2008/09/05

It has been a while since my last post, mostly due to the fact that I no longer had internet at home. I had been using my former roommate's wireless connection but it broke near the end of July, which she decided to blame on the large number of people (3) using it. So she decided to change the password and not tell anyone, which I didn't learn about until I asked her about it almost two weeks ago. I went and set up my own internet last week, but because of the holiday weekend it didn't start working until today.

Last weekend I went to Calgary to pick up a Silent Brass for my euphonium so I could practice at home. A friend from Toronto has just recently moved out to Calgary to do her PhD so I also spent some time visiting her and assisting with the assembly of Ikea furniture. From my experiences so far, I think I like Calgary, though they really ought to get a C-train (or at least a frequently-running bus) to stop at (or at least near) the Greyhound station. It's really not a city designed for pedestrians.

Anyway, the point of getting the Silent Brass was so that I could play, because I joined a community band this week. It's nothing fancy, mostly grade 2-3 music (while university ensembles tend to play more grade 6-ish stuff, if I remember my music ed stuff right), but it's nice to play with a group again. It meets in Canmore, the next town over from Banff, but there is a group that runs a carpool to rehearsals so I am hopeful that it will all work out.

My Flickr account filled up so I decided I needed a new photo service, so I am giving Picasa a try. All my pictures of wildlife and other Albertan adventures will be available here. The elk are out these days, but I haven't seen one while I have had my camera. They're mostly out at night, anyway, not during the day, but they crap all over the place and it smells worse than the horses.

It snowed here on Sunday. It turned into rain by the afternoon, but I woke up and it was snowing. The trees looked lovely but it was a little surprising. My coworker who has lived here for nine years said that is has snowed in every month at least once while she's been here. It has returned to mostly normal fall-ish weather with random rainfall every few days, which is very normal for Banff.

We discussed Christmas plans at the Thursday meeting at work, and it looks like I will be able to come home for a few days, probably December 24-28. We will also be having a work Christmas dinner, which was at the Indian place last year, which would be awesome because the Indian place is kind of pricy but it smells amazing.