I live on the edge.
OK, one block away from the edge. Lloydminster has the provincial border for Alberta/Saskatchewan running right through it (it’s hard to miss, there’s some large, red “border markers” where highways 16 and 17 intersect, and highway 17 technically is the border) and I live one block over from Highway 17, on the Alberta side.
So I can see Saskatchewan any time I want. Actually, I work on the Saskatchewan side, and right outside my office window is, you guessed it, Alberta.
In this town, most rules and regulations walk the fine line between Alberta and Saskatchewan. In some cases, Lloydminster is in its own “bubble” – there’s no PST on either side of the highway, and there’s no time zone change during daylight savings time.
(Could you imagine how much that would suck? I can’t even image how that would work, living on the Alberta side – by the time I got up, I would already be late for work.)
But surprisingly, I’m rather attached to being an Albertan. I can take or leave the Calgarian tag – I found that out three years ago when I moved to Edmonton for two summers and fell in love with that city – but hopping across the highway and looking at apartments on “the other” side...I’m not so sure about that.
I guess you could say I have a love-hate relationship with my apartment. I didn’t go apartment hunting at an exactly prime time – I came up from Calgary the week between Christmas and New Year’s – so not many building managers were around or returning phone calls. Plus, (affordable) one-bedroom apartments in Lloydminster don’t exactly seem to be a dime a dozen.
So the place I’m in – it’s the only place that I could look at when I came up here. I tried one other place on the Saskatchewan side, because I was desperate, but they wouldn’t let me even look at the place until my application was approved, and I was only here for a day and a half or so, so I didn’t make much effort.
I love my walk-in pantry and walk-in closet. The pantry especially is a huge upgrade from what I had in Edmonton. I’m less crazy about the fact that I’m on the ground floor, because experience has shown me that in the summer, I don’t believe in closing patio doors or windows. That will have to change this summer. :(
So I’m of two minds. Do I stick it out, because it’s an OK place? Or do I try and find another place, be it on the Alberta or Saskatchewan side – and if it’s on the Saskatchewan side, that means getting new plates and registration for my vehicle; the one real tangible thing that I have as an Albertan, besides my 780-area-code phone, and I don’t know if I would have to change that.
Yes, the area code kind of matters here. Although, as a side note, 10-digit dialing doesn’t always matter, as I found out – as long as you’re dialing landline to landline, any number that starts with 825 (Saskatchewan) or 875 (Alberta) doesn’t need the 306/780 in front of it. But speaking of my car, it’s not exactly large. And I don’t have enough (read: any) friends up here with pick-up trucks. One of my friends swears inter-city moving is easier than city-to-city, but I’m not so sure.
Friday 29 April 2011
Monday 25 April 2011
'Cool' degrees
One of my friends once wrote on her Facebook status "Journalism is a cooler degree than yours."
It's entirely possible to disagree — I wouldn't mind having a minor in geography, so clearly I think that's a pretty cool degree; I also sometimes wonder what would have happened if I'd chosen to take my degree in marine biology, graphic design, or a diploma in sound engineering. There are different reasons for why all those didn't pan out, but that's a different blog post.
Obviously though, from the fact that three of those four areas listed above don't really have anything to do with journalism (though I guess sound engineering — ie being the recording technician behind the sound board could be linked in to radio/TV broadcast) it's clear I have a wide range of interests, which translates well to journalism.
Just before I graduated, I had a friend strongly encourage me to apply for a job at a daily newspaper in a major city (he works at the sister paper in another city). He sounded confident enough in my abilities to handle the stresses and demands of the job, straight out of j-school.
We probably had about a 20-minute chat about the job, and why he thought I should apply. Even after I took this job at a twice-weekly paper, he still asked a couple of times why I didn't apply for the other job. My main reason was that I didn't want to be pigeonholed.
In my opinion, working at a daily newspaper in a city, I would do one thing: report. Don't get me wrong, I love telling people's stories. Some people are so freaking interesting.
But I chose a smaller newspaper because there's so many more pieces to journalism than just reporting — although with just reporting, I've been on the catwalk and in the broadcasting booths of the Saddledome, I've flown in a two-seat biplane (the morning of which I watched the Buddy Holly Story, which was not a good idea) and I've been privileged already to hear countless stories of people, with the opportunity to hear countless more.
But I also like shaking things up a bit — photography is fun, and spending 9 or 10 hours laying pages out and copy-editing is my idea of a good day. Eventually working at a paper that incorporates video into its website is also a possibility, though I like editing and compiling video more than I like shooting.
There's benefits to any job, I'm sure. But try to tell me journalism isn't a cool degree, when you get to do all this.
It's entirely possible to disagree — I wouldn't mind having a minor in geography, so clearly I think that's a pretty cool degree; I also sometimes wonder what would have happened if I'd chosen to take my degree in marine biology, graphic design, or a diploma in sound engineering. There are different reasons for why all those didn't pan out, but that's a different blog post.
