Wednesday 28 September 2011

Mills-Haig Wedding at the ROM

Oooh, my cousin got married over the weekend!!

That's why I was back in Ontario for a few days; I had a wedding to go to and friends and family to see.  It was a beautiful wedding, set in the very cool location of the Royal Ontario Museum! (Since I'm in the museum field, there was absolutely NO way I was going to miss this.)  It was AWESOME.

Me and my beautiful sister Jaleh (on the left) upon arrival.

The ceremony was in the Weston Hall entrance.

The gorgeous entrance to the Currelly Hall, where the reception was held.
Mr. & Mrs. Keith and Fiona Mills share their first dance. So sweet!

Best part of a wedding at a museum? Photo ops with dinosaurs.

Jaleh, cousin Heather, and me about to rock it on the dance floor.


The Sasani-Mills-Haig family.  Congratulations Keith and Fiona!

 Favourite midnight dessert buffet item? White chocolate-covered cheesecake squares on a stick.      


Sunday 25 September 2011

Just a quick jaunt back home...

I am currently on hiatus in Ontario for the weekend.  Will post pictures of family wedding and weekend ex-BWC staff get-together soon.

Wednesday 21 September 2011

Taking the Legislative Building Tour

I took off during my lunch the other day to walk over to Wascana Centre and take a tour of the Saskatchewan Legislative Building.  It was fascinating!

My tour guide was Arnold, a very funny man with interesting stories about the building and Saskatchewan's history.  He also knew a lot about the Baha'i Faith, which was cool to chat about (I think it has to do with the scores of Baha'is who come to visit the building, since it was build by W.S. Maxwell and his brother who were architects from Montreal).


Memorial plaque outside the Prince of Wales side entrance. Neat!

Some really cool bits of ephemera found in the upper ceiling during renovations to the building several years ago.

"Before The White Man Came" John Leman, 1933

"Northern Tradition and Transition" Roger Jerome, 2005


Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly chamber - the decorative wood carvings were uh-MAZing.


View through to the falsely-lit central dome from the ground floor gallery.
The building is made with 34 different types of marble!  The most beautiful one, I think, is the green striated marble from Europe that makes up the huge, gorgeous pillars in the rotunda.  Other highlights included: the reference library with the old Speaker of the House's chairs, the Assiniboine Gallery featuring various oil pastel portraits of famous tribal leaders in the early 1900's, and finding out that the dome is actually lit by fluorescent bulbs, not sunlight (the dome extends much higher than it looks on the inside).

A highly recommended tour stop if one is in the Regina area.  So there you go.

Saturday 17 September 2011

CFL's Saskatchewan Roughriders

Today is football Game Day in Regina.
 
This means that the streets are snarled with the car- and foot-traffic of thousands of Roughriders fans heading to the big game.  The world is awash in a sea of green and black and silver.  RRs fans are loyal and a little crazy, although perhaps not any more crazy than other sports fanatics, one might say.  The way I figure it, since there's no official NHL team out this way, football is the only outlet these fans seem to have.  And the whole province LOVES them.



This is the watermelon helmet that is apparently a required accessory of most die-hard fans.

There are a variety of ways to sport one's watermelon helmet.





This is probably my favourite, since he's also got the matching shades.
All in all, a rather riotous group of ardent fans, some of whom don their full RRs apparel even when it's not Game Day.  The RRs are playing the Toronto Argonauts today, and at this point I have no idea who I should be cheering for (although I suspect I might need to find some RRs gear to blend in or I might get kicked out of the province.)  Either way - PLAY ON!

Wednesday 14 September 2011

Meet Sergeant Bill

Say hello to Sergeant Bill, the coolest billy goat I know.

 

Welcome to Broadview, home of Sergeant Bill!

Sergeant Bill in all his glory.

A poem someone wrote - an Ode to Bill.  :)



Tuesday 13 September 2011

The Weather Network (can't help me now)

As Canadians, one thing we do really well is talk about the weather.  And it's not mundane chitchat either - we are really good at figuring out meteorological minutiae and discussing them at length.  So, to continue that long-standing tradition, here we are:  the weather in Regina is what I like to call CRAZY.

