Well, we're back from Calgary and it was a great trip!
Pace was an amazing traveler, we saw lots of friends, family and old familiar sights. In many ways, it felt like we were trying to cram three and a half years of memories from when we lived there into just under a week of visiting. But even with that constraint, we managed to hit many of the spots we wanted to see - the Calgary Zoo, the Wave Pool, Shea's old unit at the Foothills, my old office at the Old Y Centre for Community Organizations plus lots of shopping and good eating. Oh, and the obligatory pilgrimage to IKEA that all Saskies must make when visiting Cowtown.
I haven't downloaded our pictures or video yet but was looking for something to sum up the trip and found the clip below.
If asked to name my single fondest memory of the three and a half years I spent in Calgary, it was when a dozen people (including the couple we stayed with while visiting on this trip) rented a 10 man dingy (yeah, I know I said it was a dozen people involved - but there were always two or more in the river at pretty much anytime so it wasn't *completely* illegal) spent a beautiful +30 day floating lazily down the Bow River that runs through the centre of Calgary.
The day had it all - beautiful hot weather, tons of other rafters to visit with, lots of chances to jump in and swim in the swift moving river or just hold on to the edge of the dinghy, a picnic lunch, getting ambushed by kids with water guns at one beach along the ride, a chance to drink directly from the river via one survivalist participant's new water filtration gizmo, a spot check by the river patrol (conveniently happening after our portage spot where we dumped a lot of empty cans!) and even a lost engagement ring swept away by the strength of the current (luckily not Shea's ring!)
We only did this once during the entire 3.5 years we lived in Calgary because I think we realised that doing it again might bring disappointment when it wasn't as magical as that first time.
I had the same worry going back to visit Calgary after so many years away and with so many good memories of our time living there. But except for a couple small pangs throughout the week (okay, and one big one when Shea and I spent a couple hours strolling 17th Ave aka "The Red Mile" where we'd spent so much time while we lived in Calgary), I realised I don't miss Calgary as much as I thought I would. It was a great city to spend a few years in during my 20's but I would argue that Regina's an equally great city to be a young parent in. (Comparing notes with a cousin who does a 2+-hour round trip to take her daughter to soccer three nights a week is all the proof I needed on this point! )
Anyhow, I found this video which doesn't quite do justice to how peaceful and wonderful and amazing our own day floating the Bow River was. But it may give you a bit of a taste...
Read at Work
is a site from the New Zealand Book Council that allows you to read classic books, poetry, samples from selected New Zealand authors and more, online and formatted to look like either the Windows XP interface and Powerpoint presentations. Very fun and cool (though I do not, of course, advocate performing non-work activities such as this while at work! Of course, if you work in libraries, this *is* work related...sort of.)
(via Reddit though I don't have the original link handy - you can search if you really need it)
As for Shea being a computer genius, I'm sitting in a hotel room in Swift Current right now. We made sure the room had an Internet connection as I've brought my laptop with me. I plugged it in when we got here, checked e-mail then trundled off to the pool with Pace and Shea. When we got back, Shea went to the computer and asked, "How come it won't turn on?" I pushed the power button, sure I'd left it running when we left. Nothing. Again, holding it a few seconds. Nothing. "Oh fuck" is the non-paraphrased thought that came to mind. I ran through the checklist...did the screen give out? The motherboard? The hard drive? Hopefully the motherboard - that's the least bothersome major error. The hard drive has a full back-up but would be PAINFUL to redo everything. We're in a poolside room...maybe the humidity just temporarily short-circuited it or something? Wishful thinking but maybe it'll work tomorrow if I crank the air and say a prayer to the techno-gods before I fall asleep. So I'm laying in bed with Shea and Pace and Shea goes, "How long were we at the pool? Do you know if the plug in you used was working? Maybe it wasn't and the battery died?" My battery life is down quite a bit from when it was new (now I get maybe an hour whereas back then, I got 3-4 hours) but w weren't at the pool that long...were we? I plug the laptop into a different outlet and...voila...it boots no problem. So I must say my wife is a brilliant computer-engineer level of intelligence that I am daily in awe of. (Also, I was up and out of the house by 5am today to go do weeding in a distant community. So I drove 3 hours round-trip, did six hours of weeding, then drove another three hours to get here. So hopefully that's an excuse for being such a moron at why my computer "died" tonight.) God, I need sleep... (Oh yeah, I didn't plan to get up at 5am but I had a dream about being at the library weeding and the branch librarian had got her whole board of 10+ people there to help - but in exchange, they wanted me to help them move their entire library...which is in reality a big part of the reason why I was going out - to do a major weeding to help them prepare for an impending move. But yeah...I dreamt about weeding. I think I've reached the next level on the Librarian Nerd Scale! )
I couldn't think what to post about so Shea suggested I give an update from my real life. So here it is...
