so… the weekend of july 9-11^th was sort of life-changing. i built a bamboo bike in brooklyn. i fell in love.

a few months ago, jenni posted this article on facebook (or her blog, or something. i’m sure it was she who posted it, but i can’t find it now.) about the bamboo bike studio. it all seemed pretty amazing – learn to make something neat with my hands!? help support a program that builds sustainable economies in developing countries!? invest time and energy into building my own form of environmentally friendly transportation!? perfect. and seemingly unattainable for a broke albertan. …then i found out that they were offering ONE class while i was on the east coast for my DC internship, around the exact same time i found out i was awarded that handsome $17,500 scholarship. so, since i had already decided to spend about a grand on a new bike once i got to victoria (thanks to my scholarships), i decided to splurge and register for the workshop.

like i mentioned a few posts ago, i went to the studio about a month before my class, because i was in brooklyn at the time and wanted to talk to someone in person about all the things i wanted for my bike. sean, the boy i had originally been in touch with, recommended i talk to a boy named justin, explaining that justin “is the most empathetic bike designer i’ve ever heard of; in all our years together, I've seen him make countless great matches between people and bikes.” so i did. justin talked about the geometry of my bike, the issues with shipping the bike to victoria, and the possibility of building up an 8-speed internal hub (this becomes an important issue later in my story). i was really impressed by the boys’ combination of knowledge and unpretentiousness. they all just seemed really radiant (and handsome), which made me even more excited to build my bike (and steal glances at handsome boys). i continued to hassle sean with endless questions in between that visit and my actual workshop, and he was always very helpful.

okay. then, on friday, july 9^th, at 5:30 p.m., i got on the bus in DC for the 4-hour ride to new york. i arrived in NY around 10:00, and in the meantime, started having massive cramps. you know the kind. mine are debilitating. since it was late-ish and i had to be up early and didn’t have enough energy to go looking for acetaminophen or something, i just went to bed at the hostel (on the upper west side) as soon as i got there without taking anything. bad idea. for three hours, i couldn’t fall asleep because my cramps were so bad (and so bad that i couldn’t even get up to go downstairs to ask the front desk for any medicine). finally, around 1 a.m., some french girl came into the room and since she was the only one awake, i asked her if she had any medicine. she didn’t, but she VERY graciously offered to go downstairs to ask about some. she came back with some acetaminophen, and within 20 minutes of taking it, i was out. i was pretty thankful for the kindness of strangers.

i woke up at 6:00 the next morning so that i could shower and then take the train/walk to the bakery we were all supposed to meet at in brooklyn at 8:00. we sat around and waited for everyone and ate a bit of breakfast, and then headed over to the studio at 8:30 to get to work.

when we arrived at the studio, each of the six participants had a jig set up with just a seat tube, and their name written on masking tape on the jig.

our first task was to gluegun the top tube, bottom tube (not sure if that’s the right term), chain stays, and seat stays to the foam lugs. don’t worry—my bike is not gluegunned together. we just did that to hold the pieces in place while we did some other things.

after that, we spent maybe an hour shaping the foam lugs. that was the most fun and satisfying part of the whole process, i think. i was really good at it, if i do say so myself. there were four lugs to shape: (1) the one at the headtube, (2) the one at the bottom bracket, (3) the one joining the top tube to the seat tube, and (4) the one joining the seat tube to the seat stays. the headtube one was the most fun of all. we just used metal files to file away the extra foam. all the foam grit that came off got all over us, and worked like a pumice stone, making our skin super soft afterwards.

the combination of the final shape of the lugs, plus all the touching and feeling of the shaping and filing, made the process feel super sensual—something i was not really expecting. i make lots of things withmy hands, but none of those things have felt that sensual.after that, we used epoxy to cross a few pieces offiberglass over some key points on the lugs. an important, but not necessarily fun, step. i

THINK that after that, we went for lunch so that we could get some energy and let the epoxy dry a little bit before the next step. my workshop-mate dale invited me to eat lunch with him at fairway (a really fantastic nearby grocery store, next to the water and overlooking the statue of liberty), which was really nice. dale is an american who has been living in bangkok with his boyfriend for the last few years, and he was really easy to talk with and listen to.

when we got back, we started wrapping (i don't have any pictures of that, because it was too messy). ugh. wrapping lasted about six hours. the wrapping step consisted of first donning an apron, blue plastic shoe protectors, and latex gloves, and then creating a mix of… mmm, i think it was resin and hardener. i know the words “resin” and “epoxy” were thrown around, but i don’t really know the difference. anyway, the two things we mixed together started heating up very quickly after being mixed, so we had to be careful not to burn our fingers if we left our mix for more than 10 minutes or so. we created a lot of garbage with all our changes of plastic cups (to hold the epoxy) and latex gloves, leaving me wondering how “environmentally friendly” the process really was (upon further reflection, though, i concede that a few plastic cups is still mountains more environmentally friendly than other forms of transportation). anyway, we spent those six hours coating carbon fiber with the epoxy,

following sean’s four commandments of wrapping: keeping the carbon “wet, wide, tight, and crossy.” i decided early on that i didn’t like the look of the black carbon on the bamboo (it seems too jarring to me), so i chose to wrap some cotton twill tape over top of the carbon. that meant that the whole wrapping process took me considerably longer than it took anyone else.

fortunately, the studio boys were patient and helpful, and offered to do some of my wrapping for me so that i could keep up with everyone else. even still, i ended up finishing maybe half an hour or an hour after everyone else. it was 10:30, and i was exhausted and didn’t relish the thought of walking through a strange neighbourhood after dark with my laptop to get to the subway, so i sort of dropped some hints like “hey, does anyone know the number of a good cab company?” so that maybe someone would offer to walk me to the subway. justin one-upped me: he offered to let me stay at his place, a few blocks from the studio. even if he hadn’t been a handsome, fun boy, i would have still taken up the offer, because i was exhausted and my subway ride back to the upper west side would have taken at least an hour. before we went to his place, though, we went for a quick bite to eat with some of the other studio boys at a bar on his street. i think justin bought me a beer, and i tried my best to drink some of it without making a face, because i appreciated the gesture, but i could only finish about 1/3 of it before offering it back to justin. someone also bought me a sandwich, but i am still not sure if it was eben’s dad (who had offered to do so – oh, and eben is one of the other studio boys) or justin (who, if i recall correctly, was the one who brought the sandwich over to me). hmm. i sort of tried to half-thank them both, without it seeming weird in case either was NOT the one who bought the stuff for me. eek. anyway, after that, justin and i went to his place and i told him i would be happy to sleep on the floor in the living room, but he insisted i take his bed, partially because he had another friend coming over to stay the night, and she would be sleeping in the living room, and he thought it made more sense for him to sleep out there too. it was a very kind gesture, and that, coupled with the french girl who brought me acetaminophen the night before, made me very appreciative and mindful of the kindness of strangers.

