Cat Jahnke Mews

I’ve got a benefit show coming up in Saskatoon and the folks at Canadian Tire have been generous enough to donate a prize of our choice to the silent auction.  While driving through Alberta today, we spied one of their locations and decided to do some scouting.  I spent some serious time strolling their aisles, trying to pick out a desirable gift within the budget.  As if it’s not hard enough to choose something for someone you know; imagine how hard it is to guess the interest of a couple hundred strangers!

I think we’re going to go with a coffeemaker and pair it with the gift basket being donated by McQuarries Coffee.  Holy cow!  If you’re in the Saskatoon area and you have an afternoon to kill, go visit McQuarries.  When I was a little girl I never hesitated to stop and smell those ground coffee beans.  While I’ve never been a drinker of the stuff, I’ve been an avid smeller for years!

After making our decision, we continued on our path to Calgary, dropped our gear off at the hotel and found a sushi restaurant on 11th ave (despite Google giving us incorrect instructions).  What a great place!  Check out Uptown Sushi for cheap but delicious food and great atmosphere: a huge bowl of Edamame, the best tasting yam tempura I’ve ever had, and a beautiful décor.  To cap it off, the woman at the till gave me an interesting wire photo holder…  just because!  I’ll have to take a picture of it to post here.  Thank you Uptown Sushi!!

Meanwhile, back at the inn…  Ah, (certain chain of) hotels!  You have yet to impress me.  In fact, you have yet to host me without complaint.  I’m open-minded however and would ADORE having this track record smashed.  I’m currently lying in a pretty comfy bed, so you’ve got some points right off the hop.  The temperature’s under control, the bathroom was clean, the front desk staff was courteous, and there’s no horrific aroma emanating from some indiscernible corner of the room.  Hmm…  I hope you prove me wrong!

Tomorrow I start another weekend with the Signature’s Craft Sales.  If you’re in the Calgary area, come on down to the Calgary Stampede Roundup Centre.  With the abundance of talent that I see at these events, if you do brave the parking fee and come on by, I promise that you will see at least one amazing thing during your visit.

A demain!

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank goodness for my smallness.  My entire sleep allotment for this day was doled out in two hour increments in a car on the number one highway.  Perhaps I’ve already discussed this in a previous blog.  I don’t care; I’m freaking grateful that I can sleep comfortably in a bucket seat!

We’re billotted with one of the town doctors here in Medicine Hat.  Good thing too because I wanted a second opinion about a burn I recently acquired using faulty oven mitts.  (Check your oven mitts people!)  I realized after the show that during my last visit I also consulted with him about an injury I’d sustained in the very same place!

I think my right index finger is jinxed!

Thanks to the Prickly Pear for the great evening and for the YUMMY EGG SALAD SANDWICH!!!

I remember reading a Farley Mowat book in which he discusses his switch from a regular sleep schedule to one more in tune with the wolves he was studying.  Instead of the usual 8 hours straight, his sleep allotment came in much smaller increments spaced throughout the day.  This is much how Darren and I survive in the days leading up to a long tour, although the biggest difference between Mowat and me is that I can usually only fit in one nap in a 24-hour cycle.

I can’t believe how much there is to do!!  Besides just packing clothes and gear, we had to coordinate merch, keep the promotion in motion, clean the house for our house-sitter…  Darren even took time to remove the sticky gunk left behind on my guitar case after a run-in with some duct tape.  Peanut butter works like a charm!  A messy, unappetizing, “may contain traces of nuts” charm!

We didn’t have time to consume food ourselves, but we had to make sure the guitar case was fed.

So while the case ate like a king all out of Wonder Bread, I prepared an all-day buffet equally as nourishing:

Part of this complete breakfast!

By the end of the day I was so tired that I just barely remember giggling while describing a t-shirt caption idea.  I will share it here knowing that it makes absolutely no sense, but I just want to prove my exhaustion:

It supposed to say “Oops!” but there’s an “O” missing.  This was side-splititngly funny to me at 4 am.  I don’t think you’d truly grasp the hilarity unless you stayed up for 30 hours straight, subsisting only on “baked not fried” crackers, OR if you banged your head really hard.  I recommend neither; I’m always up for a laugh, but this one’s just not worth it…

I was so pleased to stop in Wabigoon for my first show of the tour.  Thank you for hosting us John!  I hope you didn’t mind me grilling you about your job as a “flight medic”.  I’m just so fascinated with people who have that kind of information in their head, and those kind of adventures in their past.  I wanna learn how to trach someone at 20,000 feet!  (Although with my level of aerophobia I think I would find it difficult to wield a scalpel while simultaneously clutching my armrests…)

10/13/07 – Brickhouse, Fernie

Breakfast at the Cycle Inn. Most likely the best fruit salad I’ve ever enjoyed. Golden Raspberries?! (more…)

10/12/07 – Langham, Kaslo

It was a race against the clock to get to the ferry. We won and we lost. We arrived just in time to be the third vehicle in line NOT to get on. (more…)

10/3/07 – Redstone, Red Deer

Oh – My – Goodness! I’ve been spoiled. I’ve yet to see Big Night, but the climax of the film seems to be in line with what I’m feeling now. I’ll never have asparagus like that again! (more…)

10/2/07 – Day off, Calgary

Stop the presses and mark your calendars: Darren and I made plans to meet at a restaurant for lunch and it worked out!! We didn’t get lost, there were no plan Bs, and no one was fired. That’s a good lunch date in my books! (more…)

9/30/07 – Day Off, Calgary

Would you rather have the big luck or the little luck? Big luck: Great job but you always drop things? Or little luck: Crappy relationship but you never miss a green light? (more…)

9/27/07 – Ernie’s Coffee House

Darren set up a passenger seat office today. Unfortunately there were no bobble-headed desk trinkets to spruce up the bucket-seat cubicle (if you use that for a band name you better credit me!) but he made do. I was less of a trooper. I’ve got to get me some of these because my eye balls do not like driving directly into the sun. (more…)

Spent the afternoon at a café very similar in feel to the bakery in the film Stranger Than Fiction. It is helmed by a young woman who seemed intent on catering to everyone with the same respect and love, focusing on quality, nourishing, REAL food. (more…)