highlights from the last week:

-i learned his name.

-the boy from the train told me that he started sewing a pair of pants for himself, and that he drafted the pattern for himself using the 3D software at his work. (he's a mechanical engineer who builds trains.) so awesome.

-i finished knitting a sweater for myself. i don't love the neckline, though, so i might change it.

-i finished my editing course, which means from now on i will have real weekends, rather than saturdays taken up by class. yahoo!

-i learned in my editing class that it's totally legitimate for editors to charge $45-$80/hour for their work. helloooo, fallback plan.

-i got two new part-time jobs. one is through my own faculty, and the other is through the department of civil engineering and involves editing. i am not charging $45/hour. not even close. BUT both jobs can be done from home, or from cafés with wireless internet where handsome boys work...

-my mom brought me my duvet. now my nest on the dining room floor is considerably more cozy and warm.

-i started building a bike for myself, with a lot of help from my new-ish, wonderful-ish friend leila at the edmonton bicycle commuters' society.

-i had nice hang outs with nathan, natasha, becky, jessy-j, and leila. they looked like this: (nathan, natasha, & becky), (jessy-j & leila), (leila), & (jessy-j).

-i went to a round dance at the u of a and saw some neat peeps i was in native studies classes with last year. it was good to see them.

-a phone call from my longest-distance friend.

not so great things about the week:

-racial tensions within my faculty. quelle surprise.

world, i have a new crush. it's sort of a relief to find i can still be physically/emotionally attracted to boys. i don't know his name yet, but he works at my new favourite restaurant in edmonton (favourite because it packages its take-out meals in biodegradable corn-based plastic containers; uses only hormone-free, free-range meat; is super close to my work; and is well-lit - i hate eating in dimly lit places). and last week, when i went to pick up some supper & some frozen yogurt, the frozen yogurt machine stopped working right when it started to grind up the fruit together with the yogurt. so this boy checked the breaker and pulled out this big moveable counter to try to plug the machine in, but it still didn't work. then he gave me a refund. then, as i was walking down the street past second cup on jasper ave., i heard footsteps running behind me. i turned, and it was that boy, running through the snow in his t-shirt, with a cup of frozen yogurt in his hand. "it started working right after you left!" haha. i told him i'd come pay for it, but he said it was no problem. ha. so maybe it is their great customer service that has prompted me to go there six times in the last week. maybe it's not the handsome dark-haired boy who works there. who really knows? anyway, i think it's entirely possible to start a relationship through frequent, "casual" drop-ins to someone's place of employment. right? it worked for some people.

see also: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/good_looking_one_not_working_today

the latest excitements in my life are that i sewed my first denim garment (a men's jumpsuit - ha!) and have fallen in love with how easy denim is to sew, AND i put my first fly zipper into my first pair of real pants (ie. not sweatpants/pyjamas): some surprisingly hot purple-red silk jeans-style pants. sounds gross, right? no. they are so rad. i'll post pictures or a link when i'm allowed to (they're both for work, and part of my boss' summer 2010 collection, which will be shown in april at edmonton fashion week).

because i've become so enamored with denim, and increasingly conscious of how bad non-organic cotton is for the environment*, i've been trying to find organic cotton denim but can hardly find it ANYWHERE. but i contacted a few girls on etsy who use organic denim, and they recommend a few places to buy online. whew. seriously, if you can avoid buying non-organic cotton, do it. there are quite a few places that sell organic cotton t-shirts and denim jeans and stuff. and make sure you're paying fair prices for the labour too. being paid a fair wage for sewing garments myself makes me feel pretty strongly about this. so no more h&m or urban outfitters (or their affiliates), okay?