the next morning, i didn’t see anyone sleeping in the living room, and justin had said right before he went to bed that he would probably sleep in his friend erik’s room, but since i saw some small shoes in the living room, i sort of assumed this friend he mentioned earlier was with him in erik’s room, and that they were “together.” i was a little bummed out, but there wasn’t much i could do about it, so i slipped out at 8:30 and headed to the studio.

my workshop-mates and i spent the morning filing and sanding the epoxy we had put on the night before, to make it rough for a second coat. that was the first time in the whole process that we could actually sit, and we all took advantage of that because we were so tired. my feet ached from so much standing the day before. after we put the second layer of epoxy on, we broke for lunch. everyone else sort of left as a group, and i was left alone, which is something i would usually seek out but for some reason it bummed me out that day. when we came back, there were some new people at the studio, and they put together most of our components for us. i was a little bummed out about that – i had sort of imagined that we would be more hands-on in that part. oh well. it probably would have taken an extra-long time if we all learned how to add all of our own components. oh, a very important thing to mention here is that somehow, the studio boys had forgotten (despite some e-mails with sean, and a face-to-face conversation with justin) that i wanted to put an 8-speed internal hub on my bike. as a result, they didn’t have all the parts available, and i had to choose between a singlespeed freewheel and a fixed gear.

earlier this summer, i had asked kelsey (my best friend, and a bike mechanic) what she thought i should include on my bike, and she enthusiastically told me i should make it a fixed gear. i sort of resisted the idea, saying that i would rather have this one be an 8-speed for victoria’s hills, and that i could always build up a fixed gear at a bike co-op later if i wanted.

however, due to the circumstances, i decided to try out the fixed gear, and we also made it a flip-flop hub so that i could use a freewheel if i wanted to. sorry if those aren’t the right terms for all that, err’body. i also told justin that one of the reasons i had been interested in putting in an 8-speed was because he had said – when we met in june – that he could teach me how to build the hub into the wheel, and i was very interested in learning that. he said that if i had time the next day before heading back to DC, he could teach me how to do it so that i could build one up myself in victoria if i wanted. he also offered to let me stay at his place again, i think because he knew how much of a hassle it was for me to get back to and from the hostel on the upper west side.

once most of the things were in place (i mean, like, handlebar grips were still missing), we took our bikes out for test rides. marty (one of the studio boys) seemed especially nervous that i had decided to go with a fixed gear, despite having never ridden one before. the boys gave me lots of good tips on what to be aware of, and so i took off… and fell in love! i had not expected to love my bike so much, and i had certainly not expected to love fixed gears that much. my bike is light, but it feels very strong and it doesn’t wiggle or squeak like many other bikes i’ve ridden.

the geometry on mine puts my body in a more upright position than the other boys’ bikes, and i love it because it is very comfortable. this bike is the smoothest i have ever ridden, even though it has skinnier tires than any other bike i’ve been on. the thing i like about the fixed gear is that, as i described to my friend joe, it feels like the bicycle equivalent of walking barefoot in the forest. i like that it makes me more aware of what my bike and my body are both doing.

after falling in love with my bike, i dreaded the idea of having to pack it up to ship it to myself in victoria, and not being able to ride it for the six weeks between that day and the day i arrived in victoria. i wanted to ride it as much as possible, so i asked justin and another shop boy, josh, if they wanted to go on a bike ride with me. my inaugural ride on my new bamboo bike was across the brooklyn bridge, up lafayette (stopping briefly at a bar where josh and justin’s friend works, so they could visit with him – justin and i shared a cranberry juice, and we left josh there with their friend), around central park – stopping at my hostel nearby so i could pick up my few things that were there and check out, down along the hudson river, and back along the brooklyn bridge. we talked about a mazillion things, but i think our best conversation centered around anthropology (justin majored in it in his undergrad; i minored in it in my last undergrad and will be doing a master’s in it in the fall). right around here, our conversation about native studies/anthropology became the point at which we now both agree we started falling in love with each other.

when we got back from justin’s, i was exhausted, partially from all that hard work making the bike, and partially from trying very hard to control my bike using only my pedals and not my hand brakes. i fell asleep on the kitchen floor while justin was showering, but he woke me up when he got out so that i could shower too. as i was about to go to sleep, he said something to the effect of: “i had a really nice time talking, and i’d like to talk some more, if you’re up for it.” so we stretched for a little bit in his room, and then we just spent the whole night lying on our stomachs on his bed, with just our shoulders touching, talking until the sun came up.

so. that’s the story of how i fell in love building bamboo bikes in brooklyn. more to come on the love part later.

(also, if you’re wondering about the girl who was going to sleep over at justin’s – the one i was worried he was “together" with – well, they’re not together. she likes girls, and i don’t think she even stayed over that night.)

also: here are some links, in case you'd like to learn more about the bamboo bike studio, build your own bike, or creep justin:

bamboo bike studio blog

video from CNN

so... there are much more interesting things than what i'm about to write about, but i like doing this chronologically, so there are some things i need to write about before i get to the really good stuff.

between june 22 and 24th, i was in st. louis for a conference this bureau was putting on. they're the ones that my work project is funded through. my main task there was to take notes during my coworker erin's presentation on language revitalization. i ended up having not much time at all to myself, though, because i was sort of required to be at all the breakfast/lunch/supper meetings that my boss went to, and all of them lasted between two and four hours. ugh. it was really nice to talk so much about something that i am so interested in, but... i definitely realized that that was NOT the kind of life that i want. in the little bit of time that i had to myself, i managed to sneak over to the gateway arch to check out the museum of westward expansion and the mississippi river. those are all pretty big (as in important, but also as in size) things. first of all, the gateway arch (that's a different link than the previous one): it's this giant steel arch, created to be a monument to westward expansion. (my coworkers and i thought it was pretty ironic that the bureau would choose to host its conference in the city that celebrates non-native people pushing into the west.) they offer rides in these scary little pods that take people up to the top, so you can see a view of the city. (and of course i did it. the view was mediocre, but the technology was neat.) at the bottom of the arch is the museum of westward expansion, which i thought would be way worse than it was. they did an okay job with the content, but i was really impressed with their layout. the museum was set up in a semi-circle, with visitors starting from the centre of the circle. from there, visitors could make their way around various circumferences of the circle, which each represented different decades, or could move outward from the centre, following one specific theme at a time. it was probably the best layout for a museum that i've ever seen. mmm, finally... i saw the mississippi. it was super flooded. i hope to spend some more time with it in the future.

