(Day 4) Mosasaur

In southern MB, you have to look for fun, as it might not find you when traversing the acres and acres of farmland, as far as the eye can see. Today, we looked as far out as we Altonians are likely to, and decided to head to Morden to explore the “dinosaur museum” (as my Mother called it.) I was incredulous that there was even a museum in Morden, so after lunch we started on our journey.


Looks like we are in the right place…

The first thing the girl said to us in our intro the museum was that it was not a dinosaur museum. lol. I didn’t mind though, we roll with the punches, be they dinosaur or not. The museum is actually called the ‘Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre’ and it had just that – discovered marine reptile fossils. You see, in the Cretaceous Period, there were air, land, and sea reptiles, but by far, dinosaurs are the most famous. Manitoba was covered in water known as the western interior seaway. Long story made short/cool, some nasty-ass reptiles lived in the body of water over my homeland and were as fierce, though less notorious, than their dinosaur cousins. The nastiest one of all was the Mosasaur. He’s ugly, too.





Here’s Bruce – he’s the largest marine reptile skeleton (though I’m sure it’s a plastercast.)




Ps, I would have totally given him a cooler name than Bruce. Probably ‘Death from Below 1979’ or something.

Here’s his fat turtle cousin (I think.)



Morden has…grown, I guess. They now have a Boston Pizza randomly in the middle of a field outside of town.



There’s also this bizarre store called “Saban & Company” next door.



I don’t know who Saban is or why they needed to add the “& Company” part, but I can’t imagine why someone decided to name their store that. Here’s my little rant on why clothing stores in the middle of shit-nowhere don’t appeal to me. 1) The items in store don’t have a overriding theme or even relation to one another. This store carried dresses for $150 AND fake Guess bags. They also carried some cheap looking pleather belts, Spanx, and Sketchers. 2) The prices are outrageous compared to what you can find at better stores elsewhere. I did find an item or two I didn’t mind, but the prices were absurd. I guess they think they have a captive audience in small towns and people will buy? Ah, no. And finally, 3) I guess I’m pretentious and don’t want to shop where farmer wives can pick up their sensible sandals, black capris, and floral-printed polyester shirts under one roof in the middle of a field. I love you Mom.

We then forwarded on to Winkler where I got to go into the Southland Mall. This place was the pinnacle of my childhood – this mall was crazy-full of awesome stores like Stylerite, Reitmans, and Warehouse One. I remember Santa drawing ridiculous crowds at Christmas and shopping for hair dye (Blondissima!) at Pfahl’s Drugs. Over the past fifteen years, the mall has slowly withered into a ghost town. The only remaining relic is Warehouse One…and the play pit area.



The reason we showed up here was to visit Jonny’s Java as all my friends had been raving about how awesome it was.



Yeah, it was dece.

We did a bit of a drive around Winkler and went to the site of the old hospital, the one I was born in. It’s now a park and so I looked into the air…the space of earth I came forth into! This is getting weird and hard to explain.

Once we had arrived back on the farm, I set out for some enjoying of the landscape. They’ve installed all these windmills in the fields near our house that my Dad calls a “scurge on the land”. lol, how dramatic.








Personally, I think they are freaking cool. And sustainable!






After the mini photo shoot starring the windmills (trust me, I have many, many more), I went to visit my cousin’s sons grave, about a mile from my house. I’ve actually always really liked that cemetery (we used to play there as kids – how morbid!) and now I know someone buried there.




I don’t know what that stuff pushed into the dirt is, but I guess its teenage guy stuff.







Just another day on the prairies (and I still have difficulty spelling “prairies), and I love it. Tomorrow we are heading into the city for some shopping as there is an Armani watch I can’t get out of my head that I saw at Costco. Of course.

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(Day 3) Lazy Sunday

After the raucous social the night before and arriving home at 2:00 AM, I slept until around mid-afternoon on Sunday. AHHHHHHH I do love sleeping, though I felt I had slightly wasted the day. However, fear not – I have more social obligations today to meet. We met up with my Mom’s family in the park for a picnic dinner while Matthew and I went over last night’s festivities. And I wore my massive Linda Farrow sunglasses to give the gathered Mennonites old folks something to stare at.


The view from the farm. I love it!!




Someone looks a lil sleepy…

Who’s this guy…?


OH. Jake Janzen. From where? Oh, Altona. Now I see.

I capped my Sunday off with a visit to my Grandparents on my Dad’s side. We visited their apartment and I gotta say, the visit was kind of hilarious. My Grandpa just kind of sat there and told my Dad he didn’t know who I was, and my Grandma told stories about this guy who shot himself in the head and his face flew straight off. She kept making this “face fly off” action with her hands. Then she’d lean back in her chair and because she’s so short, she’d end up lying almost flat but she’d still be chatting.



