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.

seventh week in DC

on sunday i bummed around DC and went to see "to fly" at the imax theatre at air & space.

i didn't do much during the evenings that week. i had to tutor cree every night because i wouldn't be around to do it on the weekend.

work was fun. one day, some visitor from the north brought down a ton of reindeer sausage, ice cream made from fish, and muktuk (whale skin & blubber). because of my dislike for food from the sea, i only tried the reindeer sausage. it was good, but mostly just tasted like every other kind of sausage. for some reason, this was all coupled with an option of mango juice or piña coladas. i chose the latter. good choice.

another day at work, my coworker ben and i played hacky sack in the office. it's hard to focus on anything else in that last hour of the day. ben also recently got an ipod touch, and he has been downloading silly applications and playing with them at work. his favourite this week has been a collection of 6 different kinds of guns. he loads up the revolver with one bullet and then makes a sad face and pulls the trigger. guns and suicide are not funny. but russian roulette with an ipod is pretty funny.

sixth week in DC

on monday the 26th, one of the curators of my museum gave a talk to us interns. afterwards the interns all went for tea (minus my intern crush, who has a habit of forgetting our appointments) at starbucks. it is nice to hang out with those girls. i biked home after work, ate supper, and biked to stitch DC where i bought some pricey orange yarn & brown yarn to hopefully make into a yoked sweater for myself. on the way home I tried to find a place that sold puzzles, but to no avail. i watched the most recent episode of "the office" online when i got home. i liked the first two seasons and now i hardly like the show (i HATE steve carrell), but i'm sucked into it for some reason and have been making sure to watch every episode as it comes out. as i watched it, i sewed the hot pink fringe i bought at mood onto my black silk western shirt (for my halloween costume). afterwards i tutored cree and then skyped with my parents.

i didn't do much during the week. that's okay, isn't it? i'm sure i wrote a bunch of letters and tutored cree or something.

i spent most of thursday night working on one of my cree books. i have hardly done any work on them for a long time. eek. but i like how that one is coming along.

on friday night i stayed in my room and wrote letters and watched the new episode of "the office" (it comes out on thursday nights).

on saturday (halloween), i woke up early and watched "boys don't cry" on my laptop. i hadn't known about the movie until i saw previews for "amelia," which reminded me how much i have a celebrity-girl-crush on hilary swank, so i imdb'd and wikipedia'd her and read up on some of her other movies, and decided i had to see this one. it was tough to watch, but good. i watched "monster" a few months ago and now i feel like i have a thing for difficult/devastating white trash lesbian/queer relationships (i'm not sure how to term the relationship in "boys don't cry," sorry). afterwards i took my bike to bikestation at union station to try to get my gears fixed, but the guy there said i would have to replace this entire part that would cost more than what i paid for my bike, and since i didn't want to do that, he just put my bike in an easier gear to ride (i know i should know how to do that, but i haven't ridden a bike for YEARS - my dad wouldn't let me because he thought i'd get killed). i biked to the american history museum and fell in love with arthur ganson and his "machine with 23 scraps of paper." i came home and ate supper and went for a bike ride around capitol hill with my letter-writing friend joe. then i came home again to get ready for the halloween party at my supervisor's house. i pretty much hate parties but i like my coworkers, and i was sure this would be one of my only chances to hang out with them, so i went. i dressed up as a barrel racer, with hot pink wranglers and the black silk and pink fringed button-up shirt i mentioned earlier. it was hideous. it was nice to see everyone, but as usual, i left pretty early.

i want to be a part of it

at the end of my fifth week in DC, on the saturday, i caught a bus from DC to NY. i woke up around 6:30 to catch the 8:30 bus, which left from a stop conveniently only about 4 blocks from my residence. the ride was comfortable (i had the row to myself), cheap ($25 one-way - by comparison, a one-way greyhound ticket from my parents' to edmonton is usually about $32, and that's only a 2-hour trip), relatively short (4 hours), and offered some pretty lovely autumn scenery. i arrived at the stop near penn station in NY shortly after noon, and walked a few blocks over to mood (the fabric store featured on project runway) so i could check it out and pick up some hot pink fringe for my halloween costume before meeting david (the boy i met on the viarail train in september) and his friends (well, younger cousin, younger cousin's boyfriend, and friend's younger sister).

