also, you should check out/submit to notebook magazine.

hiding in the dining room, knees drawn up to my chest

ugh. my stolen-ualbertawireless-internet in my apartment is really really ridiculously slow, so i haven't been able to blog as much as i'd like to. so here is a really condensed version of the last week:

-my foot still hurts from when i hurt it at my kickball party. so much so that i couldn't even practice when the lakeland girls had their soccer tryouts on sunday. i am excited to play with those girls again. i love doing sports with people who know what they're doing, and do it reasonably well, but don't care too much about winning or strength or speed or whatever.
-i've been rowing most weeknights, but i got a little frustrated because the girls i was boated with are pretty athletic and competitive. i'm not. i've asked to be in the women's novice 8, which is significantly less competitive. hopefully i will be able to row with them this week at the edmonton regatta.
-i had supper with bri, dawn, lewis, and joel at joel's house on friday. joel made some very delicious roast beef and cut up potatoes. there were some other things, but i don't remember what they were because i didn't eat them. i am a meat and potatoes kind of girl.
-after joel's meat extravaganza, i picked up kaylin and we went to becky's for a becky's-leaving-soon/colin-is-back-in-edmonton/michelle-is-getting-married party. kaylin and i were too intimidated to talk to anyone unless they walked past us and initiated conversation, so we kind of just stood in the kitchen and ate concord grapes. i wanted to talk to colin but he was surrounded by people in the living room and i couldn't exactly just walk up to him and sit down with all those people and say, "hey, we haven't talked for 5 years, but i guess we're friends now. what's new?" so. we are still not quite friends again yet. however, i did thoroughly enjoy my first semi-drunk-becky experience. she's one of only about two people i enjoy being around when they are drinking.
-(saturday:) i spent a lot of money on "jasons." i bought the first two seasons of arrested development (jason bateman), shopgirl, and rushmore (jason schwartzman). i already had rushmore, but that was on VHS, and... you know.... also, on the very same day, my coconut records (jason schwartzman, remember?) album came in the mail! AND it had a cute polaroid of him included, because he wanted to include a "special gift" for everyone who bought a hard copy of his disk. adorable.
-i dragged emily and brad to michael's so i could buy some art supplies for the mixed media class i am going to be taking at grant macewan starting this thursday.
-i got the job at the legislature! i think i start training on friday.
-i ran into courtney on whyte ave today and hung out with her while she shopped; i hung out with michelle on campus; i watched some movies with emily; i went for a walk and to the farmers' market with a boy named emery; i talked to kelseydawn on the phone for a long time
-i got 98% on the cree quiz i wrote on monday! i thought i would fail it!
-some of my teeth hurt and i think i might have cavities. owie.
-today, one of the little girls at the school i work at at noon hours ran across the field in her brown sweater with her arms wide open, yelling, "i love fall!!!" a-greed.
-becky started dating her crush. she is really excitable and adorable about crushes. i am glad she is dating that boy, but i hope she doesn't marry him because i never want her to stop having new crushes. i live vicariously through her intense, intense crushing.

coming events:
-illfit outfit is playing tomorrow, and i am going to go... after my first art class!
-the north saskatchewan regatta is on saturday
-emily's birthday is on sunday, and she is having birthday parties on both friday and saturday.
-joel and esther's wedding, a.k.a. the greatest dance party of my life, next weekend

i broke down and wrote you back before you had a chance to forget

saturday was my birthday. i started out the morning by rowing in an eight with some other novices. i got to row stroke, which meant i got to set the pace and therefore did not have to row any faster than i wanted to. the morning was beautiful. then i went home and got some things ready for my kickball party. i bought some food and picked up kaylin and we went to hawrelak park. a bunch of people who i really love came to my mix tape/kickball party. it was nice to see them all, but my party was a bit mediocre. we mostly just sat around for an hour and ate WAY too much food, including the delicious dairy queen ice cream cake bri and karen bought for me (thanks, friends!). then we exchanged our mix tapes/cds and some of us played a few innings of kickball. i busted up my foot on one of my kicks, and it has been swollen ever since. it is definitely getting better, though. then jenni and liam and doug came, so we re-exchanged our mix tapes so they could take part. then everybody left except me and kelsey and jenni and her boys, so we went to the lake at the park to feed the birds. feeding the birds at hawrelak is one of my favorite things to do. liam threw a whole bun out to the seagulls, and they were fun to watch because they each wanted to hoarde it for themselves, but it was too heavy to pick up and carry alone. once it had been pecked at a bit, the seagulls took turns trying to fly away with it. then the rest of the group would take off after them. funny.

kelsey and i watched a terrible movie ("the ex" - only rented because she's seen every other movie ever, and we like jason bateman and zach braff) and got full on movie studio popcorn and tandoori chicken.

