Friday, December 16, 2005

as much as i hate to break out the "emotional rollercoaster" cliché, i'm afraid no other metaphor will describe my past two weeks, which have absolutely exhausted me.

on top of that, my confidence in my abilities as an editor have been shaken to the core. it'll take me a while to get back to the point where i'm not second-guessing absolutely everything i do.

last week was supposed to be totally awesome. my company had posted a permanent position for assistant editor, and--predictably--i applied for it. my sweetie was convinced it was a position the firm made just for me to keep me around, but i didn't want to be too optimistic and set myself up for disappointment.

i'd also gotten my master of publishing approved by two of my committee members. all i had to do was get the third--my industry supervisor--to read and approve it. it was nerve-wracking enough prodding her to do it when she already had her plate piled high; then she reads it and says she should run it by the publisher to make sure he's okay with what i say about him. this is what doomed last year's intern to academic purgatory: she'd finished her report, and the boss didn't like what she wrote about him and he refused to let her get her degree.

it was down to the wire, but my industry superviros finally agreed to sign my approval form, and i was all ready to collect my second master's degree.

i schlep all the way up the moutain to burnaby, drop off my thesis, then come back into town to find a message in my e-mail with the subject line "project report mistake" from my advisor.

fuck.

turns out i'd incorrectly identified one of my committee members as an assitant professor (which was what he was listed as on the fucking program website) when he was actually an instructor. for that i had to get new forms signed--this coming just a couple of hours before my industry supervisor was leaving for a week in london, to return five days after the deadline for thesis submission.

retarded, no? also, my advisor told me it was a good thing i was submitting this year and not last year, 'cause last year they would have insisted that all of the signatures be in black ink. WTF? doesn't blue ink make it easier to identify an original?

anyway, friday was supposed to be awesome, and it completely fizzled.

i had my interview for the position at the firm on thursday, and it did not go so well. in fact, they had to pull me into a follow up on friday asking me if i really wanted the job, 'cause apparently i didn't give them the impression that i did. one of the editors is still sort of being weird about it. they said i had to work on little knit-picky things like serial commas. and that's one of the things i thought i was actually good at.

and the managing editor said she wasn't going to get back to me about the job until maybe the 22nd.

it got worse when the production manager came over and pointed out that i'd fucked up the price of a book in cover copy that i wrote--that it had gone to the printer that way. fortunately, one of the other editors caught it before it went to press, but everything i do's pretty tentative right now, and that's when a person makes the most mistakes...

upside is, i got the job. i start january, but i have a three-month probationary period during which time i can get fired at any point without notice. i'm totally on eggshells at work right now, and it looks like i'll be until the end of march.

sigh. i only have three days of work next week, luckily, then i have a break. which i so need.

fortunately, there are some in the firm who are just so incredible and supportive. it buoys me that there are those who value my contributions, but it's the people who doubt me that get to me the most, especially when they're people i respect.

anyway, i should stop whining. i'm just ridiculously tired and facing an insurmountable mountain of work. i've got a job and i think i've got my master's degree, so it's all good, right?

Sunday, November 13, 2005

i've lost my credit-card-fraud virginity.

someone stole my two credit cards and made obscene purchases at future shop. fortunately, the credit card companies reported suspicious activity and are sending me new cards. i guess it's lucky i didn't have anything else taken from my wallet, though now i have to put a flag on my credit file in case my identity's been stolen.

also, i'd still very much like to punch whoever took my cards in the teeth.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

still in recovery...

instead of eating turkey and stuffing like normal people, my sweetie decided that the thing to do thanksgiving weekend was to take a kayak trip out by the discovery islands and harvest shellfish. see, oysters aren't any good in the summer because they spawn and get all gross -- october's allegedly when they start building a glycogen supply to live through the winter and actually get sweet. he'd made me promise a couple of months ago that i'd keep thanksgiving weekend free to go get oysters.

i had misgivings from the get-go, but i assumed we'd be camping at quadra island, head down to rebecca spit and pick up oysters from the beach at low tide. i thought we'd be out there for two of the three days, come home and get rested up and cleaned up for work on the monday. then i found out we'd be kayaking. and that we'd stay out all three days. and that low tide was at about 4am plus or minus an hour each of those nights. and that we weren't going on some romantic getaway -- a girl from his lab and s&a would be joining us.

i told him i didn't think i could go. the timing was shit. the weather had already turned rainy, i was supposed to write my thesis, and i was likely to be hitting the peak of PMS on the trip. i was going to freeze my ass off, i told him.

then he got all sad and whined about me promising to go. he tried to tell me i'd enjoy the trip and that it'd be good for me.

i relented, telling him that to make up for lost time on my thesis, he'd have to take care of stuff at home before and after the trip so that i could work. after two ferry rides interrupted by a two-hour drive from nanaimo to campbell river, we arrived at herriot bay, where we set up camp, had the last civilized meal we'd be having for several days, then headed out at about midnight to harvest shellfish. we filled our quota of oysters and dug for clams, then headed back to the campsite where a crazy and presumably drunk man was having a fit about a chess game or something. the noise, the cold, and my thermarest, which is not made with a lady's curvatures in mind, made for a rough night's sleep.

we set off on our kayaks the next morning, after numerous hours of dillydallying. the first ninety minutes were fine; we arrived on a tiny wooded island; the largest of an ostensible archipelago of rocks, several of which featured fattened seals in poses that might be considered sultry if they were human. their blubber rippled as they launched themselves with their bellies into the water, where they seemed considerably more elegant and cute. we ate a lunch of oysters at our wooded island; my first mistake (after agreeing to go on this trip) may have been that oysters were pretty much all i ate. most of us cut ourselves shucking the damn things; the wound i made with my oyster knife is still festering away on my ring finger now. although the oysters were quite fresh and delicious on their way down, let me tell you that i wasn't terribly fond of them on their way back up...

after lunch, we launched into a bleakly cold paddle against the wind toward an island but without a specific destination in mind. all we knew from my sweetie was that there were "some bays" on the other side of read island that probably have lots of oysters. after two hours of being tossed around on three-foot waves and having the wind chill me to the bone, i began feeling unwell. "we'll just go past that point there and there should be a place to beach."

past the point was an aquaculture operation, which meant that we couldn't harvest within several hundred metres of it. we paddled past the next point. more aquaculture.

this seemingly endless meandering made me feel even more ill, and with about an hour and a half or so before sunset, i lost it and vomitted off the side of the kayak. my sweetie picked up speed to drop me off in a bay where i was supposed to find a decent camping spot while he turned back to find the others and let them know where we'd ended up.

in neoprene boots and carrying an ungainly kayak paddle, i had to amble my way across rocky crags then hack my way through the bush only to find that the grassy area i thought might be a promising campsite was actually an impossibly rocky region next to a stream. meanwhile, the sun was setting, and there was no sign of the others. all i had with me were the extremely wet clothes on my back and a paddle. i climbed over this valley of fallen trees that smelled like rotting garbage and made it to a mossy landing, paced around, and waited. clearly, someone had been there earlier. there were discarded nets and old crab shells. was this person still there? was he going to emerge out of the bushes with a shotgun ordering me off his property?

i was relieved to see kayaks coming around the bend and into the bay just as the sun was setting...but they were sans my sweetie. apparently, when he'd backtracked, he missed them somehow. the others set up their tents while i sat and worried some more. after what seemed like hours, my sweetie paddled back into the bay, exhausted. he charged me with the task of setting up the tent while he pulled the kayak to higher ground. as i put the tentpoles in, one of them snapped catastrophically. we eventually reinforced the break with a piece of aluminum tubing, but it was just yet another thing that went wrong on this trip to make it stressful rather than enjoyable.

we started making food -- stirfried vegetables on couscous -- but after throwing up, it's hard to convince yourself to eat again. i swallowed a few bites and retired to the tent, where i spent another night tossing, aching, and being fucking cold.

the next morning, we harvested oysters from the bay, which was teeming with the creatures because, as we later found out, the land had actually been a shellfish lease, though my sweetie seemed convinced that it had since been abandoned. on our paddle back to our little wood island, we encountered even bigger waves than the day before, and although i'd taken all the steps i could to try to stay dry and warm, believing that being windswept and cold contributed to my seasickness, one of the larger waves came down right over me, running down my neck and drenching my fleece. i didn't throw up that day, but i sure felt like it. i didn't do much paddling, but by the time we got back to the island to set up camp, my thumbs were blistered, and i was cold and broken.

that night was a bit better; at least we could set up the tent in daylight. the island was small enough that we knew there was nobody else and no bears around, and my sweetie built a fire, which i used repeatedly to dry my feet. i only had my neoprene boots, and they were waterlogged. if i took them off to dry my feet, i knew i'd be wet again the moment i had to step into them to go anywhere. with our vegetables going bad, we just dumped everything into a pot and boiled them up with our clams and the remaining couscous, which resulted in a watery soup that would only be acceptable as camping food.

the next morning, we had a fortunately uneventful paddle back to heriot bay. and, as soon as we lifted the kayaks out of the ocean, the sun came out, after hiding behind clouds for the entire weekend. we ate at heriot bay inn that afternoon; we all gorged oursevles, me especially, since i was starving but didn't want to eat too much for fear it'd all come back up.

anyway, we got the 9pm ferry home, which meant that we didn't get to bed until midnight. the next morning, as i attempted to get up for work, i found myself with a cough, a headcold, and achy shoulders and knees.

