Men like these..

These two make watching The Vampire Diaries very, very, easy. As my mother would say, "It's not fair men like these are made."

Wedding, apartment, new job!

Well, I certainly have been neglecting my blog, among other things, for the last few weeks! That's terrible, really. How are all my hundreds of followers going to know what's going on in my life?

I'm in Ottawa. I was in Fernie. Then I was in Edmonton for an amazing, wonderful wedding. Now, I'm in Ottawa.

In my new... apartment! With my boyfriend. In my new apartment! How exciting! We are living in this building called The Stanley, an old brick building that sits with a lean. Literally. The doorframe to the kitchen is on a tilt, as is the rest of the place.

I'll take some pictures of the building and our apartment once I get it all set up!

Oh, and more importantly... I've now worked three days with Canadian Geographic Magazine. And it's been fabulous. I had my first blog post published on their website, have been updating their facebook page with unique stories, and cannot wait to see what I get to do next.

I even got to research old stories from rum runner days in Montreal and discovered a story about this family, the Bronfmans, who made big money selling liquor over the border.

Go here to see my blog about Dr. Seuss and his green thumb he had while writing his children's books. And please keep following for future updates!

ssshhh....

Everything I remember about Fernie has nothing to do with what I experienced for the first time when I arrived home on Friday.

Usually, memories consist of playing in the snow, dancing at the bar, hiking in the mountains, and tubing down the river in the summer.

But on Friday, it was this: absolute quiet. And yesterday, it was absolute quiet. Today... absolute quiet.

Quiet is fantastic. I stepped out of my car, and there was not a single sound. Just silence. No cars on the road, not ambulances roaring by, no people yelling at one another across the street, no bus engines speeding past. No sound.

Except maybe, for red-winged black birds in the trees, and now, the sound of rain dripping from the roof.

Silence is golden.

I forgot how much fun...

Today I spent the entire day inside working on papers due for the last day of school on Monday.

I didn't even realize it was dark outside. That was enough to make me drag my ass outside to get some fresh air, and I am very glad I did.

Because I went for a walk, and walked past a school near my house, with four basketball nets. I remembered that a friend gave me an old basketball of hers earlier in the year, and I hadn't even used it yet! So, I came home, grabbed it, and went back to the school.

And I played basketball for an hour and it was amazing and fun and I'm so glad I did it. I was by myself. Wearing my glasses. In skate shoes. And baggy pants. And it was way too dark and I could hardly see. But I could hear my basketball and see the net and that was good enough for me.

I forgot how much fun it was to just play.

People should play more. Once a day. Play anything, really. How much better would everyone's lives be if we just played?!

Don't need onions to cry today.

I baked a pie

"Men may come and men may go... but pie goes on forever."

Baking a pie, is not for everyone.

But, thankfully, it is for me.

Today, I baked a strawberry-rhubarb pie, and it was delicious. Filled with strawberries, sugar, flaky crust, just the best darn thing to eat on a day off.

Here is the recipe:

Crust -

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup shortening

1/2 cup water

1. In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. Cut in shortening until mixture resembles crumbs. Stir in water until mixture forms a ball. Divide dough in half, and shape into balls. Wrap into plastic (saran wrap) and refrigerate for 4 hours or over night.

2. Roll out dough on a floured counter, and use as directed in pie recipe.

Filling -

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 pound fresh rhubarb chopped

2 pints fresh strawberries

1 pie crust top/bottom

1 tbsp sugar

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees

2. In large bowl, mix flour, sugar with strawberries and chopped rhubarb. Let stand for 30 minutes.

3. Pour filling into pie crust and then cover it with top crust (I lattice the crust by making strips of pie crust and interlocking them on top).

4. Dab top of crust with butter and then sprinkle with 1 tbsp of sugar.

5. Bake at 375 degrees for about 40 minutes, until bubbly and brown.

Eat! Enjoy!

