Tonight our activity was to go to the “baddest bar in Edmonton”. We should have done a bit more research though. We picked up our friend Joey and went downtown and tried to go to a couple of places that are known for being particularly rough. The first one was The Royal and the second was The York however they were both shut down. Here is a link to an article from March 26th saying that The York was closed down: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2010/03/26/edmonton-york-hotel-bar-closed-sale.html
This is a quote about why it was closed : "The city first revoked the bar's nightclub licence in September, citing a large number of public safety concerns and a failure to curb and report criminal activity on site." I read another article from the Vancouver Sun that quoted a lady saying that she had been going there since she was 15 (don't we have laws against that in Alberta??) and now she is 40.....yikes is all I have to say! Here is the link to that article: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/thewest/Edmonton+purchases+York+Hotel+tavern+closed/2730442/story.html
I couldn't find any information on The Royal.
We ended up going to The Transit. Here is an article about the Transit. It turned 100 years old in 2008.
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=354c6ecc-ad88-4d2c-bc3f-d42248d65dbb
Now here is my account of our expereince at The Transit......it paints a bit of a different picture than the article above, lol!
When we got out of the car the first thing that happened was a young girl bummed a cigarette off Joey. I don’t know if she was old enough to be in a bar (the older I get, the younger they look!) but she didn’t look it to me! Then as we were walking in to the bar I saw a truck pull in to the parking lot next to my car and I thought “hmm, that truck is driving really close to my car…oh well, I’m sure it’s fine”. When we left that night the passenger side mirror had been knocked off my car, grrr! I should have listened to my instincts at the time!
Anyway, back to the detailed account of our experience in The Transit. We went in to the bar and I noticed right away that there was a huge disparity in ages amongst the customers. They were either between 50 and 70 years old or 18-20. And they were rough looking. There might have been some people in their 30’s and 40’s but they all looked much older because of the hard lifestyles that they lived. We went up to order our drinks and I got ID’d. I don’t get ID’d very often but occasionally I do because I am only 5’ tall. This time however I think it was because at 31 years old I actually look my age…..I don’t look like a 55 year old crack head! So compared to the other customers in the place I looked quite young. Joey and Ken decided to play pool and they had to put down a $20.00 deposit on the pool balls. LOL, I guess it’s so people don’t steal them. The place doesn’t have debit or give tabs so I had to take money out of the bank machine. It cost me $2.35 to take money out of the machine. That is the highest charge I have ever seen on a bank machine. Anyway, I did it and paid the deposit so the guys could play pool. Oh, I forgot to mention that Joey and Ken were convinced that the bartender was a transvestite. I could see where they were coming from but I thought she was just kind of a “manly” woman, and had to be, to run a bar like that. When Joey went outside for a smoke he got offered every kind of drug you can think of from a guy who was outside smoking too. Then another guy out there told Joey that his son just died from a meth overdose. We got a lot of attention because Ken and I were wearing our Saskatchewan Roughriders shirts and I was also wearing my toque (It was Green and Gold night at the Edmonton Rush game earlier in the night so of course we had to dress up in our Rider gear to show up all of the Eskimos fans!). One old man kept calling me “Saskatchewan”. He was quite drunk and kept asking me the same questions over and over. He would say “hey, Saskatchewan!, where are you from in Saskatchewan?” and I would tell him and of course he would have no idea where Sturgis is. Then another guy came over and showed us his birth certificate to prove that he was born in Saskatchewan too, lol. I guess he wanted to be best friends with us, I’m not sure. That was particularly entertaining! One thing that I saw though that really annoyed me was two young, very beautiful Aboriginal girls were in the bar. They were hanging out with some guys who were a lot older looking than them. They weren’t drinking that I could see but one was pregnant and they kept going out to smoke. I can’t believe that pregnant women are allowed to smoke in this day and age with all of the medical information about what that does to babies! GRRR! That makes me so angry. I think there should be some sort of law against that. Anyway, after a couple games of pool and couple of drinks we left without any major incidents…….other than finding my broken mirror when we got to the car.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Day 98 (April 8, 2010): Raw Food and Interview
Today Mel and I did seperate activities. I decided to eat raw food all day. Wow that was an interesting day, I tell you what. Haha, so to start off, just trying to find out what a raw food diet is, is complicated enough let alone eating it. So we researched and researched and found that there are variations of this diet. Some of them say that you need to eat like a "granola head" (only nuts and beans and veggies and even nothing that impacts the earth) and some say like a vegetarian no dairy and no meat and others allow some meat as long as it isn't cooked over a certain temperature. I decided to eat raw meat, raw veggies and raw fruit. So for the first meal of the day I ate an apple, orange, bannana and 1 pound strawberries. Now for lunch I went to K and K Foodliners a little German store just around the corner from us (where we went a few days agofor our 365 activity) and I purchased a few items from the store. I bought salt cured pork, and a Zwiebel Mettwurst, which is raw ground pork with garlic. I decided not eat the ground pork. That was a bit extreme but I ate the salt cured. I ate a half kilo for lunch and let me tell you it was something different all right. It was rubbery and it looked and the texture suggested that it was not cooked but it just tasted like salt. It was funny because I am working alongside a friend, K.J., and he was watching this and said he has never almost threw up fom watching someone eat their lunch until now, haha. Well after that I was on my way home feeling a little lethargic from my lack of protien and carbs for the day so I stopped off at the grocery store, went to the bulk section and bought a kilo and a half of mixed, unsalted nuts. I ate those for supper and I was salted out. This experience has left me "peeless" for over a day and a half from all the salt that I have eatin and I just want to pee. Ah well, all for the cause I guess. I must say thought that I do not recommend the raw food diet to anyone. It especially doesn't work for someone like me who does a hard workout every morning and needs alot of protein in their diet.
