Intonation
Jul. 1st, 2004 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alfvaenWell, Canada Day didn't turn out quite as well as I'd hoped, but it was okay.
Nicole's sister Sharna, who works at the Alberta Legislature(hereafter "Ledge")Library, and who was thus working(because the Ledge was having an open house), invited us to a brunch at her place, after which we could tour the library and participate in the Ledge grounds festivities. When she discovered she was working from 1:00 instead of 12:00, the brunch turned into a picnic lunch on the grounds. Which grew into an event involving at least a dozen people, most of them her husband's relatives, but my dad ended up coming too. (A proposal to combine this picnic with Luke's birthday party, I vetoed. His actual birthday, and the party, is on Sunday.)
We parked at Stadium Station and took the LRT down to the Ledge, with Sharna and her & Nicole's parents. We found a good picnic spot, on a bit of a hillside, but well shaded. It was already starting to get hot, but at least didn't look like the "scattered showers" that had been forecast. We got there at about 11:30, but it was closer to 12:15 before everyone had showed up. The picnic was great, involving a bucket of KFC and lots of fruit, vegetables, buns, pickles, salads, and the like contributed by various people. My only real problem with it was that it was an actual sitting-on-a-blanket-on-the-ground kind of picnic. I've gotten too used to(on the rare occasions I go to a picnic)the sitting-at-a-picnic-table variety. Oh, well.
After that, things started to go downhill. Sharna had to go to work, and when we got to the library, in the Ledge building proper, Nicole's parents had already had the tour, and we missed meeting up with them. The library itself was not of course particularly exciting, even to a former Library Tech like Nicole. Then we had to go find a bathroom, which eventually we did. It was a very old bathroom, in the basement, with the largest toilet tanks I've seen in a long time. And what looked like marble toilet stalls. After that, we went up to the top floor, to the "Magic Spot", where sound waves from the fountain on the ground floor converge, so you can hear it perfectly. I wonder if they planned that, or if someone just noticed it one day in the hallway...
They have a bunch of big wading pools on the Ledge grounds. The boys were more or less prepared to go in there, but I wasn't, since I don't wear shorts or sandals, so I ended up sitting on the edge guarding shed clothes and valuables while Nicole, Dad, and the boys went in. The water was apparently quite cold, but my feet were very hot by that point. Once I went around to see if I could find Nicole's parents, who we thought might be waiting for us somewhere else, and missed the edge of a step, scraping my knee and my hands.
Finally, at close to 2:00, we decided it was time to go. We tried to change the boys back into drier clothes, but Simon had gotten his underwear wet(by sitting down in the water), and we had no replacement for them, so he had to wear them under dry pants. Then Nicole said she was thirsty, so we stood in line for only-slightly-cooler-than-ambient pop, and some popsicles. Then Dad went back to the picnic site to get his stuff, and we had to wait for him to get back. (Turned it he had to help out in a diaper-changing situation that turned into a peeing-all-over-clothes situation.) Then Nicole has to go back to the Ledge library to get the picnic food containers we left there, and Simon has to go to the bathroom again...
Finally we are actually ready to go home. Dad has parked closer, so we said goodbye to him. Then we tried to find an LRT access on the map. The one where we came in was all the way across the Ledge grounds by this point, and I remember that there's one on 109th Street, which we're quite close to, so I suggest we walk there. We're all hot, tired and footsore by this point, but I manage to convince Nicole about it, and we set off. We have to cross some traffic, pass a bike race in progress on the Ledge grounds, but we eventually get to the right side of the street and walk slowly(at Luke speed--he's long overdue for his nap by now)up to the entrance to Grandin LRT station.
Which, for some inexplicable reason, is locked.
After that, we weigh our options. We are now more or less across the street from the station entrance we used before, but there's no crosswalk, and 109th street is very busy with traffic. So we can either try to find the other Grandin LRT station entrance I remember, go down to a crosswalk and double back to the one we came in on, or go down another couple of blocks to the Corona LRT station entrance we're sure is there. After a rest on a bus stop bench, we decide to go for the way we came in. We go past a guy on a bike who seems to be having a schizophrenic episode, and is angrily asking somebody(?) to stop yelling at him, and finally, even more tired and footsore by this point, make it back to Grandin LRT station. I feel like an idiot for not having suggested we just go back here in the first place, but who would've that the other entrance would be locked???
We get on the LRT train going to University, which is currently the south end of the track, Grandin being the second furthest south, because we knew it would be the one we would be getting onto going north anyway. From there we manage to get home, by about 4:00.
So that's why I ended up not going to the Edmonton LJ Canada Day Karaoke Get-Together(capitals mine). My feet and legs are still sore(well, not so much now, with the Tylenol kicking in), and I just did not feel like going out. I'm still very curious to try karaoke again sometime, but on a day when I haven't had other social commitments and outside-the-house time to drain my energy reserves.