anyway... the next day, my friend/former intern crush enrique texted me to say he was free. we hadn't really hung out at all since i got to DC this time, partially, i think, because things were a little awkward when i left, and partially because he has recently acquired a new girlfriend who didn’t feel good about him hanging out with me. i was a little nervous, because the last time we hung out, it left me feeling really deflated, but when he showed up at the museum to meet me, he gave me two giant hugs, which made me feel better about everything. we biked around downtown and he took me to amsterdam falafelshop in adams-morgan for my first-ever falafel. it was incredible! how have i been missing out this long? after that, we biked back to the mall (i.e., the national mall) to pick up his truck because it had to be moved, and we threw our bikes in the back so we could drive over to georgetown. he had never been there before, so i showed him around M street and took him to the aqueduct bridge, which would have made for a really romantic night if we were still into each other. haha. but it was nice to have the company anyway. as we were biking back to his truck in georgetown, we came across a car that was completely upside down on a super narrow street. apparently some 15-year-old girl was “drunk as a skunk” (to use the EMT’s words) and had crashed the car. good lord. it’s pretty lucky that we weren’t biking that street just a few minutes earlier. anyway, enrique offered to drive me home, which wasn’t necessary but was nice because it was late and i had to get up early the next morning, and my ride from georgetown to home usually takes about an hour.

the next morning, i woke up at 7:00 so that i could eat, get ready, and bike down to the mall for 10:00 for my volunteer shift at the smithsonian’s folklife festival. this year, they were featuring mexico, asian pacific americans, and the smithsonian itself. i was put on “recycling/sustainability,” which meant that i spent the entire day going through garbages with my bare hands to pull out recyclable pop bottles. yeesh. it wouldn’t have been so bad, except that there was no running water and soap on the mall, so any time i wanted to eat or use my hands, i had to walk over to one of the museums and stand in the bathroom line. blah. i left early and biked home for a shower and a nap. later on, enrique texted to invite me out to some bars in adams morgan with him and some of his friends from his hometown. since i had heard a lot about them, i went, and ended up staying out until 2:00, which is pretty much unheard of for me. it was pretty fun, and i really liked enrique’s friends, but man, i sure do hate bars and being around people who are drinking. i biked home and got back around 3:00, only to find that the front screen door – which is usually not locked – was locked. i didn’t want to wake anybody up, so i hoisted myself up over the back fence and crawled in to the backyard. it made me realize that i really, really like scrambling/climbing things, and wished that i did it more often.

blah, this is getting long and i am losing interest. okay. a few more things:
-i’ve been doing a lot of editing for civil engineering doctoral students. it has sort of been a pain in the ass, but it pays well.
-i went for twilight canoe tours on the potomac two separate times: once with my edmontonian friends brianna and julie; and once with my coworkers erin and sandra, and erin’s husband mike. i like canoeing. i especially like canoeing in the dark.
-i watched “don’t tell mom the babysitter’s dead” with brianna and julie at the outdoor rosslyn film festival. fun.
-i volunteered a second time at the smithsonian folklife festival – this time, counting people coming in to one particular entrance. i used the day to write letters and take advantage of the free food the smithsonian offered its volunteers. oh, and there was also this pretty amazing dance group from mexico, who performed one of the most joyful dances i’ve ever seen. here’s a video that totally doesn’t do it justice. apparently, the dance was started when indigenous people started to stand up to the spanish in mexico by dressing up like them and dancing a silly dance with their hips. cute.
-canada day: my favourite day of the year. i had to work, and i couldn’t be with any canadians i loved, so i biked down to the canadian embassy to hang out with the spirit of haida gwaii.
-4^th of july: i watched the fireworks with brianna and julie from the key bridge, and picked up a falafel on my way home. falafels on my way home quickly became a pretty integral part of my DC experience.

i found him.

some things that have got me feeling like a champion lately (in no particular order):

-i was biking past the sand volleyball courts that are down by the potomac river, in between the lincoln memorial and the kennedy centre, when one of the volleyballs started bouncing in big bounces over to me. while still biking, i kicked it perfectly back towards the people who were playing, and they all cheered for me. haha. it was awesome.

-my former coworkers at the museum were telling me about how there might be non-native people who will be trained to give tours at the museum. my coworkers said they were dreading it, but had specifically agreed in a staff meeting, and told me later, that "if someone like you were doing it, it would be okay. we love you!" that was probably one of the biggest compliments/validations of my life. confirmation that i can be culturally sensitive without appropriating anyone else's culture! that's exciting!

-a dreamy boy has been sending me lengthy letters lately.

-my core team at work now consists of four people: one full-time girl who just earned her ph.d., after spending a couple of years working with a language revitalization program in the northwest coast; and two other interns. one intern in a navajo woman working on her m.a. in social work, i think (i can't remember - she just arrived last week); and the other is an undergrad student who has been working with language revitalization programs with the passamaquoddy (an algonquian language - like cree!). we are a pretty awesome team. our skills are really complementary, we all have the same hopes for this project, we can voice our opinions and disagreements with each other without taking any of it personally, and we just laugh together a lot. i am bummed that i only have 2.5 more weeks left to work with them. we would be such a force if we worked together full-time. anyway, i've been walking on clouds because ALL those girls, whose work and perspectives i really admire and value a lot, have told me that they are very glad i am here and don't want me to leave because of what i bring to the project. wow! they are these bright, sensitive, hardworking women, who really understand the work that i want to do, and they see value in me! that's amazing!

-my boss, the full-time core member of our team, and i met the bureaucrat--who is actually a really neat, bright guy!--in charge of the project we are working on for this bureau (i don't like writing names of organizations, in case people do internet searches for them) last week, when we were in st. louis for the bureau's annual summer conference. we spent a considerable amount of time with him during breakfast/lunch/dinner meetings, and had really amazing conversations about language revitalization and education (he wrote his doctoral thesis on the boarding schools, and he's one of the top dogs in that bureau). it turns out that the guy really likes us and the work we've been doing, which is nice because: (a) i guess i never really consider myself that "fun," but he told us numerous times that hanging out with us was super enjoyable for him; (b) i think his support of our work means that he will continue to push the bureau to financially and... what? morally?... support more culturally-appropriate language revitalization in the states, which will likely trickle over to canada, and all of that is great in a myriad of ways; and (c) i think he will be a great contact to have for the work that i'm hoping to do for the next two years with my master's. it seems like sometimes the bureaucratic parts of his job really bog him down, but he was super interested and animated when we talked about our project. he didn't grow up speaking much of his family's languages (michif and ojibwe), so he's quite passionate about making sure that kids today have the opportunity to learn their heritage languages. that's exciting. i'm glad that there can be something in his job that he can be really passionate about.