I woke up to a blustery, overcast, and dreary-looking day.  The clouds were so ominous looking, I left for work a half hour early just to beat the inevitable downpour I imagined was approaching.  Cursing my lack of preparation by not bringing an umbrella with me to this province, I trudged to work anticipating a wet, wet morning.  Imagine my surprise when I get to work and within an hour the clouds had cleared up and the sky was beautiful again!  What gives?  Back home, we would have been flooded out by storm clouds like that.

When I told my co-workers this tale, and wondered if I should purchase an umbrella for future rainstorms, they all laughed at me. Really hard.  Apparently this time of year is all about wind and clouds and chilly temperatures in the mornings and evenings, but there's never really any rain to accompany them.  I was told that a real Saskatchewaner would NEVER bring an umbrella out with them this time of year, mainly because there wouldn't be any actual rain, but also because if there was rain, it would bring with it such gale-force winds that no umbrella could stand up to that kind of torrent anyway. 

Well.  I am thoroughly bemused, and am also resolved not to go out and buy an umbrella - I want to fit in here, dagnabbit!  So, if I happen to return to Ontario a waterlogged mess you now know the reason why.  But I still have absolutely no idea how to dress for the weather here.  Six changes of clothes for any meteorological eventuality?

Comments and fashion suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Saturday 10 September 2011

Lunch in the Park


...And the paper's made out of WHAT??

I was invited out by my supervisor to do some shopping and sightseeing around Regina.  We had a lot of fun touring around to some of the big box stores so I could get a toaster oven and some much-needed household supplies, and we also drove around the downtown core so I could get my bearings.  Regina's not exactly a large, bustling metropolis but there seem to be enough parks, coffee shops and ethnic food shops/restaurants to keep me busy for a good long while.  

We also made the trek out to Lumsden, a beautiful little town about 20 minutes out of Regina on the highway towards Saskatoon.  We'd chatted about it at work on Friday, and thought it might be nice to drive out and prove that Saskatchewan isn't all wheat fields and stretches of nothing (which is contrary to what most people in Ontario think - it's not all like Dog River out here...)   The Lumsden area actually reminded me a lot of southwestern Ontario with the trees and hills and such.  I think it's safe to say that small-town Canada is, by-and-large, pretty similar. 

Downtown Lumsden.
Seven Bridges Road out to Lumsden - farms and hills as far as the eye can see.

Got some lovely knick-knacks while in Lumsden - a really cute, reusable, giraffe-covered sandwich bag for work; some jam made from Saskatoon berries (which taste remarkably like a cross between a blueberry and a raspberry); and some adorable paper notecards made from recycled elephant poop.  Jaleh, I am SOOOO sending you one of these in the mail!  :)

Definitely got home exhausted (pooped? Hahaha!), but had a great day out nonetheless.  Next week on the agenda: figuring out the bus system so I can get back to where the Value Village is...

Wednesday 7 September 2011

More Regina Fun Facts

I had a great time exploring today and seeing some of the Regina sights.  Here's what I learned:

-  The Saskatchewan Legislative Building, or "the Ledge", was designed by Sutherland Maxwell.  Yes, you read that right.  Once you've seen it, you'll understand why I call it 'practice' for the Shrine of the Bab in Haifa.  VERY cool.


-  The Wascana Centre forms one loooooooong park, larger than Central Park in New York.  Apparently I can walk all the way from the south end of the city and the University of Regina campus through to right across from my doorstep on the other end of Les Sherman Park.  It's all connected, and it spans most of the southern end of the city.
- Wascana Lake is man-made, a project carried out by the city of Regina to help create jobs during the Depression in the 1930's.
 - The longest bridge over the shortest span of water is in Regina - the Albert Memorial Bridge along part of the western side of the Wascana Centre area.  Don't ask for measurements, I couldn't tell you.  But it is a very long bridge over a very small dam.


