Day 177 (June 26, 2010): Reuse-It Fair

Today we went to the annual Reuse-it fair at our community league. They had some stuff that you could take for free and some stuff that you could swap things for. They had all kinds of environmental demos and displays like composting, recycling etc. They had free flower give aways for kids. I got a free skipping rope, which will help me with my endless quest to get in shape. Ken got some used golf clubs. We are not really golfers but these will be good to maybe get us started. I also got a free seed kit for a Norway Spruce. Perhaps I will plant it near our community garden some day. It is a really neat event. The organizers did a great job at getting other community organizations in there to provide additional info and activities.

Day 176 (June 25, 2010): Edmonton Oilers Draft Party

Today was the NHL draft for 2010. Since our Edmonton Oilers did really bad this year, last in the league, we got the first overall draft pick. The Oilers organization and fans were really excited about this. They have never had the first overall draft pick before. So the Oilers organization planned a draft party at Rexall Place. Tickets were only $5.00 each. There was a free BBQ, chances to win prizes, free giveaways like silver pompoms and of course the atmosphere of watching the draft with thousands of other Oilers fans. It was really fun. After the Oilers picked Taylor Hall as their 2010 first round pick they gave away 100 Taylor Hall Oilers jerseys. Unfortunately we didn’t win one:( As an Oilers fan it was cool to be there for that moment.  Here are some pics from Ken's Blackberry of the moment!

This is while we were waiting for the announcement.  They gave out silver pompoms to everyone.

Everyone was cheering because TSN was showing us on TV.

The big moment.  You can see the streamers that they shot out from the sides of the screen.

Look at all of the streamers!  How exciting!!!

I just wanted to add in here, for all of my friends who are thinking “Mel is a Red Wings fan and Ken is a Canadiens fan, why were they so excited about this draft?”, the Oilers are still my second favourite team to the Red Wings! Ken also cheers for the Oilers from time to time as long as they are not playing the Montreal Canadiens.

Day 175 (June 24, 2010): Practical Joke and Watching Slow Pitch

Today I went to watch Ken play slow pitch. He started playing with this Rec. league team a few weeks ago. A co-worker of his is on the team and they needed another player so Ken joined them. I was supposed to go play one night but I wasn’t feeling well so my friend Ashley played instead. Tonight I just went to watch. It was fun to watch them. They had a bit of a rough game. It was their last game of the spring season and they didn’t play as well as they usually do but it still looked fun. At the end of the game they had a discussion about whether or not they would join for the summer team. They had enough people to make a summer team and so they decided to register again for the summer. They asked Ken and I if we would play and we said yes. I was a bit nervous to play before but after watching the game and seeing that it really is just for fun, I am excited to play this summer. I will blog about my first game in a few weeks when it happens. It will be the first time that I have played baseball since I was a kid.  Anyway, after the game we went out to the Canadian Brewhouse for a beer and snacks.  I had a really yummy big beer.........I haven't had one in quite awhile. Sometimes eating healthy sucks but it sure was a nice treat.  Over our beer and snacks I heard about Ken's thing for today:


Today while I was slaving away at work I spoke to another employee who has had the wits scared out of him by our co-worker Tom. Tom drives truck for our company and he has an annoying habit of blowing the horn at us when we walk in front of the truck. Every time he does it to me it scares the crap out of me. Anyway, while we were discussing pranks he said that on the rigs the guys used to turn the heat on in the loaders and cats in the summer time so the drivers would get really hot when they got back in. On a whim I decided to do the same thing to Tom. While he was unloading the back of the truck I snuck into the cab and turned off the A/C and turned the fan and heat up to maximum and left it on until he went back into the truck roughly 1.5 hours later. When he went to go move the truck and park it for the day he came back and was sweating profusely. He was very upset in kind of a joking way because he knew that he got a prank pulled on him. When I asked him about playing baseball that evening he said he wasn’t sure if he would be able to because he would probably still be sweating, lol.

Day 174 (June 23, 2010): Meeting the author

First of all I just want to say hello to some of our new followers.  We would love to know how you heard about our blog.  Feel free to leave us comments!

Today we went to Audrey’s Books, it is a privately owned book store in downtown Edmonton. We went there to see a talk that was being given by a local author named Rene Cormier. He was discussing his book "The University of Gravel Roads: Global Lessons from a Four-Year Motorcycle Adventure" . He used a slide show of photos to tell us about his motocycle trip that spanned across many countries in North America, South America, Africa and Asia.   It was an intimate setting in the basement of the book store and about 20 people were there.  After the slideshow of his adventures we got to ask questions about motorcycling, travel or whatever we wanted.  I mentioned our project to him and asked if he had any ideas for us.  He said he would probably do something on the river in Edmonton like canoeing or kayaking.  We have been thinking about that so you might see that on our blog one day soon.