-i came up with this really awesome rating scale/template thing for my job, to be used in assessing individual and class proficiency in oral language skills. it is awesome and (i think) culturally appropriate, and i feel really really good about it. everyone that we've shown it to seems to really like it too. i hope teachers and assessors will actually use it! let's talk about it in real life!

-my boss gave me a raise today, because he has been impressed with my work.

-friends have been kind and generous with their words lately, which is pretty special because my friends are amazing people.

in conclusion: i am a happy little clam.

here are some things i've done in the past few weeks:

-i went to new york (again). bus tickets are between $1 and $20 from here, so i am just trying to not pass up opportunities to go there. i found a place to stay in brooklyn, through

airbnb.com. basically, airbnb is a site that pairs up travelers with people who have a couch or air mattress available for travelers to stay on, for a price that's usually cheaper than a hotel

or hostel. i had a really good experience with the girls i stayed with, and i will probably do some

more accommodations arrangements through there in the future.

while i was in new york, i found an AMAZING stationery store (their website doesn't show their best stationery, but trust me, it's great); ate fruit and granola and yogurt for breakfast at my new favourite new york breakfast place; rented a bike and biked down broadway from central park to the brooklyn bridge, then across brooklyn bridge, then up along the hudson river; and visited the bamboo bike shop (more on that later).

-i've been playing kickball every wednesday on a league that plays in columbia heights. i joined it because I LOVE KICKBALL, but pretty much everyone on my team (and in the entire league) is more about the drinking afterwards (and even during the game) than the actual kickball. some of the girls just sit around and don't play any innings and just drink beers. ugh. by contrast, i keep begging my team to keep playing for fun even after the 5 innings that make up each game are done. yeesh. i'm planning on hosting some kickball games when i get back to edmonton, so hopefully they will be more kickball-focused than these ones.

-i've had some good hangouts with various new-ish friends, including:

1. a boy named joe, who i met over craigslist before i came to DC the first time, because i posted an ad there asking if anyone would be willing to write letters with me before i arrived in DC, and then be friends when i got there. so we hung out a bit when i was first here in the fall, and then we hung out again a few times. he's neat. he works in sustainable energy, and he's really bright and kind.

2. a boy named bryson, who i met over craigslist when i posted an ad for a bikeriding partner. he's probably the person i've hung out most with in DC. he's in the military - coast guard, i think - which is preeeetty strange for someone that i would associate with. but he is very bright, and a critical thinker, and he likes doing a lot of the same things that i do (biking, canoeing, going to airshows, and eating indian food), so he's good company.

3. my coworker lauren and her husband. they invited me over for dinner one day, and usually dinner parties make me pretty uneasy, but this one was really enjoyable. another older couple was there too, and we talked a lot about the american education system, which is pretty fascinating.

4. my former coworkers sharyl and adrienne, from the museum i used to work at. i met up with them and their boyfriends at the rosslyn film festival, where we watched cry-baby outside in a park. nice.

5. my coworker erin and her husband. we met up at the rosslyn film festival (on a different friday than the one i just mentioned) and watched mrs. doubtfire. ha.

6. some edmontonian girls named brianna and julie, who just moved to DC to do the same smithsonian internship program that i did the last time i was here. i hadn't known either of them until a really random connection a few months ago, but brianna and i have been facebooking each other so i could help the two of them get prepared for DC life. now that they're here, we've hung out a little bit, and i'm really glad to have them here. i'm hoping we'll get to hang out lots before i leave DC, and then lots again once we're all in edmonton. interestingly, my love jessica just got a job with them at blackbyrd (where they work when they are not in DC). neat.

i also had some good skype talks with nathan and claire, which made me feel not so alone.

i'm still biking a lot, which feels good but makes me constantly sweaty. that part makes me feel not-so-good.

i watched micmacs (which was directed by the same guy who did amélie). not quite as good as amélie, but it was still pretty visually pleasing.

here are the ways i've been spending my free time in DC:

-bike rides into downtown on the capitol crescent trail, which is about 20 kms each way

-visit to some of the european embassies when they all were having their open house day

-airshow! a few weekends ago, the nearby air force base put on an airshow, and i went both days. and it was so awesome. i love airshows. fighter jets (when they're not actually fighting anything) and magic shows are the two things that make me instantly giddy. i know it's trashy. the people narrating the performances made a TON of super pro-american, pro-military, crazy statements (like a pilot, saying over the radio from his cockpit as he spun through the air, "i'm about to say the three best words in the english language: god bless america!" and the woman narrating a helicopter demonstration saying (in a thick southern accent), "these, folks, are the people who protect our great american way of life"). good lord. i think there needs to be some deep, critical thought about whether the "american way of life" is even worth protecting. but i've got to admit, the rhetoric was almost convincing when it was coupled with the awesomeness of some of those jets and little planes. have you ever seen or heard about a harrier jet? it can STOP in the air, BACK UP, turn 360 degrees while hovering in one spot, and glide from side to side. i know it's MOSTLY just a useless trick (unless, of course, they have to take off and land somewhere that there is no runway... and a helicopter isn't around to do the same job...) and a huge waste of fuel, but... it was totally awesome. i went by myself the first day, and i met up with my new friend bryson there the second day. i ate hamburgers and drank coke and got a sunburn and just had a good time being a little more irresponsible (health-wise and intellectually) than normal.

-film festival! there's a place in arlington (just across the river from DC, and still easily accessible by metro or bike) that is showing 90s movies for free on an inflatable screen in a park on friday nights. i've gone once so far--to see "wayne's world," which i had never seen before--and i've been meaning to go since then but it keeps getting rained out. i'm hoping the next few fridays will be sunny so that the movies can be shown.

-new york trip! there are a couple bus companies that sell $1, one-way bus tickets between DC and new york. i went two weekends ago to hang out with my friend robin, who was leading RDC students on an art tour there. i mostly hung out in chelsea, but i did manage to sneak in a bike ride around central park. i'm going back to the city again this weekend, so hopefully i'll be able to spend a bike more time biking around manhattan. oh, and i also watched exit through the gift shop. it was really good, but also sort of

made me feel yucky in my stomach. you should watch it.