~Ken
Well, the raw food diet was my idea but because of the strict weight loss diet that I am on I couldn't do it. My current diet requires 1 serving of dairy every day and 2 servings of protein but they need to be low sodium, so as you can see from Ken's entry that wouldn't really be possible. I could have eaten soy nuts but I still would have missed my daily serving of dairy. I did alot of research into the Raw Food Diet and I couldn't find a suitable dairy supplement that would fit with my diet. After Ken's experience I am glad that he did it and not me, lol.
I just wanted to mention that Ken did try to find "cold smoked salmon" for his raw food day but the store that he went to didn't have any at the time. Ken likes smoked fish so I think that if he would have been able to get the salmon that he would have had a more positive experience with the Raw Food Diet......the rubbery salted pork just wasn't for him!
My activity today was to be interviewed by one of our blog followers. Joy has been following our blog for awhile now and we also follow hers. Her blog is "One Year - 156 fears". You can read it by clicking on it on the left hand side of our blog page.
Joy came up with the idea of interviewing us because she thinks our project is really interesting and would like for more people to know about it. So she sent me the interview questions. I answered them and she is going to post the interview on her blog. This was actually a really exciting activity for me. I am thrilled that people are interested in what we are doing and are supportive of it.
Here is the interview:
QUESTIONS:
1) Tell me a little bit about why you thought this project would interest you.
We sort of stumbled on this project by accident. Over the Christmas holidays we went to visit my husband's family in Ontario. While on a road trip from Sault Ste. Marie to Pembroke I started reading my nephew's book, "Canada from A to Z", when I got to the letter "T" it said something like "Toronto, the place where you can do a different thing each day". This sparked a conversation between my husband and I about trying to do a different thing each day. I believe that it was actually New Year's Eve day when we had this conversation. So, given the timing we decided that we would try this for our New Year's Resolution. This project actually fits with some themes in my life though (that could be another reason that it came to mind). I work with children and youth who often mention that certain activities are boring or they are bored. I heard a quote at some point in my life. I don't remember who said it, or when it was told to me but it goes like this, "Only boring people get bored". I often use this quote to spark conversations with the youth I work with about what we could do that would be fun for them, so that we will no longer be "boring people". I also get very frustrated with newcomers to Edmonton who say that it is a boring city. I think that there is tons of fun stuff to do here. You just have to be willing to try new things. I guess that through this project I can prove those people wrong too!
2) What have been your favorite discoveries so far?
I guess the one thing that strikes me the most about this project is how many people are interested in it. We only have 6 followers on blogspot but I put the link on my facebook and sent it out to my email contacts and through that I have discovered that alot of our friends and family are following our journey. Ken's Dad joked that he doesn't need to call us anymore because he can just read our blog to find out what we are up to.
To list a few of my favourite activities: 1)When we did the couples communication questions, 2)more recently the meditation cd was a nice find, the first time was so funny but now I am using it almost every night 3)The musical "Chicago" was definitely a highlight. I don't think I could have justified buying the tickets if it weren't for the blog, hee hee. I am also enjoying all of the activities that take us back to our childhood like flying a kite, colouring etc.
Another, "favourite discovery" so far is the fact that we are still doing it.......
3) What are you hoping to gain from this experiment?
Personally, I am hoping to reach the goal of completing the whole year. I think that if we can do that then we can do anything!
