Riding the new Metro Line

The View at MacEwan Station

This weekend our city finally got it's second train line - the Metro Line, which adds three stations to where our Light Rail Transit (LRT) can go - two Post Secondary Institutes and a Hospital.

So on the first day of operation I did what I always do with a new transit line, and spent some time on it while reading.

The ride was pretty nice, and filled with people either video recording or taking snapshots, and I heard more than once the mention of "This will be going on my YouTube Channel", all of which faded to the background of the view (see pictured right) and of my Superior Spider-Man comic.

It's always nice to see infrastructure developed in your home town, now I've just got to see how this might benefit or hinder me in my daily commute.

Things I've Noticed: Edmonton's Medway System is crazy big!

For the last month and a half I've been doing a walking program to increase my overall health, but as I live in Edmonton and can therefore look forward to eight months of winter a year, I've been trying to find a great way to keep up the exercise without having to spend any of it outside.

Luckily for me, I work in the downtown core, and therefore have access to a LOT of tunnels throughout the downtown core - basically I can walk for about eighty straight minutes through various buildings, malls and in one case a school, without heading outdoors and keeping my heat rate up for my entire lunch hour.

Here's what it's brought me so far - I can definitely walk a lot father than I used to be able to, and although I work up a good sweat, I'm not nearly at the level of joggers or runners but for me that's okay - right now I'm just looking for better health overall and if I can find a free way to do it in my city, that's great.

Cycling Season is pretty much here!

Finally after what seemed like a year of Winter, the roads are mostly clean and I can get myself back to bicycling to and from work every day (weather permitting), which includes both my most and least favourite parts of cycling through Edmonton.

Most favoruite – riding south down Groat road (on the sidewalk of course), which allows me to travel roughly 20 block without even peddling once.

Least favourite – my bike ride ends at the base of a set of stair which travel out of our river valley into the downtown core, and have me gasping for breath at each platform (there are three) on the way up when I start out each year.

In the end, I’m sure the cycling is good for me, and in my newly discovered quest to put my recently graduated brains to some applied personal good, I think my health is a pretty high priority.

Happy Early Father's Day to me!

As my eldest daughter is spending June in France for summer school, she decided to take me to The Duchess - a fancy bakery here in Edmonton to celebrate earlier.

Even though we got there as it opened, the line up was pretty crazy so I saved us a table while she got us coffee and baked goods.

She ended bringing me a bunch of macarons, as well as some sort of berry custard tart thingy - very tasty (and pictured to the right).

Although it wasn't officially Father's Day, it was a really nice way to hang out for it ahead of her trip, and the baked good were delicious!

Genre Character of the Week: Willow Ufgood

 So back in 1988 I was twelve-years-old and my mother took my three sisters and me down to Edmonton’s historic Princess Theatre (pictured left) to see the new movie, Willow. The four of us stood in a pretty long lineup for about half an hour waiting to buy our tickets, and then the manager comes out and starts counting people in the line.

The show was almost sold out and we were either going to just make the cut or have to come back and see the movie another day. Luckily for us, we made it, although we ended up sitting scattered throughout the two floors of the theatre, and I ended up in the very front row, head craned back and nervous about the group of older girls I had to sit beside to see the film.

The next two hours of my life then proceeded to fly by, as I saw my first really great live-action fantasy film. Now I know, Star Wars and E.T. can both be fit clearly into the fantasy genre, depending on your point of view, and the early 80’s had a lot of great Fantasy classics like Ladyhawke, Time Bandits, Conan the Barbarian, Legend, and Excalibur, not to mention one of my favourite films period, The Princess Bride. But the thing is, I saw all of those on home video, rather than in an actual movie theatre – so for me Willow rightly takes its place as my first Fantasy film experience in a movie theatre.

For those of you who don’t know, the film follows this little guy, Willow Ufgood, a member of a race of little people called Nelwins, as he becomes the protector of a baby, and ends up having to save the world. For many people the movie is a sort of forgettable, pre-Lord of the Rings fantasy film also filmed in New Zealand and that’s about it.

For me, however, the story of this young husband and father going on a grand adventure and learning to trust in himself and his abilities totally resonated with me.