the five of us took the subway to the southeast corner of central park and walked through the park up to the met. since it was raining pretty hard, i took off my shoes (my soft-soled moccasins) and replaced them with flip-flops - a smart move as far as keeping my feet comfortable and easy to dry off whenever we went indoors, but a very poor move in terms of my hangnail that quickly got infected by all of the dirty NY puddle water running all over it (it's preeeetty much healed now, though). at the met we got a sweet discount because of my smithsonian badge, and we toured (amongst other things) a fun exhibition on knights' armor. after the met we went for (a mediocre) supper in little italy, made a quick stop at times square to check out the lights, then went back to the hostel we were all conveniently staying at because we were all wet and cold and tired. david and i stayed up late talking in the lounge, which was nice.

the next day we took the staten island ferry over to staten island. we saw the statue of liberty as we passed by, but it wasn't that impressive. afterwards we went for pizza (which was overpriced and not very good), then walked about 70 blocks from the staten island ferry terminal to rockefeller center. david's friends went up to the viewing site there, but it cost almost $20 and i wasn't in the mood for paying that kind of money for that kind of experience, so he and i took the subway over to burgers and cupcakes (which i wanted to visit because it seemed to be natasha's dream restaurant) for... burgers & cupcakes. then we walked over to my bus stop and said goodbye. my bus ride back to DC was slightly less enjoyable than the one to NY - i had to share my aisle, and since it was dark out i couldn't see all the autumnal goodness, but it was still nice to sit by myself and have nothing to do but listen to my ipod.

fifth week in DC

on sunday i went on a tour of the white house gardens (they're only open to the public once a year). it was neat to see the place up close. after that, i went to the solar decathlon on the mall. i had been wanting to see it since it opened, but it was always too rainy to go. i ended up just being able to see the alberta entry, which was pretty neat. i ate lunch by myself at the smithsonian castle, and then went to stitch DC to look at yarn. i didn't buy any because i didn't have any needles.

on tuesday three of the other interns (including my sort-of crush) and i skipped out on work to see "where the wild things are." i didn't ever read the book when i was young, so i am not drawn to the movie in the way that some other people are. i didn't love it, but there were definitely some beautiful parts. right after that i went to another theatre to watch "a serious man" with one of my letter-writing friends. i never like coen brothers' films, so i'm not sure why i keep seeing them.

on wednesday i had a 4-hour hangout with my intern crush. it was super enjoyable and satisfying. hanging out with crushes is the best. we biked to jefferson memorial and talked and looked out over the tidal basin at the city, and then we went for supper at qdoba downtown. yesss.

on friday night after work i helped out at a teacher workshop at the natural history museum. it was exhausting but there was good free food.

saturday: bussed to NYC; mood; central park; met; supper in little italy; spent evening at hostel

fourth week in DC

on sunday i stayed at home and napped most of the day because i had super bad cramps. i also worked on my sshrc application.

on monday i bought a bike and took it to get front brake fixed & tires filled. it was cheap and it creaks but it was the first one i could get off of craigslist.

on tuesday i made frybread in the morning at my supervisor's house with her and two other coworkers for the frybread fundraiser. then i took the smithsonian shuttle to suitland, maryland, where i met up with the other interns for a little presentation on repatriation. i rode the shuttle back with my sort-of crush, who is another intern at my museum. i skipped out on the rest of work and biked home, where i napped. i waited for the boy i tutor to call me but he didn't, so i went to union station for some steak & mashed potatoes.

on thursday i went to see "coco before chanel" with some of the other interns. it was so so so good.

on friday i went for tea after work with a boy i have been writing letters with. after that, we went to the brian jungen talk at the hirshhorn. my intern crush also showed up and sat with us. BUT i couldn't sit with EITHER of those boys because my bladder is too small and the tea was too big and i spent the WHOLE talk standing at the back and running to the washroom every 10 minutes. after the talk the letter-writing boy and i went to union station and ate sbarro and he grilled me on why i don't want to get married. ugh. it's a conversation i don't like having, and a conviction i stand by firmly.

