We've got snow....

Couple feet of it, just this weekend. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! I find myself contemplating velvet drapes for the insulation factor (we're wondering if this house has any!). At night, we're both very grateful for Seamus' tendency to crawl under the covers - thus earning the alternate nomer, "The Furry Hot Water Bottle." Photos, below: the back yard, Seamus in the newly-painted bathroom, wondering when we're going to get a curtain up (so are we), and Mike, hard at work in his study.



Today, we officially got into Skype - as it's our niece Madelyn's birthday! - so we talked to - and SAW! - the Pengs a couple of times and were able to meet the new rabbit online (our Skype name: mikandkato). How Jetsons of us! Thanks to our friend Terry in Slovenia, we've been injesting as much of the new Battlestar Galactica as we can on the laptop. We also managed to chat to our friend Sherida in Switzerland, so all in all our techno/sci-fi headspace is a tad surreal. I'm sure the plummeting temperatures have something to do with that.

And now, for the Alberta Rant: Guess how much Albertans spend PER CAPITA on gambling annually? $6,900, boys and girls. Guess who spends the most per capita on liquor in North America? Except for, maybe, Texas. Alberta. Young friends Sally & Deane from Kitchener (we didn't know them before) moved here the same time as we did. Deane, who's a thespian, was driving home from his job at at dinner theatre at West Edmonton Mall and was hit by a drunk driver. Fortunately, he swerved and escaped injury himself, but their car was totalled. The guy driving the jeep said that he was a single father of two, he'd "had a few with his buddies after work and he really needed to keep the cops out of it"....! The police were called, but alas, too busy to show up for a couple of hours, during which time Buddy in the Jeep sobered up with his heater on while Deane stood outside his smashed-up car leaking oil in the freezing cold.

The number one cause of death on the oil patch is driving. I don't know how many of those are alcohol-related, but there's an alarming lack of outrage over drunk driving here - just seems to "go with the territory."

The upside: Mike had a whole entourage attend his first "production," a condensed version of Sam Shephard's "The God of Hell." Great feedback all around. He's trying to remember how to write papers now (and, perhaps, questioning if he ever actually mastered that skill). We can walk to everything: the Oodle Noodle house, really (as in, REALLY) great coffee in any direction, the bank, Planet Organic food store, which is reminiscent of The Big Carrot in Toronto but it's all under one roof! And, as of tomorrow - unless a meeting that I have today at 4:15pm goes surprisingly, out-of-the-ballpark well - I will have gainful employment at the University of Alberta in Development. Finding "appropriate" work has been an unexpected challenge; on Thursday, three excellent opportunities materialized and one was offered to me. The meeting this afternoon is at Economic Development so I'll hear them out but will likely go with the U of A (I need to make a decision by tomorrow) - great pay & benefits (which is what we need right now) and I can walk. Alleluia.

Frederick Buechner's take on jobs: "If people are in it only for the money, the money is all they gain, and when they finally retire, they may ask themselves if it was worth giving most of their lives for. If they're doing it for its own sake - if they enjoy doing it and the world needs it done - it may very possibly help them to gain their own souls."

Here's hoping!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Sunday was spent in Red Deer, Alberta where we enjoyed our first - wait for it - deep-fried turkey! - with many cousins, Kate's parents & god-mum. It was lovely...we were still very much thinking of the Pengs in Ontario, the annual Kirkham extravaganza, the gloriousness of Featherstone Estates Winery and the Morning Glory Café Therapy Group - we miss all of you very much.

I haven't found work yet, although I've met some really interesting people, including the publisher of Venture Business Magazine (who is NOT a Conservative, thank God.). Our very good friend Sherida Deeprose's mom, Mary, is an artist who just had an opening here on the weekend; Sherida's brother used to be in a really great garage band, and one of his former band-mates is now an M.L.A. (in Ontario, we say M.P.P.) here, and he's with the NDP. It was great to be reminded that miracles happen. He was at the opening also - and seems to be having just as much fun in the provincial legistlature as he was when he was in the band! Mike & I really enjoyed participating in a pajama night at our good friend Kathie's school, where Mike read Shel Silverstein poetry to all the kids - who really got into it. The parents seemed pleased, too!

In the coming days, I (obviously) need to find gainful employment, finish painting the house and -yup - find homes for 4 kittens. The photos attached are from my mom & dad's farm.

And yup, the guest room is ready - Cristina Vanin was the first to use it!

While MIke continues to find his studies incredibly challening (I make him watch "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" every week so that he gets a break), we're not freaking out on a daily basis. Now, it's every four days or so...and that, friends, is progress. So we're grateful.

We're definitely here...!

Mike & I arrived a month ago and I think that the shock is finally starting to wear off. We've been shocked by a number of things, and - in no particular order - these include:
1. How expensive everything is here, from housing to food. Don't get us started on the liquor stores, which Klein (grrrrr) privatized some years ago. The farmer's market is mostly peopled with well-heeled, urban shoppers who don't mind dropping, oh, 50% - 200% more than we're used to paying at the Kitchener Market (man, do we miss that place).
2. How much work an M.F.A. in theatre direction entails. Mike has stopped freaking out (that's a novel experience in itself) but is frequently overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work.
3. How much money there is. Alberta is, indeed, booming; this, however, has come at a huge cost. Today we heard that oil companies owe around $200 million in uncollected royalties, and the environmental impact of the oil sands project is staggering.

On the upside: the squirrels are cute, the air is still relatively fresh and people are, for the most part, quite nice. There are kittens on the farm (which I must find homes for!) and lots of cousins in the offing for Thanksgiving. It's been great to see old friends (some of which I have 30 years of history with), while Mike's professors and fellow grad students are a superb group of people. There is TONS of theatre here - we've seen the first show at U of A's Studio Theatre, a rather intriguing producation ("Mrs. Klein"). I've had some fascinating meetings re: potential jobs, and a few more are in the offing. Nothing definite yet, but I'm learning a lot.

Let us know what you'd like to see on this blog. Coming soon: top weekly picks from The Edmonton Journal, which - thankfully - is a fantastic newspaper. Recently, Ralph Klein stated in the Journal that gambling was the only vice he's maintained (LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE).