Agribition 2016

This past week, Tourism Regina hooked me up with a media pass for Agribition.

When I went into the office to pick up my stuff, one of the ladies there asked me if I'd ever been before. I said, "Oh, no. No, no. No. Never."

I didn't mean to be so vocally adamant about it, but let's be real: if you've ever met me, you know I'm not a cowgirl. One of my best friends is a cowgirl, so I know exactly how much I'm not one. And I've always kind of assumed that Agribition is specifically for cowpeople, the same way that Folk Fest is for musicpeople and the same way there's that club in Regina where everyone dresses up like comic book characters.

It's just a place I've never thought to venture before.

When I found out I was going to Agribition, I asked someone to describe to me what it was, exactly, and they said, simply, "It's a beef show." Like I'm supposed to know what a beef show is. I pictured a bunch of cows parading slowly through the Brandt centre, swaying side-to-side and mooing. For six whole days.

I learned two things this week:

1. That's not what Agribition is.
2. You can enjoy Agribition without being a quote unquote cowperson.

When I arrived at the newsroom on day one, a really sweet woman wearing cowboy boots gave me a pamphlet with a bunch of facts on it about Agribition - things like: "attracts 800 international visitors from over 70 different countries," and "$56 million in provincial economic impact."

The pamphlet went on to confirm for me that, yes, the Canadian Western Agribition is a beef show (the best on the continent, it said), but it encompasses agriculture, Indigenous culture, live music, food, and shopping. I could get into that.

So, on Tuesday, I went to my first Agribition event: the jousting tournament. I took Ashley, Robyn, and Sullivan with me, and it was incredible.

You know that feeling you get when you see a celebrity in public or you're at a Death Cab concert and Ben Gibbard finally steps up to the microphone? I had that feeling when the knights rode out into the ring in full armour. Like, I recognize this from movies. Sullivan was equally impressed because one of his favourite cartoons features a dog dressed up as a knight. He said to me, "Mom! Are they going to hit them off the horses with the sticks?"

And I said, "I sure hope so." Is that bad parenting?

Before the tournament, one of the knights rode over to where we were sitting and yelled, "Who will be my fair maiden?" or something similarly dramatic and medieval. A little girl put her hand up and he gave her a rose.

Then, we watched the most intense sport I've ever witnessed live. Full contact jousting is no joke. From the pamphlet: Two knights and two horses will charge at each other...and collide at speeds of 30 mph. The goal is to strike the opponent with the 11 foot lance and unhorse the opposing knight.  

'Unhorse' is such a dignified way to put it. They could've just written bludgeon. I seriously thought someone was going to die in front of me. Armour is also no joke.

The next thing on my Agribition to-do list was find Baba's Food Spot. It's a local food truck that boasts the best perogies in town, and whenever they're in the vicinity, I'm there. Sully and I split a creamy dill rogy box and a drumstick ice cream cake with cute little teddy bear graham crackers in it. It was incredible, as always. That was Wednesday.

On Thursday, I met up with Karlie and we took our kids to see the International Stock Dogs Championship Finals. I'm a total newbie to all of this, so I was just as awed as my two-year-old at the way the handler could communicate almost silently with the dog who then maneuvered its little flock of sheep in a pattern around the ring and into a pen. I mean, I've seen Babe, but it's different in real life. It was adorable and impressive all at once. I'm pretty sure I heard someone exclaim, "Look at those cute little sheep butts!" at some point.

From there, we headed to the food pavilion, where a bunch of local businesses and vendors were handing out free samples of everything from chili and beef jerky to smoothies and pepper jack cheese. We had one of everything. 

And then we hit up the Family Ag and Indigenous Pavilions. Karlie got some shopping in and the kids explored the mini tipi encampment and checked out the animals.

We spent the entire afternoon there, and then we took our respective kids home and headed back for pro rodeo, where we met up with Caroline and Katlynn.

Rodeo: another one of those no-joke sports.