too many things happened this week for me to be writing in paragraphs anymore. here goes:
-kelsey and i hung out on whyte on sunday, and then came back to my house to exchange music from each other's cd/itunes collections.
-kelsey went back to calgary, and i hung out with kaylin at hawrelak park. we fed the birds and walked around the lake.
-on monday i had class; met emma (from king's) at the good earth cafe; went to the nearby elementary school to see if they could use any volunteer help, and was promptly offered a part-time position as a "lunchroom aide." basically, the school just hires university students to do lunch supervision so the teachers have a chance to eat. and it's $14/hour! they were so desperate that the lady in charge asked if i could start on wednesday. i did, in fact, start today, and it was pretty sweet. we just take attendance of the kids and supervise them while they eat, and then take them outside for noon hour recess. we're even allowed to play with the kids. today, one of the male supervisors played soccer with some boys; another male supervisor played on the jungle gym with a bunch of girls who have obvious crushes on him; and i hung out on the ropes with some dude whose name i already forget. i think i'll like working there, because (a) i've lived in this area for 5 years, and it's time i started giving back to my community, and (b) i like working with kids, but i can't spend too much time with them because they exhaust me. two hours a week is a good time commitment, and it's sweet that i'll get to know a whole school full of local kids over the course of the year.
-(still monday): i rowed in a quad with two other experienced girls and a boy. i have never rowed with boys before, but i've been hearing lately that they are hard to row with because they are so focused on strength that they neglect to balance the boat, which is a very important first step. anyway, the four of us had a fantastic row, which was shockingly balanced and enjoyable.
-tuesday: i met joel and bethany at the high level diner for breakfast. i had a multigrain bagel because my stomach can't handle much food in the morning. then i had two classes. then i met with a lady from native studies, who told me i had been awarded the native studies' "student blogger" position. basically, i will be paid fairly handsomely to do the same thing i am doing right now. i think i just have to write a minimum of three times a week, and attempt to convey "the student experience" from a native studies student's perspective. i had more class, and then i had rowing. rowing was lame on tuesday, because my stomach hurt and it was ridiculously windy and cold, and we were in this huge mother of a boat. no good. afterwards i picked up emily and we went to the blackspot cafe for the open mic thing. we couldn't stay very long, but it was nice to be there. i had a good talk with jenni, and i heard some good music, and there were considerably more people there this week compared with last week.
-this morning, i LRT'd to the legislature so i could get a security check done. if all goes well, i might have a job there soon! and who loves the legislature more than i do!? i had some class, and then worked my first shift at the elementary school, and then had some more class. during the first class after lunch, the entire university had a fire drill. my second class after lunch (cree) was cancelled because there was a pipe ceremony going on outside and our instructor was taking part in it.
-now i am waiting for my dad. he was supposed to be here an hour ago. i want him to take me out for soup. tonight i do not have rowing or anything else. i am excited.

today i had an interview to be a tour guide at the legislature. i think it went fairly well, except for when they asked me if i knew who my m.l.a. was. i said, "yeesh. i'm really bad with remembering this stuff. well, i'm from vermilion, and i think ours is... benoit? like, the vegreville-vermilion area?" and the ladies kind of smiled and said, "well, no, i think your m.l.a. would be ed stelmach, our premier. that's a big one!" then, the minute i walked out of my interview, i realized that we were both wrong, and that i DID know the name of my m.l.a. (as well as my former and possibly still current member of parliament, leon benoit), and that he's my best friend's uncle. thanks for being up on that one, memory retrieval system!

