Roller Coaster

The last three weeks have been crazy. I got a phone call wanting to set up a job interview, followed not five minutes later by reading emails from my brother- and sister-in-law to let me know that my mother-in-law had died. sigh. That's her above, at the family reunion this past June.



So off I set to Ontario for the funeral, and waited to hear the results of the interview: as I suspected, I was not the candidate they wanted, which, at some level, was somewhat of a relief. It was only a six-month contract, and while it would have paid a tidy sum, I'd be back job-hunting soon. Perhaps it's just age taking over, but I'm less and less enamoured with doing that.



Emotionally, it's been a draining stretch, and I haven't spent enough quality time making art through it, although I have, at least, been seeing a lot, including the opportunity to go to fibreworks 2014 (the Canadian fibre biennale held in Cambridge, ON) on the way to the airport to return to Calgary from the funeral. I had submitted a piece and wasn't selected, so I was curious to see what 23 works (out of a total of 161 entered) had made the cut. There were a couple of really interesting pieces, but an awful lot of it didn't get me terribly excited. It's a great venue though, and I'll likely put something in next time.



There were also a couple of interesting displays up at the University of Waterloo's School of Architecture, barely a ten-minute walk from fibreworks that I also enjoyed, and with my little brother-in-law as my chauffeur, we had a lovely drive through the countryside.



(The scenery pictures aren't of Ontario though: I took them the weekend before I headed east. I needed to blow some fresh air through my brain, and ended up going for a nice walk on Nose Hill, a large natural reserve in north-west Calgary. Hadn't been for awhile, and just needed to see the mountains, the vegetation turning colour, and to remind myself that I don't get out often enough, since I started working part-time.)