365: Red; Abandoned Again

Nope. Not a hockey rink. Its what devastation looks like - devastation when a mucky-muck US retailer, which hasn't bothered to know the market it presumes to move in to, doesn't even bother trying, and basically recreates the crappy big-box that was previously there, has all that totally backfire in about two years.

Was Zellers, was Target, is now a big, sucking hole in the portfolios of so many malls across Canada. But at least this company paid their CEO a huge bonus for totally, utterly, catastrophically screwing up, before they paid the minimum-wage employees across the country, who depended on the pittance they were making here...

365: Red; It's That Time of the Decade Again

Once every decade or so, our city's hockey team gets itself into the playoffs (this is Canada; we say it's not themselves - because a team is one thing... but I digress)

Last time was 2013 and it was all sorts of debauchery, public drunkenness, lots and lots of naked boobs - because beer plus normally self-respecting females apparently makes for "Sure you can post my naked breasts to Twitter/Instagram/Facebook, and I won't even regret it until I remember the Internet never forgets...

I like this sedate little display, even if it looks a bit like a wash line. I'm not at all sure about the blue and white stuffies...

365: Red; Greenslades

I dunno. I just thought it was hilarious to have a red bin when your company name has "green" in it.

I've been staring at this thing and the graffiti on it, for weeks and weeks trying to figure out what "blocks" means and what the image is, or is meant to represent. It reminds me of Casper the Ghost for some reason.

The whole thing is a mass of contradictions.

365: Red; MechanoTree

More building and building and building... three little homes that were old, and dwarfed by the two huge condos next door, and the new-ish, huge grocery store across the street, were torn down over the winter, to be replaced by this huge metal growth.

365: Red; Leftovers

This is one of five or six crap apple trees growing "wild" in the big park by our house - 60 acres of park we're so fortunate to have nearby. The park is very well used by the area residents and their dogs, and has been forever. People bring all sorts of food in there and seeds are dropped everywhere. Some take root but whatever might try to grow is usually trampled by people or dog feet before they get a good hold. But these, because they're on the hillside, where people are less inclined to walk, did grow; three of them, side by side, with really nice crab apples for anyone who might want one.

Last year, my friend, Rory (Aurora, actually) and I went down there and stripped as many apples as we could reach from the ground and by climbing. This year, I think both of us still have loads of the jelly we made, so we didn't pick and neither did anyone else. Even the birds didn't partake this year.

365: Red; Territorialism

Like, how do they know??

How do they know whether the trash in there has been deposited by a paying transit customer, or by some random passer-by?

365: Red; The Twenty-Year Tear Down

We moved into this neighbourhood in 1987. Here were the homes into which soldiers and their families usually moved on leaving the army. They are only a few blocks from where the MQs - the married quarters - used to be.

In 1998, Canadian Forces Base Calgary was closed, and pretty much everyone moved to Edmonton, leaving the MQs a virtual ghost town. Then people started renting those old houses on those tree-lines streets with sidewalks through the middle of the trees... and then Canada Lands took over. That's when everything started to change.

Our community used to be the other side of the tracks; people were middle class - barely. When we told people the community we lived in, they'd reply "Oh," with that "poor you," look. Once things in the MQs started to change, the whole area started to gentrify. House prices went from the $87,000 range to $1.5 million around here. Not even 20 years. Now, when we tell people where we live, we get that "Oh," except now it's with the "Oh, you rich people" face... except we live in exactly the same house still.

This house was at the end of the block just one north of us. We see something like this pretty much every day around here. Sometimes, I don't recognize my own street any more; we're the only stretch in this community with all original houses on it. For now.

365: Red; Coffee, Coffee, everywhere

I don't remember when I shot this, but I remember where; outside a shop that sells all manner of electrical stuff, wire, wire cutters, light bulbs, stuff to fix stoves and ovens. It's a bits-and-bobs-lover's heaven. 

When we were kids, our step dad travelled around Alberta and BC a lot, fixing things - GPS landing systems, I think - at small airports and landing strips. He always had a case full of electrical stuff, solder, and soldering irons. I remember rifling through that kit as we drove along, unsecured in the back of some old station wagon, singing Take Me Back to Albuquerque, from the Partridge Family show, until we made ourselves cry. Those were such simple days.  

365: Red; March 26, Velvet and Ice

Last year's leaves, this day's snow. 

365: Red; March 23, Not burning it down

Sometimes the best laid plans just totally go to hell. Such was the night of the Beef Wellington.

Every possible thing happened to slow down getting dinner on the table, starting with a dog suddenly developing a very weird pain, followed by fog filling the kitchen thanks to lovely fatty beef with a lovely buttery crust starting to smoke, followed by a delicious dinner, followed by said dog becoming really uncomfortable just as the real, shredded coconut topping for the real, from-the-nut, coconut pie caught fire in the oven while everyone poured over the dog.

This is the movement one makes whilst waiving the new, not-yet-burned oven mitts under the fire alarm in an effort to have it quit screaming. What you don't see is three other people extricating a flaming pile of burned coconut from the oven.