Personal

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Blowing Through Town

I got an email today from my friend Sarah. She and Oz spent the summer traveling across Canada and are on their way back to Dawson City. This afternoon they were in Medicine Hat and on a major detour so they could come and see me. Hopefully I had a few hours free.

I did! This was the first week night in recent memory when I had nothing pressing to do!

Sarah and Oz arrived at my job at about 4:30 and it barely felt like a year had passed since we last saw each other! We enjoyed a long (and delicious) sushi dinner at O-Sho, then finished up with tea on a Starbucks patio. There wasn’t time to say everything that needed to be said, but the conversation about the various dilemmas in our lives did us a world of good. Sometimes it’s the people outside our world we confide in best.

I am just awed by her perfect timing; she had planned to be here Wednesday, when I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy such a long, carefree evening. It’s been a down and up kind of day and a beloved friend blowing through town was just the morale boost I needed.

 

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Shock and Grief on a Monday Morning

I awoke to news that Jack Layton, chief of the National Democrat Party and Leader of the Opposition, died early this morning after a lengthy battle with cancer.

I truly feel that this man was Canada’s last and best hope for a cohesive, sensible, transparent, and just government. His victory at the last federal election, sweeping through Quebec and forever changing its political map, not to mention gaining the keys to Stornoway, shook many Canadians out of their political torpor.

Now, the party is in the hands of an interim leader, Nycole Turmel, whom I have never trusted. She will not be getting my vote for new leader of the NDP! I wish the reins had been handed over to someone else, perhaps Thomas Mulcair.

It will be strange to no longer get the orange emails from ‘Jack’, to not see that handsome and trustworthy face speak so eloquently and with such passion, to not have someone at the near-helm of this government that I believe actually truly gives a damn about the Canadian people.

Rest in peace, Jack, and may someone worthy of you pick up your fight.

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Adventure Isn’t That Far Away

I’m quickly approaching my third anniversary of full-time RVing and am, once again, taking stock of the kilometres I’ve traveled both since I’ve been RVing and in the years when I was still housebound.

Other than a month-long backpacking tour of Scotland and a morning in Mexico, my travels have been firmly planted in Canada and the U.S. I have a strong desire to see more of the world, of course, but am enchanted by what I have seen right here, on the North American continent. I have seen just about every landscape of the world, from desert to rain forest, mountains to prairies, and every condition of human existence, from the opulent homes of Beverly Hills to the third world living conditions on Canadian native reserves.

This video by my favourite television host, Josh Gates, illustrates my point beautifully:

“The great canyons of the American southwest”:

“Or here to the great northern frontier of Alaska”:

“adventure is right around the corner. Go and find it.”

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Thankfully, I Don’t Look Like a Mule For Everyone

I’ve had problems with anemia since the late ’90s, so I take a daily iron supplement. Every few months, I walk into a pharmacy (usually the one at Walmart) and ask for a bottle of ferrous gluconate. Said bottle is handed over each time with few other words. I’m asking for the pills by a specific identifier, not as generic ‘iron supplements’, so pharmacists assume that I know what I’m doing. I’ve thus bought my pills in Quebec, Ontario, BC, the Yukon, and even Oregon without incident for about 12 years.

And then I came to Alberta.

Tonight, I went to the Shopper’s Drugmart (I just love that name, incidentally, it makes me laugh) and nonchalantly ambled over to the prescriptions area where, after a moment’s wait, I was able to place my order.

“Have you filled a prescription here before?”
“No. I don’t have a prescription…”
“Oh, that’s fine. I just need to register the sale. Name and address, please.”

I gave the information, using Rae rather than my legal name, and Jody’s address, none of which matches any of my ID. That was fine because I wasn’t asked for any! I mustn’t have looked like a drug dealer to this person!

At least, the pills are super cheap in Alberta, $6.50 for 100 tablets! I haven’t paid a price like that since the 20th century!

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A Bloggable Day

Today was one of those days that makes me wish I was one of those bloggers who posts every minute detail of their lives without considering the consequences for themselves or others. Oh, do I have a whopper of a story to not share!

Just call me a tease and know that I am very much enjoying my life and work in Lethbridge right now. There just isn’t much about it that I can post.