Then we talked about how cute Janelle was as a kid when I saw this photo still being prominently displayed...


So there you have it. Lazy Sunday, wake up in the late afternoon, call Parnell just to see how he’s doin’. Tomorrow will be so much more exciting…I’m going to Winkler and Morden! AMAZING.

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(Day 2) The Epitome

Whenever I wake up in the wood-panelled basement bedroom at my parents’ house and smell the musty dank basement smell, I’m pretty much at the centre of my universe. The room might have different furnishings now, but the SK8 stickers and weird little Mexican stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling are still intact. Oh yeah, and the Old Dutch sign I stole from Chitaqua still hangs below my bedroom window. Aaaaand, of course, the Silverchair Neon Ballroom poster is still there, because Daniel Johns circa 1999 is still hot. Ahem! Moving on…

I was so excited to get into Altona and be a part of the Sunflower Festival. Most people from Altona will acknowledge that the Sunflower Festival holds a dear place in their hearts…it was the highlight of the summer for all of us as kids. The parade draws pretty much everyone in the area street-side on Saturday morning.




Settling in…I had packed up a blanket, snacks, water, coffee, an umbrella…I was ready for anything.


Reeeeeally enthusiastic Winkler Bible Camp counsellors.



My cousin’s son died this past spring in an ATV accident and they had a float in the parade dedicated to him. To be honest, this was really best float because they gave away such good stuff – hot dogs, energy drinks, Coke, green wavy things, etc. I’m only a little sad because I didn’t actually get a hot dog. I love hot dogs!






Ronald McDonald…who USED to give out coupons for a free small fries. This year, he came up empty handed…wtf Ronald.

And randomly, there were some old people riding their motorized wheelchair/scooters, knacking zot.


Only in southern MB.

All in all, I was pretty pleased with the experience, except that I felt it was too short. And where was the pig that squirted water from his nostrils? That was a perennial favourite.

After the parade, I met up with Shannon and Brent at the Pioneer Centre for the Mennonite food buffet. It was…OK. I’ve been spoiled throughout the years with a Mother who is a stellar cook so I say the schmaunt faht wasn’t flavourful enough and the perogies were way too big and tasteless on their own. I’m such a whiner.





After stuffing ourselves, we headed over the park to check out the festival scene. Unfortunately, it is a sad shell of its former self…in its heyday, we had a midway, food booths galore, airplanes dropping ping pong balls with prizes, face painting, the whole nine. Now, it’s this.


That’s about it. But there was also a petting zoo.

















They were doing some silly and unnecessary dangerous motorbike stuff near the car when we were leaving…




Good heavens! You would not find me on one of those doing that.

We then carried on with our wild adventures at the Altona Mall because Shannon wanted to go to Ten Thousand Villages. I almost wrote that as “10,000 Villages”. The feeling is alive!



I spent some time at Friesens looking for a box of birthday cards for work. I couldn’t find a single one without a religious connotation. We are certainly in the Bible Belt.

I also spent some time in the mall bathroom. So many memories in there (non-bowel or excretory system-related.) Oi.



I spent some time checking out the bulletin board in the mall as well. There was one posting that was fun to read simply because of their amazingly-poor sentence structure skill.



We then left town in Shannon and Brent’s’ rental, but not before stopping at McDonalds from some Chilled Glaces. I love you Chilled Glace!


Thanks Brent and Shannon!

Thankfully, I had just re-introduced myself to Suzy’s kids the night before, so they remembered me. However, they would now also not leave me alone. I’m such a baby-magnet. Shannon also did some bonding with the little guys…


She’s a braver soul than I…who knows where little boy hands have all been! It’s just a fact of life. lol.


I wanted a better faces-pressed photo than this, but he wasn’t cooperating.

After making a pit stop at Suzy’s grocery store, we were back to Altona and I met up with my aunt, uncle, and cousins for some Mennonite food…at the buffet again. I was still full, so I just chugged my energy drink and proceeded to talk at ever increasing speeds. From there, I headed home to kill the final hours before my Sunflower Social debut. A social! At the Pioneer Centre! I haven’t been dancing in there since my high school graduation.

My Dad dropped me off and our crew bought tickets from the picnic table outside the doors…and inside we went. It was amazing! Ninety-nine percent of those present were between the ages of 18 and 22 and they were all standing around drinking. Yay! To summarize (because I need to follow the unofficial ‘party code’ and zip it - rotfl), I hung out with Shannon, Brent, her friend, and my wonderful cousins. Thanks for being a shoulder to lean on Jamie! Literally. lol. I also made some new teenage friends and they said they couldn’t believe I was so old. Erm, yay! Then I went home to bed. The end.

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