Touch You Last

This one's for Beth : Making Love to the Vancouver Canucks by Ivan Hrvatska (The Croatian Party Ambassador) . It is both strange and beautiful.

He's a bit of a paste-eater, I think we've mentioned that before. In all honesty, we suspect he was taken from his mom too early. But he's cute, and he's (above photo excepted) a pretty happy-go-lucky cat, so it's not like he's been short-changed in life. Further evidence to his being taken too soon from his mom (but not of his literal paste-eating), every time our boys have a stay-over at the cat B&B --during one of nine yearly cruises--he comes home having learned something new. Not exceptionally new (the cat's not making me a sandwich or anything) but he just learns basic skills that most normal cats have. Like meowing. What he does now is a sad approximation of a meow, but before we'd ever taken him in to the B&B literally no sound came out when he meowed. Really, there's two types of meowing he learned, but I'll get back to the second one. He also learned to knead there. Never did it for, like, the first six months of h...

Better late than never… Monday (the 9 th ), the last first day before we left, Justin pitched the idea of visiting Plus 15 . This was not—as you might assume—a put-down related to my morbid obesity, rather Plus 15 is a series of connected walkways fifteen feet above street level that connects various shops, cafes, and the like. We torpedoed that idea though, figuring we could go shopping the next day while Justin was at work. Instead, we availed ourselves of the illegal internets to find local attractions, and Sarah found some info on Drumheller . So, we took our typical three and a half hours to mobilize, and then we were off to dinotown. Originally settled for its rich coal and oil deposits, Drumheller also revea led itself to be rich in rare fossils and dinosaur bones, and these days the city is all about tourism. Driving towards the visitors centre, we were greeted by the worl d’s largest dinosaur , measuring in around 86 feet. We all acted amazed in a pretty ironic fashion, ...

On Saturday, we had our big road trip. We left Calgary (thank Jebus) and drove for an hour before we hit the mountains. Totally, totally beautiful. And the conditions were just perfect—they were still snow-covered, but it was bright blue day which got steadily warmer the further we got from Calgary. (About a week before leaving, Sarah asked, “Baby, are you excited that you’re going to see mountains?” And I was all, “Whatevs, I’ve seen mountains before.” So, every time we came across a beautiful view of the Rockies, someone would mock me with, “Pfft… s’mountains.”) Our first stop was Canmore, where we grabbed a pretty decent coffee and a pretty terrible bagel’n’eggy sandwich. Then we motored over to Banff, which is a good looking city, but tourist-overrun. We stopped at the Fairmont Banff Springs to snap some pictures and walk through the hotel, then we visited the Banff Upper Hot Springs, where all my oozing sores found sweet relief (and almost nobody was Speedo-clad.) Then it was off ...

So it’s Good Friday here in Cal-gary, and we’re celebrating the day by having Eggs McMaster and Delicio for breakfast after our traditional ten hours sleep. Later today, we’ll be heading out to Fort Calgary, and then to Yuk Yuk’s. All good. But then, the plan for Saturday morning is to get on the road by seven and check out Field, Banff, and Lake Louise—which sounds like it’ll be a great day, but also has us up and at ‘em a good four hours earlier than we’ve grown accustomed to. Scary shit. A quick summary of some things seen, visited and/or eaten so far: Studio 82 – partook in Justin’s Wednesday ritual of wings and beer with some of his co-workers and friends. Studio 82 has nineteen flavours of wings, of which we tried about six, and of which Salt and Pepper surprisingly kicked ass. Beth , meat-slacker that she is, had a big ol’ plate of fries. Tasty, I think is the word she used to describe them. Calgary Olympic Park – had a quick stop here, largely spent in the Olympic Museum. Got t...

So, here we are in Calgary, which from an architectural standpoint is reminiscent of Toronto in the seventies, or modern day Windsor. We’ve done some sleeping in, some eating, some drinking, some driving, and some rocking out to top-volume Lionel Ritchie—good times, all in all. Things you didn’t know about Cowtown: Cable TV is free Public transit is free (at least within the city core) Every second store is a boot store Liquor stores (not provincially run) are open until 2 Strippers don’t take off their bottoms Now you know.