Monday 19 January 2009

Floating Along

Ice and water

As certain as death and taxes, any lengthy bout of frigid weather in Calgary is broken by a chinook: this one has lasted more than a few days, and the old temperature record for the date was shattered yesterday.

This has lead to some interesting happenings down at the Bow River, which flows from west to east through Calgary, and is well known as one of the best trout-fishing rivers in North America.

Office reflections

Water freezes and melts in various spots, ice shifts, and the shoreline is a front-row seat for an ever-changing panorama of heaves, puddles, and an assortment of flotsam and jetsam that emerges.

Forces of nature

This picture was taken New Year's Eve, when the shattered heaves of ice littered the river: all of our warm weather has greatly reduced their prescence, but the cold will return and the river will again look like this.

It always does....

Tuesday 6 January 2009

The Path Less Travelled

Unploughed path

We've had more snow here in Calgary this winter than I can remember since I was young, and while we need the ground moisture, it's been a rude shock to have to regularly shovel great depths, particularly off our deck. The snow drifts up into the back corner quickly, and was more than a meter deep after the last big dump-and-blow.

Given how cold it's been, however, it's mostly the light, fluffy stuff, so the shovelling isn't terribly onerous -- unlike when I lived in northern Virginia, where it was heavy and wet, frequently mixed with freezing rain and/or sleet, and no one knew how what to do with it.

I had all sorts of grand plans for work over the holidays, but they never seemed to happen, and now I'm playing catch-up. Of the two residencies I had wanted to apply for, it turns out that one runs the same time as I've already committed to teaching at Olds College, so that application went by the wayside.

The second one, where I would like to spend some time this coming fall, changed its deadline from January 15 to May 15, so I will be able to get some of the new work I've been playing with done before then, and send off those pictures as well.

Between the two of them, my day today has been fractionally lighter: there is still work to do on a couple of projects I'm developing that are still a bit sub rosa, building models of the new work, and even working in a bit of "recreational" knitting.

Books for Sale

The shop is currently empty.