*"Cotton is considered the world's 'dirtiest' crop due to its heavy use of insecticides, the most hazardous pesticide to human and animal health. Cotton covers 2.5% of the world's cultivated land yet uses 16% of the world's insecticides, more than any other single major crop.
Aldicarb, cotton's second best selling insecticide and most acutely poisonous to humans, can kill a man with just one drop absorbed through the skin, yet it is still used in 25 countries and the US, where 16 states have reported it in their groundwater." (taken from http://www.ota.com/organic/environment/cotton_environment.html, which paraphrases the EJF article linked above)

i haven't posted for two months because what comes next chronologically was the best, followed by the worst time i had in DC. both are, embarrassingly, boy-related. but i'll skip over them for now and write about them later. now i will write about christmas until the present.

for christmas my fam and i went to jasper for a few days, largely because my mom hates cooking and looks for excuses every second year to not cook christmas dinner for my immediate family and my dad's parents. for two of those days, my dad, emily, and i went to marmot basin to ski, snowblade, and snowboard, respectively. my dad's a pretty good skier, and emily and i improved a lot compared with how we started out, but we're still not very good. i've always been too scared to go on my toe edge because i don't want to catch my heel edge and break open my head, but i made myself practice those two days and now i can turn both ways onto my toe edge and back, although i can't go very fast when i do it. hooray, self.

i spent the days after christmas at my parents', finishing up the quilt i've been working on for myself for the last two years, knitting a sweater for kelsey (kels, e-mail me a picture of you wearing it so i can replace this one of me wearing it), visiting my lovely grandparents, and helping my dad make me some room divider screens for my new place in edmonton. also, kelsey and paul and i hung out at sammy's (a sort of sketchy ice cream/burger place in vermilion) and then at my house for a bit, and watched "tokyo!"

my parents drove me up to edmonton on the 30th with a truckload of stuff to make a comfortable living space for me. they convinced me to live with my sisters in the condo my parents bought a year or two ago, so that they wouldn't have to find someone new to live there when alyssa moves out in mid-february to do her practicum at home. so... i've been living in the dining room and sleeping on the floor since then. BUT i have my brand-new quilt to keep me warm, and all my craft and sewing supplies close by, and it's accessible so that the people i love can drop by easily, so i am happy.

i spent the last day of 2009 making CD sleeves with landon at my place for the four songs he just recorded. it was an unexpected hangout, but pretty great. nathan also came over in the afternoon and we played nintendo and talked. i spent new year's eve alone in my apartment (the third time i've done so on a new year's eve in four years), writing letters and crafting. it was perfect.

i spent the first day of 2010 drinking tea with darcy, and continuing the CD assembly line with jessy, landon, and jonathan.

the rest of 2010 so far has included lots of crafting (with jessica, kim, natasha, and nathan, mostly), a little bit of other sorts of hanging out (skating with nathan and alex, farmers' market-ing with nathan, movie-watching with alex, blueberry crumble at the high level diner with dr. e, ), crushing on tegan & sara with my sister at their concert, a little bit of computer work (on my cree books, on my application for grad school), wishing my gido bill a happy 90th birthday (!), and a lot of work. i'm working at a couple of different places:
1. i spend most of my working hours in a studio on jasper ave. and 104th, sewing for a young designer who won the emerging designer competition at the last edmonton fashion week. it's sort of a dream job, since i'm learning a ton and get to spend most of my work hours alone. the designer is really kind and unpretentious and great to work for.
2. i'm back at the elementary school again this year, gettin' paid for tobogganing with kids and microwavin' their lunches. the kids are really rad and adorable, and i'm glad to be able to spend more time with them.
3. i'm still tutoring. in addition to cree, i'm also tutoring one human ecology class, and the mother of the student i tutor is paying me handsomely to help her navigate the internet. she knows i need money, and her generous heart always finds sort-of legitimate ways to keep me "employed."
4. i'm editing civil engineering master's students' papers. well, i did one while i was in new york, and although i haven't done any since then, i am supposed to start one next week. it pays well and i really enjoy it. in fact, that leads into one of two classes i'm starting this week:
1. an editing class! the faculty of extension is offering an 18-hour course on copy and substantial editing. i am starting it on saturday, and i am REALLY looking forward to it.
2. a pattern drafting class! this one is offered by central sewing. that starts tomorrow. i am really looking forward to it too.

this post has been brought to you by the prodding and the internet access of natasha.