"next time we go kayaking," my sweetie said to me, "maybe you'll listen to me and get the expensive paddling jacket."

to which i replied -- only partly in jest -- "what the hell makes you think i'll go kayaking with you ever again?"

~sigh~

i'm a bit better now, but i still feel dazed and quite broken. my sweetie is off on an intrepid hike up blacktusk in a couple of weeks.

i'm not going.

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

holy fuck, i haven't written in a long time.

an update:

two weeks ago, i finally got keys to my workplace. roughly a week ago, i got a real e-mail address (for the summer, i was intern@douglas-mcintyre....). on monday, i got an official title.

now i can introduce myself as an editorial assistant at douglas & mcintyre.

and, i'm making real money. not a lot, but i'm out of the starvation zone.

things are looking up.

***

in other news, my sweetie flew to ottawa last week to reclaim our stuff that had been growing increasingly obsolete for three years in a heated storage facility that charged us about two grand a year. he drove a u-haul cube van all the way back in three days, and up until a few days ago, there was a seven-foot cube of crap sitting in the middle of living room.

one thing about my sweetie that's generally very endearing but incredibly frustrating when it comes to discarding possessions is that he attaches sentimental value to everything he owns. he brought back about eight hundred t-shirts, all of which say something hilarious or are otherwise "cool," and even though we have zero space, he's insisting on keeping them. he's got a back-story for virtually every one of them.

~sigh~

***

i have a little over twenty pages of my internship report written. i'm not supposed to call it a thesis, but calling it an internship report seems to trivialize it some. anyway, it looks like i might have to invoke some serious triple-space action to get it to the requisite sixty pages. my days of student journalism trained me to economize words and be succinct. i just can't ramble or make my prose any more literary. as a result, the report is incredibly short and shit boring to read.

oh well.

i guess the point is just to get enough done so that i can graduate and focus on my job.

i have a job. cool.

Sunday, September 04, 2005

back from a week of houseboating, where i spent every day hiking, floating around in the lake, or doing crossword puzzles. a much-needed break following a few months of frenzied hell.

it was refreshing not to have internet access, though i feel a bit out of touch now, having missed the katrina ordeal. when i saw lewis lapham speak at nash in january, i asked him if there was a sense of outrage in the US that the mainstream media was simply ignoring or if there was just no anger whatsoever. there is no outrage, he told me. the american people had gone numb.

well, there's certainly outrage now. a year too late, maybe.

on the houseboat, SW brought along a copy of the walrus, in which i noticed that one of their illustrators, sam, shared the same name as a remarkably gifted artist and genuinely awesome person i knew in high school. at the risk of feeling like a bit of a stalker, i am tempted to get in touch with him. is that weird? just a couple of weeks ago, my sweetie and i were on the bus going home from a party, when a chick approached us and started talking to us. i'd recognized her as the queen bitch from my junior high years, while my sweetie had the misfortune of going to high school with her. she talked to us like we'd always been pals.

when we got off the bus, my sweetie said, "you know, that's the first time she's ever said a word to me."

i felt indignant at her nerve to come speak to me after how mean she was to the nerdy loser girl in junior high. at the same time, i couldn't help but feel that her high school years probably were her best and she was trying to find any excuse to relive them.

anyway, point is, i don't know how a random e-mail from me to sam would be received.

***

one week before starting up again at d&m.

Monday, August 22, 2005

woot!

i wandered into my last week of my internship expecting to slip right into "what are they going to do -- fire me?" mode, but the vp operations called me into a meeting and offered me a 3-month contract to stay on, do editorial work and help set up their central database.

woohoo! i get to put off worrying about unemployment until at least the beginning of 2006. and they're paying me more than twice what i'm getting now as an intern, meaning i don't have to come home every night and do freelance work just to make ends meet. and i have the option of working just four days a week so that i can spend that extra day working on my internship report.

sweeeeeet.

Saturday, August 06, 2005

wow, i haven't written in a long time.

this is perhaps because the month of july attempted to kill me.

in addition to working 8 to 4:30 at d&m, i did my ccsp indexing project for my department's anthology and edited an entire book on fluid dynamics. i sent out my invoices two days ago, and discovered that i'd done over $3000 in contract work this month.

and i almost died.

i guess i've discovered the cap on the amount of money i could make as a freelancer. i suppose $2400 a month is a comfortable enough living. also, i probably wouldn't have been in such rough shape if i didn't also have to do internship work.

my internship is coming to an end in about three weeks, which makes me sad. there's a rumour going around that d&m might be initiating a junior editor position. fingers crossed.

my sweetie's gone on a kayak trip with his lab. it's much less nerve-wracking that he's actually going with other people, as opposed to last year, when he made a solo trip to quadra island. still, though, the timing sort of sucks, because this is my first sort of free weekend in over a month.

in a couple of days, i start designing the september issue of the physics journal. i have no idea what the content is going to be like...but i've discovered that i don't really care, which i see as a healthy and overdue step away from student journalism. it'll be good to do design again, though. i've been doing so much editing, i'll need a bit of balance.

until then, though, i'm trying to cram my days with social plans so i can keep my mind off the fact that my sweetie is under constant threat of drowning.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

finally.

i'd finished the newsletter redesign for the physics department over a month and a half ago and i just got paid. allegedly, the problem was that the finance department hadn't changed my address since i moved (which was almost a year ago now), and the physics department couldn't enter the data for my cheque to finance before they changed my address.

it's all bullshit, if you ask me. first of all, i moved up two floors. that's a three-digit change in my address. also, i'd filled in a change of address form last august.

i'm pretty sure that it was just a bunch of newbies in the physics department who didn't know what they were doing and lost my invoice. i had to remind them i hadn't gotten paid before they finally got off their fat asses.

why they had to go through payroll and not just pay me as a freelancer, i have no idea.

i fucking hate ubc. seriously.

Monday, July 18, 2005

so i'm home from work after three straight and solid days of indexing that have left me exhausted and broken with a brain functioning at, oh, maybe 0.4 capacity. and i'm officially scared shitless about what i'm going to do with my life in six weeks after this buffer internship's over.

sure, i feel more prepared than ever to take on the publishing industry -- i'm armed with all sorts of obscure knowledge you could only get in a classroom and a high tolerance for tedium you could only get in an internship. unfortunately, i think that having one and a half master's degrees has pretty much done nothing but boost my standards to unattainable heights. any job description i read, i say, 'oh, i don't want to do that kind of crappy entry-level work.'

i wonder how long it will take me to bite the bullet and realize that i've still got to pay my dues in the real world before i get the cred to move up in publishing. no editing for nori just yet -- no, first she has to be an assistant to some editor, filing manuscripts and fact-checking bibliographies.

sigh.

i'm so tired. i just need a real weekend off. really off, where i could sit on my ass and not do any housework or contract work. just to make ends meet and be able to make the $2000-a-term tuition i'm paying the school to work for someone, i've been working my ass off editing or indexing. in some senses, it's something i'm essentially used to, since it's kind of like doing school work. mostly, though, it's just really really exhausting.

