balzac

Yup, that about sums it up. That's Calgary in a nutshell as far as I'm concerned.

1. BIG SKY.
2. Cheerful, good-natured inhabitants.
3. Jaunty approach to cowboy history. Jaunty, not ironic.
4. Car-centric. (This deedly thingy was attached to a car antenna).
5. BIG STORES. (Photo taken in the parking lot of Wal-Mart).
6. Just a teeny bit of the possibly-crazy-and-psychopathic-in-odd-corners feeling. Like, this yellow-faced cowpoke's got a garage full of whiskey bottles. Full of, like bear gall bladders. That he's going to sell on E-Bay. To them Chinese fellers. Or, um, he's so skinny cause he lost his entire body gambling on VLTs. Wait, no, he's decided that with his 400 dollar windfall that he'll receive from the government this spring that he's going to fill his car up with gas and take a drive down to Toronto for a vacation....Nah, that'd be waaaaay to weird.
7. Did I mention the BIG SKY?

In other news from my travels out west, it was FRICKIN' COLD. Witness Em and I dressed in our finest brisk weather wear:

Never mind about the fact that we're one-eyed freaks! It's cold. We love the cold. Can't you tell by our drippy red noses? If only you could see below my furry coat. You'd see my fuzzy sweatshirt. And then my toasty sweater. And then my mock-turtleneck. And my t-shirt. And an undershirt. And then, uh, under that is just cold skin and bones, man.

And doesn't Emma's headgear just take the cake? You know it's cold out when you actually wear the thing on your head just like Gramma used to tell you to wear it. Next thing you know my father and my brother will be putting those black plastic booties over their dress shoes so that the salt doesn't ruin the leather. Ain't nuthin' like a little hardship to make you run back to those tried and true remedies.

More to follow of the not-silly funeral pics and stories from Alberta. [Balzac-14-November-2005]