-tours of the capitol building and library of congress! at the latter, i saw one of the only three remaining full copies of the gutenberg bible printed on vellum (there are a number of other ones that are printed on paper). at the capitol building, the tour guide talked about how the painter of one of the murals on the inside of the dome (just under the windows in this picture) slipped while he was painting, and managed to grab onto something as he slipped, but had to just dangle in the air for 15 minutes until somebody saved him. yikes. he quit after that, and somebody else had to finish the mural. that day made me feel kind of strange, though. it's funny (in a strange way, not a hilarious way) to hear perspectives on "freedom"/democracy/history from some of these "official" institutions. the more i think about it, the formation of governments in "the new world" was just so ill-conceived. i mean, i don't necessarily think people had bad intentions (although some did). it just blows my mind that a bunch of men, with not much of a common background or a ton of knowledge/experience with how people work, just got together and decided how things would be run. someone has recommended that i read eric wolf's "europe and the people without history." i haven't read it yet, but i'm going to go ahead and recommend it to everyone else anyway. i think the western world's lack of a common history is probably what has created many of our biggest problems. ugh, that's so vague. let's talk about this in person instead. but on a similar, mind-blowing note, it was interesting to be in the library of congress and be re-immersed in a place that had such reverence for the written word. my native studies degree, and the work i've been involved/interested in regarding indigenous languages, sometimes really questions and even criticizes the value of the written word. my two degrees - english and native studies - sometimes feel conflicting. it was just nice to be back in the mindframe i was in when i did my english degree, i guess. i don't read a ton of books, mostly because i am too restless and because i just read so much academic lit. that i don't have the mental energy for more reading, but i miss talking/thinking about how wonderful literature is. hmm. i might edit this post later, because i am tired and this is not expressing exactly what i mean for it to say. but i thought i should post anyway, because i haven't for a while.

i'll write more tomorrow (hopefully), but the biggest, bestest recent news is that i officially found out yesterday that i was awarded a pretty substantial scholarship by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada (SSHRC). i was ALSO told that i would get to keep the money that UVic has already offered me. together, it's more than enough to cover my tuition, accommodation, food, and travel (including a few trips back home to edmonton) for the next year. PLUS... i think i'ma treat myself to a brand new bike with some of the leftover cash. i haven't picked one out yet, but i'm dreaming of having a super light road bike frame, about 10 speeds (leila recently scoped out victoria for me, and said that's how many speeds she would like on a bike if she lived there), hybrid-style tires, hybrid-style handlebars, and a back rack with panniers. i think that would pretty much cover all of my biking needs for commutes to school and possible weekend trips on paved trails. i guess i'll have to figure out if all those things are doable/practical/desirable. is there anything that you have or do not have on your bike that you wish you did (or didn't) have?

so... DC is awesome. it's better than i remembered it, and as you may recall, i had some pretty strong feelings for it when i left last time. but my experience this time is a LOT different. i'm living in a neighbourhood called friendship heights in the far northwest quadrant of DC. it's the furthest neighbourhood you can go in the NW before crossing DC's border into maryland. i'm working at a place that writes testing materials for second language assessment, and the project i'm working with has to do with developing an oral test for speakers of the lakota language. the lady i'm living with (i'm renting a room in her house) has very graciously offered to let me use her 21-speed bike for free while i'm living with her, which is AMAZING. i have been biking like crazy. seriously. i bike to and from work every day, which is a little over 25 kms, round trip. then, on the weekends, i usually bike around 40 kms (20 kms into downtown DC, along the georgetown branch bike path, and 20 kms back) every day. today i'm not going downtown, though, because i went on friday and yesterday, and i just want to stick around home and knit. so that equals around 175-200 kms a week! my thighs are hard proof of that. it feels really good to get out and see the city and use my body so much. however, using my body so much means i have to eat a lot more, so my pants are feeling a bit tight around the waist. eek. i've gotten pretty good at riding without my hands, a skill i had developed when i was young but lost during that period of 10 years or so when i wasn't biking. i've also developed a few bad habits, namely, listening to my ipod with earphones and eating tortilla chips out of my back basket. also, i've been finding that DC drivers are crazy/assholes. i almost got hit once when i woman was pulling out into an intersection (i had the right of way), and another time, i accidentally ended up on a parkway that i couldn't get off of, and so i was trying to pedal as fast as i could, but the drivers behind me still got agitated, and one lady leaned out her window and yelled "bitch!" at me as she passed me. yeesh. people sure don't like anyone slowing them down, even for a second.

other than biking, i spend a lot of time knitting. i'm finishing up yet another icelandic-style sweater for myself. i made a ton in the fall/winter (maybe 5? that feels like a ton), but they were all out of really bulky wool. i mostly prefer the look of the very first one i did, with much thinner yarn and smaller needles, so that's the kind that i'm making now. i'll post pictures when it's done. this one is taking a lot less time than that reddish one i made, because last fall i got really good at knitting without looking at what i'm doing. now i can go into a movie theatre and knit in the dark, which is a pretty handy skill.

every saturday, i've been going to the museum i used to intern at to visit my former coworkers there. man, i love that place.

i've been watching more movies than normal. i went to see greenberg, oscar-nominated animated shorts, and toe-to-toe (shot in DC!) at various nearby theatres; wayne's world at the rosslyn film festival (they'll be playing movies from the 90s every friday night all summer, on an outdoor inflatable screen, for free!); and i just watched the blind side on my computer. i've also gone through all the episodes of glee. i don't even like it all that much, but it's nice to have something familiar to watch.

my work has been... frustrating. everybody's pretty nice at my work, but a lot of what i am doing involves reading articles and writing abstracts and an introduction/description of methodology for an annotated bibliography and literature review. we're in an early part of the project, so this is sort of foundational work that needs to be done before they move on to the stuff that i am really interested in. the topic (aboriginal languages) is interesting to me, but when i agreed to the position, i guess i hadn't been under the impression that i would be doing so much academic writing for such little pay, and without much direction. i guess that's the way internships always are, though. i should know that by now. i'm really excited about the possibility of HOW this project could turn out, but i'm not entirely convinced that it will turn out the way i envision it. i mean, it's exciting to have an opportunity to actually put my native studies degree to use, and try to do things that have historically been done in a bad way, in a good way. i'm just grumpy because i'm so sick of writing. i hate writing. i would much rather be editing. (and yes, i know that this blog makes it seem like i would be a terrible editor. i'm not. i just write the way that i would talk on here.) once in a while, i get to do some editing, and i am a happy little clam.

it's mostly sunny here, and two weekends in a row i have gotten little sunburns. it's nice to be outside so much. i think this is the first summer than i have been outside so much.

