if you rescue me, i’ll be your friend forever

wednesday (the 12th) was busy! i worked at the elementary school at noon. it was a really cold and windy day, but there was enough snow that the kids could go sledding on the hill. they were so excited! my favorite kid told me, first, "look! i got a black sled! they're the fastest!" i asked him how he knew, and he said his friend told him. cute. then later he told me, "dude, check this out," and he tried to snowboard down the hill on his crazy carpet. i really like being called "dude" by grade 1ers. another grade 1 kid i really like kept asking me to push him down the hill, and we talked a little bit and i asked his name, and he told it to me, but said, "i know. it's really com-pili-cated." those kids are so great! after lunch i drove to whyte ave. so my car could get an oil change at southpark. while i waited, i took my work pants to whyte avenue tailors to get hemmed, and then i tried some clothes on at american apparel and ended up at second cup. when i went to get my car i found out that there's a leak with both the coolant and the oil, and that i should probably get 4 new tires. yeesh. it's a good thing i'm parking my car after christmas! after all that bizzz-ness i went home and... crocheted, probably? i don't remember. but i DO remember that i went to bethany's/bri's/natasha's at around 9:00 to watch "home alone" with them and joel. they had all gone out tobogganing, so when i got to their house, they weren't there, but a couple of girls i recognized were. one of them asked me, "hey, did you ever dress up as a dinosaur?" in fact, i had. at the last king's halloween dance i went to, i wore a children's dinosaur costume that i had essentially reconstructed into a short, tight green bodysuit with a tail and a bonnet-shaped green headpiece with spikes. nobody dance parties like i do. anyway, it was really really nice to hang out with old friends and reunite with mccauley caulkin and be inspired by the craftiness that goes on in that house. i drove myself home after the movie.

on thursday my anthro 474 class used our scheduled final exam time to go through the last batch of class presentations. since i had done mine earlier, my day was pretty stress-free, so i basically just went to listen and support my classmates. i skipped out on one presentation, though, because i needed to eat breakfast (which consisted of granola, apples, grapes, and strawberry yogurt, eaten in the 14th floor lounge of tory building). in that same area, i saw a poster that may or may not change my academic career. there was an advertisement for a class called CSL 300: theory and practice of community service learning. i did some internet research when i got back to my house that day, and found that the u of a offers a community service learning certificate to students who take a couple of specific courses in their academic careers. it seems like a really amazing interdisciplinary academic approach to community development, so i wrote a few e-mails and managed to switch a couple of courses around so that i could take csl 300 in addition to the other five courses i've already registered in for next semester. i can't wait!

anyway... inspired by bethany's newest spraypainting craze, i bussed to the whyte ave. value village to look for old table lamps to paint. i found a perfect one and bussed back home, stopping at sub (to pick up a "change in circumstance" form for student loans - i was, for some reason, sent a pretty significant "institutional opportunities bursary" from the u of a... yay!) and rutherford library (to pay a $22 fine i had garnered when i mixed up some dates in early december - ugh). after that, i drove down to south edmonton common, where i picked up a couple of matching lampshades and some high-efficiency lightbulbs from ikea and some black spray paint and plastic drop cloth from home depot. deserving notable mention is the fact that there is a new "fatburger" in south edmonton common, which will be opening tomorrow (december 18th)! what a thrill. anyway, i was disappointed to learn that fatburger was not actually open when i was there, but that feeling wore off quickly when i got home and got to work on my lamp. i snuck into the back garbage area inside of my apartment building, laid down my drop cloth, and spraypainted the base of my lamp black. that seems pretty simple and boring, but lemmetellya, it was pure awesomeness. i need to work a little on my spraying technique, but the lamp seriously looks sooo hot now, and it's really good to finally have a little bit of illumination in the far corner of my living room. now i am assessing everything in my apartment based on its spraypaintability. i spent the rest of the night reading at home alone, mostly because i wanted to bask in the awesomeness/light of my new lamp. i also found out that day that i had gotten 94% on the archaeology final i had written on tuesday. genius!!!

on friday i got a text from emery pretty early in the morning. he asked me if i could help him move some boxes from his old place on the west end to the new place he was moving into, like i had offered earlier in the week. i said sure, because i had nothing else to do all day and because i know how much moving sucks, especially when no one's around to help you and you don't have a vehicle. anyway, we moved his stuff and were done by about 1:00, so i dropped him off at the bus stop and then went to safeway so i could buy some orange juice and fruit and bread and soup. i came home but then decided to go to latitude 53 to see some of the work that visual communication design/industrial design students, including emery and a few other people i know, had on display. the gallery was nearly empty, which made the experience infinitely more enjoyable for me than it would have been had a lot of people been around. after latitude 53, i stayed at home all night and ate chicken noodle soup and read my anthropology textbook.

on saturday morning i studied anthro a bit more, and then went to work at the ledge from 11:45 until 5:15. when i came back to my apartment after work, i ran into my ex-boyfriend/sometimes good friend/sometimes bad friend trent. it was really good to see him this time. we hung out at my place for a little bit, and then walked to subway for supper. then he walked me to lister hall, where i met up with joel and bethany at joel's chemistry grad students' christmas party. joel had made promises of a good dance party, so i came. the night provided good food, great company, and mediocre to lame DJing. as a combined result of the playlist and my need to study for my two finals coming up on monday, i left early. but not without feeling appreciation for the invitation.

on sunday (the 16th) i studied all day for my native issues and insights final, and then i had to work at the legislature from 5:30 until 9:30. luckily, i was allowed to work in the gift shop all night, which meant that i could spend most of my time studying and typing up study notes. i got home around 10:00, and right away got a phone call from my friend jonathan, who i am going to visit in rosebud, alberta on thursday. we had what i would consider to be the most enjoyable phone conversation i've had in months. i'm excited to go visit him. he is one of the most positive people i know, and really creative and bright and unpretentious. i feel like we have a really old friendship, but we totally don't. we worked at camp together six years ago, but never talked then, and were kind of reintroduced last new year's. we've only hung out twice since then, but we've sent each other some letters, which seems like a solid foundation for a friendship. anyways. i am ready. friendship, here we come.

on monday the 17th i wrote my native studies final, and i don't think i did very well on it. afterwards i walked to the tory building to pick up a paper, only to find that it hasn't been graded yet. it's frustrating that i don't really have any idea what any of my marks are. i walked home and studied a bit for my anthropology final, in between watching trailers of "the science of sleep" to make me feel good. i wrote my anthro final at 2:00, and at the end, received the graded paper i had written for the class. the t.a. who had marked my paper said, "you did a very good job" when she handed it back to me. i expected an 80%-90% range for my mark. when i opened my paper, i saw that i had gotten 100%! an a+! what a good end to my semester. i bussed down whyte to pick my work pants up from the tailor's, and then walked home. i got ready for work, and worked at the legislature from 5:30 until 9:30. for the first half of my shift, i worked in the gift shop and crocheted a mitten for my mom. for the second half of my shift, i served hot chocolate to members of the public who were listening to a choir sing. highlights of that time include:
-hearing "carol of the bells" sung twice;
-serving hot chocolate to a boy i kind of have a celebrity crush on; and
-being allowed to take home two potted poinsettia plants from the legislature. what a day!
after work, i tried to calm my sister down about the comparative lit. final she is writing tomorrow. we talked a little bit about milton and blake and frye, and it made me really miss those guys. as a result, i spent the rest of the evening reading the songs of innocence/experience instead of watching "the science of sleep" and crocheting mittens, as i had originally planned.

this is a long, long post. sorry!