like postcards... but cheaper

vancouver

2010-08-11T09:13:00.002-06:00

I stole this post from my husband's blog. But I figure I'm allowed to because I wrote half of it...

Also, my husband is pretty amazing.

Tiffany and I just got back from a great trip to the west coast. I was work ing in Vancouver for a week, and when I was done, Tiffany flew out to meet me and we spent 10 more days in vancouver and seat tle. We had a lot of fun. We spent a few days in down town Vancouver, our hotel had bikes so we rode around the sea wall to Stanley park and Granville Island. We ate good food and drank good coffee and enjoyed being together after a bit of a crazy month.

The rest of the time we spent visiting a branch of our family that we don’t get to see enough. My mom’s sister married my dad’s brother so they’re kind of like second parents and my cousins are like second siblings. We really enjoyed spending time with them and discussing various family traits and skin conditions. They were great hosts, great cooks, great conversationalists (we did talk about more than skin conditions…) and great fun. A big thanks to all of you who generously made room for us in your schedules, in your houses, and in your cars. We had a really great time and we love you all.

p.s. a special thanks to Mikayla for giving up her pretty bed room and also a special apology that we couldn’t get Tiffany to dance for you…

Vancouver Island from kyle thomas on Vimeo.

also, check his flickr to see photos of our trip!

for Aleksa

2010-03-17T22:42:00.007-06:00

yes.
a very strange world

but also...
an adorable world.

2010-02-09T21:31:00.008-06:00

i have a show coming up!

mark on your calendars
february 18-21*
sensory life, infinite world
at the u of w theatre
choreographed by jolene bailie
danced by me, mark medrano, claire marshall, freya olafson, tyrell witherspoon, emma rose and sarah helmer
let me know if you'd like tickets or get them at www.gearshifting.org
i'd love to see you there!

also, there's a write up about the show in the new issue of 'dance current' magazine, if you're interested!

*the 18th is a 'preview night' which means it's cheaper and sort of dress rehearsaly - 8:00. 19th and 20th at 8:00, 21st at 4:00

also, my hair is hilarious in that first picture.

aalso. if you're interested, here's a paragraph from jolene's website talking about this work:

Inspired by the seemingly limitless possibilities and co-operative relationships within animal and plant life, Sensory Life, Infinite World, is a glimpse into a conceptual and supportive ecosystem that functions with harmony, co-existence and fluid interchange. The viewer is welcomed into an imagined utopia where life is poetically lived by invented organisms without the framing of our regulated time, the dominant pull of gravity or the constant weight today’s modern society. An invitation to view and appreciate a transformation of the human form as it reveals a pure and intuitive intelligence while accepting a ripple effect felt through embracing relationships and foreign matter.

in other words, it's an imaginative little show. the beginning is like watching an aquarium... or a screen saver. everyone doing their own thing. harmonious. no judgement. happy little animals going about their activities. and then society evolves, i guess... things change. there's the addition of humour, and also of judgement.
i feel like i'm butchering this synopsis because it's hard to explain without it sounding either cliched or vague... but that gives you an idea, at least.

maybe i'll explain more later
goodnight!

2010-02-02T07:55:00.002-06:00

a quick post about a new internet endeavour
and also about the amazing talents of my husband
check out
www.olivindesign.com

for aleksa

2010-01-25T19:50:00.002-06:00

aleksa and i made a deal
blog
facebook
and euro rail

i can't quite bring myself to join facebook quite yet. i'll have to spend some time getting used to that idea.
and i can't afford euro rail quite yet, either. but i must admit, i am much more excited about that part of the deal than facebook.

so the logical thing to start with is, of course, the blog.
for the first time since march.

i'm at a loss...

i guess i'll just start with this:

i had a lovely weekend... despite warnings of constant snowfall, christie, lindsey, little blue and i trekked out to the cottage for our 4th annual cottage weekend. unfortunately i didn't bring a camera this time but you're probably not missing out on much since we spend most of the weekend having a chick flick marathon. i have to admit. from time to time i like a good chick flick and i've been sorely disappointed in the garbage that gets made these days. so we rented some oldies. when harry met sally. sleepless in seattle. you've got mail. breakfast at tiffany's and some others too but we didn't have time for them all. but it was really quite nice to relax and sit around with good friends. and good food. and delightfully cheesy movies. and caesars, wine and martinis. and of course we squeezed in some dutch blitz. and some wedding planning too (christie's getting married!).
thanks ladies for a lovely weekend.

and stay tuned for future posts
maybe i'll write one about moving
and one about adventures in scarf making
and one about how my husband has a secret blog that he hasn't told people about... (actually, maybe i won't blog about that. i'll just tell you right now. www.kylethomas.ca in the news section. go look at his pretty pictures and surprise him with some comments!)
but i'll just start by posting this. i wonder how long it will take for anyone to find it!
i love you all. sorry about being out of touch
xoxo

2009-03-27T14:51:00.003-06:00

perhaps it's lame that my first post in over a month is a movie trailer but...
this made me smile today
it may or may not have also made me cry. don't ask me why. something about those pyjamas...

2009-02-17T19:33:00.007-06:00

well. today i got an email, a face to face complaint and a comment saying that you're all tired of my get well slug.
i still like him.
he's up on our wall.

so here i am to tell you about something new.
something new....

hm...

here are the new things of my life:

1. last weekend lindsey and i went on our third annual cottage weekend extravaganza. our attendance was down by about a third but we drowned our sorrows in martinis and ended up having a delightfully good time. we ate delicious things and stayed in our pyjamas almost the whole time and added a couple new elements to our annual festivities:

a. outdoor fitness - we went on a nice long walk on the lake and discovered some fun wintery things such as twigs coated in ice, the sculptural qualities of snow and the delights of hand knitted hats.

and
b. indoor fitness (we're not normally very active on these weekends)

which brings us to new thing number 2:
after much deliberation and finding some forgotten walmart gift cards from our wedding, kyle and i bought a wii. lindsey and i broke it in with much hula hooping and various other amusing aerobic exercises. including lots of laughing at our ridiculous moves. here's lindsey skiing:

i left out the picture of myself hula hooping in my pyjama pants because it made my bum look really weird...

number 3:
i started dancing again yesterday. my legs are sore.

number 4:
i got 5 old pairs of jeans patched today. it's like i all of a sudden have 5 new pairs of jeans except they're already nicely broken in.

number 5:
kyle and i became wedding photographers last month. it was fun and we got paid in money AND delicious handmade cannelloni.

number 6:
i'm the last of the sisters to post about this but this month was the first month of our newly initiated sister's swap. unfortunately i don't have a picture of what was given to me... aleksa sent beautiful little boxes with chocolate in them, andi made a lovely country-lovin' mixed cd and shared some poems that have been meaningful to her, and tami made a pretty little pendant and a catnip/flax cat heart which petigre loves to rub her face in. and i made these:

hooray for sister swap! love and gratitude to all of you!

that's all i can think of right now...

2009-02-04T00:26:00.003-06:00

last night we had a little craft night at a friend's house.
i had a bit of a tummy ache
so kyle made me this:

a get well card
isn't he creative...