hmm. what else. i've been taking advantage of the multitude of frozen yogurt places in DC. i've said it before, and i'll say it again: frozen yogurt is the new cupcake. so hip. so good. (there are lots of cupcake places in DC too, and luckily, my favourite one is in my new neighbourhood.) i would split yogurt places up into three categories: "normal" places (like dairy queen or yogen fruz) that sell standard frozen yogurt, sometimes with frozen fruits blended into the yogurt; european-style places (which serve tart/tangy yogurt - which is apparently european (?) - with a choice of fresh fruit or candy toppings, for a fixed price for each topping); and self-serve pay-by-weight places (which usually have between 6 and 20 different flavours of yogurt (vanilla, birthday cake, tiramisu, red velvet...), plus about 20 kinds of toppings to choose from (fresh fruit, oreo pieces, nuts, candy, fruit loops...)), which are pretty self-explanatory. the latter kind is my favourite, and luckily, there's a really good place that sells yogurt that way right in my neighbourhood. i like to load up on a bunch of different fruits with some vanilla yogurt.

on a related note, companies in DC sure know how to market to the hipster crowd:

(this is a "company bike" (like a company car, i guess - you can see the name on the frame) parked outside the company's salad/frozen yogurt place in dupont circle.)

that's enough detail for now, yeah?

hey friends.

i should post about my last few days in edmonton before i tell you about DC.

well, in the last days of march, i spent most of my time sewing. nathan came over to the studio a couple of times to keep me company, and on one of those days, we went over to the downtown theatre afterwards to catch the late showing of tim burton's alice in wonderland. i love tim burton, and i love alice in wonderland in general, and i loved johnny depp, so it was mostly pretty good. there were a few things i didn't like though, like all the jabberwocky business. come on. i just wish all movies would cut out action scenes. they're a boring waste of time, and i like my movies to go no longer than an hour and a half. although nathan and i just biked to remedy to pick up wraps and ate our wraps on the northwest side of the high level bridge overlooking the river valley and hung out at the studio and then watched that movie and then biked home separately, it felt like a really, really fun/nice night.

on april 1st, sid (the designer i had been sewing for) showed his collection at western canada fashion week. i was more than a little bummed that absolutely none of my friends bothered to come (but thankful to bri, who sent me a nice little note at least mentioning that she would have liked to have been there, but couldn't), but my sister came with me, and her company was good. it was pretty exciting but mostly surreal to see the things that i had made up on the runway. i will miss working for sid. we didn't work together much in the studio, because he was gone on his internship in NY most of the time, but when we were working together, it was really silly and fun. we laughed a lot, and laughed really hard. he's just such a good, humble guy. plus, he taught me how to put in a zip fly! i will forever be indebted. oh, anyway, after his show, emily and emily's best friend aidan and i went to some bar in northern edmonton to watch christian hansen and the autistics, largely because at the last show i had seen them play, they played an amazing cover of r. kelly's ignition. seriously. it was so good. they played it again at this show, and i danced my face off.

i spent the next week working on stuff for my faculty's cree language project. on the saturday of that week, i drove my mom and my littlest sister to the airport for their weeklong vacation in turks and caicos. then i met up with kaylin at café mosaics for breakfast, and then we wandered around the provincial museum, thanks to the free passes i had for there. we had some really great talks, and i love that she thinks really similarly to me on some pretty controversial/heavy issues. robin came over in the evening and we hung out. it was nice to have his company.

i spent the week after that helping the boy i tutor with his human ecology final (it was a take-home essay - we wrote about gangs/warrior societies). i also did a lot of visiting and packing, and i drove to vermilion and back with emily to drop off some of my stuff at my parents', since i had my mom's car while she was on vacation.

i wrote my FINAL undergraduate exam (for advanced cree) on friday the 9th, and i'm pretty sure i aced it. kelsey bussed to edmonton from calgary the next day, on a greyhound bus with a broken window next to her. she also got sick and puked on the bus on the way back to calgary. thanks for coming, KDS. on saturday we went to the handmade mafia, and then went for lunch at block 1912 (which is really a great place, and i've known that for years, but i hardly ever go there for some reason. i'ma try to go more often when i'm back in edmonton in august). then we went to united cycle so i could try out a bike i had had ordered in for me (but i didn't buy it, because i'm not living in edmonton anymore). we also stopped at EBC so i could show kelsey around. she wasn't all that impressed (she's a mechanic at a bike shop in calgary, which is apparently much bigger). then we were both tired, so we went home, and had the longest talk i have had with anyone for probably... ever, maybe. we just sat on my couches and i knitted and we talked for six hours straight. it was nice. then we walked around and tried to find somewhere to eat, but it was 10:00 and everywhere had just closed, so we settled for delicious/stomachache-inducing wendy's. the next day we went to café mosaics, and then i bought some cuuute short shorts at bamboo ballroom, and some coloured tights to go with them. i think that short shorts with coloured tights are one of my favourite looks, coming in just behind jumpsuits. now i just have to gather up the confidence to actually pull those looks off. oh, we also drove to the airport to pick up my mom and sister from their trip. maybe we did something else, but i forget. kelsey got on the bus at 4:00, and then apparently puked a bunch. i'm not sure why her experiences on greyhound are always so bad. mine never are. soon kelsey is leaving on a biking/wwoofing trip around alberta/b.c. i hope she packs warm socks and isn't too cool to wear a helmet when she's on the highway and doesn't freeze when she's camping in the mountains and doesn't get too sweaty when she's going uphill.

between kelsey leaving and me boarding my plane to DC, i tutored cree a couple more times, packed up my place, cancelled my kickball party because of the gloomy weather but was still fortunate to have many of my favourite people (in order of appearance: jordan, emily, aidan, jessica, bri, joel, bethany, leila, kim, nathan, patrick, and rob) join me at remedy for wraps, borrowed a sweet camera from my friend kevin so i would have one while i'm in DC, and... that's about it. so that brings me up to my first days in DC, which i will write about next time.

sorry this is so long and not very interesting. this really is a journal for me, though, so i'm more concerned about keeping a record for myself of what i did than entertaining you. sorry.

we must evolve towards each other

the top highlights of these last couple weeks have been the conversations i've been having with people. these sorts of things are one of the top most nourishing things for my spirit. in no particular order, here are some of my favourites:

-talking with nathan, becky, and "the car boys" at natasha's about christianity and "being jesus to people." i mean, that's kind of what it was about. (some backstory: i've been attending this thing that natasha and nathan host weekly, which is basically a small group affiliated with their church, and although i definitely don't identify as christian anymore, i like having conversations about the sorts of things that come up in christian small group settings, and i like hanging out with natasha and nathan.) anyway, the conversation made me angry in the way that i love being angry, when my whole body shakes and my voice gets really low and quiet and shaky but calm. i think it was a particularly hard conversation for nathan and me (we didn't get in a fight, that's not how it went at all - it was just really difficult, i think, for both of us for different reasons), but it felt really good to talk things out. and i especially loved being able to talk/think critically with nathan about ways that we (as christians (although i'm not identifying myself as one here), as allies, as whatever) can positively affect change in our communities without being colonial about it. one of the reasons i got sort of emotional about it is that, like i mentioned before, there's sort of been some shit going down in one of my social circles concerning this sort of thing, and i think we (again, as allies/christians/whatever) need to be really conscious about our motivations and assumptions and methods in the things we do. that's sort of vague. ask me about it in person and we'll talk about it. i like talking about things like this.