on saturday morning i went for cupcakes with another letter-writing friend, and she and i walked around afterwards and went for coffee and had the same conversation that i had had the night before (except that she understood where i was coming from).i worked on my sshrc application in the evening, and ordered two pairs of simple shoes online (it had been raining in DC for a week straight, and i was desperate for anything but my moccasins, which get wet super quickly. i couldn't bring myself to order rubber boots, even though i had scoured DC looking for a pair, so i ended up ordering these and these).

third week in DC

on sunday i went with my edmontonian friend mary to her friend lydia's apartment near U street. we had a really fantastic conversation about native studies (lydia did her master's on aboriginal incarcerations in canada, and mary's mom is a prof in native studies), with a pretty great view of the city from lydia's balcony. i had to leave early, though, so i could meet some of the other interns at the eastern market. from there i walked to the air and space museum to see if any good imax shows were playing (since interns get in free), but none were, so i took the metro back to union station where i bought a strawberry smoothie. i came home and napped before tutoring cree and going to an all-house meeting with all the girls and managers at my residence. hot topics included internet connections, flushing etiquette, and hand sanitizing procedures for when flu season starts. yeesh.

on monday at work brian jungen gave my department a tour of his new exhibit. neat. in the evening i met another edmonton intern at ben's chili bowl for a brief hangout before she went back to canada.

on tuesday the interns had a tour of african art museum & the smithsonian castle, led by the man who does the mounts for artifacts. it was pretty adorable how passionately he talked about displaying things in the best way and least invasive way possible. i skipped out on the rest of the afternoon and went to the natural history museum, where i watched an IMAX called wild oceans. it wasn't as good as the dinosaurs one i saw a few weeks before.

on thursday i ran over to the hirshhorn right after work and waited in line for an hour (passing the time by eating my ham sandwich and banana supper) to get tickets to the talk tim gunn was going to be moderating on anne truitt's work. i was surprised when i got in (the line in front of me was pretty long), and even more surprised that my coworker/co-interns (who had all left work before me) did not get tickets. oh well. i basked in tim gunn's glory for the hour and a half that the talk lasted, although even he could not convince me that truitt's work was "genius" or "all about life" or even worth giving a second thought to. i get pretty irritated when art world people insist that "the art should speak for itself." that works fine for people who know the whole history of art and movements and theory and stuff, and who therefore understand where a piece fits into that chronology and how it works with or against other pieces. but for the rest of us, we need a little bit of context to understand why anyone in their right mind would think painted rectangular columns are "genius." all of the panelists at the talk refused to talk about the meaning or processes or inspiration behind the art. they offered some anecdotes from truitt's life, but as far as making the art accessible to the general museum-going public, they did a pretty shitty job.

on saturday i went to dupont circle at 10:30 for cupcakes with one of my letter-writing friends, but she didn't show up. boo. the place IS hard to find because its signage is virtually non-existent, and she was running way later that day than she intended, so... no hangout. i came back to the neighbourhood later in the day with another letter-writing friend, and we walked around and went for italian food for lunch. i spent the evening with a third letter-writing friend: we got ice cream on E street, walked around, & watched "capitalism: a love story.

second week in DC

to start off my second week in DC, i ate breakfast with mary and a few other girls from the dorm. then i went for a long walk by myself around to the big touristy spots in DC: i walked down pennsylvania ave., walked past the white house, went to the lincoln memorial, walked by the washington monument, went to the museum of natural history and saw an awesome exhibit on ants (they're incredible!), watched a 3D imax on dinosaurs, and walked home in the rain. the maps and the movies make that distance seem really short. it's not. i finished the day by talking to my mom & dad on skype.

during the week i tutored cree online, visited the natural history museum's collections with the other interns, saw an exhibit on an amtrak train at union station about disney's "a christmas carol" (which included some of charles dickens' belongings, as well as neat videos on the process of making the movie. and all on a train! fun!), met up with brian jungen a couple of times so we (ie. the cultural interpreters and education department) could learn about his work for when the exhibit opens up and people want tours, went to see the pains of being pure at heart and the depreciation guild at the black cat with two of the other interns at my museum, watched "night at the museum: battle of the smithsonian" AT the smithsonian in imax (come on. how could i not?), and tried to make responsible dietary decisions (ie. choosing strawberry smoothies over cupcakes or giant pretzels. luckily, there's a good smoothie place at union station, which is just 4 blocks from where i live).