As a side note, we really enjoy going to the privately owned book stores in Edmonton.  We have quite a few of them in our own neighbourhood.  We have talked about going to Audrey's before but just never made it there. It is really cool.  Unfotunately we didn't have time to browse in there tonight so that might be another thing that we do one day for our project.

Day 173 (June 22,2010): "Making a scene: Landscapes Then and Now"

Tonight we went to the U of A for a free lecture on landscape photographers. It was really interesting. The person who was giving the talk (Maria Whiteman) is a professor in the Fine Arts department there. She discussed her favourite landscape photographers from around the world, what she enjoys about their photos and how they inspired her. She also showed some of her work. She used a slide show to do the presentation. The talk was actually really inspiring for both Ken and I. We left there thinking about what our next “photo project” should be……not that we are even photographers or anything. She did mention in her talk though that she thinks all people are photographers and that we should not be intimidated by it. That gave me a bit more confidence. She showed us some really cool pictures that she took with a 3 megapixel camera which also made me think that I could do more with my camera. Some of the photos that I enjoyed the most were the ones that documented the change in the landscape when industry comes into an area. It made me think of the rail yard that we mentioned last week when we went to the City of Edmonton’s community consultation. Perhaps one day we will go take some photos before they get started on all of the changes. Anyway, here are some photos by the photographers that she highlighted that I got off the net.

Bernd and Hilla Becher from Dusseldorf, Germany:

I really liked alot of their collections.

Andreas Gursky from Leipzig Germany:

Allan Sekula from Erie, Pennsylvania:

Thomas Struth from Gelden, Germany:

People viewing art.

Jeff Wall from Vancouver, Canada:

This is actually the photographer and his wife in a staged photo.

Edward Burtynsky from St. Catherines, Ontario:  His photos were some of my favourite. He documents environmental impact.

These are the nickel tailings ponds by Sudbury Ontario.

Alberta Oilsands

Sally Mann from Lexington, Virgina:

She photographed her family alot and they were often controversial photos.

Catherine Wagner from San Francisco, California

Last but certainly not least I thought I would include a photo by the person who gave the lecture, Maria Whiteman.  I could only find one of her recent ones.  It is a picture of dog's paw.  She is really interested in photographing animals right now and is doing a collection on taxidermy but I couldn't find any of those photos online. Also, she showed us some really cool landscape photos that she took in Ontario but I couldn't find any of those online either.

Day 172 (June 21, 2010): Playing Tribond

Today we played our new board game, Tribond. It was fun but I think it would be more fun if you hand enough people to play on teams. The instructions give modifications to play a 2 player game but it would be better if you had a teammate and could discuss some of the answers. The way the game works, for those of you haven’t played it, is that the opposite team reads 3 words or phrases to you and you have to figure out what the common link to all 3 of those words is. It sounds easy but some of the questions are quite hard and it would be good to be able to talk them out with your teammate(s). Anyway, it was fun and will be a great addition to our next game night with our friends. For $1.00 you can’t really go wrong.

Day 171 (June 20, 2010): Garage Sale-ing

** Some people call these tag sales or yard sales. **

Today we went garage sale-ing. We were lucky because we didn’t have to go far. 3 houses down from us a lady was having a moving sale. She is moving from a house to a condo so she was getting rid of lots of stuff. We got a board game (Tribond) for $1.00 and two boxes of jars for canning for $4.00. We do a lot of canning in the fall so I was happy with those. They can be quite expensive when you buy them from the store so that was a good deal. We don’t have a lot of storage so we didn’t buy anything else plus we already have a lot of stuff so we don’t really need anything else.

Day 170 (June 19, 2010): Dance Recital

Today we went to watch our niece’s tap dance recital. She was so cute! She is usually kind of shy and bashful but she was totally loving the attention that she was getting in her pretty dress and make up. It was hilarious to see her that way. The dance performances were all really good. The little kids were so cute. The older ones were really talented and their routines were quite interesting because they were more intricate and complicated.

She is the second one in on the left in this picture.  They danced to "Who put the Bomp in the bomp sha bomp sha bomp"  (I'm sure I spelled that totally wrong!) if you haven't heard the song before it is really cute.  The funny thing is I had it on a record when I was a kid so I knew all the words!