Monday, July 11, 2005

summer hours at d&m means that i have to be at work at 8 every morning.

it's 10:47 and almost time for bed.

i am officially old.

Friday, July 08, 2005

*sob*

they've confirmed my ibook's hard drive is fucked and needs to be replaced. it'll cost $120 for the part and at least $90 for the labour. the old data might be recoverable depending on the state of the old hard drive. data recovery will be another $90 or more.

*whimper*

my poor ibook. my poor stolen computer programs...my poor stolen fonts...all of my files...

*sob*

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

i just won a hundred dollars!

it was for a writing competition among my classmates. i highly suspect that i won because nobody else submitted anything.

it's still a hundred bucks. i promised myself that the next hundred dollars i earned would go to unicef. that was about six months ago, so i guess this is perfect opportunity to make good on my word.

word.

Saturday, July 02, 2005

Monday, June 27, 2005

scattered ambivalent crap:

1) critical mass friday: amazing. there were over 1100 people, and we took over the lion's gate bridge. it was a pretty impressive sight.

2) sunday: catastrophic computer failure. my beautiful ibook started making this clicking noise and stalled. my attempts to reboot led to additional clickling. it's undoubtedly a hardware problem; i just hope i can recover what's on my hard disk. they say to back it up, but i don't really know anyone who does that...

3) almost one year to the day, some pigfuckers rip off my sweetie's bike again. this time, they didn't even leave the wheels -- everything's gone; it's been stripped down to the frame. what's really retarded is that they're going to take the parts home and realize they can't do a fucking thing with them; the whole chain ring was custom machined.

4) i have to edit a 239-page book on fluid dynamics for wiley, and i'm getting paid far less than what i was paid for my book for springer.

bah!

Saturday, June 25, 2005

dear lord.

so one of the things i have to do for my job is compile an author handbook – something editors can give to new authors that explains the editorial process, the formatting requirements of the manuscripts, etc. to do this, i'm essentially taking a bunch of scattered papers that are used in the firm and putting it all together into a coherent document. this is an excerpt from their disk requirements document:

"Manuscripts should be submitted on 3½” disks using recent versions of IBM-compatible WordPerfect or MS Word."

also:

"Never type the letter l (“el”) when you mean the number 1; and do not interchange zero and the capital letter O."

my first thought when i read this was "is this for real?" and after i'd ascertained that it was, my second thought was "how old is this document?" that second requirement is like a throwback to the days of typewriters before they put number keys on keyboard and people had to improvise. WTF?

i asked if CDs or e-mail attachments were acceptable. i mean, i don't even have a 3.5" floppy drive on my computer. turns out they're not a big fan of CDs, apparently.

if there was ever a testament to how technophobic the publishing industry is, this is it.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

if i had an indian name, i'd be called 'sandaltan.'

Thursday, June 16, 2005

babies.

seems like everyone is having them. my tech instructor at school, the publisher's assistant at greystone, a dude in my sweetie's lab, a friend of a friend i ran into on the bus...

i, on the other hand, dread the thought of having babies. i can't at all understand how anyone in our financial and career situation could even contemplate having babies. it's not that i don't like babies -- although clearly, i'm less interested in them than most people seem to be. i think what really turns me off about the concept of parenting isn't the child, but the thought of being obligated to interact with other parents. people who believe they're the only ones ever to have procreated. women who preface everything they say with "well, as a mother..."

same thing with dogs. some dog people are really cool, but in my brief trip back to alberta two weeks ago, my sweetie and i took his two family dogs out to the off-leash park. i sat back and observed as dogs sniffed each another's asses and the owners were forced to make asinine small talk, which revolved largely around breeds of dogs, dog food, dog toys...

it was torturous.

Friday, May 27, 2005

ahh, the oft-neglected index.

for some unknown reason, i've found myself in the position of having to index two things at once, my previous indexing experience being precisely nothing. one is a cookbook, which should be pretty straightforward (recipes, subrecipes, ingredients, some techniques -- easy, right?), but the other is our departmental press's anthology for its tenth anniversary celebrations. i've been indexing for two nights straight, and i'm only on page 23. of 381.

i've discovered this since i first started: indexing is hard. deciding what to include, what not to include, how to define subheadings, etc.? non-trivial.

i've always had a great appreciation for good indexes -- and cursed poor ones, of course. i'm growing increasingly apprehensive that the one i'm currently constructing will be one of the latter.

***

my sweetie and i convocated yesterday. heard the president of the university give one of the most hypocritical speeches ever. everything she said, i interpreted ironically, and i was constantly wishing i'd brought a bucket of peanuts to throw at her.

but i've neatly wrapped up that chapter of my life. in addition to donning the ridiculous gown with its ridiculous hood and ridiculous mortarboard, i met up with my old supervisor and finished the training him to use the template i'd made for the redesigned departmental newsletter. now i can invoice him and put that behind me as well.

people say 'congratulations' when i tell them i've convocated, but i don't feel proud of the accomplishment at all. it's a degree i wish i'd never pursued.

books are so much nicer than lasers.

Friday, May 20, 2005

my parents arrive tomorrow morning for a week's stay chez moi. that means that tonight, i'll have to:

1) clean the bathroom hard core
2) clean the kitchen hard core
3) vacuum
4) take out the recycling
5) gather up my clothes, currently randomly strewn about the apartment
6) find something to hang over the photo of a flattened mouse that will horrify my mother -- and not in a good way
7) find a good place to keep the bone carvings of two asians having sex that will horrify my mother -- and not in a good way

tomorrow morning, i should probably get some food or something, too. i have no idea how i'll entertain my parents while they're here.

Sunday, May 15, 2005

i am editing a book for the very first time.

it's a springer chemistry book about molecular orbitals and shit. it's an interesting learning experience, going through this massive manuscript. i'm getting paid 3 euros a page, and because the pages are way less dense than the papers i was editing, it's supposedly a net gain for me.

too bad this is the most boring book ever written. ever.

also, all of the authors are japanese, and their english ranges from poor to shit-poor.

i've asked my freelancing supervisor to give me next week off. my parents are going to be in town, i'll have my convocation, and i just don't want to have to come home from work and edit for three hours each night that week. it means the second half of the manuscript's going to be delayed by a week, but i don't think the world will suffer too much if this collection of papers about the DV-X(alpha) method isn't made immediately available.

***

i'd promised to write a thing or two about my internship. it's pretty good so far; i'm doing a lot of filing and photocopying, but it's pretty much what i'd expected. at least i'm still learning stuff. i've been going through the slush pile of unsolicited submissions and have come up with a system to make the process more efficient. i submitted a proposal to my supervisor about the project; if it works out, it may be a substantial part of my internship report.

otherwise, i've been doing a lot of proofreading. my supervisor's given me two proposals to review, both of which i rejected 'cause the writing was just too bad.

i might be indexing a cookbook in a couple of weeks, but this upcoming week, i'm actually covering the front desk for the receptionist. i'm terrified i'll answer the phone "dumbass and mcintyre" or hang up on someone when i transfer their call.

i can't believe i've already been working there for three weeks.

***

finally started my herb garden last week. i have basil, sage and rosemary growing, and my oregano and chive seeds are finally starting to germinate.

yum.

Friday, May 06, 2005

saw sloan last night. i'd never seen them live before...they were fun, but i was actually pretty impressed with the opener, magenta lane, a punky chick band from toronto.

***

allegedly, if you start exercising, at some point, you will find yourself more energized rather than tired. i sure hope that's going to kick in soon. i've been biking to work for the past two weeks and i'm still exhausted.

i've got stuff to write about, but i'm too incoherent at this point -- more later.