first week in DC

on the first day of my internship i met the intern coordinator of my museum and the 5 other interns and we got a tour of the museum on the mall (where i'll be interning, along with 2 other girls) and the one in suitland (where the other 3 girls will be). my museum is actually one of three under the same name - mine is on the mall and has about 1% of the collection on display; the one in NYC is smaller but has lots of live performances and is there because the original owner of the collection required that some stay on display in his hometown; and the suitland site is where the rest of the collection is held. we went on a tour of the collection storage, and it was pretty incredible. there were thousands of amazing artifacts from aboriginal communities all over the western hemisphere. my top favourite artifacts are the boats: birch bark canoes, skin kayaks, reed boats, etc. so incredible. anyway, during our tour of the mall museum, we joined in on a little party that was happening on a balcony overlooking the mall and the capitol building. i felt like we were on the first episode of a season of project runway, and heidi klum and tim gunn were about to come out and tell us about our first challenge.

i spent the next few days getting paperwork figured out and getting settled in my internship. i've been placed with the cultural interpreters, so my tasks are to work with the education department's teaching collection; get trained on the family activities and start presenting some of them; and to come up with a presentation on an indigenous community of my choice. on my second day, i found that the teaching collection (about 400 articles, separate from the museum's real collection) was not as well organized as it could be (ie. each artifact had its own excel sheet, but there were no accession numbers on any of the articles AND there was no searchable database linking all the info), so i spent most of my first week making up a simple database and then entering all the data from the separate sheets, so that my coworkers can search the collection by material, culture group, social usage of the object, type of object, etc.

on my second saturday in DC, i went to the national zoological park and saw giant pandas, flamingos, giant tortoises, and lots of other neat animals. i got a milkshake at the johnny rockets at union station and silently reminisced about times kelsey and i would go to the one in west ed in our west ed phase. i ate supper in the residence cafeteria with a girl named mary, who is from edmonton and here through the same program that i am (but at a different museum). i usually eat most of my meals in the cafeteria by myself. i think the other girls in the residence might think i am a serial killer because that's what people think about other people who just like being alone ("yeah, she was strange. always kept to herself."). whatever. anyway, mary and i met up once in edmonton before we came here, and there's a good chance we'll hang out in edmonton once we return, and she's very bright and i like her company when she's around. she invited me to watch "dirty dancing" with her and some of the other girls in the tv room, sort of as a way to help me get to know new people. ha. i said yes, because i wanted to get out of my room. the DVD player wasn't working, though, so we ended up watching a VHS of "sliding doors" with gwyneth paltrow. it was an interesting concept, but not a very good movie. i sort of rage out at movies that have relationships i don't believe have any real foundation. this movie was full of that.

first days in DC

i left the montréal hostel around 8:00 a.m. on september 18th so i could get to the train station in time for my 9:30 train. jonathan met me there to say goodbye and to give me a cd he had made for me on "timelessness and time," a theme i had requested (based on a line from an edward estlin poem) when he had asked if he could make a themed cd for me.

the train was scheduled to leave montréal at 9:30 a.m., stop in NYC at 8:00 p.m., leave NYC around 10:00 p.m., and arrive in DC at 1:30 a.m. the next day. i was dreading spending 11 hours straight sitting on a cramped train, but the ride from montréal to NYC was probably my best train experience so far. most of the ride went through the adirondack park reserve along lake champlain, which i think i can safely call the most beautiful part of my entire train experience. it would be a nice place to live, i think. at any rate, if you are ever wanting to go for a little train ride, i would suggest this one. it is inexpensive ($68 from montréal to NYC!), and the seats were super roomy and comfortable. i switched back and forth between napping on my two seats and working on my cree books on my laptop (there was a plug-in next to my seat, thank goodness) while watching the scenery.

i got into DC at about 1:30 a.m. on saturday the 19th, and was exhausted. i got a cab to take me the 4 blocks from union station to my new residence, because i was just too tired to walk with my huge backpack on my back and my little backpack on my front.