Question: how is it that I can injure myself performing a burpee incorrectly, but these guys can do this:

Either cowboys are not actual people, or they just have rubber bones. Fun to watch, though.

Another wonderful thing about Agribition: MINI DOUGHNUTS. Everywhere.

Also: bull riding. I don't even know what to say about bull riding. I grew up having nightmares about sharks and bears, but what I should've been having nightmares about was bulls. Bulls are terrifying.

That's everything I made it to this year - not exactly a slow cow parade. I'll have to go again next year to hit up all the things I didn't make it to this time - plus jousting again, obviously.

Obviously. 

The Lay Awakes

I've always loved a good "how we met" story, especially if that meeting results in something more substantial than simple friendship - like bestfriendship or marriage or a band, or, even better, all three, as in the case of The Lay Awakes, an acoustic pop duo based out of New York. I know their "how we met" story because I had front row seats for it. Literally.

(Or I might have been sitting a few rows back; I can't remember.)

In any case, Patrick Anderson and Anna Paddock met at my husband's sister's wedding seven years ago, where he was both musician and best man and she played piano. It was, apparently, love at first jam session. They were married a couple of years later, formed the band three years after that, and put out a six song EP a year after that, in July of 2015.

Which brings us to December 1, 2016: I'll sitting in the front row once again (or, you know, a few rows back). But this time, instead of watching Anna and Patrick play music they've prepared separately for their mutual friends' wedding, I'll be watching them perform together as The Lay Awakes at one of my favourite Regina venues, the Artesian. 

It's the circle of life or something.


Listen here, tickets here, download the EP for free here.

Fourth Friday

This week has been so long.

You're like, "Suzy, it's Monday."

But it's not Monday. It's actually Fourth Friday.

Because on First Friday, or, simply, Friday, as it's called in these parts, I said to Barclay, "Yay! It's Friday!"

And he said, "Actually, I have to work tomorrow."

And then he said, "And Sunday."

So Saturday was more like Second Friday, and Sunday was like Third Friday, and today doesn't really feel like Monday because we never had a weekend. We're not jumping into a new week, we're stretching the last one into this one like it's a piece of old gum. This whole next week is going to feel like Friday on repeat every day until actual Friday, or Eighth Friday, as it shall be called in our house.

Thankfully, I'm very busy these days. I'm not sitting at home staring woefully out the window. I've begun writing for a magazine based out of Colorado and keeping busy with my tourism ambassador stuff and we're also doing our final final final book edits this week (there's not a lot more nerve-wracking than final final final book edits).

So Friday, First Friday, I had an interview in the morning for a magazine article, and then I went home, pushed my face up against my computer screen and worked on that while Sully napped, and then I had a phone call with someone else, who wanted an article about local musicians for their website, and then I had to put together a proposal for that and then I went to Evraz to pick up my media credentials for Agribition and then I went shopping and bought six shirts and Dead Poets Society on VHS (bless the Log Cabin Thrift Store) and then I went for coffee with my high school bestie, Shlee.

With Fridays like that, who even needs Saturdays?

And this week: Agribition! Which I will probably blog about later. It's a week-long cow thing, which includes auctioneer competitions and jousting (with knights in actual armour) and rodeos and, I was told, mini doughnuts. I'm actually very excited about all of it, even though (or maybe because) it's so far outside of my realm of usual entertainment that I can't even picture any of it. I feel like I'm about to enter an alternate reality.

I do not own cowboy boots.

So, anyway, I don't know. Happy Fourth Friday and giddy, as they say at these kinds of events, up.

The Tourist Company

The Tourist Company has been radio haunting me this week with "Pedestals," a song from their most recent LP, Apollo.

I could tell this band was from Vancouver even before I looked it up--so many of my favourite Canadian bands are from (or based out of) there. There must be something in the water (or more possibly, those expensive lattes in Gastown). The Zolas, We Are the City, Mother Mother, Said the Whale, Rococode, etc... It's not that they all sound the same, they're just in the same proverbial family, so they have some similar musical mannerisms. It's like when someone you don't know walks into the room and you go, "I know exactly whose sister that is," but you can't figure out what tipped you off.

