Oh Alberta...

So I'm waking up in Kaja's (my best buddy's) apartment in Calgary this morning! I've now been here since Saturday, time is flying and I realized I have yet to post about my travels!

Firstoff - Kaja is in a pretty cool area of Calgary - Mission - the last time we were here (2 years ago) we stayed in the 'burbs which was expectedly a lot less stimulating. Whenever I travel to a different city I always search out local, alternative newspapers so I can get a feel for what areas I should go to to find the culture of the city. In Winnipeg these would be Uptown, the Uniter, Stylus and the Manitoban to name a few and in Calgary I found FFWD on the first night I was here. I was happy to see that my previous research came in handy and the majority of my list of places to check out in Calgary were listed!

The night I got here Kaja was dancing in the Explosions show. Kaja's been in Calgary dancing at Decidedly Jazz Danceworks for going on two years now so I haven't seen her dance since she left Winnipeg. But when I saw her dance Saturday night it was a whole new calibre of dancing. She did a contemporary duet with her friend Liisa (she calls her 'Liisa two i's') and it was unbelievable! I don't want to ruin it by describing it and limiting interpretations so I'm going to see it again tonight in a different line up and I plan on bringing my video camera and sitting back row so I can sneakily videotape it - so if all goes well stay tuned and you can see it for yourself!

Along with meeting slews of dancers I met a friend of Kaja's that asked me to do the illustrations of his zine for him - so surprise surprise I've taken on another task and have been sitting in the coffee shop around the corner from Kaja's drawing for the zine... It should be pretty cool - it's like a poem and is going to be illustrated by different artists and dispersed throughout Calgary - fun fun!

I came on one of the busiest weeks for Kaja dancing-wise so I've been entertaining myself during the day - I've been driving her car around and getting lost for at least half an hour each day (the first day I was lost for several hours......) but I think I've now gotten the hang of things.

I was able to check out the Market Collective which was really rad - tons of local artists selling everything from fresh sourdough bread to the handmade clothing by Peeko Apparel.

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Kaja's friend Ian was actually playing at it too - check him out here!

Yesterday I also got a chance to check out the Glenobow Musuem where Kent Monkman had an exhibit! I saw his show 'The Triumph of Mischief' in at the Winnipeg Art Gallery a few years ago but his work is so crazy I had to go see it again. Kent focuses on the relationships between aboriginal and europeans. His paintings are so epic and hilarious at the same time it's a very impressive show. I highly recommend checking out his website because he has an image enhancer so you can check out all of his paintings in detail - you can see the details of his Louis Vitton dogsleds and Duchamp's urinal amongst the pre-orgy figures. Here are a few of my faves...

Kaja's been pretty exhausted after her 12+ hour days dancing so we've been doing a lot of relaxing at night to save our energy for Leslie (our other bff) arriving tonight - so here are a few homebody photos :)

Kaja knitting while we watched Star Trek (she's a shameless Trekkie)

Me eating BLUE CHEESE ICE CREAM (no lie - it's amazing)

And just for good measure because I'm writing this post with a cup of coffee/in my pajamas - I've decided to up the intimacy level and here's my morning hair... You'd think I'm Sonic the Hedgehog's girlfriend or something...