Would have stayed longer if I could have. It was worth it to go.

Decent kickoff to the new year.

Now, lost in music, I must go.

The main act I thought was a “bit been there done that,” and the first guy I can’t even remember his name, he was nothing special…good thing he went first then.

Lighting the tree in the Square today, and I get to watch it away from the wind. They promised fireworks, and no doubt there will be rousing music and hot things to drink or dance around.

Actually it was always there at the back of my mind, but I ran out of time.

Poor pumpkin, it’s still waiting to be carved.

Might do a Christmas Theme on it or something, just for fun, I dunno.

Sad to have an unused pumpkin, so I’ll have to do something with it.

…Could I make a giant pie?

For Hallowe’en, we watched b movies with friends, always good times.

Heathers is surreal and a great parody; so many ways to light cigarettes, so much angst, and who plays croquet? I mean really.

Those old horror flicks from the 7o’s go straight to the point. The dialog is so cheesy and obvious, it’s like they’re just waiting to be killed. It was easy to see someone outside the group of friends was the killer. But. Awesome cheesy music. You knew when the teenagers were in trouble because you got the dramatic minor chord.

Hopefully it won’t be too cold for ultimate Frisbee.

Planning on carving a pumpkin sometime today or tomorrow.

Pumpkin guts and fresh pumpkin smell all over. The best part is when you cut off the top and put your hand into the epic squishiness for the first time.

When I was little, I used to scrape the pumpkin insides out with pottery tools, and the inner walls  got nice and thin, which made it easy to carve, and also gave it a fabulous eerie glow when it was lit.

I had a serrated knife with with a red plastic handle and my name etched into it. The end of the handle was a grinning Jack O’ Lantern.

There always seems to be someone who carves epic pumpkins, either making realistic sculptures,  faces peeled back from the pumpkin, monsters reaching for you, or creative use of negative space, or stenciled shapes. Dunno what I’ll do this year, though I usually end up doing demonic faces. I don’t care about the shape of the pumpkin. This year I decided I’d like a round one, but skinny, oblong or bizarrely shaped pumpkins can make appealing Jack O’ Lanterns too. I have made ghoul faces, lost souls wailing, angry animals, evil monkeys.

My friend carved a fish into a pumpkin once, and it looked fabulous-zombie fish on the prowl.

Ages ago I carved a pumpkin on a whim when I was meandering the quadrangle, roughly sort of between classes, but really looking for something to do, and won a prize from the Power Plant. I carved a  cat face, snarling fangs and skinny, crooked whiskers.

…Aaaand I dunno where to put it either. Maybe I’ll write a screen play for it-little lost pumpkin looking for a window ledge and a house to defend.

It’s sunny and bright right now, which is not a great atmosphere for carving scary faces into pumpkins. It should be gloomy, misty or frosty. I’ll have to light some candles and put on eerie music to get into the right mood to carve a scary j-o-l.

I can just envision the romance: the large bell wine glasses, the stolen booze chilling in an ice bucket as the lovers gaze over the city and scenery from the peak of a lush hill, as evening drops and the sky turns carnival colours, and he slices open the round of brie with the stolen razor blades, and then they feed each other nibbles of cheese, clink glasses and taste stolen red wine.

Or maybe the razor blades were to shave off the beard (him) and leg hair (her) to get ready for the date of stolen pleasures on top of the hill.

It was a very colourful dawn-rich colours almost like a sunset. A few days ago the dawn swept in like blazing molten gold fire. I like how the sky and the weather changes all the time here.

The Corn Maze was a lot of fun. Devon, Elsie, Rod, Nathan and Alex, and I all went to the maze, and got happily lost in it. There were numbered signposts that we had to find to help us navigate through, and then we each had different quizzes. How you answered the questions decided which direction you went next. Mostly lefts. Then some rights. Then Devon and I got separated from the rest of them, found number 5, and waited…and waited…for the others to join us. Somehow they went from 4 to 9 instead of 5 and then out.  I thought about using the GPS, but thought it might direct us to cross the sea as the easiest way out, like that time we were trying to find the Merrydale Cidery. Night was falling and I was only_innocently_thinking of film sets that involved vast acres of corn. We found a bridge, and saw The Way Out, and made a run for it before the screaming youths throwing their glowsticks up in the air could capture us and drag us away into the maize.

We all purloined a fire that wouldn’t start right away, because Rod threw damp corn stalks on the embers and we only had thick logs of wood instead of useful kindling. Although Elsie did eventually get some magazine pages from Rod’s truck, to help the fire along, and that paper for some reason burned blue and green, rather like what salt-crusted driftwood can do when you build a bonfire at the beach.

It was chilly, mizzling with rain but not enough to turn the hard packed dirt to muddy mire, but we fortified ourselves with weak, terrible coffee. It was hot at least. We finished with hot apple cider, coffees, and hot chocolates variously, and a merry blaze. Threw a roll of kitchen roll (paper towel) onto the fire, but the sparks were a little worrying, because the paper was light, and created big floaty sparks that drifted slowly in the wind…towards the dry dry tall corn maize.  But it was damp enough nothing lit, and errant sparks were stamped out quickly anyway.