Another really interesting outcome of this project is that it is going to document this whole year of our life. I hadn't thought about that when we started. If Ken and I have kids some day it would be really neat to give them this little bit of our life story. Recently I was given some documentation about the life stories of some of my ancestors. I really enjoyed reading it and so hopefully this will be passed on down the generations in our family.
4) Has there been a time when you just wanted to throw in the towel? If so, what caused that feeling and how did you overcome it?
There have been several times that I felt like giving up. Usually this happens when I am feeling under the weather or really tired. The foremost thing that keeps us going is that we have so many followers rooting for us. We have alot of supportive family and friends who have given us ideas and tell us how proud they are of us. They also tell us how much they enjoy reading the blog. We don't want to let them down. The second thing that has really helped us keep going is planning ahead. I try to sit down for a few minutes every weekend and look over our calendar and write down some ideas for the upcoming week. I find that when I do that it is so much easier to make sure that we do something different each day. The hardest days have been when we didn't have anything planned ahead of time and had to make up something on the spot.
5) What do you hope to be able to say about this project when the year is up?
"Yay, we did it! Now, let's relax and do nothing for awhile!"
~Mel
~Ken
Well, the raw food diet was my idea but because of the strict weight loss diet that I am on I couldn't do it. My current diet requires 1 serving of dairy every day and 2 servings of protein but they need to be low sodium, so as you can see from Ken's entry that wouldn't really be possible. I could have eaten soy nuts but I still would have missed my daily serving of dairy. I did alot of research into the Raw Food Diet and I couldn't find a suitable dairy supplement that would fit with my diet. After Ken's experience I am glad that he did it and not me, lol.
I just wanted to mention that Ken did try to find "cold smoked salmon" for his raw food day but the store that he went to didn't have any at the time. Ken likes smoked fish so I think that if he would have been able to get the salmon that he would have had a more positive experience with the Raw Food Diet......the rubbery salted pork just wasn't for him!
My activity today was to be interviewed by one of our blog followers. Joy has been following our blog for awhile now and we also follow hers. Her blog is "One Year - 156 fears". You can read it by clicking on it on the left hand side of our blog page.
Joy came up with the idea of interviewing us because she thinks our project is really interesting and would like for more people to know about it. So she sent me the interview questions. I answered them and she is going to post the interview on her blog. This was actually a really exciting activity for me. I am thrilled that people are interested in what we are doing and are supportive of it.
Here is the interview:
QUESTIONS:
1) Tell me a little bit about why you thought this project would interest you.
We sort of stumbled on this project by accident. Over the Christmas holidays we went to visit my husband's family in Ontario. While on a road trip from Sault Ste. Marie to Pembroke I started reading my nephew's book, "Canada from A to Z", when I got to the letter "T" it said something like "Toronto, the place where you can do a different thing each day". This sparked a conversation between my husband and I about trying to do a different thing each day. I believe that it was actually New Year's Eve day when we had this conversation. So, given the timing we decided that we would try this for our New Year's Resolution. This project actually fits with some themes in my life though (that could be another reason that it came to mind). I work with children and youth who often mention that certain activities are boring or they are bored. I heard a quote at some point in my life. I don't remember who said it, or when it was told to me but it goes like this, "Only boring people get bored". I often use this quote to spark conversations with the youth I work with about what we could do that would be fun for them, so that we will no longer be "boring people". I also get very frustrated with newcomers to Edmonton who say that it is a boring city. I think that there is tons of fun stuff to do here. You just have to be willing to try new things. I guess that through this project I can prove those people wrong too!
2) What have been your favorite discoveries so far?
I guess the one thing that strikes me the most about this project is how many people are interested in it. We only have 6 followers on blogspot but I put the link on my facebook and sent it out to my email contacts and through that I have discovered that alot of our friends and family are following our journey. Ken's Dad joked that he doesn't need to call us anymore because he can just read our blog to find out what we are up to.
To list a few of my favourite activities: 1)When we did the couples communication questions, 2)more recently the meditation cd was a nice find, the first time was so funny but now I am using it almost every night 3)The musical "Chicago" was definitely a highlight. I don't think I could have justified buying the tickets if it weren't for the blog, hee hee. I am also enjoying all of the activities that take us back to our childhood like flying a kite, colouring etc.
Another, "favourite discovery" so far is the fact that we are still doing it.......
3) What are you hoping to gain from this experiment?
Personally, I am hoping to reach the goal of completing the whole year. I think that if we can do that then we can do anything!
Another really interesting outcome of this project is that it is going to document this whole year of our life. I hadn't thought about that when we started. If Ken and I have kids some day it would be really neat to give them this little bit of our life story. Recently I was given some documentation about the life stories of some of my ancestors. I really enjoyed reading it and so hopefully this will be passed on down the generations in our family.
