some of you have been very kind and have written to ask me what the hell is wrong me with me for not having entered a blog post in over a week and a half, or to express concern that i might not be having much fun jetting all around north america. i can't tell you how happy it makes me to know that even though i hate the telephone, and even though i communicate with almost everyone i know by writing here in my blog or on facebook.

i should probably take a page from the book of jim, who has managed to update his blog like three times in the last week alone with the experiences that he has had here in calgary. and i've been meaning to... really... but it's difficult. at work, my laptop has only a spindly weak wi-fi connection from a neighbouring restaurant to tether it to the internet, and at home, i don't have a desk or a chair or a space that is warm enough to sit and write. so finding time and opportunity to blog has been challenging. and of course, there is always the challenge of ramping up on an exciting and challenging new project to keep me busy even after the 9-5 hours.

that having been said, it would be nice if i could write something good about my experience here in calgary over the last few weeks to comfort those of you who might be worried about me. ...so... err... the cats are here! we all flew out on westjet on sunday! except... i arrived at the airport only an hour before my flight was to depart and this apparently was not enough time to have the cats stowed on the airplane, so i was bumped to a flight three hours later. that doesn't sound too bad, but that meant that hans and gretel were stuck in their little kennels for almost 8 hours (1 hour + 3 hour wait for the next flight + 4 hour flight) before they could be freed to use the litter box/water dish/food bowl. to their inestimable credit, they held their bladders, didn't cry too much in the cabs, and patiently did all their instinctive business only after they had surveyed their new basement surroundings. and kudos go out to westjet too for not making me feel like an ass for not getting there on time, and for rescheduling my flight at no charge and without hassles!!

i think that it's my greatest regret in this whole alberta summer adventure that they are mostly stuck here in the basement where windows and sunbeams are scarce. somehow, i will make it up to them once we return to my airy, window-y, 24th story apartment in toronto.

in a later post, i'll write more about what i'm doing, where i've been, where i live, and all that. hopefully, there will be more timelapse goodness shortly - maybe from the drive to edmonton that will be inevitably coming soon.

while you wait for the next post, enjoy some quizzy goodness i've been saving for the past couple of weeks.

- g

ps. between the cable 80's radio music that they pipe in at the local office, and the 80's radio station that i've been listening to in the rental car, i get the distinct impression that music and culture in calgary haven't changed since the 80's. i'm not sure exactly how i feel about that, but i do know that jim hates it! ;)

song of the day for not having a car in a city where a car is an absolute necessity: where the streets have no name, u2

so, it has been about a month now that i've been living out of a suitcase. since my precious trip to new york city, i've been pretty constantly flying somewhere for the week and then returning home for the weekends to spend an all too short time with my cats. it was kind of fun at first and there has been adventure to be sure, but it is really starting to take its toll on me now. for example, i misread the departure time for my outbound flight last night - reading the arrival time of 10am in calgary as my departure time from toronto, and left myself about 55 minutes to get from my apartment door to my seat on the plane! talk about a harrowing experience! fortunately for me, traffic was still light at 7:10am on the statutory holiday, and volume at the airport was mild so i managed to make the flight pretty comfortably. the lady who i asked to print my boarding pass had to ask me where i was going three times, because i kept replying "toronto" instead of "calgary". omfg - i am so tired of flying on a weekly basis. worst of all, i didn't even get to squish my pets goodbye. i am currently deep within the throes of very profound cat-partum separation anxiety.

calgary is a nice enough place i suppose (for what little that i've seen of it) - but without a car and being stuck in the northeast corner of the city, there's not a whole heck of a lot going on out here. i went to the lamest shopping mall in all of alberta today, sunridge mall, and ended up totally regretting having wasted the time that it took to walk there. i'm totally torn between driving my own car to calgary or renting a car for when it is needed here. if i drive, then i can bring the cats with me and make the trip with a bunch of stuff that i will need like towels, sheets, an iron, stuff like that that will make life in the mostly-unfurnished basement suite i will be rending a little more enjoyable (!?!), not to mention some cat stuff. if i bring the car, then i can go wherever i need to go whenever i want (at the low low price of $1.25 a litre for gasoline), and i can even pick up my buddy jim from the airport and save the cost of cab fare. if i rent a car, then my car is spared the wear and tear, but it will be pretty expensive and a constant hassle.

there is a lot more drama going on in calgary as well that has no place on my blog - that's how personal it is! let me just say that in spite of my very best intentions, things here have become quite a lot more confusing and problematic for me than i could have expected. and this project is just starting out. well... let's see how this goes, shall we?

- g

song of the day for feeling angst: how soon is now, the smiths

there aren't too many people who would believe that i could be lost for words, but in my effort to communicate my experience of my first visit to new york city, words like "sublime" and "ineffable" keep coming to mind. i wrote a summary of each of the five days that i spent there in a journal, with the expectation that i would transcribe them to my blog, and thereby, communicate my feelings about this city to the interweb. but i've found that those musings and sentiments ring hollow without the context of that great city to inform them. i think that the best that i can do is to tell you to go and see it for yourself.

i've gone on and on in my blog about how i'm a "simple boy from the prairies" and how i wonder at the many achievements of mankind, but nothing in my life prepared me for the humbling experience of emerging from penn station in the middle of manhattan and seeing new york city for the first time. i took over 500 photos, and that was a far lot fewer than i would have because i would have loved to photograph every single building, street corner, and person i saw. i had to consciously refrain from taking a photo of every step from the moment i arrived to keep myself from having 500,000 photos and i would have had no time to see anything with my own eyes. ooo... i've never been so enthralled with anything in my life.

it's been over two weeks since i've returned from new york, to very relieved cats and the biggest city in canada that suddenly felt a lot like the wide open spaces of mill woods in south edmonton where i used to go to feel alone and like i was the only person in the world. i don't know why i so suddenly fell in love with a city that is so incredibly busy and impossible as new york - but love at first sight (well, with a city anyway) never seemed more plausible. all i can say is that if i could choose to live anywhere in the world, be anything i wanted, do whatever was possible - i would live in new york. i wonder if there's some way that i can make that happen?

- g

song of the day for loving new york city: "a new york city night", paul van dyck (featuring ashley tomberlin)

wow - i've been busy. i had all these great intentions of telling you all about my trip to new york day by day, but my new project in calgary has taken way more out of me than i had expected.  the work is very exciting and new and challenging and it's forcing me to look at programming and development for the internet in an entirely new and more abstract fashion than my experience has preapred me for and all of that has taken a lot of getting used to.  on top of it, i worry about leaving my cats alone for extended periods of time, and so in my off time, i've been doing more with them, playing more, doing more for them, and making the time that i have with them count more by being with them.  after all, they've given me so much and helped me so much through some hard times, the least that i can do take great care of them when i'm in town and around.

anyway - i'll get around to that as soon as i can. in the meantime, here's my latest timelapse video, demonstrating the challenges of blogging with two needy cats.

- g

song of the day for blogging with two furry interruptions: "wouldn't change a thing", jose amnesia with jennifer rene