Obviously though, from the fact that three of those four areas listed above don't really have anything to do with journalism (though I guess sound engineering — ie being the recording technician behind the sound board could be linked in to radio/TV broadcast) it's clear I have a wide range of interests, which translates well to journalism.
Just before I graduated, I had a friend strongly encourage me to apply for a job at a daily newspaper in a major city (he works at the sister paper in another city). He sounded confident enough in my abilities to handle the stresses and demands of the job, straight out of j-school.
We probably had about a 20-minute chat about the job, and why he thought I should apply. Even after I took this job at a twice-weekly paper, he still asked a couple of times why I didn't apply for the other job. My main reason was that I didn't want to be pigeonholed.
In my opinion, working at a daily newspaper in a city, I would do one thing: report. Don't get me wrong, I love telling people's stories. Some people are so freaking interesting.
But I chose a smaller newspaper because there's so many more pieces to journalism than just reporting — although with just reporting, I've been on the catwalk and in the broadcasting booths of the Saddledome, I've flown in a two-seat biplane (the morning of which I watched the Buddy Holly Story, which was not a good idea) and I've been privileged already to hear countless stories of people, with the opportunity to hear countless more.
But I also like shaking things up a bit — photography is fun, and spending 9 or 10 hours laying pages out and copy-editing is my idea of a good day. Eventually working at a paper that incorporates video into its website is also a possibility, though I like editing and compiling video more than I like shooting.
There's benefits to any job, I'm sure. But try to tell me journalism isn't a cool degree, when you get to do all this.
Saturday 23 April 2011
No one puts Baby in a corner
Or in a niche.
My first blog postings can be found on the Reflector website; as an editor, each of us was expected to blog weekly. “Expected to,” or “supposed to” are the key words. I think my average was one blog post about every two weeks.
Starting that blog was torture. I’d never blogged before, and I was taking over the news editor position from someone with a reputation for blogging. Not to mention she was keeping the news blog in her new role as publishing editor, so I had to come up with a whole new blog that I would run, as the new news editor.
Pressure.
I did some Googling, and there were two consistent things that kept coming back: blog constantly (people won’t remember to read you if you don’t remember to post consistently) and have some sort of niche.
According to what I wrote when I first started, my intentions were to have some kind of hybrid (hence the name A New Hybrid) of news blog and random going-ons of the world.
What it actually turned into was a green blog, which I find ironic because I don’t consider myself a ridiculously environmentally friendly person, although I guess I am, but more on that later.
What I’m trying to say is I’m not making any promises with this blog. What’s promising, however, is this article that came across my Twitter feed that says you don’t need just one niche. But a core focus is good.
So I can probably tell you, on this blog - there’s going to be some environment stuff (because apparently I’m greener than I think), there’s going to be some random stuff (I just graduated from university and am now trying to remember that I don’t have to live like a student in all aspects of life anymore) and there’s going to be a lot of journalism stuff (it’s what I do).
But nobody puts Baby in a corner (oh, and I like old stuff - especially old music - too).
edit: I originally posted this using tumblr on April 20, and then decided I couldn't learn to like the interface, so I changed blogs. I promise I won't change sites again (well, I'm pretty sure for the time being, anyway) but I can't promise I won't move the layout and design around. I've also been playing around with Wix and iWeb as ready-made templates just don't do it for me, but this should be OK.
My first blog postings can be found on the Reflector website; as an editor, each of us was expected to blog weekly. “Expected to,” or “supposed to” are the key words. I think my average was one blog post about every two weeks.
Starting that blog was torture. I’d never blogged before, and I was taking over the news editor position from someone with a reputation for blogging. Not to mention she was keeping the news blog in her new role as publishing editor, so I had to come up with a whole new blog that I would run, as the new news editor.
Pressure.
I did some Googling, and there were two consistent things that kept coming back: blog constantly (people won’t remember to read you if you don’t remember to post consistently) and have some sort of niche.
According to what I wrote when I first started, my intentions were to have some kind of hybrid (hence the name A New Hybrid) of news blog and random going-ons of the world.
What it actually turned into was a green blog, which I find ironic because I don’t consider myself a ridiculously environmentally friendly person, although I guess I am, but more on that later.
What I’m trying to say is I’m not making any promises with this blog. What’s promising, however, is this article that came across my Twitter feed that says you don’t need just one niche. But a core focus is good.
So I can probably tell you, on this blog - there’s going to be some environment stuff (because apparently I’m greener than I think), there’s going to be some random stuff (I just graduated from university and am now trying to remember that I don’t have to live like a student in all aspects of life anymore) and there’s going to be a lot of journalism stuff (it’s what I do).
But nobody puts Baby in a corner (oh, and I like old stuff - especially old music - too).
edit: I originally posted this using tumblr on April 20, and then decided I couldn't learn to like the interface, so I changed blogs. I promise I won't change sites again (well, I'm pretty sure for the time being, anyway) but I can't promise I won't move the layout and design around. I've also been playing around with Wix and iWeb as ready-made templates just don't do it for me, but this should be OK.
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