later on, i went rowing. it was a beautiful day, and this girl sarah and i got to row in a double. a double is different from a pair: in the former, each person rows with two oars; in the latter, each person uses only one oar. anyway, i was excited, because i like sculling (two oars each) more that sweeping (one oar each). however:
1. i hadn't been out in a rowing boat for two years, so i was pretty rusty;
2. sarah and i had never rowed on the water together, so we ought to have taken most of the practice just doing super simple balance drills and stuff like that; and
3. our "coach" didn't really give us any drills at all or anything to work on. in fact, he left us when we had just gone downriver from the hawrelak footbridge, and took his motorboat around a bend in the river where he could no longer see us. at that exact time, sarah and i both caught massive crabs (crabs are basically when you mean to "feather" your blade, (feather = to rotate it so it sits horizontally and you can then pull it back over the water for your next stroke), and for whatever reason the water catches the blade and pulls it, making it extremely difficult to regain control and balance) on our starboard side, started tipping, realized we were going over, and flipped our boat. it was my first flip ever, and it was awesome. the water wasn't super cold, but it was still really shocking to my system. in rowing, your feet are tied in to the footplate, so as we went over, my upper body went in, and the boat went over my body, but my feet were still tied in. luckily, the shoes i was in were WAY too big, so it was easy to slip my feet out. anyway, after kind of getting our bearings and coughing a lot, sarah and i grabbed onto our upside-down boat (which, like the oars, is a certified flotation device), and waited for a few minutes to see if our coach was coming back to help us out or at least tell us what to do. he didn't, and the river's current was carrying us fairly quickly towards one of the huge pillars holding up the hawrelak footbridge. we held onto opposite ends of the boat and swam, spinning the boat around to avoid the pillar. after we'd passed it, a men's quad came by and yelled out instructions to us so we could flip our boat upright and get back in. it felt pretty rad and rewarding to just be two girls on the river, flipping our boat and nearly smashing it on the pillar and then getting our shit together and righting the boat and actually getting back in and rowing back. luckily, by the time the boys started instructing us, our feet could touch the ground, so we were only chest-deep in water when we reflipped the boat and balanced it and got back in. i've learned to do canoe rescues and flips and stuff, but i don't know if anyone really teaches actual lessons on how to right rowing shells. i learned a lot from it (about rowing; about the river...), and i'm very glad it happened on such a warm day.

you laughed, enchanted by my intellect. or maybe, you didn't

yesterday dustan called me after i had already fallen asleep to tell me that michael cera and i were meant for each other because there was an article about him in spin saying how his favorite album is pinkerton and his favorite movie is rushmore.  thanks for thinking about me, dustan.  thanks for being such a dreamboat, michael cera.  

i've been sick lately.  i think it's because of rowing.  it might be because of my millions of environmental allergies, which are in full swing when i walk through the river valley to the edmonton rowing club.  it might also be because i am working all the toxins out of my body with all that exercise, but not drinking enough water to flush them out.  boo.  i haven't been on the water yet.  we've just been erging (using the ergometers/rowing machines) and in the tank (which is essentially an indoor boat that doesn't move - if you're curious, ask me about it).  i was supposed to be on the water with this other girl yesterday, but there were whitecaps on the river and i haven't been in a boat for 2 years, so we decided to stay in the tank.  i think on friday we'll be going out.  i bought some superwarm tights, which aren't really all that aesthetically exciting, but man, they will be so awesome in october.  

i went to the blackspot cafe on tuesday, after a cute supper with my sisters at chianti's.  jenni and the boys in her band were having some sort of jam session/open mic thing every tuesday, and there were only 6 of us there, but it was fun and super funny.  

class is really interesting.  we talked about northwest coast social relationships with regard to salmon today.  so neat!  in my native issues and insights class, we are talking about definitions for words like metis, indian, inuit, treaty, status, first nation, etc., and not really coming up with anything concrete.  in cree we are learning about animate intransitive paradigms and conjunct mode and i don't even know what those things are in english.  my favorite new cree words are "oho" (which has a macron above each of the 'o's, but i don't know how to write that on here), and "sisip," (which also has macrons above the 'i's).  "oho," pronounced "oo-hoo," means "owl," and "sisip," pronounced "see-seep," means "duck."  i think i am getting familiar with a lot of the cree sounds, but i still have trouble with emphasis.

he made me a tape of bootlegs and b-sides

wednesday was my first day of classes. exciting! the classes i have this term are: archaeology, socio-cultural anthropology, native issues and insights I, northwest coast societies from an anthropological perspective, and introductory cree. woo! later on, meghan and i ate at julio's barrio (because no one we worked with at the museum had ever been there, and they wanted to go. unfortunately, none of the rest of them showed up) and then walked home and painted watercolors and watched "high fidelity." (as a side note: i really do apologize for not citing my sources in MLA style. i know i don't capitalize, but citing sources correctly is a bigger deal to me. anyway, my screen on this new computer won't let me make italics, etc., and i don't know html. sorry.)

on thursday joel alexander and i met at 8 for a free pancake breakfast put on by the u of a students' association. i thought we would have to wait in line much longer than we did. we only waited for about 5 minutes. then we ate our breakfast in the native studies' tipi and then we hung out in the chem building and played with dry ice. i had some more classes. no crushes in them. later on i went for hot chocolate downtown with kaylin and we had a good talk. i think we always have good talks. then we went to see blake's band play at the starlight room with another band called "art brut." they were pretty amazing. i think i would have enjoyed the show if i hadn't been so tired/hungry, but i think blake enjoyed it enough to cover everyone. i don't know if i've ever seen someone so happy.

on friday i woke up really late, which was okay. i only had one class - my cree lab - but i will have more labs starting next week. i went to the doctor and she things i have asthma. another great quality i can add to my nerd list. later on i went to a meeting for the u of a rowing club. tryouts start tomorrow, and i am pretty nervous, because i can't really jog or do work-out-y things. i'm pretty decent at rowing, but i hope i don't get cut because i suck at push-ups. ugh.

