Maestro and Tweeter

While on my roadtrip to Vancouver I stayed for a few days at a friend's home, and 'lo and behold they had two brand new kittens to play with and be scratching posts for.

Maestro (the black one) and Tweeter (Tabby) are both littermates, and Tweeter is apparently the runt of the litter, as she is considerably smaller than Maestro. She doesn't let that slow her down, though, and she's learned to push Maestro away when he tries to horn in on her food bowl. Good for her!

In these photos Maestro looks very calm, cool, and collected. Very appropriate for his name. I assure you it is all an act. 90% of the time he was running all over the place trying to climb or attack anything that he possibly could. In short, very typical kitten behaviour, and loads of fun.

Tweeter, of course, is exactly the same. Just smaller, and harder to catch. She has a tendency to gnaw on fingers in a way that implies she hasn't quite figured out the difference yet between playing and fighting, but she's getting better. When she doesn't get carried away, there is little else in the world as cute as a kitten playfully nibbling on you.

 Could you tell, by the way, that my friend is a musician? Tweeter was named in preparation for getting a dog named "Woofer".

The Plains of Alberta

Last week I began a roadtrip out to Vancouver, with a number of stops along the way. I decided to take the southern route along Highway 3, with a stop in Drumheller. This made for a distance of 1639km, and according to Google Maps would take about 22.5 hours of driving time.

Along the way to and from Drumheller I found some striking prairie landscapes. I tend to forget how beautiful my own province can be. Since I live here and can see it every day it all just seems normal to me. For this trip, though, I wanted to make a point of stopping and really SEEING what I can see every day.

I was certainly lucky to have lots of cloud cover to add texture to the sky. In fact, it had been raining on and off all day, and rained overnight as well, but thankfully whenever I was out and about the weather was perfect.

Of course, the reason to go to Drumheller was for landscapes that cannot be found elsewhere. These will be appearing here soon!

Drums of Canada Day

I haven't updated here in quite some time, but I have indeed been busy. Let's get started with the backlog, shall we?

First up, the most recent! I went to City Hall for Canada Day specifically to catch a part of their multicultural performances, specifically Booming Tree Taiko. This is a duo of drummers who have taken traditional Japanese drumming and put their own twist on it.

   

Their show was, as always, very powerful and lively. They try to tell stories with their music, and I think they succeed. In particular, one of their songs was played by competing fishing villages as they bring in their catch, and the competitive aspect between the two drummers was quite apparent.

After their show I explored Churchill square a bit to practice some candids. Nothing special, but fun was had.

Sassy!

More to the point, though, Canada Day isn't complete without fireworks. Thankfully I have access to some of the buildings at Government Centre, and made my way to the top floor of one of the office buildings where I was able to get this:

I will readily admit that this is a photoshop of multiple fireworks bursts put together, but I think everybody agrees that it looks pretty spectacular!

More posts to come soon. I won't let several months go by without a word again!