I am pleased to officially announce that my sister Elaine and I are having a photography show and sale for the entire month of August! If you should find yourself driving down the #2 Highway, and are about to pass Holland, MB, take a driving break and pop in to the Tiger Hills Arts Association gallery to see our show.

The theme for our gallery show is The Country In Us. Visitors can expect to see a collection of fine art photography, depicting images of home and the bits of country that we’ve discovered in other places. Elaine and I have a strong connection to the Tiger Hills area of Manitoba and find peace, restoration and beauty there. We especially enjoy introducing and sharing the area with friends… so if our gallery show gives you a reason to take a drive out to the country, we’d think that is pretty awesome.

For the month of August, the gallery is open Tuesday to Friday from 10 am to 5 pm. It is also open on Saturdays from 10 am to 2 pm.

I ran in the Manitoba Marathon today, as part of a 5-person relay team, running the full 26 mile course. I ran Leg 5, which was 5.75 miles. It took me one hour, and my average pace per mile was 10:33. I was pretty pleased with that, as lately, I’ve been running closer to 12 minute miles. Our team name was “Woot! Woot!” and it sounds like we all had a pretty good run. All told, it took us 4 1/2 hours and we finished 266 out of the 392 teams. It was a gorgeous day for running, sunny but breezy and good cloud cover as the day got hotter.

Of course I can’t compare myself to the half and full marathoners, but I’m really happy that I took part in this… the run went great, I had lots of energy at the end, had fun sprinting towards the finish and never felt as though I was running out of air. This is the furthest I’ve ever run, and I’m proud that I trained up to it. Originally, I had planned to take the shortest leg, and ended up with a longer one. I’m happy about that, as it made me push my body further.

I’m not really interested in training up to even longer distances (6 miles or 10 kilometres suits me just fine), but I am definitely interested in running some 5 or 10k races. I’m not going to lie, I kind of enjoyed passing people as I was running, and loved putting in the extra effort right at the end to speed up. So I think races will be fun.

Worst part of the day: stressing about the logistics of getting to my relay exchange point on time, and then waiting for well over 45 minutes because I got there way too early!

Best part of the day: the way Winnipeger’s participate as spectators, whether it’s setting up their sprinkler for us to run through, cheering us on, performing (I got to hear a great punk band, as well as an awesome polka on accordian — actually caught myself whistling that tune, and kinda wanted to stop and dance for a minute). Loved the funny signs and the little kids handing out high-five’s.

Also got a kick out of running through the finish line. All in all, a fun time.

Next official running event: 8k trail run/race at Birds Hill Park in September… yay! A reason to keep training.

This week, Elaine and I kept at it… working on planning our August gallery show. Elaine got all the writing done, plus checked into print pricing, etc. and I took our rough sketch of a layout to something a little more organized. In total, we plan to print and hang around 25 photos — visitors can expect to see a collection of fine art photography, depicting images of home and the bits of country that we’ve discovered in other places. Elaine and I find peace out there, and we hope that will come through in our exhibit.

In addition, I spent the morning starting to design our promo card, which will set the look for all of the other promo/print pieces that we plan to develop. It may evolve a bit further, but here’s the front side:

This week my sister Elaine and I started planning our next gallery show in earnest and as a result, my 365two project is going to focus on that for the next few weeks. We are both madly trying to finish the bulk of the work before end of June so that we can enjoy our summer outside (instead of in front of the computer). Our combined photography show will be up for the entire month of August at the Tiger Hills Arts Association (THAA) gallery in Holland, Manitoba.

Elaine and I had a great working session on Wednesday night… hashing out our theme for the show, drafting our Artist’s Statement, choosing our photos and putting together a rough plan of what will hang where. As you can see from the diagram below, I do mean rough when I say rough.

On the to-do list for the next couple of weeks is writing our Artist’s Statement and bios, designing our promotional materials, getting pricing and prepping our files for print. That somehow needs to fit between work, projects to be done around the house, running a marathon relay, heading out home for a camping trip and taking a few drumming workshops. Oh yes… I am once again in one of life’s busy cycles.

This week is all about music. Mostly I listen to it on my drive to and from work, but if I’m at my desk long enough I also listen to it there… and sometimes before bed, and even more occasionally, sometimes when I’m cooking. I’m pretty attached to CBC Radio One (talk radio), so I often have that on instead. I’m not much of a shopper, so I’ve discovered wandering around the grocery store or the mall with a good playlist cheers me up immensely. The one place that I rarely listen to music is when I’m outside. I prefer to simply hear the sounds around me… the birds, the traffic, people talking, etc.

In any case, here are seven songs that seemed to jive with my mood each day. Enjoy!

MONDAY
“Gold” by Wake Owl (Noah Hyde/Magic Sword Remix)

This is my favourite song right now… I find it so soothing, but it also has a quiet energy to it. Usually I like specific songs for certain moments or moods, but this seems to work for almost everything. It makes me happy.

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TUESDAY
“Growing Old is Getting Old” by Silverson Pickups

I like this song for its moodiness… all sad and kind of angry, but with these pretty sounding voices.

