Catching Up

Went to Roast (hat tip: AMT) to catch up with Chris + Olivia now that they're back in town. The cafe is palatial and just about as fancy as the braising on this green-tea latte.

Olivia-Chris

So, I was in Warman for a wedding! An Olivia-Chris wedding! But I brought a camera I'm not used to, so I only have blurry pictures of the beautiful ceremony:

But there was Heidi! While the wedding party was getting pictures done, she showed me how to do Saskatoon right:

Then it was back to the reception, with lovely speeches and wicked-fun square dancing, and smiles and (new) family and love and stuff.

Oh, and this cake that is a cake. THIS IS A CAKE! I almost picked up one of the controllers before I realized.

And after the unable-to-resist-being-helpful Cox family took down the beautiful garden-party-themed reception hall, we sent the couple off to their secret honeymoon with ample banging on the trunk.

Hooray!

Edward Gorey and Tiny Robot waiting for me in the department! Merry Christmas indeed.

This one's for Chris

I laughed, at first, at the fact that all-around rockstar Chris Cox's alma mater is the place to go if you choose your University by "best chance for admission". Then I realized that I would go anywhere that could make a person jump like that. Then I realized that we ABSOLUTELY MUST RECREATE THIS PHOTO.

The Learnèd

I tried to get a picture of Chris when he was earnestly poring over ancient documents and looking studious, but Olivia intervened.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Kyle, Bekka and Olivia hosted a delicious Thanksgiving party! The trick to taking candid photos is to keep taking them until people forget that you're taking pictures. Until _most_ people forget, anyway.

Locals

I'm used to running into people I know in Edmonton by now, but I'm not used to them always being Chris.

Good Eyes, Chris C!

Andrew seems to be on national television more days than not, but not on Archival footage:

You can't really see T in this clip, but she's had her share of stock-photo-walking fame.

Moral Support

Everybody was exhausted from a long day of phonology, so my 30th birthday gathering fit twice the uninhibition (?) in half the time.  Thanks!

You can take the kitchen out of the party, but...

Man, this Euro-party sure turned into a Canadian-style kitchen party right fast

Many Days in One!

Too many good things today! I got to have lunch with famous writer and avowed butterfly gang member Rebecca Rosenblum!I got to see Steve play a matinee with Bramwell Park and the ghost of Stephen Tchir

I stunned a few more people with the Star Trek Interactive VCR Board Game
And found a good home for Data!

PANCAKES!

... with real Maple and Saskatoonberry syrups!  Plus two fruit salads composed with complementary distributions of fruit! Nota bad way to start a morning.

An Embarrassment of Riches

By ridiculous coincidence, Tyler's visit coincided with Olivia's.  wee-haw.

Good News and Bad News

I found the perfect work environment, but it takes at least 6 people to pull off; two to work dilligently next to me, and 4 to have an interesting conversation in front of me that I can jump in to every 10 minutes.  And coffee.

God love him.

Leave it to Chris to bring popsicles to a beergharita party.

Wir auch!

Here Chris demonstrates the Plautdietsch sentence so complicated it was worth a Masters' degree. The sentence plus that giant book you see on the table describing it. That's my understanding of the situation, anyway.....

Entertainment Plan: ENACTED

It turns out it's worth squeezing 98% of the people in Edmonton into your apartment because it increases the possibility that one of them has found you an impossibly perfect gift.

MARSBLOG: All Martha, All the Time

Offers to take Martha to The Mall while she was here were met with nothing but eye-rolling, so instead I took her in to see the department. Despite being an engineer by training, Mars almost immediately made my toy helicopter fail to fly:She made up for it, though, by being brave enough to open the door I sure as hell never would have.
I tried to tell her that Timmy's isn't as popular out here, but my claim was undermined almost immediately: Sure, Waterloo has four of them on campus, but you can't stand in the same place and see two of them.
When Martha heard that Edmonton had a Chinatown, she thought she'd like to check it out. I think she didn't think it would be very Chinese. It turns out she was right:
After knitting for a while at a hole-in-the-wall bubble tea place packed floor-to-ceiling with crates of mangoes, we went back to Jasper. Here's Mars at the arboretum, blithely unaware that she is about to be grabbed by a giant cactus monster
Before heading back across the river, we stopped in at the Macdonald for a little repose:
Martha was a little bit confused by this sign:
...but I thought it was pretty self explanatory: "Queen Elizabeth swimming in river: THIS WAY"

Anyway, we met up with a bunch of linguists on our way to dinner. I guess they were excited to see us:

That's Sullay's laugh you hear in the video. He was so impressed, he decided to give it a try for himself:
Eventually we made it to the restaurant, where they served us tasty Indian food by the bucket load:All in all, a great visit.

The Great Salt Lake

We started our last day in the city sitting upstairs and listening to a politician on television treat a complicated issue like a complicated issue:
While saying goodbye to the dogs:

On our way to the airport, we stopped of for a while at the Great Salt Lake itself:
To fit in with the rest of Utah, this lake is totally bizarre. First of all, the lake bed has a strange colour, and makes for even stranger looking footprints:
I wasn't the only one interested:Second of all, for all the lake there is in this lake, there's a whole lot of not lake in it too:
Have a closer look at this view:
See that giant, vaguely Eastern-looking palace in the background? Here's what it looks like from the front:The story we got is that it was built some time long ago at the edge of the lake, but eventually fell into disuse and disrepair:
The problem was that it the edge of the lake didn't want to stay where it was, so what started as a beach-front palace became a massive building a fair walk through a wet desert away from the lake:I think it's better this way. We need surreal spaces more than tourist traps anyway.

SLC Day 2

After a prodigious sleep-in, we spent our first SLC morning visiting a couple of very Western used book stores:Then it was on to one of our main attractions: Tamrika and John's diner, the Blue Plate:
We took the opportunity to give Tanya an early birthday present
While the rest of us enjoyed hearty lunches. I loved my buttermilk biscuits with vegetarian gravy, but Toma declared Chris the winner with his choice of mexican benedicts: They're not short on awards themselves:
Even the graffiti is complementary. This is the only award they had posted outside, but they had about 6 others inside - three best breakfast and three best on the cheap, if I recall correctly. I think if I had a business, I'd be most psyched about this award though:An original work Bob Moss made just for them, hand of God and all.

After lunch we went to see the University. We went to CAIL first, because Chris seemed so excited about it. We could see why when we got there - Sweet building:
Sweeter language family maps:
and an outrageously delicious library:
*whew*. We gotta get us one of those.

Later on we made it up to Park City, home of most of the Sundance Film Festival. It turns out the theatres are used for.... um... theatre during the off-season:
Overall, Park City feels a lot like Banff or Jasper, with one main drag jam packed with tourists and boutique stores catering to tourists. The only major difference was how steep that main drag was. Oh, and I guess the Mormons have left their subtle mark here:
At the end of the day we went up to see the half of the house, where Tamrika lives. Like you might expect, it was pretty sweet: And, like you might not expect, full of tiny dogs making people happy: