east bound and down

in addition to losing my bathing suit, i've also lost my new red ipod. i feel like i'm taking crazy pills. i don't usually lose things for real, so when i do, it makes me totally crazy. i don't know where my ipod could have gone. i always keep it in this little box thing right next to my door, and i rarely use it because i always use my big ipod. eff. so, i am still feeling crazy and grouchy and depressed.

i went to edmonton/vermilion this weekend. i drove to edmonton on thursday. i got breadsticks and cinna-stix from domino's and sat at home by myself and cleaned up my itunes. on friday i bought a new bathing suit (the same one as i had before, but this time it was on sale and only $20. thrilling.). i cleaned up my itunes some more and went for an interview at second cup (but have since decided i don't really want to work there because i don't want shitty hours and everyone who i know who has worked there has totally hated it). later on i went for a walk by myself and hid a couple of tapes in the city. i checked for one of them yesterday and it hasn't been taken yet. i kind of doubt they ever will get taken. whatevs. i had a good time hiding them.

on saturday jenni and i drove to vermilion for the fair. what a day. we saw some baby chicks hatching and we played with the baby kitties and we saw some baby goats and puppies and stuff. then we watched a bit of the tractor pull, and then it was too too hot so we went looking for freezies but nowhere in vermilion sells them. we opted for some slurpies instead. then we went home and i drove my dad into town so he could work the gate. he was singing to the road hammers' song i put on, and it made me laugh pretty hard. then jenni and kelsey and i watched "driving lessons." i think it was pretty cute. then the three of us went longboarding in town, and it was so, so awesome. vermilion has really rad roads - wide, fairly freshly-paved roads with hardly any traffic. so good. then we went back to the fair to watch the fireworks, and we saw jonas and trenty. i was happy to see trent, but he was still crazy-jerky-trent, so we didn't hang out that much with him. afterwards, jenni and i went to the beer gardens for some dancing. the past two years have been really lame, but this year, the band was surprisingly enjoyable. not great, but definitely better than the last couple. we danced, and lots of people commented on jen's hair, and i hung out with brina and some other girls from high school. we went home around 2. i would have liked to have stayed longer, but jenni had to work in the morning in edmonton the next day.

on sunday we woke up around 7:30 and i drove us back to edmonton. we stopped in vegreville for breakfast groceries, and then i drove jenni home. i went to my apartment and napped for a wee bit, and then i met jonathan kobewka and his friend justin at the royal alberta museum. jonathan and i have known about each other for about 6 years, because we counselled camp together at nakamun, but we had never really hung out. anyways, the museum was super fun and the bugs in the bug room were neat, and then we went to the sugarbowl to eat. it was nice to hang out with them. then when i went to drop them off at justin's car, jon said, "i really want to hang out again. but... probably not this summer." ouch. then he got really awkward and said, "i mean... sorry... that was really rude. it's just...." ha. i told him it WAS rude, but whatever. i have two weeks at the end of the summer with absolutely no commitments at all, but i know other people are busy. but maybe he thought that i really wanted to hang out for an extended period of time, when really my version of hanging out with people is just riding the bus with them or something. whatever. i am grumpy now and all my friends are jerks. and where's my ipod?

i went to nokomis today to show them my bags/wallets in person, and they said that if i make up 4 bags and 5 wallets, they'll buy them outright! not even on consignment! wow!

my bff just got promoted! way to go, kds.

i e-mailed nokomis a little while ago to see if they'd be interested in selling my wallets/shoulder bags. they are! wow. so we'll see what happens now.

recent good news:
1. my student loan was approved within about a week and a half of me submitting it. wow!
2. megs and mega-hot-boy and a few more people and i came in second place at trivia last week.
3. i am driving to edmonton tonight, and might get a job at one of the second cups on whyte for the fall.
4. people actually want to buy my wallets and shoulder bags!
5. new wes anderson/jason schwartzman movie coming out in september.
6. something else. i forget.

recent bad news:
1. i lost my effin' bathing suit. where the hell is it?
2. student loan interest is ridiculous.
3. my best friend screens my calls. ouch.

kaylin just got into the social work program at the u of c's edmonton campus. she's been waiting to hear about it for months. i am really proud of/excited for her. she deserves it so much, and she's going to do such a good job. plus we will get to go to school close to each other and wear cute school-y sweaters and get hot chocolates and study together. yessss.

this used to be our town

i finished reading generation x on thursday, and then i read life after God this weekend. i liked the latter a lot more. i have two new options for books: girlfriend in a coma or one that i will write about in a bit.