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WEDNESDAY
“A Long Time” by Mayer Hawthorne

Thing song just has such a great vibe. I love singing along with the rhythms in it (not with the words). Always put a smile on my face. I find the video kind of distracting actually (prefer just listening to it).

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THURSDAY
“Blue Belle Lament” by Adrian Glynn

I’m not sure if a song could be more perfectly beautiful.

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FRIDAY
“Oliver’s Tune” by Peter Katz

The first time I heard this song, Peter Katz was playing live at the CRYK, an arts-house venue in Winnipeg. He shared the story behind the song, and he does the same in this video (before the song starts). It’s lovely and sad and happy.

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SATURDAY
“Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way” by Waylon Jennings

This song always makes me bop up and down in an odd sort of chair dance… just a little. The twanginess of it makes me smile.

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SUNDAY
“Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People

Just a happy dancing song… I recommend trying out some dance moves in your kitchen, or outside barefoot in the grass.

I just came home from a trip to Victoria, BC with my best friend. This was our third trip together, having gone to San Francisco a couple of times before. The overall impression that I took from Victoria was “lush”. At this time of the year, Winnipeg is green and flowers are starting to appear, but in Victoria the green is a different, more vibrant shade and there are flowers everywhere. I was also really struck by how sculpted all of the foliage is. Here people probably trim their hedges and shrubs once in a while, but there it seems to be more of an art form. I can’t decide which I like better — the sculpted look or the slightly wild/let-it-be look that we have here.

Thursday was travel evening so our holiday essentially started on Friday morning. After going out for breakfast at a yummy place called Jam Cafe (great roasted tomatoes), we met up with our friend Jordan who was kind enough to spend the day with us, surprising us with random things to do. First he took us to My Foot Reflexology… it was both relaxing and amusing as there was some pretty funny conversation. Then we went up to the 18th floor of our hotel for a drink and a view of the city. Then on to the bug zoo where Jordan and Rukmali held creepy bugs and I held a cute stick-type bug. Also I wore a millipede like a bracelet around my arm. It was all I could do not to fling it across the room (the sticky feet creeped me out).

After that, Jordan drove us along the water… we stopped at Marina Restaurant, sat on the dock soaking in the sunshine and feeding the seals, and then had a fantastic meal (my favourite of the holiday)… we ended it by sharing three different desserts. Again, all yummy. After that, Jordan drove us through uVic and up Mount Tolmie, where we sat on a rock soaking in the view for a good while (well, to be honest, Ruk & Jordan sat on the rock while I wandered about with my camera).

Then it was back to the hotel for a bit until I met up with two new designer friends (Aaron and Patrick from Nanaimo) for drinks and conversation. I had a lovely time. At around 12:30 am, we called it a night… but I found out Jordan and his friend Jenna were hanging out at our hotel so visited with them in the lobby for a while. Jordan played the kamale n’goni while Jenna painted my leg and foot. I ended up going to bed at 2 am (or 4 am Winnipeg time). A late night for me.

Saturday Ruk’s friend Jen drove down from Campbell River to visit her… I hung out with them for a bit (breakfast and a bit of shopping) but then decided I was in need of a good long nap. Did that, then went for a great run through downtown and along the harbour. My app messed up and said I ran 9 miles in 42 minutes (not possible) — the diagram of my running route ended up looking like a child’s drawing. Pretty funny. In reality, I ran a little less than 4 miles. But it was sunny and hot and fun running up and down hills with new scenery to see. I had no idea where I was going half the time, but I ultimately ended up where I wanted to be. While I was doing that, Ruk and Jen went kayaking. After some reading, napping and TV watching we went out for supper at Jen’s favourite Italian restaurant. The bread was quite tasty.

Sunday Ruk and I had time to ourselves. We went out for breakfast at Willie’s Bakery (yummy again, and a relaxing spot to sit out of the rain), wandered through Chinatown, walked over the bridge and along the harbour trail on that side, then back to the hotel for a bit. It was great to see so many people out rowing in the harbour. After that, we decided to go climb Mount Douglas (thanks Jordan for driving us there!). It was beautiful, both on the climb and at the summit. 360 degree views of city and ocean, tall gorgeous trees, lovely moss, interesting rocks and colours… and these brown hawks (or eagles?) soaring above and below us. I loved it.

We didn’t stay up top too long because we also wanted to check out the Prawn Festival. So, after taking the wrong trail at one point, we got to the bottom, walked to the bus stop and rode through the city and across the same bridge we were at in the morning. We managed to get there before everything shut down and ate some prawns and such. I can’t say it was my favourite thing to eat… but I didn’t grow up on seafood. I was sad we were too late to try out the salmon. We ended up going out for supper again later in the night, and I went for a short photo wander by myself.

Monday was pretty low-key. We did an hour’s worth of shopping (I found a gorgeous feather necklace and earrings at Migration Boutique plus a cool robot t-shirt for Rob). Then back to the hotel to rest (in what we jokingly called “the cloud”), packed up, went for a long lunch and read at Sam’s Deli and then on to the airport.

These are my three favourite photos from the trip:

Thanks Ruk for thinking of the trip in the first place, and for being lovely company!