2009-01-31T23:58:00.004-06:00

Today
Saturday, January 31st, 2009
at 11:47 pm
after being married for approximately
1 year
1 month
10 days
and a couple of hours
we finally
finally

finished our thank-you cards

phew

p.s. photo by my lovely husband

4 things i've learned in the past 45 minutes or so

2009-01-16T14:26:00.005-06:00

1. i am an exceedingly bad omelet maker... i just made the ugliest omelet i've ever seen
2. ugly omelets still taste fairly good
3. i don't need to make as many hashbrowns as i do for kyle and i if it's only me eating
4. i hate big messes...

i do not profess to be any sort of amazing housekeeper. for those of you who knew me in my youth and saw the state of my bedroom, it may surprise you that messes bother me... but here's the thing. i tidy. i like to tidy. i like it when everything has it's nice little place and all i have to do is put it there. i find it very satisfying to wake up and make the bed and throw a couple of socks in a laundry hamper and hang up a sweater and be done. i've been very proud of myself the past couple weeks as i've made a point to at least make my bed and wash the dishes before doing anything else (or before leaving the house, at least). i like housekeeping this way. when you do a minimum of work on a regular basis and everything looks good. but as soon as things get worse, i'm toast.

today our kitchen is a mess. not a hideous, horrible, moldy, drippy, crusty mess. just messy. dirty dishes, cupboards open... a mess that comes from only one evening of neglect. one dinner. pasta. not even a terribly messy dinner. but because of these dishes, i've been avoiding the kitchen all day. it's the only thing i've really planned to do for the day, cleaning the kitchen, and it's 2:30pm and i've barely touched it. it overwhelms me. so all day i've been walking past the kitchen and instead of picking up a dish rag and putting on my gloves, to do a job that i know logically would only take me half an hour, i retreat to a different room to knit (i find comfort in the simplicity and organization of 42 soft, grey stitches waiting to become a hat) or i decided that now is the ideal time to break my month-long blogging hiatus. i don't really have anything worthwhile or interesting to say, but i'll post it anyway. just to avoid my kitchen...

merry christmas from us

2008-12-21T15:32:00.002-06:00

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

check out tami's boys on her blog. they're quite hilarious.

2008-12-10T00:08:00.003-06:00

It's funny how the longer you leave things like these the harder it is to get back into it. You'd think that after weeks of not posting I could think of all kinds of interesting things to say but in reality, the past few weeks have been a bit of a blur. I had three weeks off of dance which was lovely but it went so fast and I didn't accomplish as much as I hoped to. i did get some Christmas shopping and knitting done which was satisfying...

Oh here's something: Kyle quit his job at the church. After 6 years of running the youth program he has accepted a new job doing media, photography, video and design work for the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches. It's been a bit of an emotionally exhausting process - quitting and telling people and making announcements and whatnot but the hard part is pretty much over (we just have a Christmas party to have and a mini-golf course to build) and we're both really excited about his new job and the opportunities that come with it. So that's good...

Also, we bought a holographic tinsel tree for our apartment. It's a little bit ugly but a little bit lovely. It's a good home for the ornaments I got as wedding gifts - including my little reindeer from my mother-in-law. Every year I search for an ugly ornament for my in-law's tree (a story for another day perhaps). So last year, since I was moving out with my husby, the in-laws reciprocated and bought me a funny little reindeer to start off my own ugly ornament collection... (i think she's quite adorable though, really)

petigre wasn't really sure what to think of our new shiny tree...

a new (and old) family favourite

2008-11-16T23:43:00.005-06:00

One of my favourite things about my birthday is that I share it with my Grandma. (I know, my birthday was a month away and I'm still posting about it... sorry) Anyways, it's always been special to me to share my special day with such a special lady and I've enjoyed the way she's often shared her love of antiques and family and history with me on this day. This year however, my Grandma had to leave for BC before we had a chance to celebrate our birthday together. While I missed having dinner with her, it was a special birthday for me anyways because my grandparents generously passed on one of their original hudson's bay blankets. We love it. It's cozy and wooly and classic and historical. And it's become Petigre's absolute favourite place to sleep.

Thank you Grandma and Grandpa! We all love our new blanket and it will always have a place of honour in our home.

guess what

2008-11-12T17:34:00.007-06:00

today after dance i had a shower
after the shower i was trying to decide what to wear when someone rang my doorbell. being nude I felt a little frazzled and quickly pulled on a sweat suit of sorts that happened to be handy.
it was the canada post lady with a little package for me!
not only are packages extremely exciting to receive, but it also helped me decide what to wear tonight!

Look what I got! (a lovely notebook, adorable birthday cake lip balm and a very pretty top)

(sorry about the poor quality of my photos recently. In my haste to post about things I've been using my computer's camera which isn't quite up to par. Also, sorry about my messy background. Also sorry that my picture is backwards...)

Thanks Devon and Aleksa! I love everything!
I'll try to post better pictures later but wanted to let you know it all got here safe and sound and that I greatly appreciate your thoughtfulness and your beautiful gifts.

approximately 4 months later...

2008-11-10T22:10:00.007-06:00

i finished my mittens!
nothing like a good snow fall, chilly temperatures and icy hands to increase motivation
here is a grainy picture of them (the colours are a bit funny, they're actually a camel colour and a cherry pink):

hooray for warmer hands.
i love being warm.

p.s. the video we made was done with kyle's regular old slr camera (well, not really that old and regualr. but a digital slr, not a video camera). we just did it claymation-style where we'd take a picture, move a smidge, take another one... so the hoverers and the broom flying was just people jumping, taking a small step forward and jumping again, kyle had to do his best to take the picture at the right point in the jump. it was pretty fun.

remember when I mentioned...

2008-10-27T16:26:00.002-06:00

the stop animation video we made without any kids at our youth retreat?
here it is. starring Two Thumbs Don, our good friend and mascot.
*p.s. there are some funny things that happen in the background but they happen fast so stay on your toes*

Don takes a walk from pneumanautics on Vimeo.

A long post featuring many birthday highlights

2008-10-26T10:53:00.003-06:00

Well, I think this evening officially ends my week of birthday celebrations. It started last Sunday with my sweat pants birthday party (to which I was the only person who wore sweatpants... ). We had a lovely evening with martinis and thai food and movies and pumpkin ice cream. and my two lovely friends.

Monday night was my Thomas family infomercial birthday dinner. It was very sweet of them to make me dinner as my in-laws have had a stressful week caring for Kyle's great aunt who broke her hip at 91 and preparing for a trip to visit Darlene's sister who hasn't been well. I really appreciated them making time for me. We had delicious steaks and visited and I received as seen on tv gifts. I don't know if it was planned to be an infomertial birthday but I very much love my Magic Bullet and my Sham-Wow!. In fact, I currently have muffins in the oven that I made with my magic bullet. What a versatile tool.

Tuesday I went out for lunch with my parents and then Kyle and I had a relaxing birthday celebration since he's been sick all week and felt he might not be very good company if we went ahead with the date he had originally planned. So we walked down to the falafel place for dinner and then came home and watched planet earth. It was nice to have an evening at home with my husband. Plus I got some beautiful gifts!

... As I was writing this, Kyle just sleepily stumbled out of bed and said very groggily "umm.. wife? what smells like heaven in a handbasket?" (I think that's what he said he was pretty mumbley)...

And yesterday Christie and I went to the Don for breakfast and then wandered up and down Osborne. We realized recently how odd it is that we spend a fair amount of time facilitating other people's shopping trips together and never go out shopping on our own. Shopping with a good friend is a pretty fun thing to do.

And last night Kyle and I went and had dinner with Tami and Mike and then Tami and I went on a little date to a house party where we got out legs waxed and eyebrows threaded and Mike and Kyle talked about bicycles and watched a movie.

And last but not least, this evening I'm looking forward to having dinner with my family to close off the birthday ceremonies.

Thanks to everyone who made me feel so loved and special on my birthday!

my lovely little package

2008-10-21T20:19:00.008-06:00

Finally, my long overdue pictures of my yarn swap package. Here they are:

Here it is in it's entirety. Delicious chocolate and fun halloween thingies (adorable vintagey halloween cards, stickery things, a little square pumpkin bag) and my favourite - lovely, soft, hand-dyed sock yarn in very pretty colours. I'm so excited to knit myself a new pair of socks. Hooray!