-talking with bri, bethany, karen, nathan, and kim p. (in separate conversations) about church and community. bri and i talked about how king's became our church/community when we went there, and how we both felt sort of lost once we graduated from there and lost our "communities." however, we've both since built up some really nourishing, healthy communities around ourselves with really lovely people. later, when i was talking with bethany and karen, i think they both agreed that the same had happened for them. but then a few days later, when i was talking with kim, she pointed out the difference between church communities and the communities we build up by ourselves. although it's really nice to have the "community" that i feel like i have, with all these amazing, politically/socially/environmentally sensitive people, the communities that we build up on our own are sort of flawed because they consist of hand-picked community members. by contrast, church communities consist of people that we may not necessarily get along with, or have very little in common with, but the one thing that ties us together is a commitment to working through tough shit together, presumably through a broadly agreed-upon perspective or set of assumptions. which, i think, is pretty neat. and which brings me to nathan, because i think he is a pretty shining example of someone who tries really hard to work through tough shit with people.

-talking with leila about gender, ethics, and polyamory. you can ask me about this one in person, because it's the internet and i just don't want to get into on here or misspeak, but i'll let you know that it was informed by a lecturer (janet hardy) we both heard speak (although not at the same time) and a film (red without blue) we both saw (again, not at the same time). anyways, one of the highlights for both of us, i think, was recognizing that leila's self-proclaimed "immature" masculinity (marked by curiosity and a need for adventure and mischief) is balanced in a really healthy way by incredibly mature femininity (marked, i think, by pretty overwhelmingly nurturing, loving, and graceful qualities). i'm also learning a lot about my own fear of/contempt for more... how should i say... advanced?... forms of masculinity. at least, masculinity as i understand it.

-talking with leila about how we both feel the 40-hour work week is bullshit, and our shared impatience for people who work jobs they hate.

-talking with some of my classmates about reconciliation. i want to be part of communities that recognize that people hurt each other, and commit to working through that shit together in a good way.

-talking with kaylin about a mazillion things, from the wonder of evolution to healthcare to the ways that we love people. man, she's incredible.

so, in conclusion: this is what i'm going to miss most about edmonton. these kinds of conversations with these kinds of people. i know there are probably neat people who live outside of edmonton. but i'm not sure if they're THIS neat.

UVic offered me admission into their master's program in anthropology, and a little bit of money to go along with it. i've accepted. i'm moving to victoria in the fall! i plan on being back in alberta for at least three weeks in august, in between DC and BC, to hang out and rest and craft and get my fill of prairie thunderstorms.

usually i like continuing my blog chronologically, without gaps, but last week was sorta noteworthy so i thought i'd update you all on my goings-on.

1. if you have been living under a rock (i.e., if you don't have facebook or something), you might not have heard that i am moving back to DC. well, i am. i got an internship at a second language testing place, doing work with an indigenous language. i'm being a little vague just because i don't want to write keywords that would make this blog come up if people were looking for that project or kind of work. ask me about it and i'll tell you all about it. yeah, i know i should stop doing internships. i know i have been in university for 7 years and have a pretty fantastic résumé and should start getting jobs that actually pay me for the work i am capable of doing. but i can't stay in one place for long and i like learning new things all the time, so internships are pretty much perfect for me. the internship is paid (although not fantastically well), and it lasts for at least 3 months, with the possibility of extending longer as an internship or even as a full-time paid position. there are a few things that will factor into what i decide to do. but first, onto point 2:

2. i found out that i didn't get accepted into the master's program i had applied to at UBC. it was an M.A. in museum studies, and i would have been perfect for the program, but they had 130 applicants and only 22 spots, and there weren't any professors there who were qualified to supervise the research i had proposed. oh well. i'm not too bummed. i would have liked living near caitlan but i didn't like the thought of committing to vancouver for two years. i'm still waiting to hear from UVic, but... i'm not really expecting/hoping to get in. before i knew that i didn't get in, i thought that i would spend my three months in DC, come back in mid-july, stay in edmonton until the end of august to do fun summery things with friends, and then move to vancouver. but now that's not an option, so what i may do is extend my stay in DC for the whole summer (if i really like the work and the company really likes me, and if i can handle the heat down there) and then come back to work in edmonton. IF i can find a job. or i might stay in DC. or i might move anywhere. the world is my oyster.

3. but what about that handsome boy you were always talking about, caylie? oh, turns out he's not that interested in me, and doesn't really want to bother continuing anything with me, even for the next four weeks i'll still be around in edmonton. par for the course. i'll save further self-indulgent grumblings for face-to-face conversations with friends, only because i know the dangers of posting slanderous words about ex-...semi-intimate partners?... on the internet. but i will have you know i have been feeling quite deflated lately as a result of all of this.

4. i mailed a $300 deposit to someone in DC for a room in a house in a neighbourhood called "friendship heights." cute, huh? i hope i didn't get duped. from there, i can take a 15-minute metro ride to my work, or a 50-minute bike ride along a trolley-line-turned-bicycle-trail. i won't be as silly as i was the last time i was in DC - i plan on buying a bike the first weekend i'm there this time. i can't wait for bike rides and weather warm enough to wear dresses every day and good frozen yogurt and weekend trips to NY.

so. i'm moving away on april 15th. i'll be back, but i don't know when. you should consider coming to DC or NY to visit me.

highlights from february 14-20:

-getting some work done on my bike (i.e., front brakes (i would have done back breaks first, but the boy helping me at the bike shop thought it would be a good idea to do front brakes first if they were the only ones i had. hmm...), handlebars (although apparently the stem is for a bmx bike, which will apparently eff up the headset if i leave it on there too long, so i've got to change the stem soon), and a seat) to make it rideable.

-drove to vermilion and back to visit my parents and grandparents and to pick up my mom's car for the week.

