Shine On - Blogs

It's so hard to get back into the groove after  reading week! Classes this week have been a bit of a drag. But I've got a German project and a midterm, and three papers coming up in the next 4-6 weeks, so I've GOT to focus. I think chocolate is going to be a necessity...

My friend Shelli nominated me for a Shine On award, for having an enjoyable blog. Thank, Shelli! :) Shelli blogs about all kinds of things, but her influence is largely adjusting to living in Canada after being an American for her whole life. I love her style!

I like rules, so I did a bit of Googling to make sure I was following them properly. It seems like a pretty fluid award - kind of like a chain email, which I find amusing!

The rules:
1. Show appreciation of the blogger who nominated you and link back to them in your post.
2. Add the award logo to your blog.
3. Share 7 things about yourself.
4. Nominate 15 or so bloggers you admire.
5. Contact your chosen bloggers to let them know.

Seven Things:
1. I'm a maple syrup snob. We used to make our own when I was a kid, and I won't touch that maple-flavoured syrup. Blech!
2. I'm an Anglophile at heart. If I ever got a chance to go to England, I might not come back. :)
3. My current tv watching goal is to watch all the seasons of Monty Python's Flying Circus
4. For Lent this year I'm trying to go to church every Wednesday night as well as Sunday, and to read my Bible more. I've missed one Wednesday, because I went to the Philharmonic. And the Bible reading? Well, I'm trying!
5. In my head, I'm a fabulous gardener and food canner. Maybe one day I will be in real life...if we ever move to BC!
6. I'm working on a steampunk outfit for comic expo. I've been working on it for a long time. This WILL be the year I finish it! :P
7. My favourite thing about the Oscars is looking at all of the dresses in the magazines the week after. Otherwise the only time I've ever watched it was the year Colin Firth was up for best actor for The King's Speech.


Fifteen Blogs:
1. My friend Kristin, the AmeriCandian Gal, also a new Canadian, blogs mostly about the differences between the two countries. I learn things about Canada from her! :)

2. Deborah Niemann has a farm called Antiquity Oaks and I have a bit of farm envy! I'm too squeamish to raise animals, I think, but I really enjoy her blog. Plus, she has LOTS of cute baby goats. She's also the author of a couple of great books - look them up!

3. Club Jade is my source for all things Star Wars. No rumour-mongering there!

4. Drawing Saudade is Saudade's attempt to draw every day for a year. She's pretty great - she posts every night, and I always look forward to seeing what she comes up with. I won one of her pieces in a contest - a cute little baby seal. I'm a big fan!

5. If I had to choose just one blog to read for the rest of forever, it would probably be EPBOT. Jen Yates blogs about Disney, steampunk, books, home decorating, crafting, general geekyness, cats, marriage, cons...I, along with about a million other fangirls, would love to be her real life friend! :)

6. Jen's other blog is Cake Wrecks. If you like snark, have a slightly inappropriate sense of humour, and enjoy life's absurdities, you'll get a giggle out of Cake Wrecks. Warning: do not attempt to eat (some cakes can be quite nausea inducing) or drink (danger of spitting all over your computer) while reading Cake Wrecks.

7. I met Erin at Dog Under My Desk online through our mutual love of Sanctuary, which, alas, has been cancelled, but we've found other things to talk about! I don't sew, but I love her designs. She blogs about sewing and fangirling, and if you are into sewing, she has great purse patterns. I'd call her a Handbag Engineer, because the amount of structural work she puts into them blows my mind.

8. Do you have a friend coming for dinner? Someone who can't eat gluten or dairy? Wondering what on earth to feed them? My friend Heather and her partner Josh between the two of them cover both of those 'special needs'. :) They have a food blog called Going Against the Grain, with great food and great photos. Try the Nanaimo Bars...

9. Continuing with the food theme, I love the Outlander Kitchen. Theresa lives on one of the Gulf Islands off the BC coast, and writes recipes based on Diana Gabaldon's Outlander books. I haven't tried many of them, but her posts are fun to read, and if you're a fan of Diana Gabaldon, this is a rather essential aspect of the fandom. :)

10. My friend Teresa has a freelance photography business, and she does beautiful work. She also lived in New Zealand for a while and has some amazing scenery photographs. Her most recent post is about her nephew, who also happens to be my newest godson. :)

11. Sarah Sundin writes wonderful WWII historical fiction, and everyday she posts a little snippet of what happened on that day during the war. She also posts book reviews and longer essays about life during the war. She appeals to both the English major and the history minor in me!