on saturday i had soccer practice with a women's intramural team i might play with this fall. they seem neat and right at my level, which is nice. a lot of the girls are mexicans, and they give cute cheek-kisses to each other and yell in spanish a lot. cute. afterwards my parents and my sisters and my sisters' boyfriends and i went out for lunch at chianti's to celebrate my birthday. my mom and my dad gave me a rotary mat and a rotary cutter and a big clear plastic ruler (quilting/sewing supplies) for my birthday. woo! now i just need a flat, uncarpeted surface to cut my fabric on. later on, kaylin and i went to the sleeping bag drive-in at the u of a. it was supposed to be outside at QUAD, which would have been unassailably cute, but since it had rained all day, the movie was inside. it was still kind of cute anyway. kaylin and i brought lawn chairs and each cuddled up under blankets we had sewn ourselves. the movie they showed was "blades of glory." meh.

today emily and i hung out. i got some pictures developed so i could hang some new ones on my walls. we also went to michael's and then checked out the open house at the city arts centre. there are lots of neat programs on there this fall. you should check them out. afterwards we made multigrain chocolate chip cookies together. later on, i went to dr. e's because she was having a little party for a neat lady she knows. i saw linda and matt and dr. zinck, all of whom i haven't seen recently. i mostly hung out with bri, who, as always, was really great to talk with. then i finished collaging my scribblers, and now i am going to sleep.

oh! also, colin and i might be friends again. i can't say for sure, but it looks promising. that might be my most exciting news.

heyyy brother

so... i drove to calgary on friday. kelseydawn and i met up with a girl who worked for ghost river rediscovery, and who gave me a letter from the guyanese girl who wrote me a letter just before i left guyana (i wrote about it a while ago - if you're a new stalker or just a friend with a bad memory, go back a few months and read it). we spent the rest of the day hanging out on kensington and 17th ave., watching arrested development episodes on dvd, watercoloring, and eating tacos. the next morning we got up early and drove to canmore to go caving at "rat's nest cave." apparently, the cave has pack rats, which was surprising to us because we had believed alberta to be "rat free." also, "dutch elm disease" free. these beliefs, i suppose, developed over years of driving west out of lloydminster and seeing the "prevent dutch elm disease" signs. also, a boy in my high school class used to call saskatchewanites (?) "ratlanders," supposedly because WE didn't have rats. anyways. a surprise.

i had been caving before, and kelsey hadn't, but this time was pretty different from the last time i went. a couple of times we had to clip onto ropes to avoid falling into 50-foot holes, and we also did a 60-foot rappell at one spot. we crawled through some pretty tight spaces, but this cave had more tight vertical crawls, whereas the other cave i've been in had a really tight long horizontal crawl. kelsey and i tried to photograph ourselves enjoying the activity, but the combination of:
1. terrible lighting,
2. terrible photography skills, and
3. terribly unphotogenic girls
made for some pretty terrible pictures. we had a really good time, though, and it's really nice to have someone to do pseudo-"adventurous" outdoorsy activities with. we think our next activity might be dog-sledding in canmore.

after caving, i drove back to edmonton and hung out with joel alexander kelly. i sure do like that boy. we ordered pizza and watched "the life aquatic," which seems like a pretty mediocre night but after almost a year in relative isolation, it was really nice to do city-ish things with a real friend. later on we went to see jenni play at the velvet underground. i really like illfit outfit's new stuff, i've decided.

on sunday emily moved out of the apartment to a new place, and i actually got furniture and a place to call home for the first time in a year. new brown bed! new brown sheets! new brown curtains! thrilling.

on monday i had orientation. i am so excited for school. i signed up for a bunch of clubs and got a bunch of cute boys' phone numbers. part of that sentence is a lie. later on i collaged the front of some of my scribblers.

today i got my hair cut. i also saw richard, my favorite homeless man, waiting for the bus outside the movie studio. i talked to him for a bit, which was pretty exciting because i haven't seen him in over a year. i've been working on mix tapes for the last few days. also, i finished handsewing the 4 pink moose onto the outside of one of my grey bags.

tonight i think i'll be staying here

after this weekend, i was pretty much convinced that life couldn't get any better, when it threw me A WHOLE BAND MADE OUT OF JASON SCHWARTZMAN. i'd rather italicize that, but my computer doesn't let me and i don't know HTML. anyway. kelsey made me a mix cd this weekend, and it had some coconut records songs on it, and i fell in love with them without knowing the band is almost entirely jason schwartzman. swoon. i will write more on my magical weekend later.