Meanders

With Dad out of town, I had a little extra time to explore his neighbourhood. So of course I got lost. Until I found Martha street. Martha street is the way home.

A Visitor

This is a picture of me completely failing to remember to take a picture of Mars while she was here.  I kept planning on it. I'd take a picture at the delicious dinner party, or here at Remedy on one of the days she was babysitting me while I worked on my thesis.  At least we got to hang out. That's the important thing, right?

Mars Returns!

Martha came to town! For, let's say, Sullay's defense party. She and Mary are better at vogueing than I am at using my new camera.

Angie's Brunch

I'd like to get everyone who has a favourite post onto the blog, so I was sad that this was the only usable picture of my new favourite Kryptonian.

She was air-singing 80's songs, too, when I had forgotten my camera. Gah. Anyway, Jason and Chau came for brunch too. But Jason only eats babies.

Keeping it in the Family

This Lenio-Nentwig Stag and Doe is totally the reason I came to Waterloo. The Lenios handled the MCing, and the winning of prizes.

Life Events

While I'm in town for the wedding there are a few babies for me to meet. A few, um, kids, too.

Three Course Meal

Justine and Mat didn't just let me stay at their place in Toronto before flying out, they invited some people over and cooked some fantastic Indian food, followed by magical regenerating Italian Christmas cake:Then for dessert, we spon wool into gold

Shopping in Waterloo

Waterloo has yuppied up since I left, as you can tell by the shopping.  Look at these:They look delicious, right?  But they're DOG FOOD.

The good news is you can also buy delicious local beer. 

Not to mention buying houses with sheep:

Winning 2 out of 3 wasn't bad either

Curling is great mostly because you get to see all of your old friends at the same time.

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.

MARS ATTACKS!!!!

It's hard to sum up how many ways I know Martha, shown here playing Settlers of Catan in the Australian outback, so let's just say she's probably the most regular reader of this blog never to appear on it. (Directly, at least). You can imagine how excited I was to hear that she would be in Edmonton for a few days before flying back down under. Edmonton was excited too: The weather was so warm that it was physically impossible for me to take myself out of it by putting on those headphones:
When Mars (nee Martha) got here we headed to Muddy Watters, where she demonstrated her new ability to knit FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT!!!1
After a thoroughly satisfying stitch 'n bitch session, Tatiana and I tried to show her around our used bookstores, with little success:
She got to see some pretty Edmonton Edmonton anyway, though, including the old-west ghost town stretch of 81st Ave, hitching post and all:
And Whyte Ave, of course, where we met up with Trev for dinner:
On the way back to my place, Trev pointed out a dubious sign of his fame: The class he was scheduled to teach made it on to this sign:
...but not into reality. It was cancelled for lack of students. You should have signed up! Anyone can learn! And he's good!

Anyway, we stopped off at home and grabbed Kitchener-Waterloo On Board! (an "Opoly style game" based on the town Trev, Mars and I grew up in) and took it out to an Edmonton gem for a little cultural exchange:
AMT and Steve joined us for the game, and it got so intense that I stopped taking pictures, even when a crowd of my friends arrived to meet the guest of honor.