Gone with the wind

It is so windy today I was nearly blown into a bush by the wind while on my run. But the wind led to some interesting stories while I was outside.

I imagine that most people in training for a half-marathon, or a full marathon, or any sort of endurance sport, train in the wind. Because it pushes against everything you are running towards, pushing against your body and tries to get you to give up and turn around, and walk home. It gusts quickly, so you don't expect it when it throws sticks, dirt and remnants of newspaper in your path.

It is a bit like life, the wind. It throws things at you you weren't expecting. But you deal with it.

So today, I dealt with it. I ran against the wind (which at my estimate, and the Weather Network's estimate, was going at about 40 km/hour) and I did not give up. I laughed out loud to myself. Grunted, sighed. But I still ran 6.5 km.

And also, while on my run, I noticed two funny things. First, there were hundreds of snow geese trying to fly in the wind, and they were basically floating up and down against it. I watched them fly over me, and suddenly they did a 180 degree turn and flew so fast with the wind, like they were children on a roller coaster soaring through the air. It was the neatest thing. They were playing.

And second, I saw a mother and her daughter delivering papers when suddenly a gust of wind ripped through their cart and sent tens of sheets of newsprint into the air, all separating and swooping and swirling on the ground and winding up against fences. I laughed. And then I helped the lady gather as many pieces of the destroyed newspaper as I could.

It was a good little windy day.

Chum

"But the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you can find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous." - SATC

I received a phone call tonight from two of my best friends, who proceeded to tell me how glad they were that I was a part of their lives.

It got me thinking about how fortunate I am. To have those friends, the friends you can drink a bottle of wine with and have a heart-to-heart. The friends you can stumble home with at 2 am after a night at the bar, and then proceed to eat all the food in the fridge. The friend who calls and asks you for advice, and who takes your advice to heart, considering it and not disregarding it.

The friend who sends you a birthday card in the mail, even if it's late. The same one who, every so often, reminds you how beautiful you are, even if you feel the complete opposite.

The friend who crosses rivers with you in hiking boots, and proceeds to go through the bush first and scratch her legs so you don't have to. Or the friend who makes you daisy crowns in the summer.

And the friend who you spend Thursday afternoons with, talking about boys. As if you were in high school. But you're not, because you're in college.

I love my friends. I do. I'm so grateful I have them. Because even though we have our differences, as a group we compliment one another and make one complete whole, a whole that encourages and inspires, and congratulates and says, "I'm so proud of you."

Friends are truly few and far between. But the few you have are like the girls from Sex and the City - fun, crazy, caring and, mostly, they are there.

Just a 'student'

It's truly amazing what real anger can do. I don't mean sad, silly upsets. I mean a 'so angry you sweat, stomp around the room and need to open a window' mad because if you don't you might yell and scream and start throwing things.

Something happened today that resulted in me doing such things.

I'm working on a story about the New Democratic Party's standpoint on the current Canadian refugee policy. Such a story requires that I do an interview with an NDP official - I had hoped to speak with Olivia Chow, member of Parliament for Trinity-Spadina, and also a Citizenship and Immigration critic. Mrs. Chow has made several comments on the Conservative government's policy, and especially on Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's actions.

I had been calling Mrs. Chow's office all week, hoping to set something up, leaving messages, sending emails, and yesterday I spoke with a man with NDP media relations, who suggested I call Mrs. Chow's scheduler to set up an appointment. Thus, I called her this morning.

I explained to her what I was doing and that I hoped to speak with Mrs. Chow for even 10 minutes to ask her questions about what the NDP would change. I realize that this information is all on the NDP's website, but as a journalist a story is always better if there is an interview subject - someone to reiterate what is already written, and someone to humanize the story.

This woman said to me that Mrs. Chow is travelling for the next two days and won't be available, to which I replied that I understood, and then I proceeded to ask her if I could set something up for next week.

She then told me that Mrs. Chow - or "we" - doesn't usually do interviews with students because if they do one interview they have to do all the interviews with all the students that call.

This was about the time when I began to get frustrated. Not because it was sounding more and more like I wasn't going to be able to speak with Mrs. Chow, but because I felt as though I was being dropped into the 'you're just a student' category. I explained to this woman that I'm in a class of 20, and each of my fellow students was doing a different story, none of whom or doing a story on the NDP. I was the only one who would likely be contacting them.

There was an acknowledged, "Okay," that I heard, and then a very long moment of silence, which I assumed was her shuffling through Mrs. Chow's schedule to see if there was an opening next week.

Then, "I don't know what else to tell you."

I didn't really understand. Was she telling me that she couldn't do anything to help me speak with this woman for five minutes? FIVE minutes? Really. Working for Metro, working for the EMC, and working for the Free Press, I had never had any problems, especially setting up an interview for a government employee. They generally MAKE time for you.

At this point, my face was getting hot. And I was getting mad. But I tried to remain composed. I asked her, "So, are you saying that if I was a journalist with a newspaper I'd be able to set up an interview, but because I'm a journalism student I can't?"

"I don't know what else to say. She has a really busy schedule."

And that, my friends, was the end of that conversation. I did everything I could to try and set up an interview, to try and speak with this woman who could explain the NDP's beliefs in the refugee system, what they would do to make it better, I gave every opportunity to get their side of it. I even asked, at the end, if this woman had any other suggestions for me, anyone else I could try and contact.

She told me to go search on Google.

I'm a student, yes. I am also a journalist. And lastly, I am a person. And just because I have the 'student journalist' tag on my name, does not mean I deserve unfair treatment because of it, and it certainly does not mean that I don't deserve the same respect that a journalist from an official publication would receive. Even as a student journalist, I should be taken seriously, and not brushed away like a fly.

Frustrated. Angry. Anger is a very powerful thing.

Mem-uh-ree.

It's surprising how much a memory is built around things that go unnoticed at the time.

Like, getting cuts on your hands from picking long, green crab grass along the fence to feed the big dirty-white horse that lived next to Grandpa's house. Or Dad telling us to lay our hands flat when feeding said horse said grass because, if you don't, that big horse will bite your tiny hand.

Or camping in the big, orange cloth tent outside Grandpa's house in the summer, and Mom holding the flashlight while Dad made images silhouetted against the tent wall, of birds flying, or rabbits conversing. What were the other animals?

Or the wall of mirrors inside Grandpa's house, with the retro brown carpet, bright-orange fake fireplace, and Grandpa's 45 degree temperatures that were reached as he continued to stuff wood from the back shed into the black stove. And Grandma's multiple couch sets: the white one we weren't allowed to sit on. The plastic butterflies on the mirrors, the mouse poop in the cupboard, the 'forest' behind the white couch, and the piano.

We never did play well.

Trying on Grandma's pink shoes from her closet. And secretly splashing her perfume onto our wrists in her parlour: pink, red, roses, white, jewelry.

Do you remember the deer in the fields below the house? And the steep bank we weren't allowed to get close to. And the drives in the Oldsmobile wagon to the ranch, with the water pump and the cows licking the windows as we sat inside the car screaming. Screaming with excitement.

But mostly, I remember being told to go to bed in the attic, with the teddy bears and Grandma's dresses. I even remember the smell - like a closet left unopened and without fresh air - and the secret back door, dark and wooden, that we always wanted to open and explore but were too scared to ever do it.

And especially, after being told to go to bed, Mom would stay up with Grandpa, they would shuffle their cards at the kitchen table, and play a game of crib. Grandpa chewed his tabacco, had his hair slicked back (the white roots showing beneath the black of his hair), with a toothpick hanging from his mouth.

And Mom would say, "Dad! Stop being so bad," every time Grandpa made a silly comment which preceded with his wheezing laugh.

That's what I remember, most. Best.