Thank you so much, secret swap person! It was so much fun getting this in the mail. It made my week (2 weeks ago...sorry about the delay)

2008-10-19T17:05:00.003-06:00

Well. I have been putting off posting until I can post the pictures of my swap package that arrived last week but as I still don't have these pictures (I should tomorrow!) I decided to go ahead without them to avoid the wrath of the swap monitor who checks weekly to make sure we're posting. (Sorry swap package sender, I love my package I'm just a little disorganized at present) In any case, here I am.
Kyle and I just got home from a weekend in the Whiteshell with a group of high school students. It was a pretty fun weekend. I think it was a good combination of relaxation and activities. We played games and watched movies and spent time outside but also had a fair amount of free time and sleeping in. Yesterday afternoon we gave the kids some options for free time to make sure no one felt like there was nothing to do, one of the options was to make a short movie starring Two Thumbs Don - the pneumanautics mascot (a mannequin man who is a little worse for wear). None of the children chose this option but somehow that didn't stop some of the leaders from jumping on board and creating a stop animation movie that we all found quite hilarious. I will post this shortly.
And now I'm home for a bit and looking forward to a sweat pant birthday party with Christie and Lindsey. hooray!

my week in a nutshell

2008-10-07T15:54:00.005-06:00

Well. I think I have more or less recovered from my brief illness (thank you well-wishing commenters!), although I do still have a some mucus-y issues that are accentuated when doing spinning movements (which i probably do more than the average person on account of my profession)
Hmm... What else do I have to tell you today?
Well. I had a lovely weekend. Saturday was Kyle and my dating anniversary and while we are no longer dating we thought it was a good excuse to spend the day together. So we slept in Saturday morning and I made eggs benedict for breakfast and then we wandered our neighbourhood, a church nearby was having a gigantic book sale so we stopped in there and then made our rounds through the boutiques and antique stores in Osborne Village. We finished our wanderings by picking up some steaks and wine and went home to relax. We had a lovely dinner and watched a movie and enjoyed a day in eachother's company. Hooray for anniversaries! I'm quite happy to celebrate two in a year. It's nice.
Here's a hilarious picture I found of Kyle and I the summer after we started dating. Look at the hair on that boy...

I tried to find a recent picture of us but somehow i didn't manage to... i'm guessing there might be some on kyle's laptop. but here's at least a picture of grown up kyle and the most recent couple picture we have on this computer from last summer, shortly after our engagement:

And Sunday I wrote thank you cards all afternoon (I know... They really should be done already...) and then Christie and Lindsey came over and we had wine and made apple crisp and visited. It's lovely to have nice girlfriends. We have made a standing date for Sunday nights this year and so far it's worked out really well. A nice way to end a weekend.

This week hasn't been overly eventful. It involved a lot of dancing, Monday night my mom and I went on a lovely shopping date... That's really about it (other than one exciting thing that deserves it's own post - to come soon... once i find my usb cord to upload the necessary photos).

And now I'm looking forward to thanksgiving! We have dinner with Kyle's family tomorrow and from there we're heading out to my family's cottage to hang out with these people (and some other people too):

Happy Thanksgiving!

i'm not sure why i'm even bothering to post this...

2008-10-01T21:22:00.003-06:00

sorry my blog has been lacking recently. and sorry i'm not going to do much to change that right now. i have a sinus cold and i think i'm just going to go to bed. so... goodnight. perhaps more tomorrow...

in which technology abounds

2008-09-22T21:04:00.006-06:00

Kyle and I have recently had a shower of new technology in our little household. I have recently acquired my first cell phone of all time. (A little gray number with an unfortunately limited ring selection and a very exciting pedometer) and i'm writing this post from my brand new macbook. it came in the mail today and it's quite adorable and fun. Aaand with my macbook came the option of a free ipod touch, which i generously and lovingly donated to my husband. i figured he would be way more excited about it and use it more than i would, as he loves figuring out how things work and all the fun little apps and whatnot. and really, he is so excited and i'm glad that i gave it to him, however now that it's here, i have to say i'm a little jealous. it is a pretty great little device. it does just about anything... and my favourite part, after spending a whole lot of time deciding which configuration of numbers and letters worked best, we have our own little ipod monster engraved on the back. i love him. see his funny little toothed face? rawr

how fun to have these new little friends...

yesterday... and then today

2008-09-15T20:55:00.003-06:00

I had a good day yesterday. A nice relaxing sunny fall day including sleeping in, tidying the apartment, having the in-laws over for brunch and then knitting while kyle cleaned his bicycle. i made borscht in my slow cooker and handmade buns for dinner and lindsey came over and we watched edward scissorhands (i love edward scissorhands) while we waited for the beets to get softer. (apparently when the recipe says it should cook for 4-5 hours, it really means it...) it was delicious although i apparently failed to notice that the recipe that i chose came from a little section of my cookbook called 'small quantities'. i puzzled as i was making it why it would call for only 1 tablespoon of grated carrots and only 2 cups of water for the soup. i puzzled but i never checked, so by the time (5 hours later) we sat down to eat it we barely got 3 bowls out of it. a little disappointing but still delicious.

and as for today, i suppose today was a big day for me. my first day as a company dancer for ruth cansfield dance. i've worked with her a week here and there over the last year and this year she's hired me for 21 weeks of full time work, so that's exciting. also, strangely enough, of her 3 company dancers, one became injured and is unable to dance for 9 months, and the other is pregnant so i'm also the only company dancer in this company right now. fortunately there are 2 apprentices for me to dance with. so we've begun working on a new creation. i believe we'll be having a show here in winnipeg, one in calgary and touring northern manitoba. so yeah. i'm excited but a little bit regretting my relaxed summer as i expect to be very sore this week. i could feel my legs getting weaker and weaker every time i jumped today...

fall

2008-09-08T11:07:00.006-06:00

Fall really is my favourite season. As part of the Autumn Yarn Swap, we're supposed to post on our blogs about our favourite thing about this season.

I think in general I love the feeling of it. I love the crispness in the air and the emergence of scarves and mitts and sweaters and jackets and wool socks and boots (I'm a fair-skinned individual and as much as I love summer, my legs never really got along so well with shorts...)I love the comfortable feeling of settling back into a schedule, the excitement and novelty of beginning new things - going back to school, back to dance classes, the new clothes, new school supplies. So much excitement and anticipation which is always somehow amplified by the refreshing cool air. I love the changing of the leaves and the nostalgic feeling that it brings. I love feeling cozy and snuggly with tea and a good book or a soft, warm knitting project...

October is my all time favourite month. I was born in October and I share my birthday with my grandma so it's always been a special time for me to spend with my family. Also, my husband and I first started dating in October almost 8 years ago, just before I turned 17. So it's a cozy time to reminisce about the slightly awkward teenage romance that developed and grew into the most important and beautiful relationship of our lives.

