My life is not without its challenges and there's some stuff that is definitely Not Awesome about it, but I am moved to report on some of the more awesome aspects of my current life; even the small, mundane and pop-culture imbibing parts of it.

Recent Dinner I made last night and I'm proud of it:
Roast lamb, embedded with lavender and thyme (both from my garden), rosemary and garlic; drizzled with honey to glaze.
Roasted red bell pepper.
Steamed snap peas (I love those bags of snack snap peas!).
Watermelon, chevre, fresh basil and lime salad.
It was awesome!

Recent Movies watched at actual Theatres:
Get Smart (I loved this more than was good for me! Having had a mouse run up my clothes once, the rat scene nearly killed me. Awesomely funny!)
The Dark Knight (crazy awesome.)
Wall-E (beautifully awesome.)
Prince Caspian (melancholy-tinged awesome.)

Recent Movies watched at Home:
Golddiggers of 1935 (my kind of awesome! Busby Berkeley style! Even if it's a skeleton cast compared to the earlier Busbys.)
The Public Enemy (top 10 most awesome movies of all time, standing up awesomely well to repeated viewings.)

Recent Cocktails Invented:
The "Miss Lavendar" :
1 oz Rum
Muddled lavender from the garden
1/2 lime juiced
Shot of Grenadine
Club soda
Ice
It was gently awesome!

Recent Books Read:
"Un Lun Dun" by China Mieville - China Mieville is an awesome author, and this Young Adult book is fun, mildly twisted, mildly political, and sharply awesome.

"The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril" by Paul Malmont. I was perfectly in the mood for an off-beat novel with Pulp Fiction authors of 1937 as the protagonists. Awesomely suited to my needs, and a shoutout to the awesome defender75 for bringing it to my attention.

"The Arrival" by Shaun Tan - most awesome book of the year thus far! Seriously: beautiful, moving, intelligent, warm and universal. There have been few books I admire as much as this one. It was a wonderful and unexpected discovery after picking it up on a whim last week. It is a picture book for adults and bright, sensitive mature kids. Don't read too much about the book beforehand, just flip through the pages, get intrigued and start "reading" this wordless masterpiece. Let it take you on its journey, don't let the editorials or reviews tell you what it's about, discover it for yourself.

Awesome Bonus: there are at least 2 Anne of Green Gables references in this post. Can you find them?

My sudden online silence for the last week came from one of those unexpected epochs everyone faces: a family funeral.

My great aunt passed away after a long period of illness and fading. I'm a bit removed from the primary mourning, being a great-niece, but it was nevertheless a week or so of big events and big feelings.

Let me show you a picture of my aunt when she was young. This is my strong, feisty, funny, resourceful, loving great aunt, who was a mother, a widow much too young, a hard worker and, yes, even a lounge singer :-). ( Continued behind the cut. )

I keep forgetting to post about this! But I think it's only fair to mention, even if I'm late about it, that my School Board Trustee, Lois Burke-Gaffney, seems like a good egg.

To recap, the Calgary Catholic School Board (which is a public school board, not private) suddenly pulled The Golden Compass from library shelves in December to "review" it.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=146646

I got very very angry. My family and I have a long history with the schools here, and though I've certainly disagreed with the Board before, I didn't think they could be that reactionary. I wrote my Trustee, and called and left voicemail too.

Early in January I got a form letter thanking me for my concern and explaining that they hadn't "banned" the book but had withdrawn it to "review" it. That miffed me, since I was quite aware of the "review" spin when I wrote my letter and had specifically addressed it. On the other hand, I was pleased to see that the public response was big enough that they'd had to draft a form letter.

Later in January I got a personal phone call from my trustee, Burke-Gaffney. Right away she apologised for not responding to me earlier and that she agreed with me - withdrawing the book was a mistake - "silly" in fact - and not just because it got negative publicity. The book went back on the shelves (I think she mentioned this happened with a change in some senior board roles) and they're developing a study guide.

I mentioned I was pleasantly surprised by her phone call since I thought the stiff form letter was going to be all the response I got. She dismissed the letter as coming from "Downtown".

We ended the conversation with mutual admiration.

But really, the most important response out of the events was that the book is back, and I think they regret ever flirting with censorship of this kind.

A few days ago my husband, aka Dr. Smith, ditched me for an evening with my friend veritate. In fact, they'd been planning this rendezvous for about a month. The main attraction: Hockey. The Flames specifically. Both Dr. Smith and veritate love hockey, and veritate's love for the Flames and Kiprusoff is deep and abiding.

veritate's husband drhaggis and I are not really fans. I get into late playoffs if the Flames are doing well, but otherwise - meh.

So drhaggis and I declared that we would have a good time without them. A better time. A much cooler time. As the day approached, we looked for an option...

