These Potatoes Have Eyes

We were going on to try out the new Stoney Trail route to Costco and two potatoes greeted us as we headed out the door. They were just sitting there hiding on the neightbour's lawn. They look menacing, don't they? In case these two potatoes had any sinister plans, we photographed them to let them know we were on to them!

It's not just a green dotted line anymore

I had a rare night shift Friday night, and driving home I got a text from Dean who also worked late that night.... "it's open!!" I immediately knew he meant Stoney Trail! He caught me just before the turn off which I excitedly exited onto. Stoney trail, bringing our world close together, was beautiful, and you can go 100 Km on it! I was home in lightening speed, so fast I felt like I was turning off just after merging on! Today we went on an adventure to the East to see how far it goes out, right now it ends at Harvert Hills Blvd. this will bring the Balzac mall minutes away from home when it connects!!


The new turnoff Finally open!

time upon merging onto Stoney Trail, 2:19

Costco, not so far anymore!

time upon exiting Stoney Trail turnoff 2:21!!!!!!

Beacon Hill, a "Stoney's" throw away now!

Not just a green dotted line anymore! :-)

Goodbye Conklin

As me and Dean walked around the Stampede grounds last week, I was looking for some favorite rides that I have seen since I was a kid. But oddly enough some were missing from the grounds this year, I couldn't find the Mach II rollercoaster, or the haunted house with the big green witch?? This puzzled me until a few days later I ( yes I did ) googled it. And what do my eyes see?? Conklin rides are no more! A sad day in Carnyville indeed!!

The article read: Conklin Shows as it was known in Canada and the US, is no more. The carnival no longer provides the midway at fairs and exhibitions as in the past, including, Miami, Florida’s, Dade County Fair, Calgary Alberta’s, Calgary Stampede, and Toronto, Ontario’s, CNE, The Canadian National Exhibition. Conklin Shows was created by a flamboyant American carnie, Patty Conklin, almost 80 years ago. It has grown from a small rag-bag show based in Vancouver, BC, to become North America’s largest carnival.

The rides are now supplied by N.A.M.E North American Midway Entertainment. And I miss Conklin :-(

Conko, the clown logo, and name were not included in the sale. Conklin Shows has been reincarnated as a small family Ontario Carnival. Many of the original staff are still "with it".

Three generations of Conklins and as many generations of loyal, skilled and dedicated staff have steered the show through good times and bad, to fairs big and small. It's safe to say that more people have enjoyed themselves on Conklin midways than on the midways of any other carnival company in the world.

Maddie and Kimmy in 2001 @ Stampede.

Recycling Has Begun...

Everyone is so excited about the city's BlueCart Recycling program. We took a few pics of first pick up. Sorry folks, slow news day!

Anyway, I hope we do better than Toronto is doing with their Green Bin program. The Toronto Star reported over the weekend:

The City of Toronto boasts that its green bin program diverts a third of our garbage and turns it into "black gold" compost. But a Star investigation shows that the program – although nobly conceived – is a sham.

There are two problems. First, the city's claim of how much waste the program diverts from landfill is inflated. Second, some of the compost that is being produced will kill your plants because of its high salt content, according to laboratory tests.

Hopefully the Blue Cart does better than the Green Bin.

I'd like to buy the world some deep fried coke...

As always on the drive home from somewhere we talk about something that needs to be "Googled" when we get home, so today's topic was deep fried coke. Since we were denied the treat at Stampede, we sought out the recipe. As always the answer came to us via Internet, there it was, the ingredients and "how to" for this tasty morsel. All we needed to do was make a funnel cake with coke substituting the liquid in the recipe. We only had Diet Coke, but thot it was worth a try! So Dean headed to the kitchen, I followed with the camera and within 15 minutes we had Deep Fried (diet ) Coke!! It was awesome, just like the guys on YouTube said it was! We didn't have coke syrup, or cherries to top it off, but now that we have the know how, we can get the missing items! Fun to make and fun to eat... Dean will post the recipe on the cookbook blog, so if you're interested... that's where you can find it to try yourself!

a little help from Google

1.5 cups of coke

add to the mix

droplets from a turkey baster

fry 'em up

voila enjoy!

YeeHaw 2009

We tried to go to Stampede on Monday but the thunderstorm made us stay indoors, then we thot we'd try on Tuesday but it started raining again, there was a hint of blue sky up there and we decided to take a chance and head to the grounds. It rained on us a bit while we were parking, and then while walking... but it wasn't cold and it wasn't for long, so we entered the gate. One of my favorite things about Stampede is... the Carny food! We were greeted by the pickle booth first thing when we entered the grounds, so we got a beloved pickle on a stick. As tradition would have it I needed a picture of us with the pickle so I asked the girl behind the booth to take our picture. If you remember an earlier blog about camera safety, this picture follows the rules. Ask someone of authority or blocked in with nowhere to run, in this case, the pickle booth :-)




checkin out where to find deep fried coke...

a trip thru the native land of teepees

passed by the Carny games, Hello Kitty here! This is the only game I have a chance at winning.

found the deep fried booth, but no coke :-( I enquired about it and the girl that worked there said it was too labour intensive.... boohooo maybe at the Montana State Fair that we'll be at in a couple of weeks. DENIED my coke for today.

found a new food, a Torpedo Potato! They had vinegar in a spray bottle! Brilliant!