(Some year, I want to go CMW with someone and have a competition to see if we can guess which Canadian city each band is from based wholly on the sound of them. Sounds like good, nerdy fun, right? Call me if you are my person for this.)

Anyway.

The Tourist Company was in town playing the Artful Dodger last Thursday and I didn't go. I had something else that night.

But now, every time I climb into my car to go somewhere, this song is playing on the CBC. It's getting eerie, and it's making me sad. Next time they come through, I'll be there. I promise the whole Internet as well as whoever's spying on me at CBC (I'm looking at you, Rich Terfry).

If you live in Western Canada (Rossland, Kelowna, Nanaimo, Victoria, Vancouver), you can still catch the tail end of their Apollo tour. And by 'can,' I mean 'should' (see also: have to).

Staycation at the Hotel Saskatchewan

I have a friend who's a big fan of the staycation. She takes her family to a hotel here in town and they stay there overnight, use the waterslide, eat the continental breakfast, and go home in the morning. And, I mean, it makes sense. Very little planning, very little stress. You can postpone easily if people are sick. You need fewer days off work because there's no travel time--and you can even spend a little extra money on a nicer hotel or a nicer breakfast or whatever because you saved so much in gas or airfare.

It's smart. Economical. Efficient. 

Me, I've been skeptical of the idea--not because I don't think it's brilliant, but because it doesn't seem...correct. I guess I'm hung up on the definition. A vacation is for getting away. Literally: to vacate. Why in the world, I've wondered, would I spend money to stay in a place just down the street from where I already stay to do things I already do in a city I'm already in?

So, okay, a couple of weeks ago, Hotel Saskatchewan invited me and Barclay to spend a night there--my very own staycation. I thought to myself, Why not? First of all: I rarely turn down free things. Second, when you're skeptical of something you really should get right up close to it and examine it from all angles. And when the thing is something as pleasant and relaxing as a vacation, whether you could hold a dictionary to it or not, all the better. 

In the spirit of killing two birds with one stone, we took it a step further and dropped Sullivan off at Barclay's parents' house for the night. Bird #1: try a staycation, bird #2: spend my first night away from Sullivan since his birth almost three years ago (or even before that, if you consider the fact that I didn't even set him down for the entirety of those 9 months before he, you know, arrived).

Dead birds everywhere.

I figured it would be easier to spend my first night away from him if I was just across town (I was going to add a little self-deprecating disclaimer here about how I know I'm such a big wuss for waiting so long to leave him overnight etc etc, but, eh. I'm just a little late to the party. I came when I could, and I'm here now. I feel like I've written about this before...)

Anyway, the point, I'm coming to it: the point is that I checked into Hotel Saskatchewan this weekend and had my very first staycation and have since changed my stance from skeptic to full-blown advocate. 

The Hotel Saskatchewan has always been one of my favourite places in the Queen City (this is what people call Regina when they don't want to call Regina 'Regina').

I pop in from time to time to enjoy the food in the lounge or check out the Christmas decorations in the winter or for whatever other reason I can think of--I just like being there. There's always slightly tinny 20's jazz music drifting through the hallways and a doorman to let you in and chandeliers that shine down on you from the ceiling and up at you from their reflection on the floor. It's a good mix of beautifully-maintained 'old' and fresh-but-not-too-trendy 'new.'

In fact, I'd say that's what makes it stand out: its beautiful new oldness. I read somewhere once that back in the 20s it was known for being very ahead of its time because it had an electric vegetable peeler and a machine that took only three minutes to freeze 10 gallons of ice cream. So maybe now it's known for being very behind its time, but in the best way? (It should be noted that the bathrooms in the rooms are the one place that have no trace of "the old" left in them. And I think that's for the best.)

