Happy Dominion Day!

[beboots]

Fallen Bloom by ~Beboots on deviantART
Depressing stuff first:

I'm also a little bit bummed out today (at least, in the afternoon). You see, two weeks (-ish) ago, dad announced to the family that he, mum and Ian were going to Maui on July 5th... without me. This wasn't really a deliberate slight, because they knew that I had already requested time off from work for later in August, and that it was really difficult to get time off from work at Fort Edmonton.

But the fact was, they hadn't asked me, you know? They just assumed. I mean, my boss isn't heartless. If I laid out the situation for her, she probably would have given me the week off. And now today, dad thought that maybe I could try to ask my boss and he could try to find another flight for me and alter the hotel plans and stuff... and I mean, I probably could go, but that means that I'd be missing a week of work (including a "staffed up" special event day - Highland Gathering, which I also really want to attend in plain clothes during lunchtime) ... right around mid-season evalutations... and yeah, it's really short-notice. It would be too much of a hassle, you know?

So I don't think that I'm going to Maui. I mean, I've been before, two summers ago, and I would like to go again when I'm 21 (I'm 20 now) so I can take advantage of all of the free alcohol (mai tais) they hand out with all of our meals and special events and things... and all they're going to be doing is the same vacation as last time, essentially (same hotel, same places), but with more snorkeling... and I really, really loved Maui and got loads of wonderful memories and photographs and experiences... but I just feel really conflicted.

I don't think I'm going, though I know that they'll have a wonderful time. It's the whole - I could have gone, if only it was less short-notice. Like, if they had told me when they were booking the flights and hotels instead of just assuming.

At least this way I can kind of mind the house.

Man, this ended on a really melancholy note. I'll get over it, don't worry. I'll probably go away to some super-duper fantastic place over Reading Week next February, and of course, I'm still going to Scotland and Ireland next summer, so I really shouldn't complain.

But man, Maui. ;_;

And oh hey, I just thought of another reason (that I don't feel guilty about) for not going, just as I was about to post this... I need next weekend, desperately, to start and get a huge chunk of my Animethon costume done. I'm now planning on doing the Chevalier D'Eon's costume (the blue military style jacket). The cool thing about that character is that I can wear my hair up one day, with my breasts bound, and be the male!Chevalier, and wear my hair (and chest loose) the other day, when I'm tired, and be his sister possessing him. It is a good plan. :3


All right, that's enough of that. On to happy stuff!

Not A Tree by ~Beboots on deviantART

Happy Dominion Day! :D

Or to the rest of the world who doesn't live in 1926 any longer: Happy Canada Day! :D

On July 1st, 1867, Canada achieved confederation, which essentially means that we shucked our colonial status and became, well, not a country, technically, but a Dominion. We didn't have it renamed to "Canada Day" until... well past the 1920s, I can't recall exactly when, but all I really have to know for work is that we still say "Dominion Day" in the 1920s Midway. :)

Anyway, we had several thousand people come to Fort Edmonton today. It was everyone's day off except the employees of the tourism industry, you see. It was insanely busy, all day, and we didn't call in any extra staff because we couldn't afford to because of the recession. So boo on the recession.

I spent my "weekend" at the Ukrainian Cultural Village, which I'll elaborate on in another, later, post (probably), which is another living history museum... which is under the thumb of the Ukrainian community in Edmonton (so they can only present a certain (biased) version of history), but whom we all admire up at the Fort for their intense First Person historical interpretation. They don't break character, ever. One of the girls in my era actually had a bad experience with that - she asked one of the interpreters there, as a (lost) five-year-old, when the next train would come. The woman said "Next Tuesday", so my friend began to cry, thinking she was going to be trapped for half a week at the park. So yeah, it can get awkward when they stick so rigidly to it. We good-naturedly tease each other, being two living museums so close to each other - they're the Awkward Museum, we're the Rope Museum - because they disdain our use of ropes to prevent people from coming into certain areas of our historical buildings.

