Nightowls & Newborns, Day 2

Today was meant to be a travel day, a long, drawn-out travel day.

Both Kerry and I were dreading the ten hours in-the-car from Saskatoon to Edmonton...until we realized that according to the various atlases and maps we were waving around that it was only 5.5 hours and not 10.

Basically, we had a half-day's reprieve, so we decided to wander around SKtoon a bit.



At first, we wanted to duck into the area around the Flint Bar, which was all nifty boutiques and shoppes.

But after having heard Jennifer Still and Brenda and Harvey murmur at Tonight It's Poetry about cranes and the riverwalk, our plans changed.

So we checked out of our unprecedentedly nice hotel and navigated our way to a stretch of riverwalk.

And I was almost struck dumb when I spotted that first cluster of mushrooms.



Kerry, being a birdwatcher-by-association and someone who appreciates well, actually walking on a walk, marched ahead and circled back for me at various points when I got stuck.

We hit the road for Edmonton at noon and drove through another rainstorm as well as blazingly hot stretches of road.

Kerry drove first, which afforded me the opportunity to give the drum that is the chapbook another resounding smack, i.e. I read the whole thing aloud.



As I mentioned yesterday, there are several poems in the book that I haven't ever performed and so I'm testing them out, day by day, reading by reading.

Of course, perversely, I'm determined to not give the same reading twice and to explore most if not all of the poems over the course of the tour.

I also had ample time to map out my half of the presentation portion of tomorrow's events.

Once in Edmonton, we unpacked the car and checked into our room. The first thing I did was to strip my bed of its thin polyester 'duvet.' The second was to complain of my overweening hunger.



So we went to IKEA and had IKEA food (10 meatballs, 2 potatoes, 1 handful of greens) and then I watched as Kerry bought things. I picked up a few things of my own and then realized that I had no room for them at home and put them back.

We were meant to take in a movie after the shop-a-thon, but after navigating Edmonton's boomtown construction zones I could feel myself fading, so we went back to the room.

Tomorrow we've got most of the morning to ourselves. I'm greatly looking forward to that as well as to our reading-and-rendezvous-laden evening!

Huzzah!