on saturday our museum put on this big open house event so adults/locals could see our historical village (usually we only put it on for school groups in june). it seemed like it would be a pretty stressful day, but it all turned out to be quite enjoyable. the weather was perfect and there were just enough people so that the day was worthwhile but not overwhelming. plus i had some life changing stew and bannock. i talked with this man who used to be a fur trader. he asked me, as everyone always does when i am up here, if i planned on being a teacher. i said no, because my mom said i would be a terrible teacher because i wouldn't be able to handle the system, and because i am so introverted and i wouldn't be able to handle being around people all day every day. anyways, he said he is really introverted too, and he recommended i read this book called the introvert advantage. then the next day, i saw a special on the news about the very same book! strange. anyway, i took it out from the library today, and i am finally going to figure out why i can't connect with anyone ever. other visitors to the village that day included a super neat teacher who we kind of know and like (and who found one of my and robin's postcards at north country fair and wrote us back!), a lady from vermilion who used to teach with my mom, and the mega-cute boy i talked about in the last post. sweaty palms!!!

after work on saturday i was pretty exhausted but i went to robin's to talk about a new craft and have milkshakes and watch a movie. the milkshake made me super sick but i stayed anyway to watch stranger than fiction because THREE people have recommended it to me this month.

yesterday i read and crocheted and then i went to megs' for the evening. i longboarded in joussard a bit, because it is good, smooth, flat pavement all across town. then megs and i watched shopgirl, which as a whole was mediocre but was made excellent by the presence of my celebrity crush jason schwartzman. dreamboat. he was pretty adorable in it. you should watch it.

i am coming home on the weekend for the vermilion fair, and possibly some hawrelak park-ing. exciting.

my sister left for portugal yesterday. she will be ukrainian dancing there for a month. wow.

they aks me how i do it, and simply i reply, "this is why i'm hot"

part i: i met this mega-hot boy last year at the high prairie rodeo. he is one of meghan's friends from high school. anyway, this summer, megs said that he is dating some 30-year-old girl.

part ii: when i was in edmonton a few weeks ago, emily's boyfriend brad said he knew someone who knew me. he asked if i worked with a girl named meghan, and then he said he knew a guy who knew meghan who also had met me.

parts i + ii = part iii: the 30-year-old girl mega-hot boy is dating is brad's sister. meghan and i laughed pretty hard about this, especially because brad defensively told me, "she's 28."

i started reading some douglas coupland. i've been avoiding him until now because he's so damn trendy, but megs and i were in the library yesterday and wanted to avoid going back to work, so i took out some books. reading will cut into my crafting time, but maybe it will help rescue my vocabulary from its current state (the best describing words i can come up with are "awesome" and "real deadly," often spoken with a bit of an accent).

also, northern alberta has been real deadly as far as crushing goes. when i'm up here, i mysteriously find myself attracted to boys who drive half-tons and know all the words to old clint black songs. boys who have a somewhat steady labour job and all their fingers and don't drink too much strike me as keepers. yeesh. good thing i only have 5 weeks left here.

here's a picture of the moose bag i made. i like it.
also, i have a new celebrity crush.

solar-powered laser beam guitar

megs and i went to peacefest in peace river this weekend. i wasn't sure that i wanted to go, but i'm super glad i did. here are some moments that deserve mention:
-the "pirate guy," who wore a pirate cap and lots of beads and had pirate-y facial hair... and wore crocs.
-the slutty little 17-year-old girls who somehow always managed to be around me and megs, and who we witnessed wriggle out of their underwear right in front of us and then who then tried to throw it onstage, only to have it get caught by the wind and land on the fence separating the crowd from the stage. they panicked, and then tried again, and it still landed short of the stage. heh.
-the orange freezies. man, i just can't get enough.
-country bands, especially the road hammers. i didn't think i'd like them all that much (emerson drive and aaron prichett played too), but they were all super fantastic shows, and jason mccoy is such a dreamboat. i really like the feel of northern albertan country shows, as opposed to city shows/festivals.
-dancing

guess what i got paid $13/hour to do today? bead bracelets and drive megs into town so we could mail a package. tomorrow we are going to bead more bracelets. i can hardly even handle getting paid to make crafts. actually, we are kind of doing slave labor. our museum has a really shitty gift shop, with garbage that will never sell (like a $400 dreamcatcher), so our supervisors are letting us spend our hours at work making crafts from museum supplies to sell at the gift shop. sleazy? awesome? a little from column A, a little from column B.

i am working on shoulder bags. if you or anyone you know wants to buy them, they are $40. right now i have an apple green one with a black bear on it, and a brown plaid one with a beige moose on it. hot.

i got mail from dustan and bri and landon this week. thanks for not forgetting about me, friends!

yesterday megs and i played trivia at egan's with some of our regular team and a few extras, and we actually won! wow! most surprising/ironic was the fact that i am pretty sure i was the only person in the pub who correctly answered a question for which the answer was "the kama sutra" (the question was phrased something like, "the mixing of raw sparrows' eggs and something something was offered as a remedy for impotence in which ancient sanskrit text?" - so, i'm not a horny bastard, i'm just logical. because come on, how many ancient erotic sanskrit texts are well-known enough to be mentioned in a pub's trivia contest?).