- tonight we went for a big walk and ended up in River Park just down the hill from where we live in Weyburn. There was an In Motion celebration going on and Pace loved dancing and clapping and running around (yes, he's running now!) to the zydeco band that was playing.
- we're going to Calgary for a week, leaving tomorrow. Our main goals are to hit the zoo, do some shopping (Saskies have to make a pilgrimage to IKEA), visit some relatives and friends since we haven't been back since moving home in 2004 after having lived there for three and a half years
- blog posts may be a bit more sparse for the next week (but knowing me, probably not.)
- I had a day at work today where I accomplished tons, the time flew by, I wrapped up pretty much everything I needed to do before going on holidays. I love days like that!
- I'm on the road tomorrow doing weeding all day at one of our branches. This is completely different than smoking weed all day at one of our branches which is a practice that went out of fashion around 1977.
- Hockey is over. The other blood sport, the Democratic nomination proces is over. How will I entertain myself this summer. (Voice from next room: "Go outside!")
- I could see myself developing an addiction to energy drinks. I'd never tried them before but on a friend's recommendation, I gave it a shot and zowee-wowee. Them things pack a punch!
- Did I mention that I hope to visit a few of my old favourite CPL branches while in Cowtown?
- we probably won't go out to the mountains while we're there. We rarely did in the three and a half years we lived there - why change now? But seriously, we've got a pretty full week just with Calgary stuff so it's doubtful if we'll manage to head out that way.
- I've got a list of old favourite restaurants I want to visit as well. Beef satay at Viet West, chicken schwarma at Falafel King and a pizza from Hop n Brew are all on the menu.
- we've already been invited to a hot tub party - yay!
I drove nearly four hours round-trip today to do a five minute presentation at a tea in honour of a branch assistant who's been with our region for fifteen years...
...which makes me think that rural librarianship has some unique requirements you won't find in any other type of library...
...which makes me think that rural librarianship also has some unique rewards including the joy of homebaked cookies and dainties, a fly on the wall perspective for two hours conversation covering all manner of small town comings and goings plus the inevitable "Saskatchewan One Degree of Separation" moment of finding out that one person attending the tea has a daughter who signed a document for you in her role as a Justice of the Peace in your hometown and the former librarian who is also attending has a son who is married to a friend of yours from University...
...which makes me think that the afternoon tea is the small town female equivalent of the more male dominated "coffee row" which I've also sat in on in a couple different communities while traveling as part of this job... ...which makes me think of how, when we were traveling to a series of meeting in branches near my hometown and after hearing me talk about my experiences growing up in the area, my boss commented "I don't know why you want to work in Regina. You belong in a rural library."...
...which also makes me think about how many people have said (some variation of) "we'll miss you - you understand rural libraries" as my contract begins coming to a close...
...which makes me think that sentiment is properly better captured as "you understand the rural mindset" (trust me - I've barely begun to get a handle on rural libraries!)...
...which makes me think of the fact that we have a special line in our acquisitions budget to buy copies of one book for every branch in our region (rather than the more usual practice of buying one copy that rotates through the region one branch at a time) and how this year, I bought a book called "Our Towns" which features historical information and background about hundreds of towns across Saskatchewan...
...which makes
me think about how this book was being discussed on talk radio today
and I got the tidbit that "coffee row" is a phrase that originated in Saskatchewan and another tidbit that, at its peak in the late
1800's, my hometown of Indian Head had the most elevators of
any community in Saskatchewan (12), a fact I never knew...
...which makes me think that this book was a pretty good pick for a "branch perm" as we call them whereas the books I picked last year on "The History of Patents", "The History of Inventions", "A Child's Guide to the Night Sky" and "A Health Guide for Those Over 50" weren't maybe as good of picks (long story!)...
...which (also) makes me think how those picks led to one of many screw-ups I've had over the past year when I asked that the books be catalogued as "reference" materials when in fact, the proper designation was "branch permanents" which means people could actually, you know, take them out...
...which makes me think that as excited as I am about whatever may come next, I will truly and honestly miss working in a rural library system, with all of its quirks and challenges and small magical moments such as the care taken to design a perfectly arranged tray of goodies...
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that I've been on the road for the past two months doing computer and Internet training at our various branches around SE Saskatchewan (for anyone who doesn't know about our territory, if you draw a straight line from Regina east to the Manitoba border and south to the US border, that's pretty much us. Here's a map but I just realised that it doesn't render in Firefox very well so you might have to look at it in Internet Explorer - sorry about that!)