Mission accomplished, had my fill of Carny Food, and got my last item on the list, cotton candy!!

p.s. the sky cleared and was actually hot while we were stampeding! Good choice on our part to brave the day!

Scary Moments In Traffic.

I really don't know why drivers take unnecessary risks like this. Driving in Calgary is dangerous enough without adding stuff like this. At this crossing, LRTs come by about every 10 minutes or so at about 80km an hour. There is no way a train could stop in time. Thankfully the driver in front of me was thinking for the brain challenged driver ahead of him by leaving a little space for the driver to reverse should a train had come down the line.... Scary!

Singin in the rain..ok screaming

Me and Maddie were nicely sitting watching a scary movie, cause that's what we do on a day off.. and the rain came down so hard, that we couldn't hear our movie, so if you can't beat it, join it. We thought it would be fun to run in the puddles in the front street. Just as we were heading out Dean came home!

It's very refreshing, I highly recommend it!!

Lost, lost, lost blog: Billy Curtis

When I was a kid my mom was going on a trip to Hawaii. Me and my Nanny went to the airport to see her off, and then when it was time for my mom to go thru the gate, she said to me " give Nanny your coat" I was thinkin' huh?? It's winter?? why?? she said "Your coming with me" and my reply was " I don't wanna go to Hawaii??" Then my mom says we're going to Disneyland!" Many squeals later. I launched my coat at my Nanny and ran to the departure gate! The trip was awesome, very memorable and the start of my love for the Happiest place on earth. Along with Disney we also went to Universal Studios. Unfortunately at the time my mom didn't own a camera, so she borrowed my Dad's. It wasn't automatic.... and we loaded the film wrong every roll.... I'm sick whenever I think about it! I had my own camera, which was a small box, and a very expensive square flash on top, that only held 4 flashes. Needless to say, we didn't take allot of pictures on it, seeing as my Dad's camera was a "good" one. Well to make a long story longer... we went into a restaurant in Universal, I remember it being dark, red, and quiet. We sat a a big round table, not realizing... what that table meant. We ordered lunch and a little while later a man came in, and politely said we were at "their" table, ( only he walked in ) but he said, you can stay, we'll join you. I think he was smitten by my mom, and they started talking, turns out his name was Billy Curtis. That didn't mean anything to me at the time, but he mentioned being in a movie that I knew, cause my dad was a big Clint Eastwood fan. "Billy" was the "midget ( not knowing any other word when I was 9 years old ) in High Plains Drifter. When his friends arrived they were all old school Hollywood, some actors, some crew, lighting props etc. I had an autograph book that they signed for me, but I can't find much on the names. Billy told us to come tomorrow and he would show us around. I know we extended our stay that trip, maybe this was the reason why? So, anyway. we went back not really thinking much about it. But there was Billy ready to tour us. This was in the 70's and the popular shows back then were Toma, Six Million Dollar Man, Emergency, and Kojak. Before we left Billy grabbed a menu and told us we would need it.
Off we go into the big sound stages of these 4 TV shows. We got to watch them being filmed and then we met the stars of the shows!! Now we were talking my era, these shows I knew, and I was the coolest kid at that moment in time. We took 1000 pictures..... ( we already know the outcome of those... :-( not one turned out, hard to when the film isn't advancing.. ouch my stomach hurts all over again ) but I did get autographs! Dean and I were sitting here talking about my adventure one night and we googled all these people. Some of them were pretty important! I remember meeting Telly Savalas, him picking me up in his arms when we took the picture, him of course eating a lollipop. Sigh....

Anyway, it was a really cool memory that I thought I'd share, here were some google facts we found.

American midget actor Billy Curtis was cast in The Wizard of Oz (1939)Billy Curtis' career thrived into the 1970s, notably with solid parts in the Clint Eastwood western _High Plains Drifter (1972)

TOMA - Tony Musante

Suzanne Charney was in Toma

Kevin Tighe Ron Pinkard





Lee Majors

Campers are...

....a very committed bunch. Nothing will stop them from going out there into the Great Wide Open.

I agree with John Pinette's take on camping:



Anyway, I was stuck on the Deerfoot yesterday and one of those crazy camping people passed me. I just had to snap a pic:


(click to enlarge)

Nothing was going to stop this guy from going camping. It looks like his trailer was involved in a pretty serious crash. He's got some serious damage going on there! Tape it up with white tape and head for the camp site! Problem solved!