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Saturday, April 30, 2005

gah. no post for too long.

a) my sweetie got his thesis done last friday. finally. the three days leading up to his deadline were brutal for both of us; the first night i stayed up until 3am editing his thesis, then got up at 9 to help him implement changes. the day after, i got up at 6am to do a final round of editing, while he'd stayed up all night writing. when he went to submit his thesis to the faculty of graduate studies at the eleventh hour, he found it especially nerve-wracking, as the two people in front of him were sent away because their theses didn't conform to the rather arbitrary formatting regulations. fortunately, they accepted his thesis, which means that he won't owe the university a few thousand dollars in returned scholarship money and back-tuition, and that he'll be graduating with me.

we went out with S&A that night and had a three-pound crab to celebrate, marking the beginning of a string of fine (expensive) dining.

b) i am babysitting HG's food processor for the summer while she's in montreal. i pledged to use it at least once over the next three months, but haven't really thought about it yet. we went out to dinner and saw some of my publishing friends for one last time on sunday night.

c) monday was my first day of work as an intern -- or, as it turns out, the undersecretary to the administrative assistant -- at douglas & mcintyre. the d&m sales conference is tomorrow (a sunday -- and i'm going for my own *cough* edification), and in preparation, we had to put together these massive sales kits, which meant that i got extremely well-acquainted with the office photocopier. i spent the day doing menial tasks, like putting books in the mail for review, photocopying, cleaning cardboard boxes out of the back room, photocopying, recycling old catalogues to make room for new ones, photocopying...the rest of the week was more of the same, with occasional bouts of covering at the front desk when the receptionist had to go away, sorting reviews, filing stuff...which i don't really mind; doing mindless labour is fine after eight months of school, but i wouldn't want to do this all summer. the higher-ups tell me i'll be given some more interesting stuff to do after this sales conference. we'll see.

what really blows me away, though, was that i was constantly busy while i was at work; i always had something to do. and before i'd arrived, the poor receptionist had to do all of what i did plus go through the slush pile and man the phones and deal with couriers and apply for book awards. whatever they're paying her, it's not enough.

some of the submissions they're getting in the slush pile are pretty amazing: of course, you've got to have the indignant arrogant authors who think (ahem, know) they've created the best book ever written; there is one writer who stapled a ten-dollar bill into his submission of humorous christmas stories (...yeah...), and the little old ladies who write their memoirs of growing up in buttfuck, saskatchewan and expect everyone to be fervently interested in their story. part of my project is to figure out ways the acquisitions process can be made more efficient, and i already have a few ideas...

d) i wrecked a pair of jeans and a skirt riding my bike to work this week.

e) on monday night, i saw dmac for quite possibly the last time, or at least the last time in a long while, anyway. i'd found out a couple of months back that he'd decided to go back home and not return to vancouver for school. ubc wasn't really doing him any good, and it's probably for the best that he's pursuing other interests now, but it saddens me that a good friend is leaving the city.

f) on tuesday night, my sweetie and i went out for dinner to celebrate our three-year anniversary. it was just overpriced pizza and pasta, but a nice dinner nonetheless.

g) on wednesday night, we went out to feenie's for the first time, the (arguably) more affordable bistro next to lumière. my sweetie had the $14 crab ravioli appetizer that helped feenie win on iron chef america, and i had a bite -- it was amazing. incidentally, douglas & mcintyre is putting out a new cookbook by rob feenie; his picture on the cover allegedly took two rounds of photoshopping to fix the man's lazy/wandering eye.

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Monday, April 18, 2005

when i didn't feel like doing work earlier today, i googled the names of a bunch of random people i knew, from high school and even elementary school. it always shocks me how quite a few people just don't seem to have any web-presence. i'd think that every name i typed in would turn up at least one major hit.

i went on my googling spree after trying to find the contact information for some old friends, actually. in these few days before i have to start my job at d&m, i'm taking some time to reconnect and catch up with people i'd been neglecting. it's awkward (so...i know we haven't talked in two years, but...) and a surprising amount of work. i'm hoping or expecting to wake up tomorrow morning to an inbox full of new messages, and i'm fully prepared that the gratification i'm hoping to feel from people wanting to get in touch with me probably won't materialize in any meaningful way. at least i'm not talking to these people after years of silence and asking anything of them.

Saturday, April 16, 2005

so it's my birthday today.

i'm not doing too much; i just invited S&A over for gyoza and fried rice. since last weekend, i've developed a tenacious addiction to the frozen gyoza from capers. i suppose it's not that expensive a habit, since i have to eat anyway, but those mid-evening cravings for vegetarian dumplings can be distracting.

i was asked whether i'd be going to the ubyssey party at wreck beach tonight. i'd thought about it before i made my plans, but i didn't really want to spend my birthday with a bunch of volunteers i don't know. i only found out later, though, that A is bringing a friend who's staying with her, which means that i still have to clean my house, which i thought i could avoid.

this past week has been a bit bizarre; it's felt like i've been working non-stop while i've somehow also managed to do a bunch of leisure activities.

monday, we had to head to school for a seminar on how to write a good internship report. our prof kept talking about how the internship process has been relatively free of problems, with the exception of one firm, and everyone knows that one firm is the one i'm heading to. it was at once sort of funny and disconcerting. i headed straight home that day while the others went out for drinks, i think. i still had my last paper to finish up, and i did a rather shoddy job of it. i am so beyond caring about it, though. the instructor's marking seems completely arbitrary, anyway; it doesn't seem to matter how much effort i put into his papers.

i had my one-on-one self-evaluation with JM on tuesday. afterwards, SD, WF and i headed out for noodles, where we basically gossiped about people in our class for two hours. when i got home, i worked on putting together the contract for the newsletter redesign that i've somehow shafted myself into doing. i've got to learn to say no, although i haven't heard from the old boss since tuesday, so it may be a non-issue.

on wednesday, we had a group photo taken at school, and our yearbook was ready. it was just a side project a few of the students took on for fun, and it's absolutely amazing and rather hilarious. when i got home, i started putting together my year-end report for the production post at the physics journal. i think this is the last big transition report i'll ever have to write. i wrote all day and still wasn't done by 2am, but in one day, i'd already accumulated more words than the history paper that took me three solid days to complete.

thursday, SP, HG, my sweetie and i went to bowen island for a short hike around the lake. it was more of a walk than a hike, but it was really all my decrepit body could handle. we got there at about 10:30 and left the little island of 3500 at 3. i had plans to do work when i got home, but ended up napping and sitting around catatonic for the rest of the evening.

yesterday was pretty cool but sort of bittersweet; i met with AW to talk about the future of MOMENTUM, and pretty much secured the contract to compile their style guide and writer's guidelines, which i'll be starting in a couple of weeks, i think. after my meeting with her, i headed down to an herbal bliss to get some rooibos for my uncle. starting the 16th, the lady told me, everything in the store was going on sale for up to 75% off. it was closing at the end of the month. it was surprising and sad news, but SD and i have pledged to go on a tea-buying binge early next week. i'll also ask the mother-in-law if there's anything i can get her.

i headed over to the greenhouse by my place to pick up a plant for LC; she had originally intended for her party last night to be a garden party where everyone was required to bring a plant of some sort for her yard, which had been dug up when the flood restoration people had to fix her home's drainage problem. i eventually decided on a heather bun evergreen, but as i was picking it out, it kept running through my mind that LC's boyfriend is a landscape artist. i had visions of him taking the plant and saying, 'oh. one of these.'

the party was great; we all got our yearbooks signed high-school style. it was also kind of sad when we left, though. i know i won't see some of these characters again. for a while, anyway.

Sunday, April 10, 2005

lords of dogtown?!

allow me to be the first to say: bluuuurrrggggh!

the movie looks disgusting. and it doesn't even look like they wrote peggy oki into the script. what, the asian chick doesn't get a part in your precious knock-off of a movie?!

vomit!

i don't generally use so many interrobangs, but i think this heinous travesty really warrants them.

Saturday, April 02, 2005

i've been negligent in my updating, and it certainly isn't due to a lack of material. okay, here goes:

1) i was working late at school two mondays ago, as is often the case on mondays, and my sweetie came over to school so that we could have dinner together. he had with him a coupon for a restaurant on the waterfront, aqua riva. the coupon seemed to read that, with the purchase of one entrée, a second entrée under $20 would be free.

i raised the concern that, in my cons, black jeans and t-shirt, i wasn't exactly dressed well enough for fine dining. he replied, 'do you think i'm dressed well enough?' as he pulled on his torn jeans and loud top. for some reason, that was enough to convince me to go.

we headed into the fancy restaurant, where the bread is served in these specially made conical metal sculptures, and already i became self-conscious about us being utter riffraff. we were shown to our table, where i looked at the menu to find that only one entrée was priced under $20.

to alleviate the confusion, but also to out us as riffraff, jeff asked the waitress about our coupon. she patiently explained that up to $20 would be taken off the price of the entrée, and brought us some bread in a fancy conical metal basket.

we ordered, and as we waited for our meal, we were trying to have a normal conversation while being starkly aware that we sorely stood out from the rest of the restaurant patrons. at one point, my sweetie was telling me about how he had to take out the garbage because it was "stinky. highly stinky," and just as he uttered those words, our waitress came from behind him to refill our water. i buried my head in my hands, desperately trying to stifle my laughing. the waitress seemed bemused as she walked away.

after we finished our meal, the waitress brought the dessert menus; i wasn't planning on having dessert, since the meal was going to be expensive enough, and the desserts were all about $8 each, but she sort of shamed or bullied us into it. my sweetie decided that he'd go for the cheesecake, and when the waitress came back, she said, "i recommend the tiramisu, the crême brûlée or the berry crumble."