Anyhow, I thought I'd sum up the last couple months in numbers... Branches Visited - 45 (out of 48)
Number of kilometres put on the company car - 10 000+
Cancellations Due To Illness (mine) - 1
Cancellations Due To Illness/Family Emergency (the branch librarian) - 2 (and it was the same person both times which makes me wonder if she was just really nervous about the training as happens with some people)
Cancellations Due To Cold and/or Blizzards - 1.5 days (the half day is because I went out for my daytime sessions but had the evening one canceled by the local librarian)
Number of blizzards I drove through when travel wasn't recommended - 1
Number of -30 degree or colder days - too many to count
Number of 0 degree days where, the mix of melting/half-frozen snow and massive wind gusts made it feel like you were driving on a combo curling rink/jet engine turbine simulator scarier than any blizzard - 1
Number of members of the general public who attended my sessions overall - 150-200? (sounds impressive until you realise that averages out to 3-4 people per library)
Number of communities that had not one person show up for either of my two public sessions - a drop-in Q&A and a one-hour "guided tour" of the Internet - 3
Not having done the math, what I think my average rating would be for all training sessions (2 with general public, 1 with branch librarians) based on the feedback forms (out of 5) - 4.0
What it would be if you discounted the people who obviously filled out the form wrong - 4.5 (some examples - a few people gave all 1's - our lowest mark - but wrote nothing but favourable comments, some put lower marks in the "Length of Session" field meaning they enjoyed it and wish the session could've been longer but which comes across as a negative when you include it in the average rating. Who said survey design in 504 was useless?)
Two reasons I probably got higher marks than I deserved. 1) I often mentioned I was from Indian Head and had grown up in SRL which immediately sets a "you're one of us" vibe and 2) people filled out the feedback form before actually going home to see if my advice actually would help with their problem!
Number of our branches still on dial-up - 5
Question I should've expected but which caught me off-guard with how much it was asked - "how do I get satellite Internet on my farm? What does it cost? What are the advantages/disadvantages?"
In my opinion, the single biggest problem for people who at least have the skills to get online but are otherwise total beginners? They don't recognize ads on pages or know how to tell when they've surfed away from a site. The amount of people I'd show a site to and have them miles away as soon as I looked away because they just started clicking on the page randomly boggled my mind.
Number of people I helped figure out how to use a mouse - 4
Number of people I (may have ) instructed in the use of BitTorrent - 6
Number of members of the general public who brought me fresh-baked cookies when they came to the second session after attending the first one - 1
Number of 80+ year old ladies I helped sign up for Facebook accounts - 2
Ross Dawson, a business consultant who tracks different customs, devices, and institutions on what he calls an Extinction Timeline,
predicts that libraries will disappear in 2019. He's probably right as
far as the function of the library as a civic monument, or as a public
repository for books, is concerned. On the other hand, in its mutating
role as urban hangout, meeting place, and arbiter of information, the
public library seems far from spent. This has less to do with the
digital world—or the digital word—than with the age-old need for human
contact.
Our library director commutes daily from Regina to Weyburn and back, a round-trip of about two and a half hours. He told a funny story before Christmas about one day a few years ago when a blizzard hit the province and he was the only person to make it to work that day - even though everybody else on staff lived right in Weyburn! (Good thing he did too - a window had broken at their old headquarters building so he ended up spending the first half of the day shoveling out the snow drift that had accumulated in the stacks! )
So this afternoon, a big blizzard hit Saskatchewan and since I was already out on the road after a 7am start, I had to make a decision as to whether to stay overnight in Carnduff, a town two hours away from Weyburn, try to make it back halfway to Estevan or all the way home. Being a good ol' prairie boy, I chose the stupidest option and drove all the way home in heavy swirling, blowing snow. (It should've been a clue when I pulled in for gas just after leaving Carnduff and the attendant said she hadn't heard how the roads were as far as Weyburn but two semis had just pulled in and said they were calling it a night.)
But anyhow, other than a brief stop to check on a car in the ditch (nobody there), I made it with the sounds of Beach Boys "Fun Fun Fun" on satellite radio, guiding me home the final couple miles.
The funniest part? One of my father-in-law's co-workers who also drives a fuel truck for Petro-Canada (ie. makes his living driving) is currently upstairs, storm-stayed because he doesn't want to risk it driving back to his hometown which is fifteen minutes outside Weyburn. Wuss!
BusinessWeek has done an analysis to determine the relatively abstract notion of which countries are the happiest.
As you go through the blurbs, it's revealing that one of my own personal "when I am king" theories is highly represented as a criterion for a happy society - free post-secondary education.
(Click through the arrows on the top right of the linked page to see the blurbs for all countries as well as some very nice pictures.)
1. Denmark 2. Switzerland 3. Austria 4. Iceland 5. Bahamas 6. Finland 7. Sweden 8. Bhutan 9. Brunei 10. Canada 11. Ireland 12. Luxembourg
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