remember the grade 6 kid from this post? well, i found his "newsletter", and if you look back on the posts of october 2007, you'll find the ones where he interviewed the weakerthans, like i wrote about. his blog is crazy! and he's 11 years old!

i will post more about my life soon. a lot and nothing is happening. don't worry.

i haven't got a licence but i've got a lot to say

Sunday, April 6: Emily met me at Three Bananas Café at about 12:20 for lunch. I had wanted their pesto chicken panini, but they didn't have any that day, so I had to settle for a chicken pizzette. I like pizza, but it's kind of a hassle for me to eat, because I don't like cheese and I always have to pick it all off before I eat it. Not a date food. After our hangout, Emily headed to the south side of the city for some modeling thing. Ugh. I don't know how my sisters and I can be related. Both of them are vain and love modeling and stuff like that. I hate hate hate having my photo taken.

So, I asked the boy that I met at Good Earth Café last week if he wanted to meet me for a haiku-writing match. He said yes (in a haiku), so things looked promising. In my mind, this was a date. And a pretty good idea for one, at that! I thought it was a good blend of our interests (both former English majors), as well as something creative, as well as something where awkward silences were not only okay but actually INVITED as a form of creative reflection. I should write a date book or something. We met at the downtown library, and I brought my typewriter because typewriters are awesome and typing haikus on typewriters is even awesomer. So we walked over to the Citadel to sit by the little man-made waterfall amongst the trees, and started writing haikus. Disastrous things included: his decision to complement the nicest jeans I have ever seen a boy wear with the most giant, hideous green winter/rubber boots. What was he thinking? Also, his writing style was NOT my style, and I don't think we really got each other. Oh well. Talking at Second Cup was nice, though. I went home afterwards and worked on my NS 211 critical bibliography all night. It ended up being 19 pages long, but I finished it, which was really all that mattered.

Monday, April 7: I had good intentions of volunteering at the Bissell in the morning, but my brain felt really fried after writing that critical bibliography all night, so I decided to stay at home and mentally recuperate for a few hours before I began my Ecological Anthropology essay. I also walked over to CSL House to drop off my application for the Non-Profit Board Student Internship. I went there later on to talk to my CSL instructor about my final essay for her class. I had Cree at 2:00, where I found out I had gotten 97% on my oral autobiography presentation from last week! I spent the rest of the night working on my Ecological Anthro essay. It's actually a really exciting essay, because I am talking about the Iwokrama rain forest , which I learned a lot about firsthand when I lived in Guyana last year. A lot of their practices would be really beneficial to Alberta, I think. They use partnerships between government, private sector businesses and Indigenous communities to sustainably manage and protect 1 million acres of pristine rain forest, while also creating ecologically and culturally sustainable economic development. Sounds like a good idea? It is.

Tuesday, April 8: My NS 211 class had a little research colloquium where we all got to talk a little bit about our research projects. I really love doing things like that, and I've only been in one or two other classes that have done it before. It's neat to hear what other people are working on, and to share what I've put a lot of time and effort into. Afterwards we met with one or two other people who were working on topics relating to ours, and had a little bit more in-depth discussion with them. Neat. In NS 390, we talked a little bit about needs assessments for communities. In Cree we just did some review, and in Ecological Anthropology, we did the same thing as we did in NS 211, meeting with other people in the class to talk about our papers, and then doing a larger, informal presentation to the whole class about what we'd been working on. Fun. I spent the rest of the night working on my Ecological Anthro essay.

i will throw my tapes away, 'cause this will be the one worth saving

Saturday, April 5: I started the day with a little training session/meeting at the Legislature. I was antsy because it took longer than it had been scheduled, and to make things worse, my supervisors told me that because I was going to Nova Scotia for 5 or 6 weeks in the summer, they would have to hire someone to take my place and I would therefore not have a job there in the fall. Boo.