i slept well, and spent my first weekend in DC visiting the national postal museum and buying stamps there; wandering around a few streets north of the mall (and being relieved to find an american apparel - with shockingly friendly and unpretentious staff (edmonton's AA staff: take note!)); checking out the café at my museum and eating duckling (for the first time - and it has immediately become my favourite meat. it's like red + white meat, together. unreal.) and wild rice johnny cakes with blackberry compote (which, unfortunately, have all been replaced with the new autumn menu); taking the metro to go buy laundry detergent; napping; skyping with cassidy; and trying to find somewhere to buy a coffee mug on a sunday so i wouldn't have to use the styrofoam cups provided at my residence. the only place nearby that was open & selling mugs was the my obama shop in union station, and a fox though he is, i just couldn't bring myself to buy a mug with his mug on it. (the next day, i ended up finding a starbucks (even though i hate the place, i knew they would what i wanted & i didn't want to spend more time looking around) and got a brown mug & brown water bottle. thanks, starbucks. i learned a few days later that there's a starbucks that i could have gone to at union station, which has cute washington cherry blossom mugs that the other didn't have. oh well.)

post script: as you can probably tell by now, i really only have one pose for pictures, and it has been featured in 3 of the last 4 posts. this is partially because i am highly unphotogenic and this is the only pose i can bear to see myself in, partially because i hate taking photos and having photos taken of me, and partially because i am a terrible photographer and have no one else around to take my picture. from now on i am just going to take photos of my surroundings and just photoshop myself in, because my "look" hasn't changed at all since 9th grade (except for the brief - and cute! ...in my opinion - style i fondly refer to as my "lesbian cut," circa late 2002-2005).

montréal/overwhelming you with hyperlinks

in the early evening on tuesday, september 15th, i flew from charlottetown to montréal. montréal is FANTASTIC in that its metro system connects fairly simply with its international airport. i get irritated every time i have to pay $15 for a shuttle from edmonton's international airport into the city. anyway, the fact that i didn't have to spend that much just to get from the airport to the hostel made me like the city immediately. jonathan met me at the hostel and we walked to his new apartment, where he made supper for us. it was nice to talk, but i was tired and didn't stay long.

the next morning, i took the metro to old montréal. i wanted to buy a cupcake before exploring museums with my montréal museums pass. i ended up getting sort of lost, and a friendly man helped me with directions. i said i was looking for a cupcake place, but that i should probably eat breakfast first. he suggested i try olive + gourmando, which was the same place he was going to be meeting someone for lunch. i went, and it was pretty incredible. you should go if you're in montréal any time soon. i just had a fruit salad, which is my favourite breakfast food, but it was one of the best i've ever had. then i went to the cupcake place across from the notre dame for a cupcake and a macaron, but neither were very good. after that, i took the metro to the biosphère. it was neat but not as neat as i had imagined. i also got a tour of their eco-house, and my tour guide for it made a few comments to me about language and how english people are assholes to the french. i guess i always knew that that opinion existed, but maybe because i'm from the west i never really realized how strongly people felt it. after that, i went to château ramezay, which had some GREAT artifacts on canadian history as well as a neat temporary display on the history of the bicycle. kelsey, i wish you could have seen that exhibit. for the most part, the museum was one of the best i've ever seen, BUT i was surprised to see a turtle shell rattle and something else (i think it was a pipe and pipestem put together, but it may have been a shaman's mask) that i was fairly certain should not be displayed for cultural sensitivity reasons. hmm. i then checked out the sir georges étienne cartier national historic site before heading back to the hostel. i had a nap because i had a massive headache, and then jonathan met me at a metro station and we went to schwartz's for supper (at levi's suggestion). the food was mediocre (despite its reputation for being a "can't-miss" spot in montréal) but it was fun to hear about jonathan's new crush.

the next day, i went to olive + gourmando again for breakfast, and then visited the biodôme and the mccord museum of civilization. both were pretty great. the biodôme's tropical forest made me miss guyana's rainforest, but my most favourite part was seeing the puffins and penguins. i LOVE puffins! and penguins! mccord had a great gift shop (as a repeat museum employee, this is something i quietly critique every time i visit a museum) that had a lot of good books, postcards of artifacts from their collection, and high quality crafts made by local artisans. i would have liked to see the redpath museum too, but the massive headaches that i'd been getting every day for the past couple of days hadn't let up, so i went back to the hostel in between the two museums i mentioned for a nap. jonathan met me for supper after i visited the mccord, and after we ate we went back to his place so we could watch michel gondry's portion of "Tokyo!" (which i had purchased from hmv earlier in the day). after that, i went home and packed and went to bed so i would be ready to catch my train to DC in the morning.

