Got to be birds flying higher

It's been raining cats and dogs and horses and cows since Sunday, so we caught up on Quentin Tarantino movies. We still have to watch a few, but Once Upon A Time...in Hollywood seemed the right kind of movie as opposed to Django Unchained or Inglorious Basterds.

It's been a while since we watched something so cinematic--and it was hard not to be drawn into this version of 1969 Hollywood. There was so much to look at, and most importantly feel from the bonds of friendship, to humour, to drama, and even some horror elements.

Is it a historical document? Heck no. The film does, however, provide an access point to changing tastes through Rick Dalton's character and his struggle to cope with the times as a has-been. As the title implies, it's also a fairytale with a lot of what-ifs. The penultimate scenes are absolutely a revenge fantasy of some sort.

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I started hitting up the local storm ponds and, unfortunately, I discovered Merlin no longer autosaves your recordings, which sucks!

Some subrubs have always been "lake communities" because they were building around a manmade lake, but us lesser folk in newer communities get to enjoy storm ponds, which aren't for recreation. They hold snow melt and rainwater before it reaches our rivers and creeks. They attract wildlife though, which all that matters to me :-D

They usually have a constructed pathway around them, so it's a nice outing except when they're a little stinky! My community, alas, has a dry storm pond which is used as a soccer field.

I went out on holiday Monday and here's who I saw, going by memory since Merlin didn't save my list:

American coots
American crows
American robins
Black-billed magpies
Black-capped chickadees
Blue jay (heard, not seen)
Chipping sparrows
Common mergansers
European starlings
Grackles
House sparrows
Mallards
Red-winged blackbirds
Rock doves (pigeons)
Tree swallows
Yellow warblers

Some of the sounds Merlin recorded were a little sus, but I have no idea what those were now!

I've been kinda wanting a pet pigeon, but it's not the right time. Still, the universe delivers in unexpected ways and a pigeon pair have taken up residence around our house. I've seen them around the neighbourhood for a couple years, but didn't know where they lived. Now I hear them cooing at the back of the house sometimes! One is cinnamon with a blazing purple neck, and the other is more regular coloured. I actually thought the cinnamon one was a different species of bird because all I saw was the purple flash on top of the bird feeder.

I walked around the house and garage and didn't see any poop piles, so perhaps our house is just their third space ;-D

The road to the comic expo starts now!

I have so much to do, so I'll be a little quiet and will catch up with all y'all when I can! Stay tuned to my art journal, purpleponyart as I upload pictures from 2025's orders.

EDIT: I deciphered the name! It's Kruesel! Frank is the FIL of the man my relative worked for :-D

Folks!!!

Just the other day I was tingling with excitement. I checked Ancestry, and it coughed up a border card for my long-lost great-grand aunt Katie. I've written about Katie here for ages--and it was a very hilarious series of mistakes to find anything out about her.

Was she called Kolya? Nope!

Was my cousin "Aunt" Daisy on the right track 20 years ago when she tracked Katie down to Chicago? Heck nope!

Was the family lore about Katie accurate in any way? Mostly nope!

But this...this is concrete proof that Katie existed! It's full of more facts about her than I ever knew before--she was 5'6", had brown eyes and hair, was single, and worked for a family as a domestic (one bit about family lore that turned out to be true).

I was so excited and bummed that I had to go into the office that day. It was so tempting to take a sick day, and a little searching had my imagination running wild--that is, until I realized I can't read the name of the family she was travelling with.

My initial searching revealed someone named Bernard J. Krussel, and funnily enough, one of his relatives married a Catherine Marie. Catherine Marie died at the age of 95 in 2014--which was conceivable given the long-livedness of my maternal relatives. As I have a cluster of relatives in Connecticut, I have to be broad-minded when making these connections.

ANYWAY I could not find a border crossing card for a Krussel in Ancestry, which has me looking at the card again. I could not find cards for Kreesel, Kruesel, Kriesel, Kreisel, which leads me to believe Bernard J.'s last name is not a K.

So my big ask is...can anyone please take a look at the border crossing card and tell me what the handwritten name under Stasko is?

Also, would American citizens have to fill out a border crossing card, or only non-Americans?

On a whim, I even asked ChatGPT to look at it, but it was not helpful.

At least this part checked out...the destination and name of the person they were visiting was easily verifiable. Frank F. Spring Sr. lived in Rossland, BC. He met his wife there, and they later moved to Cranbrook, BC, in 1952.

Boy, my Evernote movie folder is dusty! I forgot to LJ this. Originally, I was going to post the trailer, but someone uploaded the whole movie to YouTube.

February 10, 2025

We did something fun yesterday and went downtown for a free screening of a Calgary-made indie film called waydowntown, directed by a local filmmaker, Gary Burns. I'd watched his other movies, such as Kitchen Party and Radiant City, but somehow waydowntown always escaped me. I always thought it was a movie about people living in Calgary's Plus 15 skywalk system, which is similar to the Minneapolis covered walkway system.

Instead, it's more about office culture, which the late 90s loved skewering. It's a little bit Fight Club, little bit Office Space, a little bit this and a little bit that, and it all seems to come together and works really well. It's basically about four co-workers who work in a downtown office building.

Although Calgary is never explicitly identified as the city, the narrator, Tom, says the co-workers all live in apartments that connect to this building or to the Plus 15, which wasn't which wasn't quite true at the time. Some of the humor is a little juvenile, and I would have been so in love with this movie if I watched it when it was released. In some ways it is amazing--it was shot for $750k using local talent and was filmed a bit on the fly in some areas where they didn't have permission to film. This results in a neat voyeuristic effect, and it was a total trip down memory lane--the old skylines, old buildings, old colours, lots of warm tones, and pink granite. The movie is also Caucasian as heck (Calgary has been a top three destination for New Canadians for some time). There are things I'd forgotten, like how magazines used to have perfume ad inserts in them. One of the odd things that emerges is that a lack of fresh air causes the main characters to fatigue. The color grading in the film was a little hard to watch as it was very blue and orange, which was kind of the style at the time. Instead of looking beautiful or healthy, all the characters take on this sickly look that perhaps reflects their inner turmoil and anxiety.

