Our Final Post

Hello Everyone, 

We are sad to say that our project has ended and this will be our final post.  Life is a funny thing.  When we started this project on January 1, 2010 I looked ahead at the year to come and thought that our life was quite settled and that it wouldn't be "life's circumstances" that would make it difficult to complete this project.  If anything, I thought that we might get lazy and just give up or possibly run out of ideas.  Neither one of those things led to us giving up on this idea. 

We had some big changes in our life near the end of July.  The first one came when Ken decided that due to our current financial situation (basically living paycheque to paycheque), in combination with our goals for the future, one of which is to be able to buy a home in our lifetime, that he need to get a different job.  He decided that the best option for him was to go back to working out of the city on the oil rigs.  We had planned on this not happening until around September.  Well, it's not yet September and he has been doing this for 5 weeks already! Things happened so quickly that I felt like my head was spinning around like Beatlejuice's. Ken wanted to do some research on which company he wanted to work for.  He had worked in the oil patch in the past and knew the reputations of some of the companies but still wanted to check in to them a bit more.  He went to two companies, just to ask questions, and they both offered him a job.  One lady actually filled out an application for him eventhough he said repeatedly that he was just there to ask questions and didn't want to fill out an application.  So before we knew it he was whisked away to work.  He works for two weeks and comes home for one week.  For about 5 days before he left on his first hitch (that is what they call their sets of shifts)we were running around like crazy making sure he had the proper clothes, supplies etc.  It was that week when we decided to give up our project.  He was still working at his old job during the day and after work and in the evenings we were doing all of the preparing.  It just all became too much and we couldn't find any time in the day to do a "different thing".   Meanwhile, my brother decided to come stay with us in Edmonton because he needed a bit more steady employment too.  So that meant that I had to find extra time to get our spare room ready for him and orient him to a new city.  Ken drove him around one day to talk to some people about jobs while I helped him do research on bus routes etc.  I wanted to have some time to spend with him to help him with things that he needed and make him feel comfortable here.  He has been here for short visits before but never had to navigate the city on his own. So life has been a bit hectic lately.  One part of me really regrets giving up the project, another part knows that realistically I couldn't have done it every day with everything else that was going on and yet another part of me wouldn't want to do it without Ken.  So, as you can see I have mixed feelings about it being over. It was a really great project and I do miss all of our adventures.

I thought I would share some of our favourite adventures with you all.  These are in no particular order they are just some things that stood out for us.  Feel free to read back in our blog to see why we enjoyed these days:
Day 9: Family Game Night
Day 13: Olympic Torch and Theatre
Day 16: Watching our friend's band
Day 17: Ice Festival
Day 20: River Valley Walk
Day 26: Couples Communication
Day 27: Motley Crue Concert
Day 26: Ted.com
Day 51: Silver Skate Festival
Day 64: Audrey's 80's theme party
Day 66: Listening to birdies
Day 73: Flying a kite
Day 78: Documentary - No Impact Man
Day 87: Chicago!
Day 90: Jigsaw puzzle
Day 102: 50 questions that will free your mind
Day 104: Carving our initials in a tree
Day 108: River Valley Hike
Day 111: Story Slam
Day 117: Visit with my brother
Day 122: Ravine Clean-up
Day 124: Cardmaking
Day 164: Chinese Lion Dancing
Day 170: Dance Recital
Day 173: Landscape photo lecture
Day 174: Meeting the author
Day 176: Edmonton Oilers Draft Party
Day 183: Batting Cages

There are many reasons that we particulary enjoyed those activities.  For some of them it was because they were a completely new thing to us, for others it was because we shared them together or with family and friends.  I am thrilled that we have this blog to look back on and remember those days.

I want to end our blog by telling you about some of the exciting things that we had hoped to do but didn't get the chance to.  I kept a running list of things that we had hoped to try or see.  I will keep this list in the hopes that we get to do these activities at some point. Here they are:
-photobooth
-124th Street Art Gallery Walk
-visit historical churches
-Ride the street car
-Devonian botanical gardens
-watch a sunrise
-play hide and seek
-geocaching
-indy film
-gopher museum
-drive-in theatre
-buy "real" art
-road trip
-wear our pj's for one whole day
-host a dinner party
-host a traditional afternoon tea
-horseback riding
-volunteer
-Muttart Conservatory
-watch Jr. lacrosse
-curling
-play horseshoes
-go to Katie's Crossing (a train car in the country where you can have lunch)
-Family Tree
-be an extra in a film or an audience member in a show
-tubing or sliding down a snowy hill
-x-country skiing
-bowling
-skinny dipping
-sleep under the stars
-try a spin class
-take free community classes such as art or dance
-make homemade bread
-learn to knit

The list that I have is about 5 times as long as the one that I just wrote.  I truly only included the ideas that I liked the most on this list. 