It's also known for having lots of famous people stay in it--the Queen, the Stones, the Biebs (and by the Biebs, I mean B.B. King) (but apparently the other Biebs is also on this list), Liberace, some guy named Paul McCartney, etcetera. In fact, the first time I ran into Michael Buble, he was on his way in.

I digress. So much.

The first item on my itinerary for the weekend was to "attend afternoon tea" with the other tourism ambassadors, so I put on my pearls and headed to the tea room, feeling ridiculously ladylike. Justin and his wife Megan got to experience something called Gentleman's Tea, which you can learn about here, and Katie and I did straight-up, old-school lady tea time, which is code for totally pigging out on dainties and finger sandwiches.

When I say pigging out, I really, really mean it. Here's a comprehensive list of the food Katie and I split: four kinds of sandwiches (egg salad, cucumber & cream cheese, pesto chicken, and smoked salmon) freshly baked scones with strawberry butter, chocolate-dipped strawberries, bichon au citron (I don't know what this is but I must have eaten it at some point because it's not anywhere anymore), lemon tarts with Italian meringue, chocolate truffle cake (THIS HAD GOLD ON IT), macaroons, chocolate-dipped eclairs, tea (of course), and strawberries & cream.

And it was all laid out for us by a delightful lady named Dora who has been serving afternoon tea for 33 years. Bless your heart, Dora, we loved you.

We sat there for a very long time. It was, as they say in these posh settings, lovely.

Barclay arrived from dropping Sullivan off as we were finishing up and we guiltily showed him our empty plates and gestured to the leftovers, which Dora put into a box for him to take home, like kind of a consolation prize.

There was nothing planned for the evening, and, like I said, Barclay hadn't been at the afternoon food fest, so him and I took his stuff up to the room and then set out to find...something to eat.

Here's another great thing about the Hotel: it's downtown and, therefore, surrounded by amazing restaurants--our options were almost overwhelming. In the end, we picked the Cathedral Social Hall because we hadn't been since its makeover and because Justin told us we needed to go, if only to try the pickle spears.

We did, and he was right. And lo! We beheld a staycation miracle: upon sitting down at the restaurant, it was as though I had never eaten anything else in all my life, and I had room for supper (but maybe not as much supper as usual, though).

Then we wandered over to Atlantis and got coffee to melt all that food away, because that's logical, and that's when we witnessed our second staycation miracle: my familiar Regina streets felt big and new and special, the way that vacation streets do, and my familiar Regina coffee shop felt quirky and big city. I got a drink I don't normally get and we sat in the corner we don't usually sit in and it felt like vacation and my brain let out a sigh of relief.

We talked about going to a show (Hannah Epperson was playing the Artful Dodger that night) and checked to see what delightful theatrical treats (I talk like this now) might be playing at the Globe a couple blocks away, but we ended up just visiting in the coffee shop for a while and then heading back. There's another staycation perk: you don't have to fit everything in. The pressure is off.

And the next morning, when I woke up, there was food in my bed. Freshly squeezed grapefruit juice and Eggs Benedict and coffee--and steak and eggs for Barclay. What a happy camper that guy was.

The last thing I was scheduled for was a manicure in the hotel's day spa and I was pumped about it. When the lady at the desk asked me, "Is this your first time at our spa?" I replied, "Actually, this is my first time in any spa."

And now my nails look like this:

And then, regrettably, it was time to go home. But like I said: I was a changed person. Turns out, you can have a vacation without leaving your city. All of this cost about the same as only one one-way ticket to New York (I looked up flights and did the math). We emerged with a new appreciation and fresh eyes for our city--and in the time it would've taken us to get halfway through airport security, we were home doing this:

And I have to say, as marvellous as the staycation was, this was my favourite part:

Thanks so much to Tourism Regina for sending us and to Hotel Saskatchewan for having us. 

We'll be back.

Tomorrow, actually, because I forgot my jacket.