And that's more or less what I love about fall..

cottage weekend

2008-09-01T19:13:00.005-06:00

Kyle and I just got home from a nice long weekend at the cottage. We spend a lot of time sitting around and reading and knitting and taking pictures. It was quite nice.
One of the highlights of our weekend was the annual Nutimik Lake community garage sale. We went bright and early (about 9:30) and the place was packed full of people and stuff. We left with some exciting things and I came to realize that I actually have more collections than I thought I did.
I seem to collect:
vintage aprons
dishes from the 40s -50s
antique tea cups
cameos
and... that's all I can think of right now but they're all good things to look for in a garage sale.
The only sad thing was that we bought a set of 5 glasses and a pitcher and all the glasses were taped together with packing tape and when I was unpacking them today two of them broke, each of them the same way - a big piece came off with the tape, I think they were stacked to tightly and there was too much pressure. in any case, that made me sad. although the remaining three match the little plates we bought perfectly. that made me feel a little bit better.
perhaps i will post pictures of our purchases soon but in the meantime, here are some pictures (the first two were taken by kyle) from the weekend:

the day the lemon pearl came to be

2008-08-23T13:46:00.005-06:00

last night as kyle and i were sitting down for dinner my phone rang the ring it rings when someone wants to come in and visit. Not expecting anyone, I was surprised when my parents showed up with roses, a bottle of wine, a bowl of cherries and chocolate bars. My mom had apparently come accross my horoscope in the newspaper which said something about how I needed some R&R this weekend and that I should sit down with cherries, wine and chocolate, so my mom went out to make sure I had the right ingredients. It was very sweet and lovely. We also, fortunately had enough pasta for the four of us so we had a nice impromptu dinner visit before they headed out to the cottage. Thanks parents! The roses are beautiful, the food delicious and I love surprises.

After dinner I went to Christie's house where Lindsey, Christie and I had tea and cookies and chatted. Somehow, before we knew it, we were in the middle of an unplanned craft party. While we sat and talked we started fiddling with some random paint chips that happened to be on the table and soon enough (well, a couple hours and some very sticky fingers later) we had this:

we named our boat the lemon pearl after one of the paint chips and lindsey took pictures on her phone to make sure she (and therefore i) could blog about it (you know lindsey's having a good time and the day's a success when she says 'ooh i can blog about this!')

and then i came home and found that my lovely husband had cleaned our minor disaster of an apartment. there's something very wonderful about surprises, fun with girlfriends, creative accomplishments and a nice clean apartment with fresh roses on the table and somehow i managed to experience all in one day. thanks to everyone who made me a very happy girl yesterday. i love you all.

i have a pretty great boss

2008-08-21T22:41:00.004-06:00

my boss cecely is an altogether lovely person. she's one of the most enthusiastic, sweet and encouraging people i've ever met and i love her dearly for it. we got to know eachother because one day, a couple of years ago, i stopped by her store and she commented on the scarf i was wearing (which i had felted myself) and wanted to sell them in her store, and thus our relationship began. Since then, I started working in her little store and I enjoy it very much. She's a very relaxed, supportive, generous and friendly person.
and... one of the added bonuses of our relationship is this:
Cecely and I are exactly the same size.
Last Friday, Cecely came in to work with about 7 pairs of virtually brand new jeans for me (and also a couple of tops). She was cleaning out her jeans drawer (she owns a lot of jeans) and brought in ones she hasn't worn in a while. All of these jeans are worth about $200 a pair and I was a very excited girl. It came at a time when all of my jeans were starting to wear out and I was starting to think about saving up to replace them. Every pair she brought in fit me perfectly and I am so grateful for my generous Cecely-friend.

swap questions

2008-08-20T15:20:00.004-06:00

For reference, I have decided to be a part of a yarn swap this fall. In order for us to get to know our secret swap partners we have to post the following questions to our blogs. For those of you who have no interest in my knitting related answers and have felt left out of my dazzlingly interesting life due to the fact that i haven't posted in a while, don't fret! I will post soon! (one of the swap rules is that you have to post to your blog every week, so you'll see more action here in the next couple months)

Do you knit or crochet? How long have you been at your craft?
I am able to and enjoy both but I prefer to knit. I learned to knit when I was in grade 9 so 10 or 11 years.

Do you spin? What type of spinning do you do?
I do and I quite enjoy it although I would say my skills are limited. I have a lovely Louet S10 that my dad bought for me off ebay.

Are there any other crafts that you participate in?
I like sewing but again have limited talent for it. I am interested in embroidery and needlepoint but haven't had the chance to try it yet. I like making cards and other papery things... I have a desire to hook a rug one day...

What are your favorite yarns/fibers?
hmm. i love wool. i love soft things. i love alpaca. i'm not sure i have specific favourites, though.

What are your LEAST favorite yarns/fibers?
acrylics. anything that's scratchy or plasticy. i'm also not a huge fan of machine variegated yarns (like the red heart ones or others that you find at walmart) but i do think haindpaited ones can be very pretty - but i prefer a subtle variegation - not too much colour change. i do love self striping sock yarns though, they're quite enjoyable. also, i'm not a big fan of novelty yarns like eyelash or feathery things.

Are there any types/brands of yarn that you are dying to work with but haven’t gotten a chance?
I heard recently that alpaca is 3 times warmer than wool and have since been dreaming of alpaca socks and mittens and anything to defend me from winter weather. i love being warm.

What are your favorite types of projects to knit/crochet?
I have a new found love for sock knitting. Socks are probably my favourite project but I do enjoy a sweater here and there and some hats and mitts thrown in.

What are you currently working on? Anything you plan to start this autumn?
I'm currently working on a big cozy sweater with deer on it. i have to make two of them because my friend/boss cecely has comissioned one as well so that will keep me busy for a little bit. i also have some sock patterns to try and i would like to build up my collection of winter apparel - mitts and hats and whatnot so the change to cold weather is fun and exciting rather than ominous and depressing.

What is your favorite FO? (Please, post a picture if you would like.)
hm. i love my socks because i get a lot of wear out of them. i made my first wearable sweater last year (actually i had to make 2 again because of cecely buying the first one) which i liked. it was my first attempt at colourwork and i was rather proud of my little whales and bows. the hat i made recently out of llama yarn is so soft and comfy and a pretty colour.

What is your oldest UFO?
my very first sweater attempt which i made 2 or 3 years ago. i made it out of blue sky bulky and it had all kinds of cables and bobbles and it never occurred to me that bobbles in a bulky yarn end up sticking out about 3" and they might make you look rediculously huge. by the time i had it put together enough to try it on i knew there was no future for us. i've started to rip it apart to use the yarn for other things. it's beautiful yarn and working on the sweater gave me more confidence in my knitting abilities, even if it reduced my confidence in my pattern choosing abilities.

Are their any knitting/crochet techniques that you would like to learn?
i'm in the process of learning stranded knitting. i love colourwork. is it normal for stranded knitting to be much tighter than normal knitting? cuz mine sure is... i've also never knitted on double pointed needles. i usually use 2 circulars unless i don't have 2 of the same size, the i magic loop. i would be interested in trying double pointeds.

Are you a sock knitter? What are your foot measurements?
i love sock knitting. i wear about a 7 1/2 shoe and my feet are quite narrow. to be more specific, my feet are 24cm (9 1/2 inches) long and 21 1/2cm (8 1/2 inches) circumference.

Do you have a yarn winder and/or a swift?
sadly, i do not. although i do hope to acquire on in the near future and in the meantime i make my husband help wind... that way he knows how wonderfully useful it would be to have one.

Where/how to you keep you needles/hooks?
I don't have a great system right now. i have a polkadotted tube that was originally supposed to be a gift tube for a wine bottle that i keep my straight needles in. and i have a set of interchangeable circulars that stay in their little case.

Do you collect anything?
no, not really.

What is your favorite type of music? Are you MP3 ready?
I am and I like quite a variety. for some reason this question is too hard for me right now. i'll edit this to have a real answer soon.

Do you like sweets? What are your favorites?
i sure do. favorites are hard... i'll edit this one too.

What is your living situation like? Any pets? Children?
i have a cat and a husband.

Are you allergic to anything?
nope

Do you have an online wish list (Amazon, Etsy, Loopy Ewe, etc.)? Please include links for your swap pal.
not at this time but it sounds like a fun thing to have. i'll post the link if i make one

Are you having a birthday during this swap?
yes i am... i turn 25 on october 21st

Favourite colours?
I love grey. it's my neutral of choice, followed by cream (i'm not a huge fan of black or brown). i have recently been rather taken with golden yellow. i love peach and i like purples, pinks, blues and greens... i really like all colours when they're in the right context... dang these favourite questions are hard.

