot out the motel window.
• Starbucks for coffee before leaving. Served by a younger version of Jack Black.
• Black line of clouds early on extends eerily downward and immediately becomes HEAVY rain, and then large hail (size of rock salt). Have to stop briefly. Skyscrapers of Winnipeg still visible on horizon. Clouds are so close here you can watch them move relative to each other.
• A few hawks seen.
• Stop at the "Chicken Corral" in Neepawa for fried egg & cheese sandwich lunch. Waitresses sing in Rankinesque 3-part harmony for monetary pledges in support of "Lily Infestation" festival.
• Which reminds me, and this is not in my notes, the restaurant we had lunch in the day before was called "P. I.'s Lounge" and was a total dive that smelled like vinegar, with weird pictures of babies on the walls and Christmas lights everywhere, and the food was really great. There was a pickup truck parked outside with the Ontario license plate "CHEZBRGR".
• Alison sees a coyote sitting by the side of the road.
• Ali and I figure out that the game of Cows is impossible to play on the prairies because when you see them they are in groups of ≥ 100, i.e. no fun to count. So we play Horses instead.
• Sky and land get bigger and bigger; another short shower.
• Eat left-over garlic broccoli & ginger fish fillet at Saskatchewan border.
• The 1-road town of Langenberg (Co-op store, Golden Bowl Chinese restaurant, Save Room for Dessert Bake (sic) & Eatery) has red-, yellow-, & green-striped banners lining its one half-km road, probably not indicating a strong Jamaican presence.
• 13–10 for me so far at 2:55, or 1:55, depending on whether Saskatchewan's shunning of DST means we have to set the clock back another hour, a question about which there's been some debate. Game goes to 50, and there haven't been any graveyards yet.
• Canada geese with babies by a pond in Yorkton.
• Today there are roads leading off in other directions, plus great visibility of sights in those directions besides dense, unpopulated forest, relieving us of the in retrospect fairly apt impression that we have been stuck going one way along a 1-dimensional track where if you stop moving for some reason good luck ever getting found by someone, not unlike a fat kid caught Augustus-Gloop fashion in a completely enclosed waterslide like the indefinitely out of order one at our motel two nights ago in S.S. Marie, our unanimous fascination with which only now strikes me as symbolically fitting.
• Ali moves into the lead — 16–13 — just past Yorkton.
• Stop at a tiny picnic park in Foam Lake. Throw a softball with Alison. A small bird sings insistently, defying us to find it in a dense tree. No one ever gets a clear look at it, even with the binoculars. Probably a red-eyed vireo, though.
• Graveyard! 16–0. 13 really is an unlucky number.
• A pizza place in Lanigan across from the gas station where I pull out the end of the infinite towel in the washroom claims to be "Home of the Big Slice," but I know it is lying because that's in Halifax.
• Realize in Plunkett looking out to the point where field meets sky that the oft-alleged similarity between prairie living and coastal living, viz. the proximity of large open spaces, does not exactly hold, because looking out at the ocean from the shore is always looking at an implied infinity that is other than oneself, whereas the prairies' endless distance surrounds you — you are in the centre of it. There is an extra, breath-stopping sense of utter freedom on top of that awe associated with the grandeur and ultimate imponderability of nature.
• < 1 hr. outside of Saskatoon: 10–0 for me after a few more graveyards on either side. How will someone ever get to 50?
• Of course they don't. We get into Saskatoon, check into the seniors' complex, meet Alison's grandpa, and eat dinner at Smitty's. Turns out I'm right about the DST thing and so we've gained another hour. Seinfeld and early to bed. It'll be weird not to be on the road again tomorrow. I kind of wish we could keep on going all the way to the Pacific Ocean. But I also feel dizzy from watching the land fly by all day, and am actually having a bit of a hard time walking.
And now I'm behind again, as there's already a couple of days in Saskatoon to add to this, but it'll have to wait. The birthday's about to get underway.
I have notes on the drive here from Winnipeg, which I was going to work up into a proper post, but there never seems to be an extended period of time for that. So I think I'll just give you the point-form version essentially verbatim, along with some photos and video:
• Rained the night before, so no Red River photos possible. But here's a shot out the motel window.