Confession corner: I have a little bit of an addiction to awkwardness. I really like being in awkward situations. My parents have always been a little overprotective, and have therefore never really allowed me to engage in extreme sports or any other other form of adrenaline manipulation through physical activity. As a result, I've learned to get my kicks from extreme emotions. Anyway, I joined a dating website a few weeks ago because (a) my best friend had, and (b) meeting good boys is hard! At first, I was pretty embarrassed about it, but I have since decided that it is pretty much the most entertaining thing of all times. The way I look at it, only three things can really happen: 1. You meet the boy/girl of your dreams, 2. You go on dates with people, which can really only be nice and comfortable or painfully awkward, both of which seem extremely appealing to me, or 3. You get messages from idiots who appear to be only semi-literate and obsessed with their 4 x 4s, motorcycles, Oilers games, etc., and you can tell your friends stories about these dudes and have a good laugh at their expense. High fives all around. So, getting back to the story I haven't actually even started yet: I had been talking with this one dude for, like, a week or two over the internet. Nothing intense, just a few messages about Weakerthans albums and how awesome it is to live in the part of the city we both live in. He said on his profile that he wasn't interested in a long-term relationship, and neither am I, so he seemed like a really perfect candidate for something I'd been wanting to do for a long time. I asked him if he wanted to meet me and go for a hand-holding walk, and if we could continue not telling each other our names through it. Right away, he got how awesome and awkward it would be, so we decided to meet at Garneau Elementary School at 1:00. We held hands and walked around the river valley and Whyte for about an hour and a half, stopping at the Farmers' Market for some vegetables and perogies. We said goodbye near his house and haven't spoken since. It seemed so nice and innocent. I really love things like that. Not telling each other our names seemed to make the whole thing, like, quieter or softer or something. Plus, hand-holding is awesome!!! I had good intentions of going to the Edmonton Flea Market later that day, and an Illfit Outfit show in the evening, but I was just too tired. I stayed at home and worked on essays.

we'd better run 'cause i haven't got the funds to pay this fine

i'm just importing these from my NS blog. excuse the capitals.

Monday, March 31: Instead of going to volunteer at the Bissell, I spent Monday morning working on essays. I went to school early to pick up an awesome typewriter that Joel had bought for me over the weekend. On the way to Joel's office in CAB, I ran into Emery in FAB. I really like running into people I know. I like feeling like I am part of a community. I had Cree at 2:00. Our class started our Cree autobiography presentations that day. I spent the rest of the day doing essays.

Tuesday, April 1: I did my Cree autobiography in class. I think it was the first Powerpoint presentation I have ever done in my life, which is pretty sad. I like giving presentations, so it was pretty enjoyable for me.

Wednesday, April 2: In my CSL class, we exchanged drafts of our final papers for peer editing. I don't like having other people read my stuff. I suppose it was a good exercise, though. While my group was out in the hallway of the Humanities Centre, Shannon walked by and we talked for a bit. She is going to start coming to Wednesday night crafting at Steeps, which is nice. After class I walked with my classmate Meaghan down 112th, and then I went to Steeps, where Becky and Jessie were waiting. I had brought Jessie's typewriter with me to bring it back to her, because I had gotten one of my own. Instead of crafting, I just typed haikus, borrowing lines from our conversation. Shannon and her husband Jeremy joined us around 5:00, but Jessie had to leave then to go to Cree class at the Native Friendship Centre. The rest of us left at around 5:45. I went home to work on essays. My mom called me to tell me that she had received a letter saying I had gotten into the French immersion program in Nova Scotia that I had applied for! Exciting!

Thursday, April 3: Thursdays are the days I have 8.5 hours of class, so I just did that all day. We handed in our art projects for our Contemporary Aboriginal Art class in the evening. My instructor was really supportive of my work. I did a 4 part piece. One part was a large knitted raven; one part was stretched canvas with an image of a Ukrainian woman lying on some bare soil and some ravens underneath; one part was sewn like a tipi front, and had art tools (paintbrush, pencil, etc.) keeping the buttonholes together, and had some hand-embroidered words near the bottom of it; and the last part was an acrylic paint/acrylic gel transfer/photocopies collage on hardboard. I was pretty happy with it, and pretty proud after my instructor's reaction.

Friday, April 4: Shannon and I hung out at Good Earth Café at 10:00. She told me that she had applied for the French immersion thing in Nova Scotia as a backup in case she doesn't get the summer job she wants. I hope that she gets the job, but I also hope she doesn't. It would be fun to hang out with her and learn French on the coast for a couple of weeks. I went to the elementary school to work at the noon hour, but it turned out that the schools were on spring break. Nice! I met my NS 211 prof at Pembina Hall to go over some entries from my critical bibliography for that class, and then I went to my Cree lab at 2:00. I spent the rest of the night working on my critical bibliography.