The Silent Film festival is this time of year!... nerts, it doesn't start til February.
Bladerunner is playing at the Plaza! ... darn, too late for a work night.
The High Performance Rodeo theatre festival is going on!... *sigh* nothing really good that night.

drhaggis came through with the suggestion that we hang-out somewhere posh and drink outrageously priced cocktails: the Oak Room at the Palliser Hotel. I concurred, but felt the evening needed an additional something to really prove that us non-sports fans were much cooler.

After wrestling with google, I found something intriguing: the University hosts a "Science Cafe" at a pub downtown, third Tuesday of every month. This month, it's about the Opium Poppy... She shoots.... She scores!

Two cosy rooms at the back of the Unicorn Pub were jammed full of people, from all walks, eager to learn about science. To discuss it, question, argue and laugh about it. Wow. 15 minutes before it started and there was standing room only.

We finagled two seats with our charm and persistence, got our pints and pub food and settled in to listen to Dr. Facchini - head of one of the very few research labs involved in studying the Opium Poppy. He was engaging, funny and enthusiastic. He wasn't afraid to talk about the politics, ethics and economics of opium and medical narcotic production. Since I figure my steampunk character, Lady Faraway, has a personal interest in opium, the topic nicely dovetailed as character research :-).

As scientists, I know we rely too often on our Power Point, so it was great to see how this event doesn't allow a screen to distance the presentation. He took his microphone and walked amongst us. There was a break for personal discussion (and people, including drhaggis and I, really did talk at their tables about science!) and then a lively, intelligent question and answer session followed.

Afterwards, we talked personally with Dr. Facchini and admired the poppy plant he brought with him. I got to show off by asking if the poppies were polyploid and discussed candidate gene strategies, how they differed from human gene hunting, etc.

It was so surprising to find out this has been going on for a year now. Surprising, exciting and reassuring. The world can't be all bad, if things like this happen in it. People still love reason.

And look at what intelligent, sensitive people can find to do in this city of ours! We might not have been able to do some of those things on the list that night, but still, those events we considered were fantastic options. Yes, even the Flames game :-).

--
More links on Science Cafes/Cafe Scientifique - find one near you!

http://www.cafescientifique.org/index.html (UK, World links)
http://www.cafescientifique.ca/ (Canada - seems to be down though)
http://www.sciencecafes.org/ (US)
Calgary's list of upcoming Cafes:
http://www.calgaryscience.ca/courses/adultprograms/sciencecafe.php

Fire

I saved the neighbourhood yesterday. Yes, my sharp beady little eyes were the first to pick out the smoke and wavy heat rising above the treetops of my backyard aspen woodland and meadow. We were the first to call 911 and tell the fire department that there was a bushfire maybe 200 feet away from our yard and they came to our house and made their way out into the meadow:



We overheard the firemen saying the fire when they arrived was about 100 x 180 feet in area. We got 2 big pumper trucks and 2 little ones, and they got it under control in a couple hours. Yay!

This was the first really warm day of spring and it was "Leaf Day" - the day that all the trees on the prairies burst into leaf - and we'd just been out tracking down frogs in our wetlands and enjoying the weather for the first time since winter, so it would have been tragic if anything worse has happened.

Friends: Tiki Highballs!

It was a full day all round, and it was topped with a rather belated but still very welcome and generous birthday supper with my family. By tradition, the birthday 'child' gets to pick a couple friends to come too, so I was very happy that veritate and drhaggis could come. You won't believe the ineffable coolness of the Vintage Atomic Highball Glass Set Complete with Carry Tray that those two managed to find and keep hidden from me for the past several months. Highballs! w00t!

Speaking of Highballs. I need some good Tiki highball recipes - is there such a thing? Tiki drinks tend to fall into the "Cocktail" family, I think, rather than the HighBall one. But if you know some good drinks to put into these supercool glasses, I'd love to hear of them.

Fandom: Making tiny pictures

Did you know one of the reasons I chose variations of "Magpie" as a username when I first logged onto the 'net in about 10 years ago was that I loved to run about stealing shiny pictures of actors from the web? And turning them into desktop wallpapers with my paint program? Yep.

My eyeballs are square once again from staring at the screen and making tiny 100x100 pixel pictures. It's silly really, spending hours on these wee things. I got the idea to make classic film fandom icons involving famous legs and feet with the line "My Fandom Has Legs" - which I think is terribly clever since, of course, not only are there famous legs in classic films, but by definition, classic film fandom has legs - it's been around a long time.



I am also getting a kick out of colourization:



Fantastic: Dr Smith is teh Sexy!!1!!111!

My husband made a goal this year of running 10 km, and this morning he got out there in front of thousands and ran 10 km! Yay! I am so proud of him! Yowsa!

Today Dr Smith and I went for a walk through our personal greenwood. I suppose the neighbours share it too, but really, it's ours. Despite two small snowfalls this autumn, we're experiencing some warm, clear days with brilliant light. We can walk through the wood almost all the way to our grocery store - almost 1 1/2 km long, though it's narrow and development presses up against it from each side. Here's a picture I took of our woodlands:


( Follow the path. )