{"id":11487,"date":"2014-09-18T13:09:59","date_gmt":"2014-09-18T17:09:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=11487"},"modified":"2014-09-18T13:11:44","modified_gmt":"2014-09-18T17:11:44","slug":"oh-canada-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=11487","title":{"rendered":"Oh. Canada."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/81595350@N00\/15236044106\/player\/\" width=\"373\" height=\"500\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I am having a marvelous time in Canada.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t plan on ignoring the blog altogether, at least not the same way I actively planned to take a break from <a href=\"http:\/\/puppetwrangler.tumblr.com\">my Tumblr<\/a> and my work e-mail. (In the case of the latter, I changed my password just before I left the office last Thursday and refused to memorize it.) It&#8217;s just turned out that way.<\/p>\n<p>Granted, most of the regular visitors to this blog follow me <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/unrealfred\">on Twitter<\/a>, where I&#8217;ve continued to blather, or have themselves actually been here in Canada with me. So posts here, even if I&#8217;d had the time or inclination, would have mostly just been repeating myself.<\/p>\n<p>Still, it&#8217;s good to write these things down.<\/p>\n<p>I arrived in Calgary on Friday evening, after a pair of pretty uneventful flights. On the way, I read about half of Ann Leckie&#8217;s <i>Ancillary Justice<\/i>, which I&#8217;m really enjoying. I may get around to finishing it on my return trip. (Although I <i>do<\/i> leave at 6 in the morning, so&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>I spent a good block of Saturday afternoon walking around downtown Calgary with Jocelyn, who offered to be my tour guide for a couple of hours while I was in town. The last time I was in Calgary, in 2011, I saw basically none of it, so it was nice to have the company and see a few of the sights. (That those sights included things like a flame-throwing octopus &#8212; fresh from Burning Man, apparently, and in town for <a href=\"http:\/\/beakerhead.org\/\">Beakerhead<\/a> &#8212; was just an added bonus.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/81595350@N00\/15072482107\/player\/\" width=\"373\" height=\"500\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I had dinner, then, with Heather, who it was great to see again &#8212; even if I did feel like I should be using the servant&#8217;s entrance to visit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lectio.ca\/?p=7174\">her palatial estate<\/a>. (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/81595350@N00\/15259050875\/\">My own room<\/a> was nothing to sneeze about, quite lovely, but still.) We grabbed breakfast the next morning as well, and then I was racing out the door to catch the bus to Banff.<\/p>\n<p>Which is where I&#8217;ve been since Sunday. <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/81595350@N00\/15072292329\/in\/photostream\/player\/\" width=\"500\" height=\"373\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>And it has been ridiculously beautiful here. Seriously, the cold weather I was warned about so far hasn&#8217;t really materialized &#8212; though it does feel like early fall &#8212; and it really is impossible not to be impressed by the gorgeous scenery. There&#8217;s just so much of it! I went to a geology talk-and-walk yesterday, given by the Banff Centre&#8217;s Director of Customer Service Jim Olver, and I <i>still<\/i> don&#8217;t quite remember how many mountains are around us.<\/p>\n<p>And, despite a crazy-making evening during which my Chromebook died on me and I ran around (with Heather&#8217;s help) trying to get it to work again, the writing has actually been going well.<\/p>\n<p>I finished a short story yesterday, then threw caution under the bus completely and decided to submit it somewhere. I mean, what&#8217;s the worst that could happen, they reject it? (Oh my god, they could totally reject it. What have I done?!) It&#8217;s a goofy little piece, but I had fun writing it, so we&#8217;ll see.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not yet settled on what&#8217;s next, though I&#8217;ve got a few stories in the pipeline and almost another week and a half to work on them here.<\/p>\n<p>Did I mention that I&#8217;m having a marvelous time?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am having a marvelous time in Canada. I didn&#8217;t plan on ignoring the blog altogether, at least not the same way I actively planned to take a break from my Tumblr and my work e-mail. (In the case of the latter, I changed my password just before I left the office last Thursday and &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=11487\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[82,28,75,12],"class_list":["post-11487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-canada","tag-personal","tag-travel","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11487"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11487"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11489,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11487\/revisions\/11489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}