when kaylin and i hung out a few days ago, we were walking by my apartment and we saw a pigeon next to the sidewalk. kaylin wanted to take a picture of it pecking at the ground, because her parents just bought her this neat camera that takes 8 pictures over 2 seconds. neat! anyway, just as we got close, the pigeon flew away, right in front of this boy driving by in a suit on a vespa with a wooden crate tied to the back. he was a little startled, and he looked at us because that's where the pigeon came from, and he gave this funny little smile. i liked that moment.

i went to a wedding dance with meghan in joussard on saturday night. it was fun to dance, but the dj was pretty terrible, and there was a lot of drama. but i danced in heels, which is i think the first time i have ever done that outside of ukrainian dance, and i didn't even break my ankles! wow. i am growing up. plus i got to wear my brown polka-dot dress. woo!

i sewed some shoulder bags yesterday. i am not happy with the first one, and i think i am going to keep the second one for myself. ugh.

my guts hurt and i almost threw up last night. boo.

pack up your bags, bells!

i think the best week i've had all summer was this week. first off, it started with canada day! then on monday, my mom and dad and i drove down to drumheller to visit the royal tyrell museum. dinosaurs sure are rad. plus i learned that north america used to have camels and lions and stuff, before the last ice age or something. wow! maybe i knew that, but i had forgotten. my very favorite part was the giant beaver statue. i guess there used to be super-huge beavers here, but they are all dead now. beavers are swiftly becoming one of my favorite animals.

after the royal tyrell, we drove to fort mcleod and stayed at a bed and breakfast. they had some giant pinecones.

on tuesday we went to head-smashed-in buffalo jump. it was pretty neat, and laid out really well. plus this super cute native boy came up to me and asked if i had any questions, but his cuteness made me nervous and i couldn't really think of a question because, hello, i work in a native cultural arts museum and i already knew what most of the artifacts were. frick. i get nervous around cute boys so i end up with all the creepy ones in the world having crushes on me. anyway, then we drove through longview (where i stopped to get my favorite beef jerky!) and by eden valley (one of the reserves i worked on a few summers ago) on our way to canmore.

my dad's brother has this super unbelievable condo in canmore, so we stayed there a few days. i bought some super hot boiled wool from this amazing quilting store in town, and i am going to use it for appliques for my wallets. i also bought a quilt pattern, because i am going to make another one for myself soon. i went in the hot tub at the condo a whole lot. kelsey came over from calgary on thursday, and the four of us went whitewater rafting on the kananaskis river. it was just a "beginner" trip, but it was so, so enjoyable. we vowed to never go canoeing again, because rafting is so much more fun/easy. it was apparently the nicest day they've had for rafting in the last two years. kelsey and i might go back to canmore later in the summer to go caving and rafting.

later kelsey and i went longboarding. it was really nice, but it's pretty hilly where we were, and we are too sucky to go down even slight declines, and too weak to go up even slight inclines. so basically it all just turned into a street lugeing session down a wide quiet residential road hill. i think i am going to buy some protective gear and do that more often.

yesterday i came back to edmonton and kaylin and i hung out for a bit. we went to watch the street performers at churchill square. i like that she is as introverted as me, if not more.

c-day

dear dairy,
i bet you are dying to know what i did on canada day. here's the condensed version:

-i played nintendo in the morning and throughout the day
-my parents arrived at the apartment at about 11, and we walked over to the legislature to watch my sister ukrainian dance (i never really believed people when they say that they're doing something to make their families and friends proud, but man, when emiline was dancing, i nearly cried. i was so proud. plus i cry at everything.)
-i met angie at the steps of the ledge, and we walked through the gallery (it's the only time in the year that members of the public are allowed to walk through it! thrilling!)
-a few minutes later angie and i met bri on the steps of the ledge, and we walked through the gallery again and then walked around the ledge a bit to see our awesome mace and "the magic spot."
-bri and angie joined me for my traditional "canada day burger" - a burger with white onions and red ketchup. festive!
-i walked from the ledge to the second cup on whyte ave and gateway. i met michelle there and we walked back to the ledge and had screamers and sat on the lawn. we were both surprised at how easily we picked up our friendship, which for four years has lay dormant, especially given the fact that we are both such awkward girls. i like her.
-i walked back home and my family and brad went for supper at the high level diner.
-we all went home afterwards, and i played nintendo while i waited for the fireworks.
-my dad and i walked along saskatchewan drive towards the bridge that i watched the fireworks from last year, but it seemed really crowded, so we decided to watch them from dr. e's apartment on the same street. bri and matt and linda were there too, all of whom i have spent at least one canada day with, which made the day feel a little bit more like tradition.
-i missed kelsey.