over the past couple of years, i've been pretty hard on my home town of edmonton. in the way that an adolescent knocks his square, out-of-touch parents to his hip, trendy friends, i've been guilty of trash-talking the cradle of my life. i mean, the international airport has an impossible glaring error on the welcome message that it uses to greet all of its visitors - and that error has persisted for YEARS... WTF?!?!?! obviously, nothing is perfect and nothing can be all things at all times to all people - but it's something of a sin not to appreciate a thing for its own merits, and one's home is definitely not an exception.

i suddenly, unexpectedly and rather ironically was sent home on business last week so i decided to take the friday off and spend a few days over the weekend reconnecting with the home that i'd left three years ago tomorrow. so many things were different about this stay than previous visits. i had no set agenda (outside of work) and i intentionally set up almost no expectations to see any of my old friends so that i could relax and really soak up my own feelings about the place. in retrospect, i think that this was the perfect plan, and you'll see why if you keep reading.

i stayed at a friend's flat - a gorgeous condo overlooking the river valley from the north side. it was mere blocks from where i spent some of the most significant and formative years of my life, and i have to admit that i never had a decent night's sleep being surrounded by all of the reminders of all of the history that i've had in edmonton.

to make matters worse, the weather in edmonton vacillated between unseasonably warm and frostily cold. the first day or two that i saw more rain than any other weather, thus encasing the entire downtown in a two-inch layer of ice making foot travel (my chosen option) fairly treacherous. however, deep deep in the core of my being is an irrepressible love of the winter wind. as you can see from some of these photos of my walk across the river valley, the sky is clear and the air is crisp. the wind was blowing at a good 30 - 40km pace, the breath of god moving across the shining, smiling, upturned face of the world - filling all of us with its presence... this is a sentiment that i think only prairie children can understand and appreciate and it's a feeling that i've gone far too long since feeling. i fell in love with edmonton walking across this icy bridge in the biting cold wind, the crystalline blue sky, and the blinding light of the sun shining off of the snow and ice. words cannot possibly describe the joy i felt at the centre of that bridge.

on the south side of groat bridge is the university of alberta and whyte avenue, two of edmonton's greatest assets. i wandered across the campus at which i had spent almost a QUARTER of my life - strolling its corridors and pathways, walking down HUB mall, smiling in appreciation to see my beloved Academy Pizza - still open (although certainly run by different owners) after almost 22 years since i first went there on a seemingly-daily basis. and whyte avenue. without the throngs of drunken party-people, whyte is the closest thing to a metropolitan community that edmonton has. bustling walking traffic, exotic and fascinating shops, an incomparable farmers' market, and a vibe and energy that easily competes with toronto's queen street or kensington market. it was an incredible joy to stroll into the small, independently owned shops, with their unique retail concepts, and feel like a real human being, rather than a statistic for a global chain of shops - a target demographic. to experience the worldliness of these shops in edmonton was simply heavenly.

in an older post, i remarked at the lack of suitable nightlife downtown. i hereby recant those embarassing claims and take upon myself the criticism of ignorance and prejudice. my friend AJ pointed me toward some spots that were new, but presented fantastic opportunities for socializing. in fact, spending an evening at a very hip lounge called 100, i found that nightlife in edmonton was not only so much more relaxed and pleasurable than that to which i had become accustomed to in toronto, i also realized that the people of edmonton are incredibly beautiful, free of pretension, and eager to enjoy life with unrestrained and unmitigated revelry. this observation alone was so very much worth the price of admission that i can hardly desire to go anywhere else now to enjoy a drink or a chance encounter.

and just in case you feel the overpowering need to go to a truly metropolitan spot with ambience, sincerety and sophistication, there's TZIN which i have mentioned before on 104th street just west of jasper ave. the proprietor there, kelsey, is an incomparably lovely woman who practically radiates warmth, joy and hospitality. her joint is charming, ambient, urban and so very high-class. i have been incredibly lucky to get to spend some time chatting with her and soaking up the charisma that she imbues into her creation. clearly, i can't say enough nice things about her bar. go there, if you can.

i spent four days and nights in edmonton, and they were some of the best days i've had in years. in fact, so restorative was this visit, that i fully believe that i've regained some of the confidence and certainty of purpose that i had lost over the past few years floating around like a disembodied spirit in canada's biggest city. i haven't yet sought the forgiveness of my friends in edmonton who i've harmed, but i feel like i've given myself permission to love my home again, which is an important start to healing the wound between us.

edmonton is still vitriolic. the drop in oil prices means that oil sands projects worth billions of dollars have been put on hold and lives have been put on indefinite hold while the the global economy figures out what the F it wants to do next. however, if edmonton can keep the lovely and inspired people that i met last week, i'm sure though that edmonton has become, and will continue to be, a place very worthy of admiration and love and respect well into the next century.

edmonton, i love you!!!! not as much as my cats, but almost!