I would love to hear your thoughts on our project.  Hopefully we have inspired some of you to try different things or just get off your couch and experience life.  My greatest learning from this is that if I ever decide to take on a similar project I will limit it to about once a week. I think that way we could free up more time to spend on the activity (it was always easiest to fit in activities on the weekend) and possibly put a bit more money into it.....although we did learn that there are ALOT of things you can do on a limited budget.

Take Care Everyone.  Thanks for your support of this project.  Sorry we only made it half way through!

Day 190 (July 10, 2010): Crusin' the strip

Today we cruised Whyte Ave. Whyte Ave is a popular night spot and hang out spot in Edmonton. There are lots of bars, theatres, restaurants, artsy stores and alternative shopping options. We rolled the windows down, turned up the tunes and cruised back and forth. We ended our excursion by going to Dairy Queen for a blizzard, mmmmmmm!!!

Here are some pics:

A funny picture of Ken.  He was laughing and his tongue was sticking out.

Me!

A beautiful day for a cruise!

Stuff on Whyte Ave.

We discovered that we have a brand new Shoppers Drug Mart in our community.  It looks huge!

This is the building that the old Shoppers was in and now it looks empty.  It is right across the street from the new one.

On our way to DQ!

Mmmm!

Day 189 (July 9, 2010): Arena Football

Today we watched “Arena Football” on tv. They telecast games every Friday night but we have never been at home to watch one so we made sure that we were tonight. Since the game is played in a hockey rink setting it is quite different than football played on a regular sized field. They have some different rules and strategies. It was interesting to watch but a bit confusing at times. It is a bit of a faster game because the field is so much smaller. It doesn’t take as long for them to get a touchdown. The scores can get quite high. We both thought that it would be more fun to be at a live game than it was to watch it on tv.

Day 188 (July 8, 2010): Art Exhibit at the Public Library

Today we went to the downtown location of the Edmonton Public Library. There was an art installation there that we wanted to check out. 

This is a quilt that was made by a local artist. She gathered thoughts from new immigrants on their experiences coming to Canada. The stories are written on the quilt. It was so interesting to read the dichotomy of responses from the different people. One person said that people in Canada are so welcoming and friendly while another person said that Canadians are really reserved and it is hard to get to know them because they don’t open up to you. I think the quilt exhibited the fact that you can’t generalize what “Canadians” are like (or Albertans, or Edmontonians) nor can you generalize what a new immigrant’s experience would be like coming to this country. There are so many factors that can influence this including the thoughts, feelings, beliefs, values, morals etc. etc. etc. of the immigrants themselves. Some of the stories are amusing. One lady said that she moved to Fort McMurray in the middle of winter and didn’t know what -16 degrees was like and the first morning she walked outside with wet hair and in sandals and ended up in the doctors office because she got sick. Some of the stories were heart wrenching. One person mentioned that they are often confused about their self identity because they don’t feel completely at home in Canada but then when they went back to their home country after several years the country had changed so much that they didn’t fit in there either.

Day 187 (July 7, 2010): New Recipe

Today our plans had to change because I got tied up at work and it rained.  We had planned on going on a cemetary tour of the oldest cemetary in Edmonton.  Unfortunately one of the parents who has a child registered in my summer camp was very late picking up their child and then it started to rain so we had to come up with a different plan. I recently go this new cook book from Herbal Magic (a weight loss program)  and really wanted to try one of the recipes.  Since we couldn't go outside and it was kind of cold and crappy out I thought that some nice comfort food would be great.  I made the "Healthy Choice Chicken".  It is sort of like Chicken Parmigian but with the Healthy Choice brand of pasta sauce and alot of extra veggies in the sauce.  It was really yummy!

This is a pic I got off the internet.  My recipe was similar to this because you bake it in the oven but it wasn't as greasy looking as this and had more veggies. Unfortunately we were so excited to eat that we were half way through our bowls before I thought of taking a picture. By then, it didn't look pretty so I decided not to take a picture.

Day 186 (July 6, 2010): The Paint Spot Art Exhibit

Today we went to a local paint supply store called "The Paint Spot" http://www.paintspot.ca/ .  They were displaying paintings done by children from Haiti.   Unfortunately we didn't have our camera so I can't show you any of them.  If you live in Edmonton you should really check them out!  The paintings were of a variety of subjects.  A couple of them had the Haiti flag in them.  It is kind of a complicated flag and they did a great job painting it.  Some of them were really abstract.  Some of them clearly showed the story that they were trying to tell.  One in particular showed a bunch of Haitian people lined up in the background watching a scene that was going on in the foreground.  The scene was of a Haitian man chained up and being tortured by caucasian people with the flag of France.  Obviously this was showing scenes from colonization. It was a very emotional painting.  There were also a couple of paintings that seemed to show everyday life in Haiti, grass huts, people carrying baskets on their heads etc.  It was a really cool exhibit.  It was also neat to go to the new Paint Spot location.  It is two blocks from our house and we had no idea that it had moved there.  It used to be further down the street but recently moved.  They have workshops on different types of art mediums every weekend.  We are hoping to get one of those in sometime.