Nicole's sister Sharna, who works at the Alberta Legislature(hereafter "Ledge")Library, and who was thus working(because the Ledge was having an open house), invited us to a brunch at her place, after which we could tour the library and participate in the Ledge grounds festivities. When she discovered she was working from 1:00 instead of 12:00, the brunch turned into a picnic lunch on the grounds. Which grew into an event involving at least a dozen people, most of them her husband's relatives, but my dad ended up coming too. (A proposal to combine this picnic with Luke's birthday party, I vetoed. His actual birthday, and the party, is on Sunday.)
We parked at Stadium Station and took the LRT down to the Ledge, with Sharna and her & Nicole's parents. We found a good picnic spot, on a bit of a hillside, but well shaded. It was already starting to get hot, but at least didn't look like the "scattered showers" that had been forecast. We got there at about 11:30, but it was closer to 12:15 before everyone had showed up. The picnic was great, involving a bucket of KFC and lots of fruit, vegetables, buns, pickles, salads, and the like contributed by various people. My only real problem with it was that it was an actual sitting-on-a-blanket-on-the-ground kind of picnic. I've gotten too used to(on the rare occasions I go to a picnic)the sitting-at-a-picnic-table variety. Oh, well.
After that, things started to go downhill. Sharna had to go to work, and when we got to the library, in the Ledge building proper, Nicole's parents had already had the tour, and we missed meeting up with them. The library itself was not of course particularly exciting, even to a former Library Tech like Nicole. Then we had to go find a bathroom, which eventually we did. It was a very old bathroom, in the basement, with the largest toilet tanks I've seen in a long time. And what looked like marble toilet stalls. After that, we went up to the top floor, to the "Magic Spot", where sound waves from the fountain on the ground floor converge, so you can hear it perfectly. I wonder if they planned that, or if someone just noticed it one day in the hallway...
They have a bunch of big wading pools on the Ledge grounds. The boys were more or less prepared to go in there, but I wasn't, since I don't wear shorts or sandals, so I ended up sitting on the edge guarding shed clothes and valuables while Nicole, Dad, and the boys went in. The water was apparently quite cold, but my feet were very hot by that point. Once I went around to see if I could find Nicole's parents, who we thought might be waiting for us somewhere else, and missed the edge of a step, scraping my knee and my hands.
Finally, at close to 2:00, we decided it was time to go. We tried to change the boys back into drier clothes, but Simon had gotten his underwear wet(by sitting down in the water), and we had no replacement for them, so he had to wear them under dry pants. Then Nicole said she was thirsty, so we stood in line for only-slightly-cooler-than-ambient pop, and some popsicles. Then Dad went back to the picnic site to get his stuff, and we had to wait for him to get back. (Turned it he had to help out in a diaper-changing situation that turned into a peeing-all-over-clothes situation.) Then Nicole has to go back to the Ledge library to get the picnic food containers we left there, and Simon has to go to the bathroom again...
Finally we are actually ready to go home. Dad has parked closer, so we said goodbye to him. Then we tried to find an LRT access on the map. The one where we came in was all the way across the Ledge grounds by this point, and I remember that there's one on 109th Street, which we're quite close to, so I suggest we walk there. We're all hot, tired and footsore by this point, but I manage to convince Nicole about it, and we set off. We have to cross some traffic, pass a bike race in progress on the Ledge grounds, but we eventually get to the right side of the street and walk slowly(at Luke speed--he's long overdue for his nap by now)up to the entrance to Grandin LRT station.
Which, for some inexplicable reason, is locked.
After that, we weigh our options. We are now more or less across the street from the station entrance we used before, but there's no crosswalk, and 109th street is very busy with traffic. So we can either try to find the other Grandin LRT station entrance I remember, go down to a crosswalk and double back to the one we came in on, or go down another couple of blocks to the Corona LRT station entrance we're sure is there. After a rest on a bus stop bench, we decide to go for the way we came in. We go past a guy on a bike who seems to be having a schizophrenic episode, and is angrily asking somebody(?) to stop yelling at him, and finally, even more tired and footsore by this point, make it back to Grandin LRT station. I feel like an idiot for not having suggested we just go back here in the first place, but who would've that the other entrance would be locked???
We get on the LRT train going to University, which is currently the south end of the track, Grandin being the second furthest south, because we knew it would be the one we would be getting onto going north anyway. From there we manage to get home, by about 4:00.
So that's why I ended up not going to the Edmonton LJ Canada Day Karaoke Get-Together(capitals mine). My feet and legs are still sore(well, not so much now, with the Tylenol kicking in), and I just did not feel like going out. I'm still very curious to try karaoke again sometime, but on a day when I haven't had other social commitments and outside-the-house time to drain my energy reserves.