- g

a couple of thursdays ago, i experienced a big, nearly-city-wide power failure in toronto.

i was doing some work on my computer around 10pm when suddenly, all of the power went out in my apartment suite. now, following decades of lessons-learned from apocalyptic cyborg films i knew very well that power failures are principally caused by EMPs (electromagnetic pulse) that disrupt power, computer and electrical systems and also typically herald massive amounts of death, destruction, and of course, robot invasions. this was my very first instinct when the power died and i rushed out to the living room to grab my cats and protect them from the inevitable fiery shockwave that was certain to level my apartment building within seconds.

i was incredibly relieved to look out of my living room window and see, instead of glowing mushroom clouds, a sea of inky darkness with the exception of the street lights which seem to run on a separate grid than the residential power lines.

it was an extremely cold night (for balmy toronto) at NEARLY -30C (if you could see me, you would see me smirking at the relative no-coldiness of that number, given some of the Edmonton winters i have lived through). i was very worried that if power would not be restored soon, the heat from my apartment would seep away and that my cats, fur-lined as they are, would ... um... get cold.

the power remained off all night and it wasn't until around 7:30 in the morning that power came back on. the pipes that feed radiant heat to my apartment were cold, but my suite was relatively warm, given that i live on a high floor and all of the heat trapped in the building continued to rise as it moved through the building.

getting to work was also complicated by the outage. apparently, power was spottily disrupted throughout the west side of toronto, mostly affecting residential areas, but also impacting traffic lights, and taking out most of the subway line that services the west-end of the city. of course, all this i didn't realize until after i boarded the subway and checked my iPhone for news about the power outage. i went one stop on the subway before i was forced to get out and either take a bus, for which some 500 people were already in line in the freezing wind, or to walk back home and drive to work.

at the same time, israeli forces were bombing the crap out of hamas in the gaza strip. obviously, i felt that my own little brush with the end of the world was a farce, and i laughed at myself for the inconvenience that i felt, and thanked as i do almost daily my good fortune to live in this area of stability and sanity. the things for which we in canada have to be grateful are innumerable and these little, insignificant disruptions in the status quo should help us all realize what a utopia we inhabit.

- g

song of the day for when the world is running down: when the world is running down (you make the best of what's still around), the police.

it's been years since i've been skiing, and i miss the days when i was much much younger and i would... erm... borrow my parents' car (most of the time without their knowledge) to drive in the middle of the night to visit my friend vazdru princess in jasper where she was studying to be a chef with the CP Hotel people (now Fairmont Resorts). i have heard a lot of great things about Collingwood's Blue Mountain Resort, so i looked outside earlier, thought that it was (relatively) warm and the roads were dry, so i would take a drive up to see the resort for myself.

i haven't gone on a proper road-trip for a very long time, so i felt comfortable with the carbon footprint that this adventure would make. at 141km each way, the trip there and back should only take a few hours and not consume more than a tank of gasoline - which is now so cheap, i could afford to fill up with the mid-range octane fuel and still afford to wash my car with the same grade gasoline! the road out was clear and dry, just as i had anticipated, and i made great time along highway 400.

the funniest thing that i saw driving out to Collingwood was this little company - "Dock in a Box". i don't actually care what it is that they actually do, i suppose it has something to do with umm... boats. all that i could think of driving past it was the andy samberg collaboration video with justin timberlake from a couple years ago, with almost the same name. i nearly drove my car off the freeway when i saw the building, and almost did the same trying to snap this photo as i sped by at 110km/h!

i arrived at Collingwood and was a little disappointed! i was expecting to be greeted by a charming little ski village like jasper or banff, and i was instead confronted by an altogether uninteresting town like... kitchener or red deer. after a couple of well-timed text messages to my fairy-godsister/HR manager, i was put on the right path to the blue mountain resort, but not before the FREAKING FREEZING RAIN STARTED TO COVER EVERYTHING AROUND ME IN A SHEET OF SUPER-SLIPPERY ICE!

blue mountain is nice! it's cute! it's... small!!! i guess i was expecting something like my beloved lake louise, and found something more like my also beloved rabbit hill from back home. it has a cutie little chairlift that takes you up a whopping 720 feet!!! so that's like... three minutes of completely uninterrupted skiing!!! okay okay - you can stretch that out with skiing foreplay and cuddling, but still - there's no way i would drive an hour and a half to ski up and down that bunny hill! i am definitely planning a proper ski trip for march.

the real adventure started with the drive home. the freezing rain had coated all of the roads with ice and because they only salt the roads here, there was nothing to give cars traction apart from really slow driving! it was getting dark and i knew that there would be people driving back to the big city oblivious to road conditions and i was seriously afraid for my life. it took me over two hours to drive the 140km back, but i got back in one piece and a renewed appreciation for life in all of its myriad forms.

so the moral of the story is that not all completely spontaneous day-adventures go as smoothly as you would like. some start off with the promise of maybe picking up some time on the ski hill or at the chalet and end up with a wheel-gripping death-race back home. maybe check the weather report before you head across the province (although i never did that when i drove off to jasper as a young man).

- g

song of the day for just kind of going with it: hand in my pocket, alanis morissette