In this picture she is again the second on in on the left or the first one in the back row.  So cute!!!

This is after the show they were giving out some awards to some of the dancers.  It is quite a serious dance school that she goes to so this was a big deal.  She is about the fifth one in on the right.  Sometime during the awards she noticed us in the audience and started waving from the stage.  Too cute!!

This is after the show.  We gave her a flower because she did such a good job.  In this picture she held it in front of her face so we tried again..........

That is the "hamming it up" pose.  She usually isn't like this so it was so funny!  I wish that lady wasn't in the background, argh!  I couldn't get another shot because promptly after this was taken she went to climb on some rocks, lol.

Day 169 (June 18, 2010): Mill Creek Pool

I got an email from our community league that members can go to the Millcreek outdoor pool for free on Friday evenings from 6-8pm. All you need to do is just show your community league membership card to the cashier and you can swim for free. That is what we decided to do today. It was a really nice day today but despite that the pool was not busy at all. I think maybe it was due to the fact that it is still early in the season and the pool just opened a couple of weeks ago. We had fun at the pool. We hit a beach ball back and forth while treading water in the deep end and did a couple of laps and then just hung out. We had a pretty good workout. I have never been to that pool before. It is really nice and quite big. I’m glad we checked it out.

Day 168 (June 17, 2010): Homemade Tea

Mint Tea

Lemon Ginger Tea

Tonight I decided to try my hand at making homemade tea.  I checked a couple of recipes on the internet first and then just decided to wing it.  This was a last minute decision when our plan for our activity tonight fell through.  I didn't measure anything that I put in the pot.  I just did it to taste.  I really enjoyed the Lemon Ginger Tea.  It was a bit "spicy" for Ken (too much ginger) so he just added more plain water to his.  The mint tea on the otherhand was a disaster.  It was disappointing too because mint tea is my favourite.  I drink LOTS of tea (usually 4-5 cups a day).  I was really looking forward to trying my own mint tea.  I bought Organic Mint leaves from the store.  Everything that I saw on the net led me to believe that I could just boil them until it go to the desired taste.  It tasted really gross. So much so that I thought it might make me sick.  I am wondering now if I should have bought "peppermint" leaves instead.  I don't even know if there is such a thing.  I will have to do more research before I attempt this again.  I saw one website where this lady was mentioning how she grows her own mint and makes her tea whenever she wants.  I thought that would be great and really cut down on my tea budget, but I failed!  I will look into it though because I did this on a whim.  Perhaps next year I will grow the right kind of mint in my garden and not have to buy tea anymore!

Day 167 (June 16 2010): Community Open House

Today Mel and I went to check out a new proposal that the city is asking of the community. What I (Ken) got from this is that they would like to use some of the unsused property (a former rail yard) in the community and build new strip malls.  They want to make them enviornmentally friendly on the backs with muruals that look like nature. They will also build bike trails and a bicycle ramp over the tracks and get it ready for the high speed train that is planned from Calgary to Edmonton.   The train will stop in our community rather than go on to downtown.  I think this will lead to our community being bombarded with more crime and people that we do not need because we already have those issues without this rail comming this far into the city. I was glad that Mel heard about this open house and took me to it. At least I can send in my opinion whether it is heard is another thing.
Mel: It looks the city wants to add a "walkable" area to the Whyte ave community.  They have planned some bike paths and walking only streets with shopping etc.  We already have ALOT of cool shops and eventhough we don't have a "walk only" street in our community, Whyte ave is known for strolling down.  I think the proposal looks "okay".  They had some good ideas and I am not as concerned about the extra traffic in our community as Ken is. I think that if we get the high speed rail train from Calgary and it stops in our community it will be another more environmentally friendly way to travel between the two cities.  I also think that alot of the business passengers will get off the train at Whyte Ave and just catch at taxi or bus to downtown so they won't spend a ton of extra time here.  Anyway, it was interesting to see the plans.  Hopefully we live here long enough to see the outcome.

Day 166 (June 15, 2010): Sketching

Today we decided to try our hand at sketching.  Neither one of us are very artistic. I am crafty, but not artistic at all.  I am always amazed at artists and art in general.  Anyway, first we picked something in our house to sketch.  We chose this brass candle holder that was my grandmothers.  We put it on top of the tv so we could both see it.

This is Ken's attempt.  He drew his more life sized that I did.  Mine was a bit small but his was a bit crooked.

Here is my attempt:

My dream would be to learn how to shade this in so that it would show the different dimensions of the object.  So far this is really just an outline but I think we did quite good considering this was our first crack at it!