Day 185 (July 5, 2010): Planting a tree

Today we planted our Norway Spruce Tree that we got at the Reuse-it Fair a few weeks ago.  I hope it grows and that someday we can put it somewhere meaninful to us.  It will be kind of cool to be able to look back at it and remember this project.

The tree came in a little kit. It has instructions a seed puck, a  little pot and we got about 5 seeds.  So actually we could get 5 trees in the end.

We had to pour water on the seed puck and let it swell and then try to shove it down into the pot.  Our seed puck was too big for the pot before we put the water on it so this was a bit challenging.  Hopefully it works.  We will keep you updated about our little trees.

Day 185 (July 4th, 2010): Golf and Greenhouse

So first of all I want to say that "yay, we are half way done this project".  I can't believe it.  We had our first serious conversation about ending this project early this week.  We are both extremely busy and are finding it difficult to fit in all of our activities along with the rest of the obligations that we have.  We are both very committed to going to the gym as often as we can, everyday if possible, as well as work, running errands etc.  Sometimes it feels like there aren't enough hours in the day.  We discussed the fact that one of the reasons we started this project was so that we would "live life" instead of sitting on the couch and not experiencing anything.  We want to have a full life that is enriched by all sorts of adventures.  With that in mind though we had a discussion about weighing the stress that at times is involved with a project like this against the benefits of the experiences.  We decided to keep going with the project for now but gave ourselves permission to end it if things changed for us or got too hectic.  Basically, we are amazed at what we have accomplished already and if we did end the project early we wouldn't be disappointed at this time.....afterall, we have done 185 different things this year!!!  WOW!

Secondly, happy Independence Day to our American followers.  We hope you have a wonderful holiday.

Mel's activity for today:   Today I went to a greenhouse.  Ken was golfing for the afternoon so I was on my own.  I have wanted to go bum around a greenhouse for awhile but just haven't gotten around to it.  I was sort of hoping that they would have some cheap veggie plants on sale since it is quite late in the season.  Unfortunately I was about a week late.  They had a few herbs on sale.  I was hoping to get some mint so I could try to perfect my mint tea that was so awful a few weeks ago but they didn't have any of that.  I did see one neat herb though.  I can't remember the exact name of it.  It was a "lemon-something-or-other" and when I rubbed the leaf and smelled it, it smelled exactly like lemons.  I considered buying it but then I thought "why would I do that when I can just use real lemons in my recipes".  Anyway, I had a nice relaxing time just wandering through the greenhouse looking at the different plants.

Ken's activity for today: Today I went golfing with a friend of ours, Blair. I have not been golfing in almost 2 years so I was a little rusty, needless to say. I took my clubs that Mel and I found at the Strathcona league reuse it fair. They were very old clubs but beggars can not be choosers. I did not feel too bad because Blair is not that good at golf either. We took it well considering that there were 3 young teenagers that passed us on the course. They were training for the PGA I believe, ha ha not really but they were really good. I can not remember what I shot on the 9 holes but it was not that good, I would estimate about a 70 or 80 I think. Ah well it was a fun. I will go again this year most likely.

Day 184 (July 3, 2010): lunch with family

Today I made lunch for Ken's stepsister Jen and her fiancee Greg.  They live in Yellowknife and were down here for a shopping trip.  They are getting married in August.  Unfortunately due to my job I can't really take time off in the summer so we won't be going to the wedding.  We were really glad that we got to see them and hang out a bit again.  Hopefully sometime we will be able to go up and visit them.  Anyway, we sort of did two different things today.  The first one was visiting with them.  We haven't seen them in over a year.  The second one was that I made a new recipe for lunch.  We had vegetarian baked stuffed tomatoes.  They were so delicious!  They had rice, zuccinni, onion, celery and basil in them.  I am always a bit nervous to try out a new recipe for the first time when I have company in case it doesn't work out but it did this time so I was lucky.

Day 183 (July 2, 2010): Batting Cages

Today we went to the batting cages.  Ken's friend Jay came with us.  I was a bit nervous.  I hadn't hit a ball with a bat probably since I was about 15 years old......we won't say how long ago that was but it was quite a long time ago.  However, I did play alot of sports growing up that use hand-eye coordination such as lacrosse so I was hoping that those skills would still be with me.  The place that we went to gives you 10 pitches for 1 token.  I was extremely excited because on my first token I connected with the ball on all 10 pitches!  Yay Me!!!  Not all of the hits were pretty but at least I didn't strike out.  By the end of my third token, 30 pitches later, my arm was getting a bit sore and I missed a couple but all in all I was happy with my performance.  Ken and Jay did quite well and both smoked a few really good ones.  It is hard to tell how far they would have gone because the nets overhead and around us stopped the ball sometimes.  Ken took these pics on his blackberry and I didn't even think to get one of him:(

Jay

Me

Me again

Day 182 (July 1, 2010): Happy Canada Day!!

