A moment of fame?

Yesterday I attended the Covenant Health Community luncheon at the Delta Edmonton South. The luncheon was good--the food was much better that the Amalgamated Transit Union banquet Saturday that my dad and I attended at the Shaw Conference Centre!! The luncheon keynote speaker was David Whyte who holds a degree in Marine Zoology, is a poet, leads expeditions to the Amazon, Andes, the Galapagos Islands, and does workshops and lectures. His mother was Irish and his dad a Yorkshire lad, and David grew up in Yorkshire.  This was an interesting and unusual choice as a keynote speaker for a health care organization and an audience of administrators, board members, staff, and some volunteers. But it was inspired as far as I was concerned.  He read some of his poetry to illustrate his points, told stories from his own life, and was certainly far more entertaining and relevant than the usual choices for speakers!! Bravo Covenant!!

We were all given copies of the Annual Report and herein lies my moment of fame.  Back in August Diane Berge and I were interviewed by Krysta from Covenant Communications--she even taped the interview!  She decided to center the story about SWD around my mother's airplane dream and myself as now co-chair of SWD.  I had an honest to goodness photo shoot in early September, complete with screens, bright lights, multiple shots, fussing with the props, etc.--I felt like a super model!! Well, okay not quite!! Hahaha!! And I engaged in multiple emails with Krysta over the story. As she approaches writing from a journalism perspective--corporate journalism to be precise, and I approach writing from an academic perspective, you can imagine we had some differences!! Like when she ascribed to me a quotation that Diane had made--um, that's plagiarism!! Also I don't like inaccuracies in numbers, dates, stuff like that.  I'm sure she thought I was a real pain, but she graciously made the corrections.

I scanned the page from the report, so it's not great quality, but you will get the gist of it--I hope.  I offered to sign autographs after the meeting, but no one took me up on that!!! Hahahaha!!

I really like the story because fulfilling that dream with my mother will always be something I'll cherish for the rest of my life.

The Dog Days of Summer

Here it is the last week of Summer, already!  We had a terrible Spring and until August our Summer sucked big time--between the torrential downpours, the clouds of mosquitos, the endless lawn mowing, and the cooler than average temperatures we thought we had been robbed!! Mind you, everyone's lawn was soooo green, and I never had to water anything--kept the water bill down!! But August sure improved everyone's outlook--we finally had more seasonal temps and September has been even better.  We had a week of beautiful days with temps up to 30 C and they are forecasting upper 20's for us later this week. Whoo Hoo!! So here's how Duffy enjoys nice Summer days--as only dogs can!!







 




 







Look Who Came Over to Play!

That's right-Winnie the dachshund from next door!! I'm short on toys for little dogs--even the red ball is too big for her, although she did push it around with her nose!

Here's a picture of Winnie and Duffy on Duffy's birthday--they look so cute together!

Meanwhile back in the yard on a hot September day. When Winnie is allowed to come to the fence, she and Duffy exchange little doggie smooches and if she leaves too soon, Duffy whines! And she will then run back to the fence--awww.

"Oh oh--she's got my toy rubber tooth brush!" says Duffy.  They roared around for awhile, although Duffy gave up--it was too hot for him, but she was fine in the hot sun!  Every collie should have a dachshund buddy!!

Collie in a wagon!

Okay, let's get going!!

Just the right size!

Eeeeeeek!!!!!

OMG!! Have I suddenly been transported to Australia (Hi Jacqueline!!)where the spiders are larger than life? This delightful creature is in my greenhouse and has taken up a pretty permanent looking residence.  I have never seen a spider like this in my life!  Those who know me well, know that I am not squeamish about bugs and am a big fan of spiders--"Spiders are our friends" is one of my pet sayings. But I wasn't at all sure, that I wanted to extend friendship to this one! I got on the Internet though to find out what it is and whether I needed to get the can of Raid out. There are about 1300 species of spider in Alberta (I didn't think there were that many) and this is a member of the Orb Weaver family and apparently isn't poisonous.  Still, I don't think I'll stick my hand in the web!!! And the good news is that it's so big, it can't sneak up on me!!!