What is your Ravelry ID?
tiffanythomas

10 reasons why I failed at the Tour de Fleece

2008-07-31T09:43:00.005-06:00

1. My pincher fingers got sore.

2. I went to the cottage a lot and lost valuable weekend time (but had a lovely time, otherwise. Kyle's parents just bought a new boat and we went on lots of wildlife seeking boat rides. I was trying to choose some pictures to post here but perhaps it's best if you just check out kyle's flickr account. the link is on the side...)

3. I had work dancing last week and ended up so sore I was completely useless all week

4. I wasn't overly inspired by the weird colour I chose. I looked at other people's spinning blogs and their yarn was so pretty. It was inspiring that you could make such beautiful yarn but made me less than excited about what I had

5. I realized I'm really not very good at spinning yarn to make socks. I'm not very consistent in my thinkness... Perhaps I need more practice which also seems to require more patience....

6. It seemed to take up most of my living room and looked messy... I need a craft room...

7. Petigre kept wanting to sit on my lap when i did it and then she would attack the yarn

8. I'm easily distracted... I made these socks

9. And then this hat

10. And then started on these mitts

So I guess maybe I was doomed from the start. However, I did manage to pull my spinning wheel and wool out of the basement of my parent's house and get started at least. It's more than I've done in a long time. Oh well...

my old lady soul rears it's head yet again

2008-07-07T09:45:00.004-06:00

A while back, Christie and I took a spinning class. At the time we were interested in creating yarn that looked more interesting than regular yarn. We wanted thick strands of crazy yarn with puffs and nubbins and fuzzy bits in colours that we found appealing. Our spinning instructor was perhaps a little alarmed at what we created while all the other ladies spun thin, even strands for knitting socks or some other tiny thing. At that time we never would have even touched such wee little yarns. However, over time I've come to realize that the crazy yarn is really not much good for anything other than being pretty yarn and regular, even yarn is so prolific because it serves a much more useful purpose.... In my experience crazy yarn doesn't really lend itself to becoming a knitted item that I would ever wear. So I've decided it's time to revisit the world of spinning and try my hand at a nice, even, smooth yarn. Plus I have discovered that I like knitting teeny things like socks after all, so it's all the more exciting for me. One of my goals for the summer was to take up spinning again and just recently I managed to come accross a little event called the Tour de Fleece. Basically it's for spinners to issue themselves a challenge that they wish to accomplish within the time frame of the Tour de France. So initially I thought I would challenge myself to spin enough yarn to make myself a pair of socks. However, as I started my spinning it occurred to me that I might not actually have enough wool to make this possible, so I'm challenging myself to spin enough wool to make a respectable skein of yarn and attempt to make it into socks. So I unearthed my spinning wheel and my wool from the depths of my parent's basement and I have begun. Here's my progress so far:

Long Lost Photos from Austria Part 1

2008-06-26T10:15:00.010-06:00

I remembered today that I don't think I ever showed anyone except for Kyle my Austria pictures. It was a beautiful place and a big time in my life and my blog readers/family and friends were very supportive of me while I was there. I was reading through some of my old entries from when I was there, my one horrible day in particular, and I was very touched by the comments people left to encourage me. I'm thankful for all of you and for your love and support. You don't always realize how much people like you affect your life until you find yourself in a place where you no longer have them close. I definitely learned a lot that trip and while it wasn't always fun, I want to show you some of these pictures to honour that time of my life and to share some of the beauty and good times with you. (there are lots of them though, so I might just post a couple today and more later). Also, it seems I took the most pictures when I was out exploring by myself, so there are hardly ever any people in them, I'll try to include as many people pictures as I can but you may need to prepare for a scenic tour of Austria.

We'll start with our outing to the Armoury. It chronologically isn't a good starting point but we had lots of fun there with our guide and got to try on the armour, which people normally don't get to do.

Here's me in a helmet:

Here's our guide-man (he was so excited to get his picture taken. He said even though he's worked there for a long time, he's only tried the armour on once and never in a picture... he gave us his email address so we could send him these):

me in my full suit looking ready to fight. It's extremely heavy. I cannot imagine being very nimble in this stuff...

here's the whole crew. don't mess with us...

and these pictures are from a day when I went exploring on my own. First I went for a walk around my neighborhood (and got lost a bit) but found these creepy little lawn ornaments:

and then I took the tram in to the city

this is the tram station we stopped at every day

and then I went to the look out point on top of the hill that our cave theatre was in. You can see the entrance to the cave and then stairs up to the clock tower on top. Apparently it was built during the war, there were canons and stuff on top of the hill and then the cave was a bunker of some sort. It was so beautiful up there.

This was apparently my favourite thing to take pictures of. It's a water cistern that they used when they lived on the hill.

And here is a view of the city. The blue globby thing is their Kunsthaus or art gallery

And that concludes the selected pictures of Austria part 1... stay tuned (if you're interested)

Ottawa

2008-06-24T10:20:00.007-06:00

Well, I'm back from Ottawa (I know... old news...) I got back last Sunday. We had a great trip. The first half was busy working towards our show which was on Tuesday and Wednesday but it was really fun working with the other schools from around Canada and all being a part of the same work. It was a really unique experience and the piece was incredible, in my opinion. It was really neat to see how the choreographer incorporated different themes and how he was able to organize 55 people in a very efficient way to create something really beautiful. I'm glad I got to be a part of that.

Other highlights of the trip included:

Dance parties in our enormous hotel room (seriously this place was way bigger than my apartment. It was great, we had a kitchen and a dining room and enough beds for the 4 of us to not share... anyways, here's a picture of Christie and Hilary. Notice how often Christie does the claw in pictures...

Milkshakes at Zak's diner. Many varieties! I had Chocolate Banana:

Discovering I could make this face (actually, I don't know if that was really a highlight...)

We went out dancing one night to 90's night. We had fun in theory but the club we went to was a little sketchy and they played more 90's grunge than we were expecting...

And in stark contrast, High Tea at the Chateau Laurier (we clean up well, except that I had to wear a sweater cuz I was sunburnt from 'landscape dancing' which is a story for another time):

This is their tea trolley, each compartment had different loose teas and they put them in a pretty silver dish for you to smell before committing to one. It was delicious tea. The big silver carafey thing was the hot water:

And of course, shopping is always a highlight. One of my favourite things about Ottawa is the open market with fruits and veggies and flowers and handmade thingies. I would like to get my groceries there.

We also found some really fun little boutiques:

This picture was taken illegally... The lady said we weren't allowed to take pictures because they have so many people's handmade things there and they don't want people stealing their ideas. So pretend you can't see the little owl pillow in the corner...

And I bought this tray at a little vintage shop. It matches our apartment perfectly:

Well I think that about sums it up. We had a lot of fun, got to see a lot of dance shows and... yeah, it was a good trip.

finally

2008-06-07T12:31:00.002-06:00

well i'm off to ottawa.
i think we're all pretty excited to finally be heading off to perform and put to rest the pieces we've been rehearsing to death for the past 5 months. wish us luck, we perform on tuesday and wednesday. other than that we get to go to lots of shows, have high tea at the chateau laurier, shop, eat... all around i think it'll be lots of fun.
well...
love and farewell to everyone!
see you next sunday

Birthday Boy

2008-06-03T13:30:00.014-06:00

Yesterday was Kyle's birthday. We decided to have a rather relaxed celebration as both of us have had a lot on our plates recently so here's what we did:

We began our celebration with dinner at Alycia's Ukrainian Restaurant, which is apparently one of the best places in the country to get perogies... and as most of you know, Kyle loves perogies and we'd never been there. It's a funny little place with rather dated Ukrainian decor, but we enjoyed ourselves and the food. Apparently it was one of John Candy's favourite places to eat. There were lots of pictures of him there...