And, to cap off my day, I learned that I really enjoy Korean bulgogi (traditional Korean sesame steak).  Sweet and spicy beef...mmmmmm...such utter deliciousness.

Tuesday 6 September 2011

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go...

And so ends my first official day of internship at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum!  How was it, you say?  Well, it was dandy and I am exhausted.

My days are 8:30 - 5:30, with the possibility of a flex day off every other week. (Sweet.) I have a vacant office for use while I'm here, and I'm so lucky that it has two windows that overlook the street and the museum.  The conservation lab is not in the museum proper, but rather in a heritage building across the street called the Annex.  The building is where the first SaskTel headquarters were located (the first telephone company in Saskatchewan, circa early 1900's).  I got the full backstage tour of the museum and the annex today, and I got to meet some very nice people. I hope someday to actually remember some of their names too!  :) 

In terms of projects, I have a major one involving a decorated war veteran who was shot, hit by shrapnel, developed trench-foot, saved a bunch of his fellow soldiers by head-butting them into a trench before a bomb went off, and was very nearly court-martialled for being a traitor and spy, all during the first World War.

Oh, and he's a goat.

He goes by the name of Sergeant Bill, he needs some serious TLC to get him back into fighting shape, and working on him is going to be one of the coolest projects EVER.

Monday 5 September 2011

Labour Day weekend

I've had such a lovely Labour Day weekend not doing any labour whatsoever.  It's been pretty fantastic, sleeping in and watching a "Murder, She Wrote" marathon.  Now I just have to steel myself for officially starting my internship tomorrow...

Here's a picture of a moose to finish up the long weekend, mainly because I like moose.    :)

Saturday 3 September 2011

MEGAMUNCH!!! He's my new favourite thing ever.



 



My First Big Excursion

I decided to go gallivanting about the Cathedral district yesterday to see what I could see.  I also wanted to take an excursion over to the RSM and see what I've gotten myself into this semester.  Here are some highlights from my trip...

The Regina Baha'i Centre is on my way to work everyday. How cool is that?

In case you can't read that, coprolites are fossilized dino poops.  :)

The diorama displays at the RSM are really quite cool and the backgrounds are amazingly realistic.

I actually got kind of freaked out by the wolves, truth be told; they looked and sounded so life-like...

I have a carbon footprint of 4.3 hectares; the average Canadian's is 6.5.  Yay?

Heeeeeere's Megamunch!  He is very cool and very loud.  :)

Why yes, I will, thank you!  I perused several coffee shops, a fruit stall vendor, two retro clothing stores, a yarn/knitting shop, a cupcake shop, a meat market, and a 7-11.  Whew!

A family of GIANT Jackrabbits live in my neighbour's yard.  I only caught one on camera...

HOLY CRAP!! I FOUND FRESH FIGS IN CANADA!! 

Friday 2 September 2011

Coincidence? Maybe...

Tell me that this isn't a crazy coincidence -

I am living in Regina in the basement of a woman whose daughter is currently serving at the Baha'i World Centre, where I used to serve as well.  This daughter also just happens to be living in my old flat there and, I am fairly certain from what her mother has said, my old room.  With over 300 different flats she could have been put in, doesn't that seem just a little bit weird? 

MY. OLD. ROOM. In Haifa, Israel. 

Honestly, what ARE the odds??

Thursday 1 September 2011

Moving Furniture

Has anybody else had this problem - You get to a new place, it's completely furnished, and everything's just fine but for some reason you get it into your head that all the furniture has to be in an entirely different place?  Just because? 

Maybe I have to stake my territory or something, make it "my own".  But no matter; today I am rearranging my bedroom furniture.  There's nothing quite as satisfying as pulling everything away from the walls, dragging it around until it's placed just so, and then standing back to admire the handiwork.  (And then promptly falling back into bed because, hey, it's exhausting pulling furniture around by yourself.)

Perhaps later today I'll post some preview photos of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum (RSM)...