"oh," said my sweetie. "and i'd already settled on the cheesecake."

"i wouldn't recommend the cheesecake. in fact, the cheesecake and the pecan pie are my least favourite choices."

"um, i guess i'll take your second choice, then."

"the crême brûlée? sure."

she smiled and walked away, and i started laughing at our continued riffraffery. "they should just put a sign on our table that says 'riffraff,'" i said, just as, of course, the waitress came from behind me this time, to refill our water. my sweetie sort of lost it and started laughing fairly hard at that point.

we paid for our meal, left the waitress a substantial tip, and eventually bussed home after i concluded upon returning to school that i wasn't conscious enough to do any more work on our tech project.

2) we went to victoria on thursday for a field trip to see trafford publishing (a print-on-demand/vanity publishing company) and abebooks, both of which are making bucketloads of money in an industry that, as we keep being told in management class, is continually losing cash. i went on wednesday night and stayed with HG, whose father and stepmother have a lovely bed-and-breakfast-type home in metchosin, a half and hour's drive from victoria. our history instructor booked a conference room at the quality inn for our thursday lecture. afterwards, a few of us stayed behind, walked around victoria and had dinner together. it was loads of fun, especially since there were several among us who were getting to that delirious stage of exhaustion where everything is funny. it was also kind of bittersweet, 'cause we knew that we'd all be parting ways in a couple of weeks.

3) i am so grateful that christians think jesus died and came back to life; the four-day easter weekend was something i really needed, not that i did much beyond work on my history paper. the thing's a piece of shit, but i don't want to think about it or work on it any further.

4) we more or less finished our tech project document yesterday. i'm pretty happy with it; it's quite comprehensive and its 70-page length really drives home how much work we did on it. now, we just have to plan our presentation. we have a few things in the works. in anticipation that our project would be pretty much impossible to execute, we called ourselves 'sisyphus solutions,' so at our presentation, we're going to start off by pushing a giant papier-mâché boulder up the stairs of the auditorium to the the of rocky. when we get to the top, we're going to hoist the boulder up above our heads.

we also have plans to dress like techies: black jeans hiked up to our nipples, black t-shirts tucked into our pants, socks with sandals and tape on our glasses. it'll be totally hot.

5) so begins the week from hell. two exams, one paper, one big presentation. oy. i haven't even picked a topic for my last tech paper. i'm sort of discouraged by the fact that i didn't do particularly well on my last one. but, when it's all over, we all get to head over to our prof's house in coquitlam and get sloshed on his vineyard's bad wine! i can't wait!

6) i was planning on taking the two weeks off i have in april off -- that is, no work on anything. much walking outside and vegetating. unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be possible. i have a backlog on editing i have to catch up on, a bunch of physics journal stuff i need to take care of, and just a couple of days ago, i heard from my old thesis supervisor completely out of the blue. he wants me to help design an easy newsletter template for the physics department.

if i'm to make any money in freelancing, i have to stop feeling guilty about charging people for work that i do. i don't know why i have that problem.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

strange days. i'm in a rather bizarre mood right now, feeling as i'd imagine a person with ADHD on valium might feel. i'm feeling a bit sour and kind of stressed out, but my body is inexplicably relaxed. i'm so overwhelmed with work i can't bring myself to do anything. i'm more or less in a state where i realize that i'm going to be hit with a load of work in three weeks and that i'm going to wig out, but i can't do anything about it right now.

helpless...

listless...

but i shouldn't be. i have a 20-page history paper that i have essentially yet to start, but i keep deleting what i write. if i get that out of the way, things won't be so bad. why can't i write it?

why do i feel so lethargic?

***

thursday, in our history course, a book restorer came to talk to us and show us her work. i never realized how economics-driven the book restoration business was; they do to the book what the client asks, even if it may not do anything to preserve the book. it was more about raising the resale value of an old book rather than preserving the content of it. i appreciated what she did quite a bit, and her work is quite extraordinary; but it disappointed me somewhat to have my naïve notions of book restorers as being the conservationists of human knowledge unceremoniously dashed.

friday, we trekked up to special collections on the main campus; i've heard that sfu can be quite beautiful when it's sunny out, but it was grey and misty and altogether depressing, especially in the campus's dystopic concrete landscape. as i was making my way on my 45-minute bus trip after having woken up an hour earlier than usual, i thought, 'if i decided to do a phd in communications, i'll have to make this commute every fucking day. i'm not sure i can make that commitment.

this week, we head out to victoria for a field trip. should be fun, and could be exhausting. we're to visit trafford's print-on-demand facility, as well as the abebooks offices.

presentation tomorrow, midterm wednesday, should be concurrently writing my history paper, two weeks behind on my editing...

why can't i get a move on it?

Friday, March 11, 2005

fucking jetsgo!

roar!

this is what i get for being on the ball and booking tix for my parents three months in advance.

bugger.

i might be able to get my money back, but it's a long convoluted process of faxing the credit card company and have them file a complaint on my behalf. it may take until mid-july for me to get my money back.

well, at least i'm better than those poor stranded fuckers out there.

and now i have to book with westjet, which has probably jacked up its prices in response to this whole jetsgo fiasco.

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

yay! i have an internship!

this summer, i will be working for douglas & mcintyre publishing group and studying how they can streamline their acquisitions process. i'll even be paid! modestly, but it's better than what i'm getting now.

i'm excited. i've got all of these grand plans to bike to work, but we'll see what happens come the end of april.

it's such a relief to have this settled; i felt like i was one of the only people left who didn't have an internship.

in other news, i experimented with my new oil fondue set yesterday to see (a) how long it would take to get the oil hot enough to fry things if i relied on just the flame, and (b) how successful i could be at making vegetable tempura using the fondue set. this is all part of my presentation plan for my history course, but i'm not sure it's going to work out. i think i've decided to make hush puppies rather than veggie tempura (just couldn't get the batter right), but that excludes those non-dairy folk in my class from being able to partake. how is this relevant to the history of ink, you may ask? well, it really is only peripherally so, but at least it makes class interesting. see, old-timey printers used to go beyond the city walls once or twice a year to boil linseed oil and make their own ink. for the germans, it was pretty much the equivalent of their wayzgoose, a day when everyone in the printing house got together for 'merrymaking' (two of the books i read used that very term) and a meal: they'd fry food in the boiling oil and eat it.

tonight, i try my hand at making berry-juice ink and prepare my presentation.

Saturday, March 05, 2005

basic pez etiquette:

if someone offers you a pez, check to see if the dispenser's been pulled back, revealing the candy. if it has, you are obliged to take the candy. do so graciously, even if it's one of the gross yellow ones or if you just plain don't like pez candies. if the latter's the case, you say, 'just one, thanks.' if the dispenser hasn't yet been pulled back, and you don't want a pez candy, it's safe to refuse. just don't make the pez offerer have to push the candy back into the dispenser. that's just rude. the best response is, 'why, i'd love a pez.' i mean, seriously. unless you're actually diabetic, a single pez candy isn't gonna kill you.