And then we went to the globe to see Son of Rambow which was a pretty adorable little movie about a little Plymouth Brethren boy who agrees to be the stuntman in the school bully's Rambo-esque home movie. Quite a delightful little scenario acted by quite delightful little boys.

And then we came home and opened presents. It was altogether a lovely evening. He was a very happy boy...

Also, Kyle started a new job and they bought him a brand new macbook pro with all kinds of fancy expensive software and other exciting things... and as with all new mac owners, most of the first couple days are spent using the photobooth feature (see evidence of this above and below). Hours of fun and hilarity - so much fun, in fact that we couldn't even be bothered to move to a location where the lighting wasn't terrible.... I think Kyle laughed hysterically after each picture we took.

Hooray for birthdays and silly photos
Happy birthday Kylsie!

photos

2008-05-23T20:12:00.005-06:00

Well, the show is finally over. Thanks so much to everyone who came. It really means a lot to have people come out and support us. Kyle came to the dress rehearsal to take pictures. Here are some of them:

This one isn't of me or of a piece I was in but I think it's a pretty great picture of Arlo

These ones are of ashes, I included the last one to see if you can spot evidence of me running into christie's face with my shoulder... (you might have to enlarge it)

These ones are from fruit studies;

And these two aren't Kyle's (you can see a couple more of Kyle's pictures on his flickr account for which there is a link on the side of this page). I stole these ones from the lighting designer's website without permission (don't tell) but at least I'm letting everyone know that these are Hugh Conacher's photos of my solo and of Passionsong

show time

2008-05-15T11:07:00.005-06:00

Well. Today is opening night of our show, and usually I send out an email before hand telling everyone what pieces I'm in and what they're about and things like that but I didn't this year. So, as my sister suggested, perhaps I'll do that here. And if any of you are interested in coming, you can let me know (tonight through sunday at the gas station theatre, 8:00)

I'm in four pieces this year
The first one of the night is my solo (which is only on Thursday and Saturday, my lovely friend Hilary does it the other nights). It's a fun little piece called Caught by the Tango and it involves a little shoe, a black dress with a red crinoline and white gloves. I think this piece is pretty self explanatory...

Next in the evening is Passion Song which we worked on last May with Bill Evans from New Mexico. I think this might be the hardest piece I have ever done in many ways. But it's beautiful and now that all the cleaning is done, it's fun to perform. It fairly classical modern and we have long ankle length full skirts (which are not always cooperative and seem to get longer and longer as the piece goes on...) and we have to do long balances at times which exposes my weaknesses as a dancer... But it's a beautiful piece with great dramatic music and some weird quirky moves that contrast with the classicalness of it as a whole.

After the intermission is Ashes which I have actually done before so some of you may remember it. The piece was inspired by the choreographer's visit to Pompei. It's a piece about survival, dignity, acceptance, human life cycles... I think it also explores strength in numbers and the power of stillness. The piece includes both sculpture and emotion, the choreographer wanted to portray images of the architecture and art she experienced in Pompei, the columns and statues and paintings, but it's also about the lives and the community that took place there before and I guess during the disaster.

Right after Ashes is KJ4 which you will not see me in but I spent many, many hours working on that piece as an understudy so if you like you can pick any one of the 4 of them and imagine it being me. This piece was choreographed by Rachel Browne (the founder of the school, the company and basically modern dance in manitoba). It was inspired by a piece of improvisational piano music and I think it's a great piece, the girls look really strong. I would have loved to perform it.

And last but not least we have Fruit Studies which was choreographed by a very interesting and lovely man named Tedd Robinson. He travelled across Canada this year choreographing pieces for professional training schools who were going to be at the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa next month. So when the 5 schools get together in Ottawa we're going to put them all together to make a big long piece, which will be hectic but really fun. Part of this work was inspired by a little cult called the Shakers who (in my limited understanding) didn't believe in reproducing, they thought the world should end with them. So men and women were separated within their little community and every once in a while they would get together and basically have crazy dance parties to release their sexual energy... The first piece of music in this dance is Shaker music. It's a pretty unique piece and I'm really excited to perform it.

So that's that. My last show with the school and i think it's a good one. I'm feeling pretty excited about performing tonight, especially after getting out some emotions earlier in the week... Hooray for show time! Hope to see some of you there!

reflections of a non-graduate

2008-05-13T15:17:00.007-06:00

apparently my sister is no longer interested in my cupcakes.

i don't really have any fun pictures or stories or anything to post today but here's a more current look at my life.

It's show week. The couple of days before a show where it's close enough to feel the tension rising but not close enough to be excited. I was thinking as I was walking home from the theatre today that it's a bit of a funny time for me. This is my last show with the school. My last scheduled show in Winnipeg for that matter (we're performing in Ottawa in June). For all I know it could be my last show for a very long time. I have nothing concrete planned for next year and to be honest I find that really exciting. I'm looking forward to a new routine, starting things fresh and new. I feel antsy for change. I've been focusing on this desire to move on for a long time and it occurred to me today that I also need to make the most of this week and enjoy it. I don't want to push through and just have it over... even though that is kind of what I want to do. But I hope that this show will be memorable for me and remembered as a special one in my life.

I think it feels a little sad to me right now because last year was my graduating year but i didn't move on to anything new so it didn't feel very special. I went to the grad dinner and the grad tea party and I got to bow with the graduates and receive my certificate and my flowers but I knew all along that I'd be right there again next year. It was exciting to see my fellow graduates move on to new things but I felt like I wasn't a part of the excitement or the emotions. I felt like I was a fake grad or like they were just including me to make me feel better.

And now this show is my last show and feels like the end for real this time but I don't get to be a part of any of the graduation festivities because I'm already a graduate.

So all in all it just feels a little anticlimactic. And like I've never really belonged in either of my graduating classes and never had a graduation that felt like my own. I don't mean to complain that I've been left out of things or anything like that. Its more just in my own processing. I guess I just want to make sure that I give this time in my life the significance it deserves. I've put a lot of myself into this program and I want to approach this show like it's a big one in my life. And remember that it is really important to me even though it's not the one with the flowers and certificates. It is the closing of a chapter in my life and I don't want to forget to acknowledge that.

I feel sad right now and I can't quite figure out what I'm sad about. I guess this whole year with dance has been a bit of a struggle for me. This whole year of 'post-graduate studies' has been emotionally challenging in a lot of ways and I kind of just want it to be over. But I think I owe it to myself to celebrate this and to acknowledge this as an accomplishment and to be proud of myself.

cupcakes

2008-04-09T22:47:00.005-06:00

this post is for my bridesmaids... well, really, anyone who wants to read it is more than welcome...

ahem

behold! my cupcakes:

these cupcakes were made out of a special little valentine's day gift from my sister. she gave me a package with cake mix, sprinkles, cupcake liners, napkins, all kinds of cute things. it made cupcake making way more adorable. and they were also delicious.

aaand. the lovely cake plate was given to me by christie and lindsey as a wedding gift. i love it and was so excited to use it today for my cupcakes. today was my first time baking since the marriage. and i must say, cute things makes it way more fun.
thanks ladies.
i love you!

Wedding pictures

2008-02-27T16:44:00.013-06:00

Oh yes, wedding pictures. Our photographer was Rod Braun who I got to know mostly through dance as he comes to photograph our dress rehearsals evey year. We were so happy with his work, both in process and product. We had such a great time working with him. Anyone interested in looking at a larger selection of his photos, please go to www.evestudios.ca click on flash and then on client. Our password is Thomas with a capital T. Here are a couple of my favourites, for this installment I tried to choose some that aren't on the photographer's website so you have a well rounded selection.