Anyway. Divergeance. What was I talking about again? Oh, right. The other thing I did on my weekend was practice a song that was to be sung in a group today at the Midway. I don't know the title, but the first line goes something like "Musical demon, set your honey a dreamin', won't you play me some rag?" So if you know it... anyway, it has two parts, and I praticed all weekend... only to find that I was on minigolf duty all afternoon, and so missed our five-in-one show. (That's five shows for the price of one, in one tent.)

Oh, well. The show was apparently pretty cool. There was our choral bit, a "true stories of crime", which was obviously false and over the top ("This cup with a whole in the bottom once held poison. My comrade shot it out of my hand. This is the whole that saved my life."), a magic trick that didn't work (hilariously, apparently), a bearded lady who had shaved as she had gotten ready for the show that morning, some "cooch dancers" (belly dancers)... and a Hawaiian show. Which was apparently hilarious.

See, tropical fruit was really difficult to acquire in Canada in the 1920s, right? So essentially, there was this big lead up to the Hawaiian show (like, "imported directly from Hawaii, it's...") and it's revealed to be a pinapple, plus Bo (who also played the "war hero") playing the ukelele. Stephanie, the other member of the drama troupe besides Bo and Jimmy, walked around with the pineapple, through the audience, and invited people to touch this exotic fruit and be amazed, waggling her eyebrows and making exaggerated hand motions.

Shut up, it's funny.

Anyway... I had like 245 people show up at my minigolf in the afternoon. Most days go by and we get barely 20. Seriously. It's not that good of a Tom Thumb golf course.

Also, a guy offered to buy me some ice cream (he was a 70 year old man and his wife - old, but not in a creepy way) and I refused, thinking that I wasn't allowed to eat any while in costume, and fearing that my supervisor would come by and see me. She didn't. I totally could have gotten some in a cup and hidden it in my golf shack... besides, ice cream is accurate to the 1920s. And Sasha, who is in the same era as me, also had ice cream later in the day, when I returned to the Midway around closing.

But I didn't come to this realization until later. So every time that someone walked by with ice cream for the rest of the day, I felt a little twinge of regret. D:

But I also got to ride the street car (the newer and quieter one, called "Creeping Death", because you can't hear it coming) for the first time in costume. I looked like an authentic 1920s commuter, and had several people photograph me as I bussed my way back to the midway. Just for your information, it's a like 10 minute walk to get from one end of 1920 street to the other. This is a massive park. No joke.

Anyway, I've always wanted to ride in the streetcar in costume, so... yeah. :)

Comments

[anyjen.livejournal.com]

Ow. Too bad about the Maui thing. I know how you feel; my parents went to the US for the birth of my sister’s first daughter... and didn’t take me with them, despite the fact that I could have served as their translator.
They left me to stew in Buenos Aires in the worst summer in more than fifty years instead... but I had fun, too. I got to meet a few net friends and even go to an anime convention, so... ^__^

The Hawaiian show thing reminded me of a wax museum I once visited...
You see, once, long, long ago, we went on vacations as a family (since we’re six of us, that’s kind of hard to do nowadays). Nothing really fancy, we stayed at hotels that gave us discounts because they were connected to my mother’s job, yadda yadda.

It was still awesome. One of the places we visited remains the best amusement park I’ve ever visited, despite being incredibly cheap... They had a small petting zoo, consisting of one single animal you could pet... what was so fascinating about it? Well, the animal was a cougar. That was when I made the discovery that yes, big cats purr too.
(domesticated cougars aren’t so rare over here; sometimes, farmers have to go and kill a cougar that’s been attacking their cattle, and since most of those feral cougars are female they later try to find the cubs. If they are young enough, they can be easily domesticated, apparently)

They also had a haunted house that actually made me scream (while most make me laugh) because they messed with your head rather than show you people in costume, making you walk through a hall in complete darkness while telling you the story of the owner of the house, who had been murdered and his body never found... it was timed so that when they said that, you stepped over a mattress on the floor: talk about corpses + no light + soft and squishy thing under you foot = instant scream. I was shorter then, so I didn’t feel it, but apparently they also had things hanging from the ceiling that brushed your head as you walked. It was really creepy in the total darkness.