Sunday, February 27, 2005

what a bizarre week.

my sweetie got acute food poisoning on monday night. rancid shrimp in a salad roll, he speculates. he called from work at about midnight that night explaining that he was spewing from both ends and asked if i could go get him some ginger ale while he gingerly made his way home.

on my way out to the gas station -- the only place around that might be open at that hour -- and as i was walking down the sidewalk, i see a skunk dart out from the bushes and come barreling straight for me. i skirted around me at the very last possible moment; i think it might have been about 40 cm away or less. i don't think i've ever been quite so close to a skunk before.

just what i need, i thought, to be sprayed on my way out to get ginger ale for the ailing husband.

anyway, monday night was sleepless; certainly, it was much worse for my sweetie than it was for me, but horrible sounds of vomiting every twenty minutes made for a sleepy nori on tuesday.

i had tuesday off, actually -- our tech project wasn't to start until wednesday, when i had to give my presentation on content management systems. i joked that it was just like a reading break, only a fifth as long. i spent most of it nursing my sweetie back to health, which was interrupted by a meeting with BCAMP, in which i was pretty much told that there was no place for me there and that i really should consider other internship options.

well, poo.

i tried working on my CMS presentation, which ended up quite the piece of garbage, especially when compared to LC's awesome presentation on wikis. however, i did manage to get an entire research article laid out and sent out for proof.

wednesday, i finally got to find out whom i'd be working with in tech. turns out i'm shafted with the smelly guy again -- who was utterly ineffectual in our last project and was, as you may deduce, smelly -- but the rest of my group seems pretty solid. our goal is to find a way to automate the process of catalogue production by flowing ONIX-compatible XML data into a commonly used layout program like quark or indesign. last year's group got pretty far with the project but couldn't quite make a fully functional package. i got stuck being project manager, which is fine, i guess, but i'm just afraid that i'm not really going to end up giving it my all because i feel so burnt out.

this week, i also decided on my history paper topic: the history of ink. i'm not entirely sure what angle i'll be taking on it -- and i have about six books that i asked my sweetie to get me from the ubc library to read yet, but i ran the topic by my instructor, and she was entirely too enthusiastic about it. unfortunately, on thursday, i found out that smelly guy apparently wanted to take on that topic as well, and wanted to coordinate presentations on the same day.

so unimpressed i was. i don't want to have to coordinate anything with him.

anyway, the week ended fairly well, with a few of us heading out to drink on friday night and plan a kitshy 'yearbook' for our class, complete with an elementary-school-type class photo with our prof standing by us and one of those white-lettering-on-black signs reading 'mpub class of 2005,' individual photos with incoherent call-outs to our peeps, favourite quotes and inside jokes, an autograph page, and tally of our upcoming 'most likely to...' survey.

tonight is oscar night. in keeping with three years of tradition, at least one of S&A is coming over for dinner and to watch the program; however, none of us have really seen any of the nominated movies, so the whole affair is really just an excuse for me to take sunday night off. i guess i kind of need it. within the next week, i have a tech paper due and i have to get started on this history presentation worth a rather substantial chunk of my mark.

~sigh~. okay, here i go.

Monday, February 21, 2005

Saturday, February 19, 2005

magazine project over!

we had our presentations yesterday, and all three groups did pretty awesome. fuck, am i ever glad that's over.

my designs got the least criticism -- surprising, considering i was really the only art director of the three groups that wasn't a 'designer.' one of the panel members said that our magazine proposals were 'among the best he had ever seen,' which i thought was lip service, but apparently last year, the groups put out dave, a magazine for the regular and not terribly good-looking 'dave' who just liked to drink beer and hang out with his friends; boys only, a magazine for the 'reluctant reader' in the 9 to 12 male demographic; and goal, a magazine for parents of children who played sports -- essentially for soccer moms.

yeah.

so our magazines don't seem like that much of a stretch. they could actually be real titles.

after the presentation, we hung out and had brie in the lounge. KS and i played guitar and people drank a lot of free liquor. a bunch of us went out, intending on going to subeez, but it was packed. we ended up at honey, a pub i'd never been to before, but it was great: booths with large plush velvet cushions, music from the 60s, a wall onto which they projected some russ meyer-esque film with russian subtitles...food was consumed, drinks were imbibed and dancing was done.

good times.

i'm tempted to take a pause, but i have some severe catching up to do...a mountain of editing work, physics journal crap, my technology presentation i have to give this wednesday, my technology paper, my history paper...

and although i did the laundry last weekend, it's been sitting in a massive (but clean) heap on my bedroom floor, remaining unfolded and getting permanently wrinkled.

oh yeah: my internship plans with MOMENTUM fell through last night. i don't really know what i'm doing this summer.

excellent, as they say.

Saturday, February 12, 2005

where others hyperventilate, i appear to clench my jaw retardedly hard. at this point,i think my molars are going to fall out; i am *so* stressed out. there is so much shit to do and not enough time/energy/brain cells to do it. K&T called today and said surprise! they're in vancouver for the weekend! let's hang out!

aaugh! worst timing ever!

i'd invite them over for tea but the apartment is currently a filth-encrusted hovel, the laundry room still isn't done, there is refuse all over the bottom floor of my place, i have a big presentation that i have to design all snazzy this upcoming week (what the fuck made me think i could be art director of a magazine, anyway!?), there's a completely unintelligible article i was supposed to edit three weeks ago, both my prof and MOMENTUM are putting pressure on me to do my internship with them, i have a management assignment to do and i'm running on an average of five hours of sleep per night this week.

*whimper*

why won't sfu give me a week off?

why!?

Saturday, February 05, 2005

instead of prosecuting michael jackson for child molestation, we should prosecute janet jackson for giving the FCC the reason it was looking for to send freedom of speech back to the mccarthy era.

discuss.

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

ugggghh...

that's how i feel right now.

i've been in this perpetual state of exhaustion since monday and i'm not sure why. i'd thought it was the whacked out fumes from the tiling adhesive my sweetie's been using, but now i'm not so sure. i just constantly, constantly feel like i should be sleeping, and i'm constantly, constantly cursing my backward university for not having a reading break.

suicide rates are highest at sfu, too. correlation?

anyway, my internship prospects look like they may be taking some concrete shape...i am either (a) working for MOMENTUM (i find out sunday whether and how i fit into the whole magazine-publishing scheme), (b) working part time as a research assistant to my prof gathering data in support of BCAMP's application to get magazine publishers a provincial tax credit and part time for BCAMP putting together a position paper including lobbying strategy and contacts, or (c) working (who knows how?) for douglas & mcintyre.

until then, i've got more pressing issues on my mind, like 'how the fuck am i going to get that 700-page book read by next friday,' and having to buckle down and write this silly paper on eben moglen i've been putting off for four days now.

*yawn*!

Friday, January 28, 2005

"A study for cost-tolerance allocation model of by integrating process capability index Cpm into product life cycle cost"

you know editing is going to be hell when that's the title of the article.

Monday, January 24, 2005

nori's nash summary:

wednesday, 19 january: flight supposed to leave at 1945h. thomas calls at around 1730h to tell me that due to freezing rain, the highway from the edmonton airport to the city may be closed and that i should call him when i get in to let him know what's up. check the flight information website, which claims that the flight has been delayed to depart at 2022h. check ama website, which says that the highway is extremely dangerous. refresh. highway is closed. fuck. sweetie says that he can see if he can convince his parents to pick me up via the back roads with chains on the tires. i leave the house at about 1815h.

hop on the 98 b-line at around 1835h. sit on one of the bench seats. dude across from me is trying to read life of pi, but there is someone sitting next to him talking to him. i can't see him because my line of sight is blocked by a girl standing in the aisle.

"yeah, you know? i got a $300 a day habit. i'm tryin' to get healthy, man."

dude reading is visibly disturbed. "uh...good luck with that," he says.

girl in the aisle gets off the bus. that's when i see that the guy behind her is actually smoking a crack pipe -- on a bus -- and blowing out the window. he gets off at the next stop. dude reading understandably sketched out.

"can you fucking believe that!?" i hear from another dude at the back of the bus. "i've never seen that in my life!"

"what happened?" asked this rather imperceptive man sitting in the corner.

"if he hadn't been blowing out the window, i would have clocked him and thrown him off the bus myself!"

"what happened?" the man repeated.

"he was smoking crack! i work in the downtown eastside. i see that kind of shit all the time, but never on the bus! what does he think this is, the skytrain?"

yes.

i eventually get off the bus and catch the connection to the airport. get to the desk.

"i'm supposed to fly to edmonton."

