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Every year, the university I work at chooses a "book of the year". We all (assumably) read it and the the author visits. After the profound experience that was my read of  Indian Horse , I decided to read a couple vintage books of the year. First I read Chorus of Mushrooms (meh). Next up, Monkey Beach. Book of the Year 2002 Monkey Beach By Eden Robinson 2001 377 pages I decided to read Monkey Beach because I was still on and aboriginal literature kick, plus the main character has the same first/middle name combo as me. Couldn't pass that up! When the story opens, Lisamarie's 17 year old brother Jimmy has been lost at sea. From there, the book moves back and forth through time as Lisa tells the story of their childhood and wayward teenage years, growing up in a contemporary Haisla community on the west coast of B.C. She weaves the lives of her family and friends throughout, and includes compelling lessons about native culture and traditional ways of life. As the book ...

It's book club's two year anniversary this month. I've been with the book club less than a year, but I'm happy they've let me be a part of their group - I've really enjoyed getting back into reading and getting to know the ladies better! For this month, we decided to re-read a book another member had read for a previous book club month. I chose to read Come, Thou Tortoise, a book read by Leah for January 2013's book club (Canadian author) , which was before my time in book club. And I certainly didn't regret the choice! March 2014: Re-read of another club members previous book club choice (gosh I really can't figure out how to describe that better!) Come, Thou Tortoise By Jessica Grant 2009 412 pages The only words I can think of that sum up this book are "awkwardly sweet but in an awesomely quirky way", if that makes any sense! Audrey (Oddly to her family) Flowers is an articulate woman "of low IQ". When the book opens, she is tr...

Here is my usual wrap up post! Catch up my thoughts and photos of the 2014 Brier: Update 1 Update 2 Update 3 Update 4 Update 5 Kamloops was a great Brier. It was the perfect mix of work and curling and friends and food and relaxing and friendly folks. I'll miss all the great people but I'm sure I'll see some of them down the road. I'm glad the CCA let me join them! But I have a niggling feeling that this might be my last gig as an IT intern. And I think I'm ok with that - it was a good run but I think I'm ready for a change. As mentioned earlier, I have a few ideas about what I can do as a curling volunteer going forward, and I definitely want to be at the 2015 Brier in Calgary! I let you know how I get there... Below are my tweets to archive my adventure. As is the twitter way, oldest is at the bottom Sunday, March 9, 2014 #Brier update 5 - the final weekend:  http://t.co/G9dhKJEinY  #Brier hangover day 1. Lonely. Travel day. 14 hours till home!  Sunday, March ...

Saturday, March 8, 2014 This was supposed to be a rather relaxed day of watching curling. Except the Olympic gold medalists are in town so it was chaos backstage. Fun times. Today was the day I finally, after all these events, really truly screwed up my job. Don't ask how it happened, but I never got any video of the 3v4 Page Playoff Media Scrum. No, no babies would've died, but I always try to do my best at these event because I want to come back henceforth! Thankfully the one of the reporters helped me out and I was able to splice his audio with still photographs and my "video" turned out ok. And I'm not getting fired. Phew! (And this was after I was late for filming the Gold Medalist Media Scrum because no one told me and I hadn't plugged in the mic so we got iffy audio for the skip and then I walked out of the building without my accreditation and almost couldn't get back in. Oiy.) Never notice this till now, hung up in the arena. Vintage! Olympic gold...

Thursday, March 6, 2014 I had ramen for lunch and a tasty squash and zucchini for dinner. Oh yeah. There was curling.   I'll never get tired of this view. Watching 4 games during a draw at the Brier is a special thing. Friday, March 7, 2014 Last morning of round robin play. I showed up as usual, late-ish, and caught up with one of my Wednesday Ladies league teammates who has come to watch the final weekend. It's always nice to see a familiar face! There was no tiebreaker, so I should've gone for a long walk along the river during the long break, but instead I read, watched bad reality tv, and ate delicious lunch and dinner from my favourite food truck, Eats Amore while I dreamed about joining roller derby. I am not normal. Then it was off to the arena for an exciting 1-2 page playoff game. It's weird going from watching 4 games at once to just 1. The crowd was super loud! I was tweeting scores for the CCA twitter (hope I did ok) so I actually had to pay attention! Then...

Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Today was definitely a "middle of the event" day, and thus pretty routine. My biggest accomplishment of the day was finding some non-arena food to eat for lunch AND dinner. And we walked to dinner so that was good. Too much sitting. Too much arena food. Also I broke my almost two day doughnut free streak after they left out boxes of timbits near the media room. So close! I did have a lovely conversation with a couple derby girls from the Tournament City Derby Dolls and they convinced me I'm not too old or out of shape to join roller derby (watch for a blog post on that in the coming months...). I spent some time today trying to figure out how to continue my volunteer involvement with the CCA. It's possible my cushy IT gig is up after this event, and I want to attend at least one even a season. I'm young, I can work, I'm pretty smart and learn quick - so I want to continue to help out to the best of my ability. I talked to someone about b...