• Starbucks for coffee before leaving. Served by a younger version of Jack Black.
• Black line of clouds early on extends eerily downward and immediately becomes HEAVY rain, and then large hail (size of rock salt). Have to stop briefly. Skyscrapers of Winnipeg still visible on horizon. Clouds are so close here you can watch them move relative to each other.
• A few hawks seen.
• Stop at the "Chicken Corral" in Neepawa for fried egg & cheese sandwich lunch. Waitresses sing in Rankinesque 3-part harmony for monetary pledges in support of "Lily Infestation" festival.
• Which reminds me, and this is not in my notes, the restaurant we had lunch in the day before was called "P. I.'s Lounge" and was a total dive that smelled like vinegar, with weird pictures of babies on the walls and Christmas lights everywhere, and the food was really great. There was a pickup truck parked outside with the Ontario license plate "CHEZBRGR".
• Alison sees a coyote sitting by the side of the road.
• Ali and I figure out that the game of Cows is impossible to play on the prairies because when you see them they are in groups of ≥ 100, i.e. no fun to count. So we play Horses instead.
• Sky and land get bigger and bigger; another short shower.
• Eat left-over garlic broccoli & ginger fish fillet at Saskatchewan border.
• The 1-road town of Langenberg (Co-op store, Golden Bowl Chinese restaurant, Save Room for Dessert Bake (sic) & Eatery) has red-, yellow-, & green-striped banners lining its one half-km road, probably not indicating a strong Jamaican presence.
• 13–10 for me so far at 2:55, or 1:55, depending on whether Saskatchewan's shunning of DST means we have to set the clock back another hour, a question about which there's been some debate. Game goes to 50, and there haven't been any graveyards yet.
• Canada geese with babies by a pond in Yorkton.
• Today there are roads leading off in other directions, plus great visibility of sights in those directions besides dense, unpopulated forest, relieving us of the in retrospect fairly apt impression that we have been stuck going one way along a 1-dimensional track where if you stop moving for some reason good luck ever getting found by someone, not unlike a fat kid caught Augustus-Gloop fashion in a completely enclosed waterslide like the indefinitely out of order one at our motel two nights ago in S.S. Marie, our unanimous fascination with which only now strikes me as symbolically fitting.
• Ali moves into the lead — 16–13 — just past Yorkton.
• Stop at a tiny picnic park in Foam Lake. Throw a softball with Alison. A small bird sings insistently, defying us to find it in a dense tree. No one ever gets a clear look at it, even with the binoculars. Probably a red-eyed vireo, though.
• Graveyard! 16–0. 13 really is an unlucky number.
• A pizza place in Lanigan across from the gas station where I pull out the end of the infinite towel in the washroom claims to be "Home of the Big Slice," but I know it is lying because that's in Halifax.
• Realize in Plunkett looking out to the point where field meets sky that the oft-alleged similarity between prairie living and coastal living, viz. the proximity of large open spaces, does not exactly hold, because looking out at the ocean from the shore is always looking at an implied infinity that is other than oneself, whereas the prairies' endless distance surrounds you — you are in the centre of it. There is an extra, breath-stopping sense of utter freedom on top of that awe associated with the grandeur and ultimate imponderability of nature.
• < 1 hr. outside of Saskatoon: 10–0 for me after a few more graveyards on either side. How will someone ever get to 50?
• Of course they don't. We get into Saskatoon, check into the seniors' complex, meet Alison's grandpa, and eat dinner at Smitty's. Turns out I'm right about the DST thing and so we've gained another hour. Seinfeld and early to bed. It'll be weird not to be on the road again tomorrow. I kind of wish we could keep on going all the way to the Pacific Ocean. But I also feel dizzy from watching the land fly by all day, and am actually having a bit of a hard time walking.
And now I'm behind again, as there's already a couple of days in Saskatoon to add to this, but it'll have to wait. The birthday's about to get underway.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Winnipeg!