charlottetown

after visiting erica in halifax, i took a shuttle bus to charlottetown. levi picked me up and drove me back to his place. we had lunch at some italian place near the harbour, and i spent the afternoon talking to cassidy on skype while levi worked. in the evening, levi cooked a really incredible meal on the barbecue: wings, ribs, asparagus, red peppers, corn on the cob... delish.

the next afternoon we left on a mini vacation. levi takes forever to get going in the morning, so we didn't leave charlottetown until 3:00 or so. we stopped at a gas station restaurant in new brunswick for supper (i had whole wheat blueberry pancakes, because they seemed like comfort food since i was super sick with a cold), and then drove to a little place in nova scotia for the night. i won't mention the name of the place or the town, but it was pretty brutal. the signage marking out the directions to the place was terrible; their pillows were the plastic kind they use in homeless shelters; and - this is the craziest part to me - they put the dust ruffle on the bed as the quilt. good lord. i went to bed as soon as we got there, because my cold had gotten so bad (there was mucus accumulating in my eyes) and my skin ached and i was exhausted. levi stayed up and drank with the owners.

the next morning, again, we didn't get going until much later than i would have liked. we visited peggy's cove, mahone bay, and lunenburg (see here also). i had been to all three last summer but levi hadn't been to any, so i think he liked seeing them. the drive was nice and felt comfortable. we went for supper at a place overlooking the harbour in lunenburg. the food was good but the meal was a little tense, thanks to my companion's dislike for our server. yikes. we had hoped to find somewhere to stay in lunenburg, but it turned out that there was a seafood festival on that weekend, so everything was totally booked up. we ended up staying in bridgewater or something, about 20 minutes out of lunenburg. i was just happy to go to sleep. still sick, but getting better.

the next day was rainy. we had hoped to go bike riding - levi had even bought a bike rack before we left charlottetown specifically for this trip, and we had bikes with us - but neither of us felt like riding in the rain. we drove back to charlottetown, taking the ferry this time instead of the bridge, which i love. i wrote letters on the ferry while levi napped. when we got back to charlottetown, i tutored cree on skype and wrote letters, and levi went out to music trivia with his staff. i went for supper by myself at a place that caitlan and i had had some incredible rice dish at last year, but found that the restaurant had changed their menu. boo. i had butter chicken instead, grumpily. later on in the evening, i went for a barefoot walk in the rain and mailed some of my letters and had a nice texting chat with jessica.

the next day i just bummed around the house some more and wrote letters. i also skyped with hao and cassidy, and both conversations were really fun. levi took me out for supper and convinced me to try lamb, which i for some reason had never tried before, and i loved it. this was the second time in my life that i had meat with blueberries, and both times were within the span of a month. it's something i'm going to put together more often. in the evening, levi went out with his staff for a going-away party for one of them, and i stayed home to tutor cree online and write letters. i liked the arrangement just fine.

the next day, i packed up all my things, wrote some letters, and borrowed one of levi's bikes for a quick ride along the harbour. i wished i had done that every day i was in charlottetown, because it was lovely. i also wished levi and i had had a chance to bike together, and to play catch in the park like he had promised. oh well. just before i had to go, levi surprised me by getting his staff to pick up a birthday cake for me (it was my 26th birthday on the tuesday). we ate very, very sweet cake very, very quickly, and then levi drove me to the airport.

the whole visit was strange and if you ask me about it i'll tell you more about it, but i won't write about it on here because i know that snoops make their way onto here occasionally and i don't feel like indulging them. it left me feeling strange with a lot to think about, and i was shocked to find myself tearing up as i was saying goodbye to levi. summarily, i don't think i'll be going back to charlottetown for a long time, if ever, and while most of me is okay with that, there are parts of me that are... sad? confused? angry at myself? i don't know. i like doing this sort of emotional exercise, but it's sometimes difficult to sort through. oh well. i got what i needed out of the trip (and it's not what you might think), so i'm glad i came. i love learning, and i definitely learned a lot.

