i went to vancouver yesterday because:

(a) kelsey was going to be there with paul so that paul could go to a dentist there,

(b) i try to get out of victoria as much as i can, and

(c) vancouver has cheap and delicious food that victoria does not have, and i have been living on a diet of toast, pasta, oatmeal cookies, orange juice, and rice for far too long.

low points of the trip include:

(a) the six early-twenties assholes on the ferry on their way to a gwar concert or something (or at least, that's what shelby and i deduced after seeing them pose together while yelling "gwar!" in unison outside of the taxi van they were getting into), who were loud and obnoxious during the ferry ride while shelby and i were just trying to get some reading done for school.

(b) waiting outside in the rain for an hour and a half in the morning because kelsey and paul are not good mass transit navigators.

(c) the 150 junior high school kids on the ferry back to victoria, who (1) were running and shouting all over the ferry, and (2) were the perfect captive audience for some guy with pouffy red hair, who played interactive songs on his mandolin, singing in an accent that was a mix between pirate and english soccer player, getting the kids to yell things in unison and jump up and down to the rhythm of his music.

(d) missing one of my connecting busses in victoria by seconds - and only because i couldn't cross the street in time because there was traffic - and having to wait an extra half hour for the next bus, making my total traveling time from downtown vancouver to my home total 5.5 hours.

highlights of the trip:

(a) seeing kelsey.

(b) talking with kelsey for four hours and not running out of things to say.

(c) eating $2 pizza from uncle fatih's - the best pizza place i've ever been.

(d) getting lamb roti wraps from east is east, which, to my surprise, included side salads (i got two orders so i could take some home, so i ended up with two salads) AND the tiniest side soups ever. see picture. i wish more places would give me 2-ounce side servings of soup more often.

(e) this isn't part of my trip, but my landlord just said he'd knock $150 off my december rent because i'm leaving halfway through the month. best landlord ever! if you ever want to live in this city (although i don't know why anyone would), let me know and i'll put you in touch with these people. seriously, they're the best. they were the best even before they gave me a sweet discount on my rent.

i've realized that most of my posts recently have pretty much entirely focused on justin, and how handsome and wonderful he is, and what sorts of things we do together. i guess i should remember that most of the people reading this (if anyone actually reads it anymore) do not know justin yet, and they are maybe tired of reading about someone they don't know.

okay. so here are some things about just me:

i am pretty much hating it in victoria. i really hate my program and the classes i am forced to take through it. i should probably not be posting this on the internet, but... i dunno. i wanted to do a master's in museum studies, and i was also very interested in indigenous language revitalization. UBC offered a museum studies master's in anthropology, but since i didn't get in to that (and neither did any of the other students in my program, except for one, who for some reason chose here instead), i settled for anthropology here. that was a mistake. anthropology is not the right discipline for me. i minored in it during my native studies degree, but managed to avoid most of the theory and history of the discipline. i guess i assumed that it was pretty similar to native studies. nope. it seems like all we talk about is foucault and discourse and power/knowledge and bullshit academic concepts that either (a) don't actually matter to people in communities, or (b) could, and should, be rephrased in more accessible language. i feel (and am) obligated to continue this degree because of my funding, so my mild acts of resistance include posting this on my blog, complaining to my classmates, and being dismissive of academia in class. i am entirely unsure of whether i will be able to get funding for next year, which means that it is very likely that i won't be able to afford to finish this degree (since the major scholarship i have now is only available for one year of a student's life); i have hardly been able to speak with my supervisor, so i have no idea where i should go with my thesis or if it would actually be useful for communities at all; and i am not able to take classes i am interested in. however... next semester should be better, at least for the classes. i'm taking kwak'wala (a language spoken by the kwakwaka'wakw in northern vancouver island and the mainland near there) and minority language maintenance, both of which are through the linguistics department. and i just found out that i may be able to take classes at UBC through the western deans' agreement (which allows graduate students to take classes at universities other than their home institutions, but pay tuition only to their home institution). i spend ALL my time here reading and writing, so i haven't had any time to join any activities (for example, i really wanted to join a rowing club), and my classmates and i want to meet up regularly for crafting, but we all have too much homework to even allow ourselves to meet for a few hours each week. blah.

however... there are a few highlights:

1. i have been knitting. it's a sweater for justin, and it's about halfway done. i'm hoping to have it done by christmas.

2. i am really, really looking forward to christmastime. justin and i are both flying into edmonton on tuesday, december 14th, and we'll be staying for three weeks. i can't wait to see everyone and for justin to meet everyone i love (and for them to meet him)!

3. i'm living by myself for the first time ever, and it's awesome.

okay, so i am realizing that updates that are 3 months behind aren't really updates. i'll try to be more up-to-date, and i'll fill in the missing parts later.

justin was just visiting me in victoria for 2.5 weeks, but he left yesterday morning. boo. (either i am terrible at using blogspot, or it is a terrible program; in either case, i always have trouble getting my photos to line up the way i want them to, so i am going to separate my justin-visit post into several different posts so that i can put the pictures in easier.)

we have both been feeling sort of sluggish and out of shape lately - he has been spending most of his time working at the studio and not messengering, and i have been spending most of my time sitting and reading or writing inside, so one of the first things justin did when he got here was exercise by doing handstands.

the second day he was here, we went to the butchart gardens. my parents had taken me there when they came to visit over thanksgiving, and although i am pretty disinterested in gardens in general, the butchart gardens were amazing. i told my mom that justin would love seeing them (he has a fondness for flowers), and so she offered to give us a trip to the gardens as an early christmas present to us. so, we rented a car from the car share cooperative i just joined (!) and drove out to the gardens. the weather was sunny and warm and amazing.

(<---this picture is of justin with his rose thorn horn)

in case you don't know much about the gardens, here's the important information. the gardens used to be a limestone quarry and cement factory owned by a guy named robert butchart. once the good limestone had been quarried, his wife, jennie butchart, decided to turn the whole thing into a garden. the picture at the bottom of this post is of me and justin with the sunken garden in the background. the mound in the middle is a giant lump of limestone that wasn't a high enough quality to be quarried, apparently. this was my favourite garden, followed closely by the japanese garden - lots of bamboo and moss! anyway, if you happen to find yourself in victoria at some point, even if you are ambivalent to gardens/flowers like i am, you should totally visit the butchart gardens.