And for some added hilarity, this is what I looked like 3 days before the wedding.

Yup, nothing like some good old stress to get you looking your best...
This beast only completely cleared up a couple weeks ago.

a rather dry update

2008-02-26T22:40:00.003-06:00

So I received a complaint today that I haven't updated since February 5. I feel as though my life has been relatively uneventful and I haven't been overly inspired to write recently. But for those of you who have been greatly missing my little updates, my calendar and I will fill you in on the things that have happened since the 5th:

The morning of the 5th I started dancing again. It was nice to get moving again but I do kind of miss my little housewife routine.
In the evening Lindsey and I rented the movie Hairspray. John Travolta makes a hideous woman but Christopher Walkin is an adorable dancer. I had the songs stuck in my head for weeks...
On the 6th Kyle and I went to see a play at PTE. It was one of our date night gifts that we got at Kyle's shower at work.
Doesnt look like I did anything on the 7th. Kyle had a futsal game. Maybe that was the night that he bruised his shin bone. He was in a lot of pain for a long time. I think his leg is still a little swollen and bruised from it.
On the 8th we went to see one of the kids from the youth group in their high school production of Pride and Prejudice. There's something entirely unique about watching a high school play. You definately feel a huge range of emotions, you're always kind of on the edge of your seat. Sometimes it's pretty cute, sometimes it's horribly awkward, sometimes you feel bad for them, sometimes embarrased for them, sometimes oddly proud of them, sometimes your ears hurt from the shrillness of teenage girl's voices... There's nothing like it. Landon did look quite adorable in his dapper little suit and lace scarf...
Okay, the 5th was a long time ago so I'm not going to inform you of everything I have written in this calendar after all. The following entries are more selective:
The 11th was my mom's birthday. She was in Los Angeles so Kyle and I went and had dinner at my sister's house. It was quite nice and I got an exciting little valentine's gift full of adorable little baking things.
I also started back at school this day which was fun because we were working with a guest and the piece we're working on is pretty great. But it did make me feel like I was in a bit of a time warp and wouldn't mind moving on to new things sooner or later...
Valentine's day was great. Kyle and I had a nice evening together and I got a new knitting book, a rosemary plant and a peace lily among other fun little surprises.
This past Thursday, Christie and I had a much anticipated laundry date. We got all our laundry together and bought snacks and played yatzee at the laundromat. Seriously, what could be more fun than that?
Last night we had Tara, Jacko and Manuk over for a little potluck dinner. We had a lovely evening. It's fun to be able to have people over at your own place.
This afternoon I made a brief visit to my sister's house and had pizza buns with them.
And tonight Kyle and I went out for dinner with my dad and then grocery shopping. hoot!
I think that more or less catches us up.
Other things I've done that aren't in the calendar:
I knitted myself a pair of socks from yarn I bought (after employing my best sign langage) in Austria
And I've almost finished a sweater
That's it.
Maybe now i'll be more on the ball with posting...

pudding?

2008-02-05T14:25:00.000-06:00

so last night Sadie (a girl from the youth group) came over. We decided it would be fun to make something delicious so I pulled out my new Deceptively Delicious cookbook from the shelf figuring it would be extra fun to make a strange little delicious thing. So Sadie picked out a chocolate pudding recipe that had avacado puree in it.

Seriously, this pudding was the most bizarre thing I have ever eaten. The texture was all wrong. Not puddingy at all, very pasty. You almost had to chew it. It was chocolatey but it had a strange avacado aftertaste. But that's not the weirdest thing...

The weirdest thing is that it sat in a puddle of green ooze.
...eewze
gross

in slightly newer (and much sadder) news

2008-02-01T14:35:00.001-06:00

my socks dissolved in the wash the other day...

poor little socks...

old news

2008-01-30T10:42:00.000-06:00

As most of you have perhaps already read in Lindsey's blog, we spent this past weekend at my cottage. It was a belated New Years/Lindsey's birthday celebration and we spent our time watching tv shows and movies, playing our own little version of dutch blitz(ed) and eating an abnormal amount of cream cheese.
A good (goot?) time was had by all...

a special and potent addition to our game...

a pretty sunset

lindsey's birthday wish

crumbs of reddish velvet

a decision finally made!!

2008-01-24T17:33:00.000-06:00

So... After weeks of searching and deliberation, Kyle and I are now the proud owners of a funny little table and chair set. I quite like our little set and it matches our happy little 70s style apartment beautifully. The table is from a random wearhouse store on Princess which is filled with junk. But it was in brand new condition and a lovely and sturdy arborite for only $50. The chairs we got from Hoopers and about 40 or 50 years prior to that they came from Norway.

We christened it last night by having our good friends Nils and Melissa over for dinner. We had pasta with brussels sprouts and pine nuts (p.s. mom - I love my little birdie lemon squeezer. Things that are functional and cute are my favourite. This one doesn't even squirt when squeezed.) and then we had tea with funny tasting chocolate that I brought home from Austria. It was supposed to be 'milk chocolate with carrot rasps' but we weren't overly impressed - except for Nils who loudly claimed that he loved it and it was his favourite and that it had a cleanly taste...

Here are some photos of our new friends:

I think it looks especially nice with our love doves, which Kyle's grandma made for us (she made them for each of her grandchildren to be given on the occasion of their engagement) I think they're lovely.

Now that we've finally decided on a table and chairs, our deliberation efforts have been transferred to the issue of a vacuum... handheld versus upright? cheap versus quality? consumer's report reviews versus owner's reviews? dyson versus electrolux? sigh... the decisions never end...

two months later...

2008-01-14T10:25:00.000-06:00

well. it'll probably take people a while to check this, seeing as it's been two months and most of you have probably given up on me. There are probably too many things to update you on so maybe I'll start with the most recent event and depending on how ambitious I am, maybe I'll post backwards from that. But at least this is a start.
sooo...
Kyle and I just got back from our honeymoon on Saturday. We went to Varadero, Cuba and it was lovely. We managed to get there the day their biggest cold front in 30 years ended and we had beautiful weather the whole time. After the months of planning and rushing and chaos it was so nice to just lay on a beach and read a book and drink pina coladas.

ooh. another bonus of married life is that now I can post pictures on my blog so here are some from Cuba:

this is a picture of the view from our balcony. we had the nicest balcony there because we were newly weds. The ocean doesn't look as blue in the picture as it actually was because it was nighttime when kyle took this one.

playing in the ocean (Kyle didn't want me to put that picture of him in because he thinks he looks silly... which is, of course, exactly why i like it...)

this is of snorkeling. (kind of hard to see the fishies in the underwater one... we only had alittle waterproof bag for our camera so they aren't super clear. but the fishies came to eat the ham sandwich that the sailor man threw to them)

we went on a tour one day and went on a sailboat and snorkeling and to an island for lunch and then swimming with dolphins. it was pretty fun. I have more but that's a good starting point. Plus I can't remember how to find the pictures... Kyle showed me the other day but I've forgotten...
In any case, it's nice to be back in the world of the blog. and I think i've got lots of catching up to do. it's been an eventful couple of months and now i have more or less nothing to do so I have time to relive the past with you... stay tuned...

note:

2007-11-11T15:30:00.000-06:00

posting will be less frequent for the last week of my visit because my internet access is not as convenient as it once was. so i apologize for that.
today we did our first show run. it was long and a bit crazy but im sure it will all come together by friday.
well... that's it for now. one of the other dancers arrived today (the daughter of our host family) so she's living in the computer room which is why i can't use it very much. and then we move on tuesday to a house with no internet. so... perhaps this is it.
if so, all my love and i'll see most of you in seven sleeps!

november the twelfth. two thousand and seven.

