What Are Grain Elevators For, Exactly?

I am a huge fan of the show Corner Gas and while working at my current job have watched every single episode of the show’s six seasons at least four times each. Don’t judge! It’s an easy show to watch! YouTube has all the episodes available, commercial free! The show is set in a prairie farming community in Saskatchewan, and follows a motley crew of characters that I just can't get enough of.

Anyways, in the episode I’m watching right now, one of the characters is showing a bunch of pictures she’s taken, and all the pictures happen to be of grain elevators. It occurred to me that while I’ve seen many grain elevators while living in and driving through Alberta, and vaguely know how they work, I really have no idea EXACTLY what they do.

After some research I found that I actually did know pretty much what grain elevators do and how they do it, but thought I’d write about it anyways, in case some city folk are unaware. 

Grain elevators, first put into use in New York state in the early 1840s, are basically just huge storage bins for wheat and other grains. The design of grain elevators, which is pretty standard and very recognizable for anyone who has lived anywhere near farming communities, is very specific, and ensures that while keeping the grain safe and contained, it also makes for easy removal and eventual transport. The height of the elevators allows for considerable amounts of storage capabilities, and the more grain, the better they work, as the weight of the grain presses down and literally forces itself out of the metal spouts that lead into whatever transport vessels are being used.

On a side note, I used to always think it would be fun to jump into the unseen depths of grain, but my mom quickly warned me that doing such would cause me to suffocate and die. Yikes! So, no grain diving for me then. 

What are Some Fun Date Ideas?

Ever since Cole and I started dating the amount of TV I watch has skyrocketed. He was pretty much raised by television, so having it on for hours and hours every day is just natural to him, whereas before we moved in together I didn't even OWN a TV. So, in order to keep us from being completely sedentary and in the hopes of preventing us from getting stuck in a rut, I thought it would be fun to initiate a "TV-free day" every week. Or, at least a TV-free HALF day, during which we would do something fun that gets us off the couch and maybe even out of the apartment.

What I thought would be a good way to keep things spontaneous but still helps us out if we ended up blanking on what we should do with our TV-free time is if we wrote down an assortment of random activities on little slips of paper and put those slips of paper in a hat, or bag, or some other such receptacle. Then, at the appropriate time, we can simply draw out one idea and do whatever it says on the paper. Yesterday I wrote down about sixty ideas, and while some of them I came up with on my own, I did need a little help in the creativity department. So, I searched the internet for what other people thought made for a great date. 

Some of the ideas for "things to do with your mate" were obviously posted by crazy people and/or teenagers, and were completely ridiculous for a couple who has been together for over a year now. But I found that if I was persistent and scrolled past the idiot ideas I did occasionally come across a thought or suggestion that tickled my fancy. In case you were curious, here are some of the activities that I threw in the hat: 

take a midnight walk	take family pictures with Butters
fool around on guitars together	go to a g-rated movie
go for a meal at a restaurant chosen from the phone book based on its name alone	slow-dance together
film a nature documentary	feed the geese
play Scrabble	have a hangman or tic tac toe tournament
make bucket lists	visit Mamaw and Ed

Naturally, I ALSO think it would be fun to document our experiences, so every week there should be a post in this blog that doesn't exactly follow the usual question-and-answer structure, but I hope whoever reads this will enjoy the posts nonetheless. And of course, feel free to offer up any of your own recommendations for things you like to do with your own significant others. 

Is Bel Air a Real Place?

D and I were talking late last night about popular lingo. Apparently, Jersey Shore is the go-to place for the newest hip talk - a fact which is 'slightly' worrisome. Anyways, D kept dropping the 'f' bomb. No, not the four letter one... the five letter one. I guess 'fresh' is back in! 

I wanted to clarify the newest meaning of fresh and asked Dani if we were trying to be fresh as in Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Maybe it was the late hour, or maybe I'm just a bubblehead, but this led me to wonder if Bel Air was actually a real place, or if it was made up for the tv show! I knew Beverly Hills was real, but Bel Air? If I don't hear about it in celebrity news a few dozen times I just can't be sure. And, then I wondered, if Bel Air WAS a real place, does it still exist?

According to the internet, it sure does! According to Wikipedia about 8000 people live there! That place must be crazy big. And hey, you can live there, too! 

This stunning home is only 11.4 million dollars!

How Much Do Window Washers Make?

Cole and I live in an apartment building on 106th street, just down the road from busy Jasper Ave. It's a unique area - at least to me. After several weeks of staying with Cole over the summer I realized that I had yet to see anyone under the age of twenty on my walks to and from home. The majority of the area's population appears to consist of young professionals, which makes sense as we are minutes away from the downtown core. In fact, 106th street itself is largely occupied by large office buildings, and at least one structure that (weirdly) seems to house both residents and places of business.

This morning I left for work, trudging up and over the sloping hill leading down to our apartment building, and headed north. I sidestepped the clusters of suited men and high-heeled women on their way back to their cubicles with Tim Hortons coffee cups clutched in hand and crunched some drying leaves under my shoes just for fun. At some point I happened to glance up and over to the right, and spotted a window washer strung confidently over the lip of one of the neighbourhood edifices. 

Being an unapologetic gawker I stopped to watch for a moment, and wondered to myself how much I would have to be paid to hover so precariously along the open face of a multi-story building. Then I wondered how much the crazy guy above me was making. After doing some poking around online it looks like the general consensus is that an average window earns about seventeen dollars an hour. It also looks like instead of earning an hourly wage, they are paid according to how much ground (or window) they cover in a designated period of time. The few dollars more an hour they make than me is not enough to get me off the solid surface of the earth. 

But, kudos to the men and women keeping downtown skyscraper glass so clean the panes reflect the sky. 

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For some enjoyable insight into a day in the life of a window washer check out this article from the Toronto Star: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/635557--skyscraper-window-cleaners-a-breed-apart.