But the best thing of all was the labyrinth. There was a small one in the middle of the place, really well made (I got lost twice in there before remembering the hand-in-wall rule), and which had this tantalizing signs every few steps... “wax museum ahead”; “wax museum over there”; “you’re almost at the wax museum”.

(continued in another comment because it got too long)

[anyjen.livejournal.com]

Finally, after twisting and turning who knows how many times, we finally saw the sign we’d been looking for: “wax museum” and an arrow pointing past a turn.
We took the turn... and we immediately exploded into laughter.

There, neatly arranged on shelves against the wall, were a few dozens empty cans of floor wax. XD

[kuiskata]

:((( That really sucks. Like you said - it would have been much easier on you if they had just said something about it in the planning stages. *huggles*

Ooh, I'd love to see a post about the Ukrainian Cultural Village. :) I've never been there, myself.

PS: I hate to be all grammar nazi on you, but in this sentence? ("This cup with a whole in the bottom once held poison. My comrade shot it out of my hand. This is the whole that saved my life.")

I think you want "hole," not "whole." I couldn't figure out what you were saying for a minute there. XD

[dayadhvam-triad.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to hear about the Maui thing. D: It would've been better if they had thought to ask you about the whole thing first, but... :(

a bearded lady who had shaved as she had gotten ready for the show that morning
lol, did she just forget about her beard?

That was a nice gesture on the old guy's part. :) Glad you're having fun at Fort Edmonton. :D

[especially.livejournal.com]

It's like how my granny calls it Armistice Day in november!


Also, I'm coming to the Ft tomorrow! Hopefully will see you. :)

[beboots.livejournal.com]

Huzzah! :D Find me in the Midway. I'll be either wearing yellow or purple (light colours) with a big white hat. :) Oh, and lipstick. ;)

[beboots.livejournal.com]

Yes, you're right, I meant "hole". D: I wrote this whole post very quickly, you see. Sorry about that!

Also, I've found that my English is going downhill. If I'm not speaking in 1920s slang, I feel like I'm almost thinking in French but speaking in English - there's a disconnect. D:

[beboots.livejournal.com]

That "wax museum" sounds awesome. :D So do domesticated cougars.

The wax museum signs remind me of something I read about Barnum's museum of oddities. He didn't care how long people spent in his museum after paying him the entrance fee. In fact, it was so crowded that he wanted people to leave very quickly. So all along the way, he had signs saying "this way to the Egress!" and "Egress!" with giant arrows, etc. People shuffled along eagerly, thinking it was some sort of exotic finale... only to be shoved out the door at the end.

("egress = "exit" in latin)

[kuiskata]

I know the feeling - I'm pretty sure my syntax suffered a lot in Finland. Most of the people in the summer school were not native English speakers, so somehow I ended up using some of the weirdest sentence constructions... XD

[anyjen.livejournal.com]

They're surprisingly cute... until they try to do the cutesy kitty thing and chew on your fingers... we quickly withdrew our hands then; with teeth that size, it's doubtful we'd be able to keep them. :P

Oh, boy. That must have been a shock. XD

But seriously, that wax museum thing was brilliant... I'm pretty sure it's one of those anecdotes that are told by every member of my family separately. XD

Man... I want to see more pictures of you in costume. Your job sound really awesome (despite last-minute minigolf duty)

[beboots.livejournal.com]

Random tourists keep photographing me - and I'm pretty sure, what with their gorgeous cameras, they have better photos of me than I have copies of myself. ;) I'll see if I can do a google search, perhaps...