Serena Ryder stood me up!

Mike and I went to London Ontario this month to see what it might be like to live there. Mike will probably be doing his master's and Ph.D out there, so we might be there for about 4 years.

We had a great time. It's a really pretty city. Of course being from Alberta I'm amazed by anywhere that has old brick houses with ivy on them. It's been stinking hot in Calgary for weeks, and it was so nice to get out of our 28 degree townhouse to an air-conditioned hotel room. The hotel was pretty sweet. Our room was built like a 1 bedroom apartment with a kitchen and living area, and separate bedroom.

It was still hot out there, but it was usually cloudy which helped us feel a bit more comfortable when we were walking around outside. It was just fun to walk up and down the streets and look at all the old houses.
It was my birthday on the 19th and we had a great dinner together at a wonderful restaurant. On the 20th we went down to Detroit for the Serena Ryder concert that I had been looking forward to for weeks. We managed to get to downtown Detroit without meeting any violent criminals, but we were a bit early so we had to sit in the car looking rather suspicious for about an hour.

I was hugely disappointed when I found out that Serena Ryder had dropped off that leg of the tour a few weeks prior. You'd think that Ticketmaster would have some way of knowing and contacting people who bought tickets. However, since her album hasn't been released in the US yet, I was one of only 3 people there who had a clue who she was.

Fortunately Xavier Rudd was amazing, and managed to bring me out of my funk with his crazy one-man-band and diggeridoo skills.

We were also cheered up by the fact that the concert was over soon enough for us to hit a Cracker Barrel restaurant on the way back up to Canada.

On our last day we checked out of the hotel in the morning, but our plane didn't leave until after eight pm, so we had a lot of time to kill. There is a really nice park in the middle of London called Victoria Park. They were having a free music festival in the park called the Home County Music Festival.

Since we had spent the night before at the concert in Detroit, we didn't listen that closely to the music. However we had a perfect day lying in the grass, eating fair food, and watching squirrels bury food in the lawn.
I had a great bit of summer in London. Although I would be happy to have fall start tomorrow and put and end to this annoying heat wave.

Weddings.

I spent the last 2 weeks of June in Lethbridge living in a hotel, working, walking around downtown and studying. It was quite peaceful. I got a lot of studying done, and I have now experienced the bar known as Sound Garden. Quite the place that one.




My first appointment at work there was a little weird, though. The police brought in a decapitated and skinned animal for me to look at. It was my job to guess how it died and what it was. I voted for stabbed, and cat. Bizarre. And then the next day a lady brought in her dead cat and asked me to tell her how long it had been dead. And then a bag of dead fish was found in the parking lot. I didn't have to post-mortem the fish, though. After the few days of CSI Lethbridge, things got much more normal.

Lethbridge is nice. It's like a quiet version of Grande Prairie that you can drive across in 10 minutes. I was scared that I would have to treat rattlesnake bites, but thankfully none of the clinic's dog patients were dumb enough to get bitten while I was working. Worst wildlife encounters I had to clean up were dog vs porcupine and dog vs. baby deer.



I got home the day before Heidi and Glen's wedding barbeque. The BBQ was fun, and the wedding was even more fun. All my siblings and their husbands/wives/kid were around and we had a great time dancing. Highlight of the night was BREAKDANCERS! They were awesome.

Kristed hung around town for a few days so I could neuter her dog. We had a lot of fun shopping and hanging out. Opi was an excellent patient and is the cutest dog ever. This is how he looked when he was just little. He's still just as cute, only bigger and droolier. But he's less nutty now. ha ha.




Finally, this last weekend I went to my friend Steph's wedding. It was great but I had a cold so I didn't stay past the speeches. I got to drive around in a low 2-door car while wearing a short skirt that day. Good thing it wasn't windy out.


Mike was up in GP attending his cousin Tina's wedding. Sounds like it was a good time too.




Mike is happy for Jason and Tina, but he was most excited about the roast pig.

I have to go study some more now.