4) Has there been a time when you just wanted to throw in the towel? If so, what caused that feeling and how did you overcome it?
There have been several times that I felt like giving up. Usually this happens when I am feeling under the weather or really tired. The foremost thing that keeps us going is that we have so many followers rooting for us. We have alot of supportive family and friends who have given us ideas and tell us how proud they are of us. They also tell us how much they enjoy reading the blog. We don't want to let them down. The second thing that has really helped us keep going is planning ahead. I try to sit down for a few minutes every weekend and look over our calendar and write down some ideas for the upcoming week. I find that when I do that it is so much easier to make sure that we do something different each day. The hardest days have been when we didn't have anything planned ahead of time and had to make up something on the spot.
5) What do you hope to be able to say about this project when the year is up?
"Yay, we did it! Now, let's relax and do nothing for awhile!"
~Mel
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Day 97 (April 7, 2010): Retro Cartoons!!!!
Tonight we decided to watch some retro cartoons. We watched "Huckleberry Hound", "The Flintstones" and "Jetsons".
I watched a fair amount of TV growing up so I can name a ton of cartoons that I liked as a kid. Ken didn't watch very much tv and also has a poor memory for such things so he remembers the ones that were still sort of popular as he got older like "The Flintsones". When I was telling Ken about some of the cartoons I remembered he didn't even know what I was talking about. For example, he doesn't know who Jem is.....that is almost blasphemy to me! I love Jem!!! She is truly outrageous!! For those of you who don't remember who Jem is here are some pics. I like the first one because it shows her as Jem and Jerrica. I used to have a Jem doll with blinking red earrings and it had both of the outfits in this picture. The belt is reversable! Memories.....
Here she is rockin' out with her bandmates. I also had the doll of the girl with the blue hair but I don't remember what her name was.
Ken says that his favourite cartoons growing up were He-Man and Thundercats.
What were your favourite cartoons growing up??
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Day 96 (March 6, 2010): "The Way We Live" City of Edmonton Survey
Through doing research to find new ideas for our 365 day project I have stumbled across lots of different things that I would not have become aware of otherwise. Some examples of those things are other people's blogs, like the "day zero project" and the "100 things to do before you die" from Grant Thorpe. We also became aware of the "did you know..." website by doing research for our project. Something similar to this happened again this week. I was looking at the City of Edmonton website to see what events/festivals were coming up that we might want to attend. I do this about once a month so that I can mark the events on our calendar for our project. While I was on the website I stumbled across the "The Way We Live" Edmonton's People Plan. Here is the link: http://www.edmonton.ca/city_government/city_wide_initiatives/edmontons-people-plan.aspx
Here is a brief description: "The Way We Live: Edmonton's People Plan is a 10-year plan that will provide a comprehensive framework to co-ordinate City of Edmonton people services over the next decade. It integrates existing plans that affect people services and clarifies the various roles the city has in the provision of people services." They have been doing research for this plan for awhile and have now come up with 6 goals for the plan: Goal One, Edmonton is a vibrant, connected, engaged and welcoming city. Goal Two, Edmonton celebrates life! Goal Three, Edmonton is a caring, inclusive and affordable community. Goal Four, Edmonton is a safe city. Goal Five, Edmonton is an attractive city. Goal Six, Edmonton is a sustainable city. They have drafted a report with their ideas about how to achieve these 6 goals. Now, they are consulting the public to give feedback on this plan.
I find it really interesting that through my research for our 365 day project, that includes doing activities, attending events and trying new things in Edmonton, I stumbled across an opportunity to give feedback on life in our city. Sssooooo, in case you haven't guessed already, our activity for tonight was to read the plan and fill out the survey with our thoughts on the proposal. I considered giving our answers on this blog but I decided not to because I know that other Edmontonians read our blog and I would like for them to give their feedback on the survey without knowing what we put. If you go to the link that I provided above you can read the draft plan and the link to the survey is on the top right of the page.
Here is a brief description: "The Way We Live: Edmonton's People Plan is a 10-year plan that will provide a comprehensive framework to co-ordinate City of Edmonton people services over the next decade. It integrates existing plans that affect people services and clarifies the various roles the city has in the provision of people services." They have been doing research for this plan for awhile and have now come up with 6 goals for the plan: Goal One, Edmonton is a vibrant, connected, engaged and welcoming city. Goal Two, Edmonton celebrates life! Goal Three, Edmonton is a caring, inclusive and affordable community. Goal Four, Edmonton is a safe city. Goal Five, Edmonton is an attractive city. Goal Six, Edmonton is a sustainable city. They have drafted a report with their ideas about how to achieve these 6 goals. Now, they are consulting the public to give feedback on this plan.