Day 165(June 14, 2010): Planting Flowers

Today we planted flowers in our window boxes.  Ken has never done this before so I got to show him how.  We used his expertise to attach the boxes to the rail of the balcony.  They don't look like much now but hopefully when they grow out they will look good.

Day 164 (June 13, 2010): Chinese Lion Dancing Workshop

As I write this post I am physically exhausted!  Today we did a Chinese Lion Dancing workshop that was put on by the Hung Mun Athletic Club here in Edmonton. http://www.hungmun.com/  It was a free workshop aimed at giving information to people about Lion Dancing and possibly getting more people involved.  This was probably the most "different" activity we have done this year and also the most fun.  We had a blast.  The workshop started out by having the senior dancers do a performance then they did a quick slide show that gave a brief history of Sung Mun and Lion dancing.  Then we did a "warm up".  Let's just say that by the end of it we were boiling, not warm.  The warm up included learning some of the basic stances and moves that we would need once we started to learn our routine.  Lion Dancing has it's routes in Kung Fu so alot of the basic moves come from Kung Fu.  Next, they split us up into pairs, Ken and I went together, then they put 5 pairs in each group. We learned a routine that was about 5 minutes long.  We repeated it, for what felt like, a million times.  The routine and Lion Dancing in general takes alot of leg strength.  I don't think I am going to be able to walk tomorrow!  The instructors were so awesome.  They were really nice and patient.  They also stressed that they totally don't discriminate so even though we are not Asian we felt like we fit right in. This is one of those activities that I would totally recommend to anyone.  If you ever get the chance to learn Lion dancing, DO IT!  Just be ready for leg killing "Horse Pose".   Just to spread the word, they do free lessons on Saturdays if anyone is interested.  It is an awesome workout.  We are actually considering continuing on with it.  The beginner lessons are only 45 minutes every Saturday.  We just don't know how that will fit into our already busy life!  (especially since we applied for a part time job last week, although we haven't received a call yet)  Anyway, here are some pictures of the beautiful Lions!  Unfortunately we didn't get any of us in the costumes because we were taking the photos!

This is Ken at the beginning of the workshop.  We had no idea what they had in store for us!

The instructors wore red shirts and belts

They also played all of their own music.  You had to match your movements to the beat of the drum.

One of the groups getting ready for their final performance.

One of the performances about to start.  They are in the leg killing "horse pose".  It doesn't look that hard but when you have to stand with your legs apart like that in a squat position all day it really starts to hurt!!

This is during the dance.  The 5 Lions have to weave in and out in a figure 8.  We didn't have any major crashes which is amazing! The instructors were helping out though so that didn't happen.

Today I learned Lion Dancing but more importantly I learned a new respect for the physical fitness and dedication of the dancers!!

Day 163 (June 12, 2010): River Day at Rundle Park

Today we went to River Day at Rundle Park.  It was a beautiful day to be outside.  The City Of Edmonton organized the day.  There were lots of different things that you could try out.  The had canoeing demonstrations and you could sign up to try it out.  We met one guy who told us that on Tuesday evenings you can go there around 7:30 and try out canoeing for free.  They supply all of the equipment.  That might be a future activity for our 365 project.  There was also a free pancake breakfast.  There were lots of different booths giving away free stuff and with educational material about pretty much anything related to the river.

They had people doing demos of remote control boats that you could also try out.

There was a booth with aquatic animals found around Edmonton.  These toads were chipping like crazy.

We watched the geese and ducks for awhile with their babies.

Here is a picture of some of the people who tried out the big canoes.  We didn't do it because there was a HUGE line up.

We took advantage of the nice day and threw the football around in the park for awhile and went for a walk.

I also wanted to let you know that later in the day Ken and I decided to do a workout in the river valley.  At the end of our workout we found our tree that we had carved our names in.  It only took us a couple of minutes to find.  It was neat to see it again.

Day 162 (June 11, 2010): Dancing in our living room

Today we used another suggestion from my friend Jen.  We danced in our living room.  It was a really fun and funny activity.  First of all, neither Ken nor I have any rhythm so we had alot of laughs at ourselves and at each other.  At one point we were both laughing so hard that we were crying and had cramps in our stomachs.    We danced to all kinds of music.  I even tried to teach Ken how to Two-Step to country music.  He didn't even step on my toes, lol.   We also got the cats dancing, eventhough they didn't seem very impressed by it.

Dancing Kitty!!!!

We only got pictures of Thor.  Oden was too grumpy!

This was a great idea for an activity for a night at home. If anyone else has any ideas please let us know!