-met robin for breakfast at café mosaics on monday, and then went for cupcakes at fuss. after that, we went to west ed., where we bought frozen yogurt and robin purchased himself a desktop computer from apple. when we were there, the salesman assumed we were a couple. it was nice to pretend things like that for a while. robin said that when we were talking, it sounded like we were quite affluent and well-established artists or designers (well, he really is) because we were mentioning how we each have our own laptop and desktop with adobe creative suites on all of them. ha. afterwards robin let me nap for a bit, and then we went and watched crazy heart at garneau. we went to remedy afterwards before robin headed back to red deer. he had never been there before and apparently he fell in love with it.

-picked up caitlan from the viarail station late on monday night.

-had breakfast at my crush's work with caitlan on tuesday.

-went to elk island park with caitlan and jessica on tuesday. we walked around for maybe an hour and then sat on a picnic table in the sun for nearly an hour. i usually have an immensely hard time sitting and doing nothing, especially outside (i don't like wind touching my face), but the conversation was so good that i didn't mind it one bit.

-ate supper at the southside curry fix with caitlan on tuesday.

-on wednesday, caitlan and i walked to café mosaics for breakfast, thinking that it opened at 9, but apparently in the winter it doesn't open until 11. boo. we checked out upper crust, but they didn't open until 11 either, so we ended up eating at high level diner. i love their blueberry crumble, but there's not a lot else there i really like. we walked back across the river and one of my former coworkers from the legislature gave us a tour there. afterwards, we sat in on question period. it was neat! i've sat in on it before, but i don't think i've ever bothered staying the full hour. plus, that day the MLA from my riding introduced a bunch of drag queens who came to visit. fun. caitlan and i came home afterwards for quiet time because we are both extreme introverts and we need it. in the evening, caitlan went over to jessica's so the two of them and becky could play music together. while they were doing that, i went for hot chocolate with my crush and then we went for a walk around the legislature grounds, during which he asked if he could kiss me. heck yes! but i don't like kissin' in public that much, so we went back to my apartment for a little bit. you know. after a little while i went to kim's house to meet up with caitlan, who had been dropped off there by becky. leila came a little while later, and there were some other peeps too who i don't know very well. we crafted and it was cosy and lovely.

-on thursday, caitlan and i ate breakfast at café mosaics, and then drove to vermilion and back to pick up emily. sometimes my family does things really inefficiently, and so rather than having emily take the bus, everyone insisted that she be driven back to edmonton. that task fell to me. anyway, i liked showing caitlan the prairies, but i was starting to get tired of driving. the three of us ate supper at remedy, and then caitlan and i rented amelia and crocheted mittens for our loved ones.

-on friday, jessica, caitlan, and i drove to athabasca to visit the boreal forest at the camp jessy used to work at. it was pretty lovely. when we got back, we visited the bug room at the royal alberta museum, because: (a) bugs are awesome, and (b) i have a free yearly pass for 2 people for any of the provincial historic sites in alberta - let me know if you wanna go to one! then we went to the muttart conservatory because kim said she would give us a tour there if we got there in the last half hour before it closed (kim used to be a tour guide there, and the conservatory is FREE every day for the last half hour), but it turned out the hours had changed and we were too late. boo. we went to my crush's work to pick up supper, and then we went to the northside steeps, where jessica played a lovely set and caitlan accompanied her on a few songs. in addition to jessica and caitlan, becky, jenni, shamira, kim, leila, my crush, and several other lovely people filled the room. it was pretty perfect to have so many people that i love in one place. we were exhausted and i was sort of tired-grumpy from driving all day, so we went straight to bed afterwards.

-on saturday caitlan and i LRT'd/walked to joel & nathan's house, because the two of them were hosting a cool runnings brunch. i notably and mistakenly misspoke, and told nathan to "be less nathan," which is NOT what i meant but it came out that way. sorry, pal. it should be obvious by now that i like you just the way you are. anyway, joel, nathan, leanne, caitlan, bethany, natasha, my crush, and i ate delicious waffles and bacon and even more delicious fruit and yogurt. and we kissed the lucky egg and let the jamaicans steal our hearts. my crush had to go to work afterwards, so caitlan and i left around 2:00 and stopped at the new frozen yogurt place in city centre mall (frozen yogurt is so the new cupcakes, FYI). then we stopped for a few groceries and came home for our requisite introvert-naps. supper was at dadeo (with caitlan commenting that edmonton has a lot of great places to eat - which it does!), and then we went to hawrelak park for their silver skate and aboriginal winter camp festival thing. it was cute and fun. we came home and crafted and watched julie and julia.

-i drove caitlan to the train station on sunday morning for her 7:45 a.m. train. thanks for visiting, friend.

highlights from february 7-13:

-warm granola with bri at my crush's work

-sketchy jesus with nathan and natasha

-hot chocolate with kim

-pizza and cake with my sisters for alyssa's birthday

-a much-anticipated but short walk with my crush across high level bridge and back (short because he came after work, at 9:30 p.m., and could only hang out for an hour because he was getting up to drive to vancouver the next morning at 4 a.m. or something)

-lots of various work: editing a civil engineering master's student's thesis, tutoring cree and human ecology, sewing, supervising kids at the elementary school, stuff for the cree language project

-a meeting for the cree language project, where the staff in charge of the project in my faculty made me feel really good about the work i've done so far and the work i will be doing for them

-lunch with bethany at my crush's work

-supper with becky at my crush's work (on the same day as lunch with bethany there. eek.)

-come-over-and-draw-party-turned-come-over-and-gossip-and-eat-all-this-food-party at natasha's, featuring natasha, bethany, leanne, and joel

highlights from the week of february 1st-6th:

-delicious warm granola with bri on monday morning.

-my crush asked me out for tea on monday.

-walking around with kim and putting up posters on monday evening.

-doing tons of different kinds of work (editing, sewing, tutoring, data entry for the cree language project) that i really enjoy and get paid well for.

-hanging out with natasha, nathan, and some silly boys at natasha's on tuesday.

-buying a super cute coat from cinder + smoke, on sale! (mine's navy, although i would have preferred the green pictured here.)

-my pattern drafting class, where i continue learning neat things about how to fit fabric on bodies.

-a 3.5-hour-long tea date with my handsome crush at steeps on whyte on thursday.

-butter chicken with bethany on friday.

-tea and cookies at jenni and shamira's (although the date was cut short because i felt very very sick because of the jerk chicken salad from "the greenhouse" that i had eaten beforehand). those girls have moved, and now it takes just 6 minutes to walk from their door to mine!

-a 6-hour-long hangout with my handsome crush on saturday. we went to the farmers' market, bought vegetables, and went to his house. he made us some pretty incredible curry with chicken, and afterwards, we walked around his neighbourhood, came inside, drank tea, listened to records, talked about travelling, and confessed our massive crushes on each other.

conclusion: it was a good week.

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.