Today Mel and I went to Sherwood Park for Canada Day and attempted to eat at a free pancake breakfast but the line up was approximately 700m long so we decided to go out for breakfast instead. We went tothe  Road King truckstop for an awesome buffet breakfast. It was really good and I ate a lot. We then came into Old Strathcona (the community we live in) and walked over to where the annual Silly Summer Parade was passing by. There were a lot of cool floats and participants.  Mel will write about the pictures since she took them:

Look at all the people on the sidewalks and boulevards.

We had a great view of the parade because we were on the corner.  We could see this view to our left and the previous picture was straight in front of us.  We got to see the floats coming, then turn the corner right in front of us and the go down the other street.

The guy in the passenger seat is wearing a beaver costume, lol.

Horsies!!

Strathcona Seniors Association

Same organization as the last one.

Cute doggies.  They all had little booties on.  This one is hard to see them in because his booties are the same colour as his fur.

I liked the tree in the back of the truck with the paper maple leafs.

It says, "Maple Syrup, Hippity Hop, Drink it down and Bubble alot".  I not exactly sure what that means.

Brazillian culture

Brazillian dancers.  They were awesome. They can really move their hips.  It gave me inspiration for my Zumba fitness class, lol.

I can't remember what this organization was but I liked the guy with the snow shovel.  The band was good too.

These guys were raising awareness about donating blood.  They had some great cheers that they were chanting.

I loved the big "Mr. Mugs" dogs.  Did any of our followers ever read those stories in school when they were really young?  Our "readers" in grade 1 were about Mr. Mugs.

Punjabi Cultural Association of Alberta.  The children were dancing.  They were cute but it looked like they had a hard time standing up on the float. I was a bit concerned that some of them might fall off.

Edmonton River Valley Segway tours. They looked really fun to ride.

This was a cheerleading troup.  I can't remember the name of the organization but they were really good.  When they got further down the street they threw one girl so high that her legs hit the trees.

He was just tossing her back and forth like she was a feather.

This was a float about some kind of halloween festival.  See the fake arm sticking out of the back door?  This car had wicked hydraulics.  Moments after it left I realized that I should have taken a video of it.  Darn!

This dog was so cute.  It just sat there all patient watching the parade.  It was not bothered at all by the people or noise.  Lots of little kids came to pet it and it was really patient and gentle.  The only time it moved was when it saw other animals and then it got up and walked towards them to visit but it didn't bark or anything.  So cute!!

Day 181 (June 30, 2010): Virtual Museum

Today Mel and I went through a virtual museum on the computer. I didn't even know that they existed but a couple of weeks ago when we were researching activities for our blog we discovered one.  It looked cool so we added it to our list of things to try out.  http://www.museevirtuel-virtualmuseum.ca/index-eng.jsp  We scimmed through all of the categories and then got totally immersed in the history of lacrosse portion. It was really cool and we learned a lot. I learned that Canadian Aboriginal people might not have invented the sport but it was most popular in North and South America but was played all over the world in similar forms. Mel found it very interesting that it was a game that was passed on through so many generations and that the aboriginals in Canada were actually banned from playing professional lacrosse by the government of the sport. There are many other topics to research on these museums. Though not as cool as real museums they are handy for people that cannot make it to museums.

Day 180 (June 29, 2010): Storm Watching

Today Mel and I watched a huge storm that came in. Actually two storms came in.  One came from the west and one came up from the south.  There was about a half hour break between them.  We were expecting a hail storm so we went to cover the garden with blankets but it ended up that we didn't need to because we did not get any hail. It was a really good storm. Just west of the city got a tornado but we were didn't. We had something else planned for tonight but then Mel remembered that our friend Audrey suggested that we watch a storm sometime and since we were going to be outside covering the plants we decided to switch our plans at the last minute.  The pictures explain the rest.

This is how the sky looked from the car when we were on our way to our storage unit to get some old blankets to cover the garden.

This one is cool.  It is nice and sunny one one side and you can see the storm coming in on the other side.

We are now on our way back in to the city from our storage unit.  We are driving into the storm.  Notice that where we are now the grass isn't even blowing.  It is not windy at all.

I took these while we were at the garden putting out the blankets.  It is really dark!

This is the sun through the trees after the first storm.

I took this picture through our bedroom window.  Unfortunately you can see the screen but it is still a nice picture.  This is during the second storm.