i spent three full days and four full sleeps at erica's in halifax. this is what we did:
september 7th: we made friends with history at the Halifax Citadel, a national historic site of a neat stone military fort. we tried to buy groceries on quinpool but everything was closed. it turns out haligonians are very serious about labour day. as a result, i had to buy canned soup (to help with my cold) and a bag of plain chips (to fill up my stomach) from a convenience store. also, since erica had just moved in to her place, she had no pots or pans, so i had to cook my soup in a little enamel cup. we watched "bottle shock," which i had wanted to see for a little while but which ended up being sorta mediocre.
september 8th: erica needed to go do some things for school so i went to a tea shop and put together a puzzle while drinking an iced tea on their patio. my friend julia sent me a neat letter earlier in the summer that was written on the back of a puzzle, and i had to put the puzzle together to read the message. fun!!! so during the day i put together three puzzles (with erica's help) at various tea shops and wrote letters on the back of them. i bought some food on spring garden (erica was doing a cleanse so she didn't eat anything) and we walked over to citadel hill so we could sit in the sunlight and i could eat. i also ate a blueberry pancake cupcake. mmhmm. it was white cake with blueberries, and two layers of icing: maple and blueberry, both buttercream. hopefully edmonton will pick up on that flavour before i get back. erica went out that night and i stayed in so i could tutor cree and talk to cassidy, both over skype.
september 9th: when we woke up, erica and i watched tokyo! because we are both in love with michel gondry. he didn't disappoint. you should watch it too. i also ate a nice breakfast of strawberries and yogurt and raspberry whole wheat muffins while we were watching the movie, and that all felt good because i like to eat good things in the morning. in the afternoon we went down to the harbour so i could get some soup, and then we took the ferry to dartmouth and went to the value village. that's pretty much it. oh, and i was super sick with a cold pretty much the entire time. boo.

you may or may not know about my mildly epic train trip across canada at the beginning of september. here it is:
september 2nd: my parents took me to the viarail station in edmonton around 10:30 p.m. i boarded the train at 11:30, and my parents have a hard time letting go, so they walked me all the way to my car and then snooped around my cabin before each hugging and kissing me six or seven times and saying goodbye. after putting all my carryon stuff into my (tiny! but cosy!) single cabin, i snooped around all the nearby cars for about half an hour as the train pulled away from edmonton. i fell asleep pleasantly surprised by how comfortable the bed (which folded down from the wall) was.
september 3rd: we passed through saskatoon and winnipeg. prairie, prairie, prairie. i love the prairies the best but i was a little tired of seeing them. in the dining car on this train, they insist that everyone eats in groups of 4s. it was mostly non-canadian seniors on the train, so conversation was easy enough, although i would have rather eaten alone. the food was incredible. really. between meals i either napped (my first night's sleep wasn't fantastic - the noise of the train was hard to deal with. plus i was too excited.) or went up to the dome car to watch the scenery and listen to my ipod/read "conversations with god"/write letters. i also had some nice conversations with one of the only non-seniors aboard the back half of the train (the front half apparently had a lot of student-aged people sitting in coach, but i didn't go up there because i am not a big visitor in the first place. however, if i HAD gone up there, i would have seen a girl i know through caitlan (we all went to cathedral grove together last christmas). i ended up seeing her as we got off at the stop in montréal (she was staying, and i was heading on to halifax).
september 4th: northern ontario! lakes! forest! quiet! maybe i will spend more time up there sometime. maybe jessica and caitlan and i will build our introvert cabin up there. i worked on my cree books (which are coming more slowly than i had hoped) and i think they are pretty cute. i talked more with the non-senior citizen boy i had talked to the day before, and it turns out that he is preeeetty interesting. his high school activities were football, choir, drama, and the robotics club. he once made a giant venus flytrap robot (16-foot moving jaws, that could apparently pick up a human!) for a high school play. he invents things and has patents for them. he kind of reminds me of stéphane in "the science of sleep," just in the way that he creates things. neat. i think his spirit is gentle and good.
september 5th: i disembarked from "the canadian" (the train between edmonton and toronto) and took a less comfortable commuter train to montréal. there, i bumped into carly, one of caitlan's friends who i had met last december when caitlan and a few of her friends and i went to cathedral grove for a day. apparently we had been on the same train for the last 3 days, but i had been in the back and she had been in the front, so we never saw each other. funny. in the evening in montréal (which easily had the nicest train station in the country, as far as i could tell) i boarded "the ocean," the train that would take me to halifax. my room was considerably bigger than the last train, and had its own shower, but i didn't find it as comfortable as the first. that may have mostly been because: a) the blankets weren't as cozy, and b) the bed was set up so i had to sleep perpendicular to the train's sides, rather than parallel (like the first train). i didn't get much sleep the night before, so i pretty much just ate supper and went to sleep. i slept through most of québec, which was kind of a bummer but i hope to spend some time there sometime in the indefinite future, so i'm not too worried.
september 6th: my train arrived in halifax shortly after lunch. i took a cab to erica's. i'll write about my time in halifax in my next post.