I find it really interesting that through my research for our 365 day project, that includes doing activities, attending events and trying new things in Edmonton, I stumbled across an opportunity to give feedback on life in our city. Sssooooo, in case you haven't guessed already, our activity for tonight was to read the plan and fill out the survey with our thoughts on the proposal. I considered giving our answers on this blog but I decided not to because I know that other Edmontonians read our blog and I would like for them to give their feedback on the survey without knowing what we put. If you go to the link that I provided above you can read the draft plan and the link to the survey is on the top right of the page.
Day 95 (April 5, 2010): Oilers Game
We were fortunate enough to go to an Edmonton Oilers game for free tonight. My aunt and uncle gave us the tickets. They were great seats and we really enjoyed the game. Unfortunately, we forgot the camera at home so we don't have any pictures to show our loyal readers:(
We usually try to get to one or two games a season but we hadn't been to any yet this year and the season is almost over so this was good timing for us. Also, it was a fantastic game! The Oilers won 4-1 over Minnesota. GO OILERS!!!
Something else interesting to note is that the player that was in the Montreal Canadians puzzle that we made last week, Guillaume Latendresse, now plays for Minnesota so we got to watch him too.
Some of you may have noticed that I changed the format of the blog, what do you think of the new layout?
We usually try to get to one or two games a season but we hadn't been to any yet this year and the season is almost over so this was good timing for us. Also, it was a fantastic game! The Oilers won 4-1 over Minnesota. GO OILERS!!!
Something else interesting to note is that the player that was in the Montreal Canadians puzzle that we made last week, Guillaume Latendresse, now plays for Minnesota so we got to watch him too.
Some of you may have noticed that I changed the format of the blog, what do you think of the new layout?
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Day 94 (April 4, 2010): Basketball
Today we went to the park by our house and played basketball. We played 21. Ken beat me 21 to 9, lol. It was fun eventhough I really suck at it. It was a beautiful day today and it was nice to be outside spending time with my husband.
Day 93 (April 3, 2010): K & K Foodliner
http://www.kandkfoodliner.com/
This store is about 1 block from where we live. We have tried to go check it out a couple of times for our blog but our timing is always off. Their hours are Monday - Friday 9am - 6pm and Saturday 8am - 5pm. They are closed on Sundays.
Here is a quote from their webpage explaining the history of the store and what they offer:
"Krause & Krause, that's the K&K in "K&K Foodliner", started in 1956 with brothers Albert, Rudolph, and Leo. Back then they started by having a quality product and service with a smile. We still pride ourselves on that same concept. We have expanded over the years now offering a wide selection of German, Polish, and Danish products. In house sausage made daily with the same great recipes. Our sausage has no gluten added, no msg, or milk products. Come give us a try you'll be glad you did."
This morning when we went to the store it was an absolute ZOO! There were at least 20 people in line at the meat counter waiting to get served. I could tell by their accents that they were mostly European immigrants. I think that must mean that the products that K & K provide are really good. We bought some turkey garlic sausage and some german noodles that Ken has wanted to try. The sausage was really good. I could only try a little because sausage is not really part of my approved diet. We will try the noodles another night and let you know how they were.
Here is a picture of Oden helping me update the blog:
This store is about 1 block from where we live. We have tried to go check it out a couple of times for our blog but our timing is always off. Their hours are Monday - Friday 9am - 6pm and Saturday 8am - 5pm. They are closed on Sundays.
Here is a quote from their webpage explaining the history of the store and what they offer:
"Krause & Krause, that's the K&K in "K&K Foodliner", started in 1956 with brothers Albert, Rudolph, and Leo. Back then they started by having a quality product and service with a smile. We still pride ourselves on that same concept. We have expanded over the years now offering a wide selection of German, Polish, and Danish products. In house sausage made daily with the same great recipes. Our sausage has no gluten added, no msg, or milk products. Come give us a try you'll be glad you did."
This morning when we went to the store it was an absolute ZOO! There were at least 20 people in line at the meat counter waiting to get served. I could tell by their accents that they were mostly European immigrants. I think that must mean that the products that K & K provide are really good. We bought some turkey garlic sausage and some german noodles that Ken has wanted to try. The sausage was really good. I could only try a little because sausage is not really part of my approved diet. We will try the noodles another night and let you know how they were.
Here is a picture of Oden helping me update the blog:
I thought I should include it since I put up pictures of Thor when we were doing the puzzle. He was actually up on the desk because Ken was vacuuming and he needed me to protect him from the big, scary vacuum!
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