"that flight's been cancelled. but you're confirmed for the 945h flight tomorrow morning."

"there's nothing earlier?"

"well, there is a 7am flight, but it's full. you can come at 6am and try for a standby seat."

pout.

"are you sure i can't get a seat on the 7am flight?"

checks. "oh. things must have changed. okay, you're confirmed for the 7am. be here at 6 at the latest."

head home. call thomas with the news that he'd have to postpone my talk. spend the rest of the evening trying to sleep but not succeeding, then just giving up and watching television.

***

thursday, 20 january (my sweetie's birthday): get up at 500h. look around at the ridiculous renovation mess in the apartment and contemplate whether i should eat something. i'm not hungry, but i know i'll be ill if i don't eat something. decide against it and just pack a bunch of arrowroot cookies and ginger candies. call a cab. head to the airport.

fly to edmonton and cab it to the hotel. am late for my own talk by 20 minutes.

try to check in. they don't have a reservation for me. find thomas. get my t-shirt and registration package to discover that my name had been misspelled on the name tag. try to check in under that name while bizzak promises me a new name tag. head into the room to find the personal effects of at least two others. wonder whom i'm rooming with.

see ET, whom i haven't seen in years. she looks fabulous. also run into other old friends.

see doug southam's documentary photo session. it is excellent. conclude that it is an unfortunate coincidence that the cancer lady's last name is tarbox.

see paula simons's session on opinion writing. she's extremely fun and articulate. miss opinion writing.

meet my roommates, AC and KH, who both seem pretty solid.

hear buzz that people were disappointed that i didn't give my session today. begin to worry that everyone's expectations are too high.

spend evening editing and trying to get some reading done for jmax's tech class, but too tired.

***

friday, 21 january: get up to have breakfast up in la ronde. lose my roommates but find basil sitting with someone i don't know. ask to join them, introduce myself to the dude with longish greasy-looking hair. midway through my meal, basil gets up and leaves. other dude is weird.

"have you seen van helsing?"

and

"i could talk some more if you want."

he tells me he wanted to go to my talk, but since it's been rescheduled to 11, he can't see it.

pity.

i dick around in the tech room for an hour and print out some handouts for my talk. find myself with nothing else to do and just sit around getting progressively more nervous. head to my session room, wait for people to file in...

give my talk. it goes okay, i guess. there are roughly 50 people there -- not a bad turnout -- and i'm hoping they didn't all leave disappointed. a few people come and chat after my talk, which i take to be a good sign, although they're almost all weirdos. one chunky nerd asked me where he could find magazines to write for.

what?

i find out he's from the quill, and it all makes sense. i tell him to contact the mmpa and that seems to satisfy him, but he continues to talk to me about assinine things.

i go to RB's talk. that boy sure knows how to sell himself.

see one of ron johnson's many presentations. similar to what he had last year. don't learn much, but it's still good.

give my second talk. about a dozen people show up -- more than i expected. "since we're a smaller group, i want this to be more of a round-table. why don't you throw questions at me and let me know what you want to get out of this session?"

silence.

okay...

i talk about the lunatic society and robert maxwell and eventually, they start asking me questions, most of which i seem to be able to answer to their satisfaction.

evening: lewis lapham.

also, meet dmac's mom.

yes. lewis lapham. an engaging talk, as expected, but he doesn't say anything i don't expect him to say. get gag rule and 30 satires and have them signed. "is there outrage that we simply don't hear about up here?" i ask him.

"no. there's no outrage. i've tried hard to find it."

watch napoleon dynamite with dmac, HT and AL.

chat with bizzak.

go to bed.

***

saturday, 22 january: wake up to our fourth roommate, whom i haven't met, showering. she emerges, i introduce myself. she is a small unassuming asian girl.

head upstairs to breakfast, which, disappointingly, consists merely of fruit and pastries. eat a blueberry danish and a bowl of fruit salad. am joined by DL and LB.

go downstairs and run into SL. feel obligated to go see his talk. it's okay -- raises some issues that i hadn't thought about -- but his malappropisms and use of the word 'utilize' make my eyes roll.

see CB's talk on alt weeklies. see HA in the audience and chat with her for a bit. make fun of KO for having to introduce CB and encourage her to introduce him as her boyfriend. JC is also there. he is the shit.

see therese kehler talk about freelancing. she is, as roommate KH puts it, "abrasive and borderline rude." her advice is sort of inconsistent and not terribly helpful -- "i hated this pitch. and your pitch is the most important. it's your chance to make a good first impression...but we ran the story anyway"; "never write in the first person. but here are some cases where it worked"; "this was a terrible article. but i rewrote it and ran it anyway" -- leading me to think, ah...this is why ed is the way it is.

ken alexander's talk. glad i went, but his answers to the questions are somewhat disappointing. he doesn't seem to have much of an idea of the walrus's mandate, identity or audience. having a forum for canada's writers and readers is fine and good, but not having an easily articulated purpose just makes failure more likely. i won't be shocked if the magazine folds within five years.

meet the parents for dinner. they pick me up and we eat at pearl river. yum. there, a man comes and says hi to my dad, shakes his hand and mine, and asks my dad a few questions that he stumbles in answering. when the man leaves, my dad says "this is embarassing...i don't know who he is."

it takes the three of us a good ten minutes to figure it out, but we finally do -- it's old neighbours of ours who moved about three years ago. glad they don't understand cantonese...

head home after dinner, where i find my christmas present from my sweetie -- a the cheat sweatshirt -- which had taken until just the last week to arrive. i pack all of the crap we'd forgotten in edmonton after our visit over christmas and promptly fall asleep for two hours. alone in my old bed. sweet.

get dropped off at the hotel, where i pack up. things don't quite fit, but i cram as best as i can. head down to see dmac, find him in the tech room. we sit and talk for a long time...but we are interrupted. we will have to recapitulate later. anyway, we are interrupted by a group of his friends, who are up from banff and dropped by to say hi to him.

later on, we're joined by HT, and while the three of us are obviously engaged in conversation, AK comes along and sits down, attempting to join in on our rather personal discussion. we try subtle hints to get him to go away, while he gives us not-so-subtle hints to vote for him in the cup presidential election. we tell him none of us are voting, and he says "you can still read my position paper even if you're not voting."

go away, AK. you're not charismatic.

head toward the elevators, where i am flagged down by my roommates, who infom me that there is "action" happening in our hotel room thanks to the fourth girl. apparently, KH and AC walked in to find her and a dude partially clothed. they hadn't even chained the door or hung a 'do not disturb' sign on the door.

"oh sorry...uh...we'll give you some time," says KH, meaning, of course, "we'll give you some time to get dressed and compose yourselves," not "we'll give you some time to finish having sex." but as soon as they walk out the door, they hear the door chain being latched.

the three of us are sexiled.

"how long should we give them?" AC asks. KH just wants to get to bed. we eventually go back up, knock on the door, and roughly ten minutes later, hear (from another room down the hall) someone leave our room. i ascertain that it's safe enough to retrieve my sweatshirt, do, and head back downstairs to chill with dmac and HT, who are on safety. we sit until about 0330h and get to bed.

***

sunday, 23 january: wake up, finish packing, and eat brunch, which is a bizarre hodgepodge of food -- ravioli, waffles, salmon and eggs benedict?

head to HT and ZBP's session about queer journalism. a freak from the gleaner keeps interjecting. otherwise, it is a fine session.

get driven to the airport by thomas. will miss him till i see him next.

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

ROAR!

freezing rain in edmonton. flight cancelled. missing my own talk.

fuck!

poor thomas. he's probably much more stressed.

however, i bet he hasn't seen a dude smoke crack on a bus before. as of tonight, i have. it was spectacular.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

two members of my magazine group missed class today because they were both too busy pumping water out of their respective homes.

people keep saying "i've never seen it rain like this," but they must have. it's vancouver. it did the same thing last year. probably has done the same thing for years prior, too.

just checked the environment canada website. it's -11 in edmonton right now, and will only get down to a low of -21 during the conference. big improvement from the -44 they were getting last week, and certainly better than the unceasing sheet of water here.

i liked vancouver better when it was covered in snow. for a reason i may have identified but am not entirely sure i have, i feel much more vulnerable when i'm walking out in the rain. it's not just the wetness and the grey skies -- i think the fact that my rain gear cuts off a large portion of my peripheral vision puts me on edge. i can't see what's around me, and i don't know what's coming.

now it's beginning to look like i may need an entirely separate wardrobe just to make it to the airport tomorrow. my rain coat, rubber boots and jupo will serve me no function in edmonton.

i'm excited but nervous. i have no idea how many people are going to come to my talks. "who the fuck is this person, and why the fuck should i listen to her?" is probably what most delegates will think when they read the conference schedule.

my sweetie just warned me not to pee in the ice machine at the hotel. i shall keep that in mind.