I’ll be quite honest here, I’m a pretty huge fan of the film – I read the novelization by Wayland Drew and played both the NES game and the Arcade version when I could. Although not a fan of the sequel series of novels, I think I may be one of the bigger fans of this film in my hometown, or at least in my neighborhood.

The film has recently been released on Blu-Ray, and if you haven’t check it out yet, it is definitely worth a look.

Animethon 19 Review

On Saturday my youngest daughter and I went down to Animethon - Edmonton's annual Anime convention (which also happens to be the longest running anime convention in Canada - next year they'll be up to 20), and had a really great time.

The cosplayers (convention attendees who showed up in costume) were amazing - Kaia's favourite was this fellow (or lady, or perhaps six small aliens pretending to be one person) dressed up as "No Face" from the film Spirited Away.

We wandered around the convention for a few hours, took in a panel called Steampunk 101 where two nice ladies explained this subculture and how to get involved, and then caught the first episode of Irresponsible Captain Tyler - a personal favourite of my daughters.

Was it fun?  Absolutely - the staff and volunteers were great, the people were incredibly friendly and everyone was happy to let you take a picture if you asked.

My daughter is definitely interested in going next year, and in all honestly - that's about the best statement of a conventions success you can make.

Things I've Noticed: Wow, We had a lot of snow today

All right, I'll admit that as a guy who is usually focusing this blog on my own Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction interests there isn't usually a place for weather, but today was something else.

Here is Sunny Edmonton, Alberta, Canada we've had a pretty mild winter, some snow, some days where we needed to have heat packets and heavy parkas but nothing too bad (we are a considered a northern city by some), but over the last week we've had some pretty good weather; I switched to my lighter jacket, stopped carrying my monkey-themed snow hat and even began carrying my books and lunch in a regular bag rather than a heavy duty one.

I took today off from work to run a few errands, (updating government documents, doing my taxes, etc.) and figured, "hey, with weather as nice as this, it will be a lovely day to sit in various government offices reading my latest Matheson and drinking tasty coffee.

This morning I woke up to some crazy heavy snow, basically the really nasty stuff, non-stop, wet and unpleasant. So of course I decided to trek out and do my errands anyway.

My bus stalled a few times taking me into the downtown core, but once I got down there it wasn't so bad at all - mostly because I stayed indoors. Very few people decided to brave the weather so I worked my way through those various government offices at a pretty nice speed and got some good reading in as well.

Of course as soon as I stepped back outside the snow had melted enough to flood both of my boots and drop giants gobs of itself down the back of my jacket.

Actually, now that I'm home it's a pretty nice day. Long Weekend of video games, reading and hanging out with my family, here I come!

Things I've Noticed: Edmonton is a pretty cool place for writers

Imagine sharing your latest short story, not by passing around a copy of it to your friends, but instead by getting up on stage and reciting the thing to an audience. This is exactly what I watched on Wednesday night, and it was pretty darn cool.

As a guy with aspirations to write, I try to keep my ear open for opportunities in my local area. On Wednesday I came across one of them - my friend Trish suggested I check out Edmonton's Story Slam, as it was partnering with our local genre fiction magazine - On Spec (I went to a reading hosted by them recently and had a pretty good time).

The concept for the Story Slam was pretty simple - 10 contestants, 5 minutes each, a microphone in front of a bunch of other writers and their friends. The event was held in the Haven Social Club, a basement cash bar with a stage and comfortable seating, and when I got there at around 7:00pm, the place was already packed. I got a really good vibe off of the audience, as everyone seemed very supportive of the writers and was having a great time.

Although I didn't personally perform a story (I thought I might give it a try, but then got a little gun shy after seeing the size of the crowd), I will definitely check out the next couple of these events (they happen on the third Wednesday of each month. Also it was nice to see that the writers could bring their stories on stage with them and read, as I thought it may all have to be done spur of the moment.

It's really kind of cool to see just how big the writing community is in my northern city, considering I always used to feel there were only one of two folks up here giving it a go. BTW - my favourite story there was an interesting take on the maze of King Minos from Greek mythology, told from the Minotaurs (extremely pleasant) point of view.