I could’ve used this when we lived in Calgary but honestly, this is all I needed to know:
1. Hop N Brew (right next door to where my office was – dangerous!)
2. Drum & Monkey (also down the street from my office – sat there for like ten hours from noon on to hold a table for Game 7 in the 2004 Stanley Cup Final!)
3. Classic Jack’s
4. James Joyce (downtown and I think there was one on 4th? Amazing curry fries!)
5. Ship & Anchor (Many places on this list are gone but the Ship is a Calgary institution.)
6. Kensington Pub (home to a great Saturday afternoon sharing a pint with an 80-year old aunt!)
7. Rose & Crown
8. King Eddy
9. Kaos Jazz & Blues Club on 17th (Special mention as we held multiple Freedom to Read Week fundraisers here when I worked at the Writers Guild of Alberta)
10. Wild Rose Brewery
My old 'where to drink in Calgary' decision tree got onto reddit again today. Seeing that many people were commenting about how out-of-date it is, I updated it for 2021. Here is your new 'Where to drink in Calgary' decision tree! pic.twitter.com/lThzbyPLtN
Browsing my photos, I occasionally come across a photo of someone in the family wearing a mask and it’s weird to think how unusual it felt at the time – when Pace had to go into isolation for a weekend after presenting with some weird breathing (later diagnosed as childhood asthma), when I’ve gone in for surgery or when I accompanied Shea for a c-section, when we sprayed chemicals on our lawn, when we did painting.
Not sure on the context of this one but three year old Sasha had no idea what she was preparing for only a few short years later!
I’m trying as hard as I can to avoid buying from Amazon as I’ve grown to *really* dislike their business practices – from how they treat workers to resellers engaging in fraud to simply the fact that Jeff Bezos does not need one more penny of my money.
I mean, Wal-Mart is a shitty employer too but at least they have employees in my city and pay taxes here and so on. I haven’t done it at Wal-Mart but most bricks & mortar stores also making returning stuff you bought from their online stores a lot easier (recently returned some clothes to Old Navy, no problem!).
Here’s a sample of a couple of the comments on the MetaFilter thread…
My biggest problem with Amazon these days is that so many of their third party sellers are practicing fraud. I only buy the most basic items there anymore because too many times, even slightly above bottom-of-the-barrel brand products have turned out to be not the item claimed, but rather cheap, low-quality alternatives in fake packaging.
Also:
The issue has been that Amazon’s warehouses consider all “same” items interchangeable. In the “Fulfilled by Amazon” system, the seller ships their product to Amazon, who keep it in their warehouses until it’s bought. If another seller is selling the same item, their stock is mingled with the first seller’s stock at the warehouse. If one of these sellers is sending fakes to Amazon, you as the customer have no way to avoid them when buying that item. Buying from seller A or seller B has no relationship to whether the item you receive is originally from one or the other.
“There are legitimate medical exemptions but if someone requires a mask exemption, that usually means they are at high risk of Covid and I counsel them to not to go out in public without a mask and instead, have someone assist you – a family member or caregiver if possible…Some doctors will feel pressured to give medical exemption letters but by and large, most of the time, people don’t need a medical exemption from wearing a mask.”
Pace is really good about walking his younger sister to and from every school but he was clearly excited that she’d gone out to the lake with her mom on Thursday while he wanted to stay out and go with me after I finished work today.
“Can I write my skateboard to school?” he asked hopefully.
Of course.
(Funny related story – Sasha was quite sad the other day realising her brother will be in high school so she won’t walk with him next year.
“Are you nervous about walking alone?” her mom asked.
“No, I’m sad because I won’t be able to spy on him after school to see who he’s talking to!” she replied.
This was one of the last pictures I took two months ago to the day on Saturday March 27, 2021 as Regina Public Library prepared to once again close our branches the following day as Covid was spiking in Regina and area.
And just like when we shut down in March 2020 “a week or two” turned into “multiple months” as the branch was closed to the public for two months.
At least this time, our internal Business Continuity team was more prepared than when Covid first hit (and really – which businesses had *worldwide* pandemic on their risk assessment/emergency plans?) so all staff were either able to work from home, do a hybrid WFH and in-branch (which is what I did) or stay working in branch delivering curbside pickup, “Grab & Go” bags of random books based on patron preferences submitted via online form (rebranded to “Check It Out” bags as some people had apparently taken “Grab & Go” too literally when we were still open!, curbside printing and scanning, discussion of outside computer stations (that never happened) but an outside public phone (which did.)
Between those offerings plus a centralized Hotline to answer calls/emails/chats and digital programs, really there was *very* little that library patrons would not be able to access while we were closed that they couldn’t when we were open. (Again, direct access to the Internet and related items – printing, photocopying – for people who didn’t have technology at home was the main thing we couldn’t replicate.)
Barring some major change or announcement, we expect to reopen Monday and hopefully that’s the last time the library closes in my lifetime (short of the occasional brief power outage or snow day or something!) 🙂
We had a “Hungry Caterpillar” themed birthday when Sasha turned one that was a huge hit – great decorations (mostly homemade or from the Dollar Store), a “Hungry Caterpillar” dress ordered off Etsy, and her (at the time) five year old brother even did a reading of “The Hungry Caterpillar” using a giant book I’d borrowed from the library.
I don’t use Pinterest a lot but the board I created for party ideas still gets a lot of hits/saves to this day (uhm, would’ve sworn I added more than six things to that board but don’t know enough about how Pinterest works – maybe they pruned broken links or copyrighted images or something?)
Family Photo
A Special Reading of “The Hungry Caterpillar”
On the wall, one photo from each month of her first year In caterpillar form as a cool decoration (This “Chain” Hangs In My Office To This Day!). Also featuring an antique pedal car her grandpa restored for her.