Sunday, January 16, 2005

there is a big hole in my kitchen ceiling. but the installation is almost done. i have a functioning stove and dishwasher again, although there's so much debris and garbage in front of both appliances that i can't do much with either.

***

SM put it best on thursday: "do the rest of you feel like you've entered a state of perpetual panic that doesn't look like it'll abate until the end of term?"

it's true. i'm experiencing this continued jaw-clenching stress that is a bit too overwhelming to know what to do about -- one of those situations where you freeze and you can't accomplish anything, even though you know that'll just exacerbate everything in the end.

monday was fine; "i can handle this," i thought, as we went through the syllabi for the management and technology courses. when the outline for the magazine project was handed out on tuesday, the "how the fuck am i going to get this all done" set in, and when we had our first history class on thursday, i completely slipped into a deer-in-headlights mode.

i'm going back to edmonton for nash on wednesday. i can't help but panic that if i fall behind, i just won't ever get adequately caught up. i put together one of my presentations yesterday. the other, i'm being a little too flippant about, i think. i've convinced myself nobody's going to show up...

the courses all look like they'll be interesting; but they will be a lot of reading, a lot of writing, and a whole hell of a lot of baptism by fire.

our magazine project i'm apprehensive about. our groups have evidently been mixed since last term, and i'm afraid that i might not be able to get along with everyone quite as well as last term. i'm also concerned that we're all generally stressed out, and that the tension's pervading our meetings, putting us on edge much more than is reasonable. ultimately, i'm worried that the magazine we'll end up having to work on won't be something i'm passionate about and i'll just end up doing a mediocre job on it.

finally, i'm worried about my internship. only one place has gotten back to me, and we've been playing telephone tag for the past week.

*sigh* (frustration...)

~sigh~ (calming...)

one day at a time...one day at a time...

Monday, January 10, 2005

my kitchen, and the room that's supposed to (eventually) be the laundry room are in utter disarray at the moment.

have i told this story before? here's the synopsis: when we bought the place, the owners claimed there was a rough-in for a washer-dryer set in the little room by the kitchen they were using as a storage closet. that didn't at all influence whether or not we would have bought the place, but i didn't really give it much thought, since, after having bought a house, it was rather unlikely that we would have any money left over to buy a washer-dryer set, particularly since my tuition this year is outrageous.

however, my in-laws came to visit, and while they were here, they bought us a washer and a dryer. ridiculously generous of them, to say the least. the machines were scheduled to be delivered several weeks later, and when they were, we cleared out the storage closet and my sweetie attempted to install the set, only to discover:

1) the "pipe" that's supposed to feed water into the washer is about 0.25" in diameter, meaning that it would take approximately 50 years to fill the washer.

2) there was no standing pipe in which the water was supposed to drain from the washer. there was just this corrugated hose that runs a convoluted path through the kitchen cabinets and just ends right under the kitchen sink. meaning, of course, that if we were to have hooked up a washer to it, after it had taken 50 years to fill with water, it would drain into our kitchen cabinet, onto the kitchen floor, and quite possibly the apartment below us.

3) the dryer electrical was piggybacked off of the stove.

4) the washer electrical was piggybacked off of the microwave.

when this was further investigated, it was found that, rather than run a cable behind the drywall and through holes in the studs, the installer had simply gauged this curved trench in the drywall and embedded the cable into it.

first class.

my sweetie's intial plan was to smash through the concrete kitchen floor with a sledgehammer and run proper piping under the floor. he called our realtor to ask where exactly our property ends and where the property of the dude below us begins.

turns out his property ends at his ceiling...but ours ends at our floor. the gap belongs to the strata council, with whom my sweetie had already had a previous run-in. suffice it to say that we decided not to put ourselves in a position to have to deal with them again. anyway, when the realtor found out what a shoddy job had been done with the installation, he kind of went crazy and said that he wanted to take the previous owner to court, how the whole thing is "mickey mouse" and how all fire fighters were useless (the previous owner was a firefighter, to put that last comment in some context, but i guess it would have been marginally funnier if i'd left it unexplained.) my sweetie did his best to discourage any kind of legal action, but the realtor was insistent that we keep all of our receipts and get reimbursed for out-of-pocket expenses. turns out it wasn't the previous owner's shit-installation job, after all, but because they signed some sort of disclosure form about alterations to the property, they're still paying for the cost of materials.

strangely enough, the previous owners' realtor called us, saying that the previous owner's father had died and he'd made the coat rack by our door. they then offered to pay "any amount" for it. we said just to pay for our washer dryer installation and not worry about it.

wow. this isn't a synopsis at all.

point is, we had to run the pipe behind the stove and dishwasher. both appliances were pulled out and this morning, my sweetie flooded the bottom kitchen cabinet after discovering that he couldn't shut off the cold water supply to the sink. he's going to try freezing the part of the pipe with dry ice, cutting it, the capping it.

what should have been a straightforward plug-and-play installation is turning into quite the gargantuan mess. i'm looking forward to being able to use my stove again. i don't even care about the washer and dryer anymore, excpet that they're currently taking up space in our living room.

Friday, January 07, 2005

if DV were here, he'd say that my week was a testament to the church of the shaft and the flow...

monday: picked up S&A's wedding gift (part of it, anyway). that night, we dropped it off at their place and watched them forcefeed their cat. see, cats are kind of retardedly designed. housecats will get fat, then if something upsets them, they can stop eating. like other animals, they'll begin to metabolize their own body fat if they don't have food. problem is, their livers can't handle that. it gets all fatty and useless, and, if untreated, the cat just dies. apparently, then, the solution is to forcefeed the cat. i watched as A held the cat's head while S squirted pasty liquid catfood into the cat's mouth as the animal protested. rawr-rawr-rawr-rawr...

tuesday: finally got my letters and CV all ready for the internship application. went to school and printed everything out. then went and bought myself a long overdue pair of cons. they've got quite the racket going; there must be, like $2 worth of material in them and they're selling for $60. brings me one step closer to being joey ramone next halloween, though. also, bought the napoleon dynamite DVD, which my sweetie was convinced i would never be able to do. also picked up cables to connect the laptop to the television so that on saturday, we could run the DVD off my 14" laptop while watching it on my 13" television...?

wednesday: walked around town and dropped off my internship stuff. both BCAMP and ABPBC are in sun towers, so if i get hired at either of those places, i could head to victory square and shoot up during my lunch break. MR at ABPBC was honest, though -- she said that she probably wouldn't hire on an intern if she couldn't find funding for it. BCAMP is still a possibility, but the director wants me to think up potential projects -- she knows much better than i what her organization does, though, so i'm sort of at a loss. dropped off my CV at adbusters, too. tried to tell the lady i spoke to that i'm applying for an internship, not one of their writer/editor jobs, but it didn't seem to sink in. she was sort of bitchy.

thursday: my cold got worse. it also snowed about 4 cm. news stories showed helpless and hopeless vancouverites slipping everywhere, many of them complaining that city crews hadn't salted enough. bunch of wieners. i also got promoted/demoted in my freelancing job, depending on how you look at it. my supervising editor moved me to another journal -- the visual computer, from the international journal of advanced manufacturing technology; the upshot is that it's easier to edit, but i'm paid less per page (2.75 euros). i think it's still a good deal, though. we'll see...

my sweetie picked up a wireless router yesterday, i'm now doing this from bed. sort of dangerous, in that now i have no reason to leave bed.

wireless is awesome.

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

vancouver is ridiculous. they're predicting we'll get 1 cm of snow tomorrow. there are already 2 cm of salt on the roads.

also, i'm now giving two presentations at nash. how did that happen?

napoleon dynamite party this saturday. woo!