in love with the place, in my mind

yesterday was a really cute day. i just love being in edmonton.

i woke up at 4 a.m. and couldn't fall back asleep, because i get so excited about all the crafts that i want to make and all the things i want to see/do while i'm here. at 8:30, i went to MEC to pick up a backpack for a girl in guyana, and then i went to kaylin's. i love hanging out with kaylin. we went to safeway to pick up some food, and then we drove around downtown looking for richard seine. we both miss him like mad. unfortunately, we couldn't find him. we talked about working in the inner city and how much we loved the people and hated the organizations that employed us. i'm so glad we're both out of there now. those jobs were seriously so destructive for us. then we went to second cup and had a really good conversation. my favorite conversations lately have been with my post-christian female friends. it's comforting to know there are other people out there who are dealing with the same issues as me: guilt, loss of identity, believing that "satan has a hold on [me]." yikes. then we went to the legislature and talked about missing colin powles and how we've both always believed that the other was too cool to be friends with us. ah, insecure middle-class christian white girls. so predictable. i still feel that way about her though, as i do with a lot of my friends. i was so confident in high school! i guess junior high is catching up with me now. anyway, kaylin and i had a super cute time at the leg. we walked around the pedway and talked about loons going extinct and about how we are all doomed because the earth's magnetic field is shrinking. then i wanted to show her the "magic spot" at the leg. because she had never seen it. so this cute lady named maggie took us on a tour of the legislature. she was so excited! she couldn't stop talking and smiling! i want to see if i can volunteer to do tours there next year. the whole leg. was so interesting. i forgot all the neat stories about it, which i must have learned in elementary school when we visited the place on field trips. we especially liked the mace. alberta's first mace used in parliament was made out of garbage like those floaty toilet-tank balls and plastic pipe and broken teacup handles, and spraypainted gold! and they used it for FIFTY years! our province is so cute and neat. i am in love. we also really liked the magic spot (the "acoustic anomaly" where you can hear the fountain). i always like hanging out outside the leg., but i think i am going to start spending more time INSIDE. we also found out that on canada day, they bring out the red carpet and all visitors are allowed to walk up it and then into that room where all the government business is done (sorry, i forget the name. i was always TERRIBLE at remembering political science stuff) (and this is the ONLY time of year visitors are allowed in the room, and the ONLY parliament building in canada that EVER allows visitors in) and then out the back. so kaylin and i are planning to go next canada day. the day made us even more excited about our province than we already are, so we decided that sometime in the next couple of years we are going to go on a vacation to small towns and notable cute places in canada. exciting.

after hanging out with k-lin i hung out with kev. i haven't really talked to him much since the summer because i knew i would be tempted to ask him questions about darcy that i don't want to know the answers to. but hanging out with him was so fun! i really missed all his constant, lame jokes. i like that he doesn't mind going shopping with me (we went to whyte ave and i bought a sufjan album and some american apparel clothes. so predictable.). he is fun, and i am glad that he will be in edmonton next year.

finally, i hung out with joel kelly. i feel like joel must spend all his free time reading books entitled "how to be a great friend." he is just always the right amount of fun, and supportiveness, and concern, and silliness, and intelligence, and conversation. and he is my most reliable source for new music! we just went for supper, but it was really nice. i am excited that joel will be going to school in edmonton next year too. so many fun friends in such close proximity! life doesn't get much better!