There was also a petting zoo and barn, and some fun set dressing to take your photos at, on, or around. I loved the giant haybales, and I wanted to play, but I’d loaded my arms with useless pink umbrella, coffee, and camera, so I just took pictures of Devon on the haybales instead.

It was a fabulous chilly evening, and the corn maze and company made it all so much more awesome.

It’s my lot in life to love too deep, to fall too hard, and cry too long, to pick myself up and try to fly again too quickly, choking back life as if I am afraid it will drain away.

There were impressive Northern Lights Friday darkest, not the most epic I have seen, but they were quick, and green and purple and white, and I called my father, who was muddy with clay, my mother, who was sleeping, and my sister who wasn’t there and couldn’t be bothered, to come and share the night with me, D and D’s mum, her friend, and N, and N’s girlfriend, A.

Earliest I have ever seen them, 1^st week of September.

Tried a fresh fig for the very 1^st time-sweet, juicy, light, almost like jam inside. Coworker brought them in, like mangoes, in a crate, and it was succulent, and very delicious. You bite them through the skin and eat them like a plum.

I have recently enjoyed fresh squeezed lemonade with real mint, and today I fancied a Raspberry Dark Chocolate Latte. I bought it on a whim, and enjoyed it against a backdrop of jazz and height, clicking like tiles and glass against the lazy morning sun. I went wandering on my lunchbreak and took pictures of golden leaves and black berries, and it looked like I was taking a picture of a forgotten corner of a castle, framed by Fall.

…There is a Saturday Night Lake in Jasper, and I think it should be glitzier than it is; it has a lot of pop culture to live up to.

Jasper, where there were goats, a shallow, sandy, warm beach, and a new totem-pole in town.

Drumheller, where we found Devon has an era, he’s just that awesome; we saw a dinosaur fossil so old it was leaking oil, and I bought a mug that vaguely looks like an oval dinosaur egg, and outside we saw a cloud dinosaurs eating the sun; and I tried to take a decent picture of the badlands landscape. Need to look for Clive there, when we go again.

Calgary, for the Stampede, fireworks, friends and family, bright sun, and carnival rides.

Edmonton, for the play she wrote for the Fringe, the sustainival, where Carnival Rides run on veg oil, and where we visited Telus World of Science, the Royal Alberta Musee, and we have yet to visit the IMAX

Pigeon Lake, before the blue-green algae took over.

Kamloops, but I didn’t see the Ogopogo, even though we were almost in the Okanogan. Love the feel of Kamloops, feels like it is built for tourists, and it’s easy to find the essentials-Tim Horton’s and gas.

Would have been nice to have more time, though, of course, that’s always the way it is.

I enjoy the whole process of traveling by ferry.  The views, the salt, the cold wind, the warm food, the weak coffee, the gift shops, the tourists, grinning, taking pictures, laughing, the puzzles and books, coats and music people bring to pass the time. I love watching the  dozers and dreamers, drowsing under the sun, and I love the boom of the whistle that announces the sailing, even though it used to frighten me when I was very little. I love the thrum thrum underneath me, that deep, industrial vibration, as the ferry nudges into port, the clang as it docks.   I love the stillness in the car anticipating, festive,  until we rumble off, and the adventure begins.

Salt Spring Island is full of wineries, gorgeous scenery, artists, potters and craftspeople, apples  and picturesque little towns. We stayed near Ganges, which looked all romantic against the golden late afternoon light, and got lost, but that’s alright, we were tourists. Thought it would be a great place to have a studio and explore personal creativity.

They also had no fish and chips shop on the docks where we had a 2 hour wait for the Victoria ferry, only a virulent vegan bakery, that offered (actually delicious) apricot-spelt bread, organic milk for coffee, but strangely no organic cream…

We did find a little restaurant that had unique, local art for sale on the walls, and coloured glass panels, as well as views of the  harbour, bobbing sailing boats and the docks where the ferry comes in. And the food was amazing.

Also learned about Golden Plovers, and how they journey from all over the world to a paradise in the Arctic, on one of the ferries, though I can’t remember if t hat was on the way back to Vancouver or on the way to Vancouver Island.

And in Jasper, we found this amazing shallow, sandy beach, with warm water. Everyone was stopping for a paddle at this unexpected treat. Mostly the water in the Rockies is frigid, as it’s glacier-fed, however, to make up for it,  the water also usually has a striking turqouise, green, or sparkling clear blue colour to it.

We also saw goats,  just chilling, and 1 elk, but the way the traffic was snarling and everyone was piling out, taking pictures, I thought there had been a naccident.

…You know, we should have visited the Merrydale Cidery, when we were on the Island and brought back a treat for the winter. Oh well, next time. It was good to see the old haunts, and eat Noodle Box. I had Barenaked Ladies “This is Where We Used to Live” echoing in my head…