12. Worldview Everlasting, created by Pastor Jonathan Fisk, is a collaborative blog that answers questions about Christianity in general and about Lutheranism in particular. He also does a weekly vlog, which is usually a treasure trove of geeky references.


Alright, that's not 15, but this is all I've got! Hopefully you can find a new gem to add to your reading list!

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Hiking in Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park

Life is funny sometimes. Opportunities come up and you respond to them as you feel appropriate, and I wonder: if we realized the vast consequences tiny decisions can influence, would we be more deliberate in our actions, or would we be paralyzed by indecision, or would we become even more careless when choosing actions? As a fan of scifi, particularly of the Stargate and Star Trek variety, where time travel, temporal paradoxes, and muddled time lines as the result of a moment's hesitation are all in a day's work, I thought I was rather aware of the ripples tiny decisions make, but one of those ripples snuck up and took me by surprise last week. :)

I'm sorry if you're one of the people who's ear I've already talked off about how great Sanctuary was/is, but that's where this ripple started. Last September I discovered my favourite TV show ever (which is really saying something...) and then started following the actors from it as they worked on various other projects, which is how I started watching Hell on Wheels. As the title may suggest, this show is not for the squeamish...it's on AMC, which will probably tell you quite a lot...anyway, the Sanctuary actor I started watching the show for keeps a low internet profile, so I started following the lead actor, Anson Mount, on Twitter. He's an interesting person, and while I don't always agree with him, he's more polite than a lot of Twitter celebrities with whom I don't agree, and he's really great about interacting with his fans.

In April Anson tweeted a blog that someone he knows had written about a visit to the set of Hell on Wheels. Of course I checked it out, and as I was very entertained by Shelli's 'voice', I started at the beginning and caught up on all of her old blog posts, and subscribed to new ones. I have a pretty wide range of blogs I follow, and I'm a fairly regular commenter, because I know how nice it is to know that someone's actually reading what you write. (Insert crickets chirping on my blog here. :) Shelli started chatting back, and eventually she was back in Calgary and emailed me to hang out, which really got me excited, because I really like making new friends, but in person I'm pretty much an introvert when it comes to starting up a conversation, so becoming internet friends first was a good way to get past my initial shyness (which, can you believe, has in the past been taken for snobbery?! :P).

And I figured what better way to introduce someone from LA to my favourite things about Alberta than to take a hike in a place I'd never been! :) Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park is about half an hour from my house, just west of Calgary on the way to Cochrane. It's so close and so beautiful, I can't believe I've never been there before.

CP Rail train and prairie skies!

The paths are mostly paved, and very well maintained. The views were absolutely stunning - we were close enough to Calgary to still glimpse Canada Olympic Park in the east, as well as see the mountains to the west.

Cute little critter!

One of the interpretive signs said that badgers live in the park, and I got really excited, because I didn't know we even had any in Alberta, but the park guide said that they're nocturnal so we wouldn't likely see one anyway. :( Still, we saw enough other things to make the hike worthwhile!

Old general store/post office. The original brick facing is piled up behind and to the left.

I ADORE rural decay. The old store is fenced off so we couldn't get too close, but it was close enough to spark my interest. The park was originally the site of a ranch, and a CP rail town with a brick-making industry. Eventually the town folded and all that's left is this building and a pile of bricks. My minor is in Canadian History, so this is all right up my alley!

It looked like rain!

We walked and talked for hours and hardly even noticed! I tend to get bored fairly easily when doing nothing but walking, because I'm usually multitasking like a crazy person, but when you add in talking about everything under the sun, the time just flew. :) The skies were clouding over and there was a bit of a drizzle by the time we were heading back, but despite faint thunder in the distance, we managed to avoid bad weather. My car needs a bath though...the road into the park is gravel, and very very very dusty!

After leaving the park we headed into Cochrane for some world-famous MacKay's Ice Cream, which you can read about on Shelli's blog...she posts more pictures and isn't as rambley as me... :)

So, thanks to Anson Mount, who I followed because of Hell on Wheels, which I checked out because of Christopher Heyerdahl and Sanctuary, which I first noticed because of Amanda Tapping and Stargate - in short, my fangirling of scifi - I met a friend, hiked, and ate ice cream. And it was a glorious break from a week of helping with Vacation Bible School...which is definitely a story all on its own. :)

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