The film's title actually takes its name from the idea of going "way downtown", which is to eject yourself from a building. The film is a critique so many things--interpersonal relationships, the built environment, corporate culture, etc. At the after-show panel, Gary Burns said he actually never worked in an office, but knew enough about it to make it feel authentic (TBH it's quite a broke ass office). It was quite a treat to spend time with a very engaged audience that wanted to see the film and ask urbanism questions. The audience could have stayed there asking questions all day! Bonus--we also saw our friend Lone Howler and Mom, so we sat with them and caught up!

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We watched a few more James Bond movies from our big DVD set over the Christmas holidays--I'm just woefully behind logging them.

We watched:

• You Only Live Twice (Bond in Japan)


• On Her Majesty's Secret Service (with George Lazenby)


• Diamonds Are Forever (Bond in Las Vegas)


• Live and Let Die (first movie with Roger Moore)

Out of the four, On Her Majesty's Secret Service was my favourite. George Lazenby really wasn't a bad Bond--and maybe it was the performances of Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas that rounded out the movie so well. George Lazenby brought a bit of softness to Bond, and I was not prepared for the ending!

It goes without saying that these movies seem campy to modern audiences — I wonder if they would have felt campy when they were released. The villains are just a step above being Batman henchmen. You Only Live Twice was pretty cringey and Live and Let Die had us reading up on blaxploitation afterwards. Diamonds Are Forever felt too long, although seeing vintage Vegas was pretty cool! In some ways these movies are travelogues from a time when travel was expensive.

When people complain about some of the stunts in a newer franchise, like Fast & Furious, they're forgetting things like the epic ski chase or boat chase from Bond--both of which seem a little silly today!

The journey continues! I ordered two birth certificates from the Provincial Archives in January. There's a 100-year limit on birth certificates, but fortunately, I was able to order one for my great-grandmother and one of her sisters.

As any genealogy dabbler knows, there were times when records were not kept as accurately as they could be. My great-grandmother was born in 1902, but her birth certificate was issued in 1903 :-D She was the first child born in Canada, and possibly someone in the community said, "Hey, you have to make her official" :-D

Now, her sister's birth certificate was much more interesting--it was a re-issue dated 1965. Both documents have different spellings of the parental names.

Anyway, the 1965 document has a placename on it for both my great-great-grandparents, which today resolves to Dzhurynska Slobidka in the Ukraine.

I can only imagine how many cousins I have out there 😃Such an accidental find! Many of the documents I have reference Galicia, an area that encompasses Poland and the Ukraine. I joined a Galician family history Facebook group, and someone gave me a few more clues, all in Polish. I haven't plunked it into Google Translate yet, but I'm really enjoying the family photos in the group, as they give me an idea of how my ancestors looked and dressed! Apparently, Dzhurynska Slobidka was a Polish colony in the Ukraine, so the flip-flopping on who my family is finally makes sense :-D

There's a whole bunch of 80s and 90s movies I never watched because I was either too young, too old or too broke :-D In the case of Empire Records, even if I had the money, I would have passed on it. I hated movies and TV shows for teenagers when I was a teenager ;-D Part of it was because I was a snob. Part of it was that it didn't reflect anyone I knew, and yet another part was being sold something just because it had teenagers in it.

My younger self would probably find Empire Records the same as my older self--long and boring. I guess it's a cult classic for reasons I don't really understand :D It just felt like a poorly edited hot mess, and I understand 40 minutes were cut from the theatrical release. I couldn't work up any nostalgia for it. The save the record store plot felt really weak. Mitch was barely a villain, and Gina and Corey seducing Rex Manning was super cringe!

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Cronometer
https://cronometer.com/

Cronometer has been around for a long time--and it's one of those super nerdy nutrient tracking apps. I've used it on and off because it's so good at doing what it does. It's also Canadian, which means many Canadian brands are in the barcode scanning system. Manually entering nutrition labels was always a huge pain in the ass, and Cronometer's latest version is so easy peasy--photograph the food and it does the work for you.

Cronometer is great if you want to gain, loose, or maintain weight. I use it mostly to track my iron intake these days. You can use it however it works for you :-)

Finch
https://finchcare.com/

I've been using Finch for just over a year. An artist friend raved about it, and it turned out that a lot of people I knew were also using it. You rasie a virtual bird pet from baby to teenager by completing quests. After I had my first iron infusion in December 2024, I really needed to get back on track with life and looking after myself. It's a delightful combination of birds and cuteness. There are many habit forming apps out there, but I never tried one before.

It's a gentle app that will help you accomplish anything you set out to do, whether it's moving more, trying some breathing exercises, or building a daily habit. It's helped me keep up with my rotator cuff exercises and now I'm determined to floss daily :-D

When I bought my S22 phone, I splurged on wireless earbuds.

They were not cheap.

I always used them at home bc I was afraid of losing them. But, I did take them on vacation in 2024, and couldn't find them anywhere when we got home 😭😭😭

My best guess was that they popped out of my bag on the plane. I didn't buy a new pair bc 💲💲💲

Well, yesterday was my lucky day!

I was searching for a particular cable in my tech drawer (which I did find), and found an old blue tablet case.

You can guess the rest of the story! My earbuds were still fully charged and everything! Here I was always kicking myself for losing things and losing an expensive thing when I was a responsible adult the whole time :D