We made it to Thunder Bay yesterday and now tonight we're in a hotel in Winnipeg, getting ready for bed. Seen many many trees and a few animals (crows (dead and alive), turkey hawks, black bear (Andrew), deer, bald eagles). On arriving here, we ate way too much food at a really good Chinese restaurant across the street. Then we went for a walk by the Red River as the sun went down. Really pretty, especially with the trees growing right out of the water and birds skimming bugs off the surface of the water, but unfortunately no camera for that part. We might take some photos in the morning.
What I do have photos — and video! — of is our visit this morning to the Kakabeka Falls on the way out of T-Bay. It was gorgeous, and made a nice beginning to another day full of sitting in a car.
Tomorrow: Saskatoon!
What I do have photos — and video! — of is our visit this morning to the Kakabeka Falls on the way out of T-Bay. It was gorgeous, and made a nice beginning to another day full of sitting in a car.
Tomorrow: Saskatoon!
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
LOOOONG Road Trip
One thing about this one-subject blogging, it seems like I'm always a few weeks behind what's actually going on, and I'm never going to catch up. So here's a very short post to fill you in on what's happening RIGHT NOW.
We're in a hotel room in Sault Ste. Marie, having driven all day yesterday with Alison's dad and brother from Toronto. We're on our way to Saskatoon to see her grandfather, who is turning 100. We made this plan long ago and now it's starting to seem kind of crazy, but it's also pretty fun so far. I've got a paper cup full of horrible coffee beside me, Alison's in the shower, and her dad and brother are busy pacing around and repacking. There's a Dairy Queen across the street and a bowling alley connected to the hotel. Andrew (Alison's brother [confusing, I know]) and I considered doing a little bowling last night after dinner, but in the end we all just went to bed early, completely exhausted.
We were in Toronto for a full day before setting out on the drive, and we got to see our friends Jeff and Tim playing some softball in a nice little park off Christie.
It was very relaxed and pleasant. Almost made TO seem like a possible place to live. Then we got back to Alison's parents' for dinner and there was a homeless guy asleep on the lawn of the person across the street. Someone called 911, and they sent a fire engine and an ambulance. Two firemen went up to the guy and told him he can't sleep there. Then the ambulance driver used his public address system to bellow, "YOU CAN"T SLEEP THERE!" Then they turned their sirens back on and left, having earned their government salary for the day. The homeless guy looked slightly stunned and/or bemused before he fell asleep again.
Today we drive to Thunder Bay. Then Winnipeg tomorrow, and on to Saskatoon the next day. I'm reading David Foster Wallace's history and analysis of mathematical infinity. It's unsurprisingly fascinating. Assuming internet connections continue to appear as we head farther into the wilderness, I'll keep you posted.
We're in a hotel room in Sault Ste. Marie, having driven all day yesterday with Alison's dad and brother from Toronto. We're on our way to Saskatoon to see her grandfather, who is turning 100. We made this plan long ago and now it's starting to seem kind of crazy, but it's also pretty fun so far. I've got a paper cup full of horrible coffee beside me, Alison's in the shower, and her dad and brother are busy pacing around and repacking. There's a Dairy Queen across the street and a bowling alley connected to the hotel. Andrew (Alison's brother [confusing, I know]) and I considered doing a little bowling last night after dinner, but in the end we all just went to bed early, completely exhausted.
We were in Toronto for a full day before setting out on the drive, and we got to see our friends Jeff and Tim playing some softball in a nice little park off Christie.
It was very relaxed and pleasant. Almost made TO seem like a possible place to live. Then we got back to Alison's parents' for dinner and there was a homeless guy asleep on the lawn of the person across the street. Someone called 911, and they sent a fire engine and an ambulance. Two firemen went up to the guy and told him he can't sleep there. Then the ambulance driver used his public address system to bellow, "YOU CAN"T SLEEP THERE!" Then they turned their sirens back on and left, having earned their government salary for the day. The homeless guy looked slightly stunned and/or bemused before he fell asleep again.
Today we drive to Thunder Bay. Then Winnipeg tomorrow, and on to Saskatoon the next day. I'm reading David Foster Wallace's history and analysis of mathematical infinity. It's unsurprisingly fascinating. Assuming internet connections continue to appear as we head farther into the wilderness, I'll keep you posted.
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