one of the best parts about my last week of work had nothing to do with work at all. i had a 2.5-hour phone conversation with a boy i went to high school with, who texted me out of the blue with big life questions. i think our conversation was healthy for both of us. i hope we'll hang out/talk more in the future. i also had some super nice skype conversations with nathan; the same boy from high school; and hao, the boy i met in guyana. i am glad for skype. it helps me stay on the good side of the fine line between solitude & loneliness.

i had a three-day weekend on august 26th-28th. i spent the first day of that in vermilion, and the second two in edmonton. i:
-ate breakfast with shannon at café mosaics
-bought black tennis shoes from urban outfitters & underwear from american apparel
-bought Opa! for lunch & met Jordan at the park near the farmers' market
-napped for a bit at my sisters' condo
-went longboarding with nathan. we didn't longboard for long, though. we didn't feel like it. instead, we bought our respective favourite drinks at our respective favourite coffee shops, and then walked around the legislature. he showed me some of his drawings, and i really got a chance to appreciate his intentionality. in his whole sketchbook (i don't know if he calls it that or something else, but whatevs. his book with drawings in it), there is not a single scribbled out part or page torn out or anything. it seemed remarkable so i asked him about it and he said that he sometimes spends hours planning what he's going to do, and very intentionally makes a decision about what he's going to do before he does it. that's neat. and not the way i operate at all. at the end of the night i sort of forced him to let me copy a bunch of his music onto my external hard drive. i got a ton of great stuff, most notably including 300 billboard hits from the last 6 or so decades. so good.
-ate breakfast at high level diner with dr. e
-met with a professor at the u of a (to get help with my sshrc application)
-tutored cree
-went for vanilla cokes with jessica at dadeo

on the 19th or so i FINALLY finished working on natasha's dress. i started it in february and despite some minor glitches (ie. the wedding getting called off), natasha and i both managed to pull our way through our agreement (my dressmaking in exchange for a painting by her). so, i threw the dress in the washer and dryer (which i knew was safe, because i had washed the fabric before i cut out the pattern) to get out some water spots from the iron... and it came out totally ruined. faaack. there were dark spots EVERYWHERE, as if someone had splattered hot butter or something all over the dress. not very flattering. definitely unwearable. so i e-mailed natasha to tell her what had happened. she was very gracious, but that still didn't stop me from bawling (and THAT was probably aided by my PMSing). since the dress was ruined, i decided to try whatever i could to get the stains out, because i really had nothing to lose. my first few tries (handwashing with no soap, machine washing with detergent) didn't work, but i eventually tried some of the "oxi-clean: baby" that was left over in the trailer from the girls last year... and it seemed to work. so after about 8 rounds of handscrubbing the dress with oxi-clean and throwing it in the dryer (WITHOUT a dryer sheet, which appears to have been the problem), the dress is finally wearable. good lord. i hope natasha loves it. she asked me to put pockets onto it, because we both love them on dresses, and i think they make the dress 10 times more adorable. hopefully she will post a picture of herself wearing it when she picks it up (oh, natasha: i left it at nathan's because i won't see you when you get back). and i am looking forward to getting the painting she's making for me. woo!