2007-11-10T18:02:00.000-06:00

today was our last day off here in graz.
actually that was a lie
we have another one the day after the show.
but our show is on friday and we leave here first thing sunday morning.
i must say, i'm pretty excited to come home. there are definately things about graz that i will miss. but im ready to come home.
i would really like to come back someday. due to the circumstances surrounding this visit i feel like there are so many things i never got the chance to see and experience. i have experienced a lot of really great things and i have learned a lot and grown as a person and as a dancer. but i think i would fall more in love with europe if i came again with more money and more time and perhaps with less rehearsals and maybe with a husband..... right now im so grateful for this experience, but my heart is still at home.
today was cloudy and cold. feels like winter is on it's way. i slept in and had a nice slow morning. the most exciting part of the morning was that they just opened a new tram line close to our house so we no longer have to walk half an hour to get to and from the tram. just in time for us to move out... good timing. (we move out tuesday night because annette and bernt have people coming in from out of town to see the show, so they need the space to host their guests)
i wandered around downtown for the afternoon. got lost a bit. as i usually do on my days off...
bought a couple things
met lise and pam
went for dinner
went to the english movie theatre
saw hairspray
much better than the heartbreak kid
john travolta makes a hideous woman
met up with silke, one of the dancers from austria and went for punsch - another traditional drink here. they have seasons of drinks (i guess like how we only have eggnog at christmas) sturm season is just ending and punsch season is beginning. it was quite delicious. it's like a warm, christmassy sangria.
well... goodnight
8 more sleeps!

smiles

2007-11-07T15:56:00.000-06:00

Well. Yesterday and today were both just rehearsal days so not a whole lot to fill you in on. The show's coming up soon and things are starting to come together but we definately have our work cut out for us.

I seem to have strained a muscle in the front of my neck today, which was unfortunate... Everyone told me I needed to ice it and we ended rehearsal early because I couldn't run things anymore. So I stopped at the grocery store to buy a package of frozen peas to ice my neck on my way home (which already sounded like hell to me. who wants ice on their neck as they walk home in the cold? Not me, I'll tell you that much...) However, as it turns out, they don't sell small bags of frozen peas in Europe. They sell small boxes of frozen peas or they sell 2 kilogram bags. There was no way I was about to put a 2 kilo bag of peas on my neck and hop on the tram so I bought the smallest bag of frozen things I could find:
McCain Smiles.
(Actually to be honest, there was a smaller package of something that looked like spinach slime pellets, but I wasn't willing to purchase them)

I waited until I got out of the store to tuck the smiles into my scarf (thick necks look suspicious in stores...) and I took the tram home. It was horribly uncomfortable and cold and strangley but my neck does feel a bit better now...

shopping and a hilarious joke

2007-11-05T17:15:00.000-06:00

today was another lovely day off in graz. pam and i had planned to get an early start on shopping and whatnot but annette invited us to have lunch with her so we went into town to do some grocery shopping and then had a german lesson and some lunch.

after lunch we went shopping for gifts and for annette's birthday which is tomorrow. we bought her a present and then were trying to pick out a card for her but it was hard because they were all german and then we amused ourselves with the idea of picking a card that we secretly knew was an anniversary card or something and pretending we thought it was a birthday card. for some reason we thought this would be hilarious because annette is always trying to teach us german. hilarious.

we had a nice day shopping. i bought some cheap boots cuz mine are falling apart and some legwarmers because the dance studio is so flipping cold all the time.
and later on we met up with lise and had dinner (a strange but delightful little place called mangolds where there's a buffet and you take what you want and then they weigh your plate and charge you accordingly.) and then we went to the english movie theatre and saw the heartbreak kid, or whatever the new ben stiller movie is called. it was utterly terrible but nice to hear people speaking english. pam and lise were excited to buy beer from the concession stand.

we only have one more day off before coming home. all the rest is spent rehearsing... kind of too bad. i do like days off...

one day i'll post pictures...

2007-11-04T14:43:00.000-06:00

so. what do i have to tell you today.
well... yesterday we had a nice little day off. pam woke me up to tell me that bernd (our house papa) had made us breakfast so the three of us (anette wasn't there cuz she is visiting her daughter in germany) had a lovely little breakfast and bernd showed us how to properly eat an egg out of an egg cup. good little life lesson. i'll be showing off next easter.
after breakfast we got dressed and bernd took us on a little tourist adventure. we went to schloß eggenberg which is a big castle built by a neurotic man. unfortunately it was closed to tourists for the winter as of october 31st. so that was crappy timing. but we saw some pictures of it and it looked pretty incredible. but we did get to go through the art gallery there and wander through the park and hang out with many peacocks (including an albino one, like the one the malfoy's have at their house...) it was a beautiful day and it was an incredibly beautiful place. i had a bunch of postcards picked out to buy but when i went to buy them, we were told we weren't allowed to because the lady who worked in the gift shop was on her lunch break... so sorry to all for the lack of postcards.
after wandering around there for a while bernd bought us sturm and maroni (apparently austria has seasonal drink specials... we happen to be here in sturm season) and we sat out on a patio and watched the peacocks.
after schloß eggenberg, we went for a little walking tour of some of the places bernd thought we would enjoy. we saw a huge old cathedral and a school for priests in training (i'm sure there's a better word for it than that) and after wandering for a while we went and he treated us all to delicious sushi.
it was such a nice little trip and we were so touched by his generosity.
and today we just rehearsed all day. sunday is the day we have almost the whole cast together and it's always a little more scattered and hard to organize. i feel like we have a lot of work to do in the next twelve days.

two other things i like about austria:
the autumn leaves stay on the trees so much longer than they do at home. it's very pretty.
i like hearing the church bells ring. they ring a lot, especially on sunday.

in two weeks and a couple of hours i'll be home. crazy.

even more boring than yesterday!

2007-11-02T16:06:00.000-06:00

another busy day of rehearsals over without any incidents to report.
after rehearsal the whole crew (well, treasure, christina, thomas, lise, pam and i) went for sturm and maroni (basically sweet wine and roasted chestnuts. they were quite good actually. i was surprised by chestnuts yesterday - they were softer and pastier and less nutty than i expected, the caught me off guard and i couldnt decide what i felt about them but today i appreciated them. i was prepared...)
tomorrow we have the day off and we have plans to go to schloss eggenberg. i don't know much about it but we're going there.
well. my eyes are having a hard time staying open... so goodnight!

this post is pretty boring.

2007-11-01T14:52:00.000-06:00

nothing much to report today. rehearsal went well. we felt a little on edge in the morning, it seemed as though the lady could have turned on us at any second but the afternoon went well and it was sunny for the second day in a row. and the studio we dance in has big windows so the room warmed up so much better than normal.

after dance we didn't really have many options of things to do because it was another holiday and everything was closed (they have a lot of holidays here...) but we found a little pizzaria open and had pizza for dinner and that's about all there was to my day. nothing overly memorable. oh except for a man sleeping at the tram stop today. he was a normal looking man dressed relatively well. a golf shirt and a pea coat... he looked fake. pam and i wondered if we should be concerned and try to help but then we realized it would probably make things worse if we tried to wake him up and then didn't have a phone and couldnt speak the language and basically couldnt communicate or do anything. we thought that might be confusing for him. and he was breathing...

and there was also an old lady who wouldnt stop talking to us and asking us questions no matter how many times i told her we couldnt speak german. a man who looked like bryan adams tried to explain it to her but it didn't work. i think she might have escaped from the seniorumzentrum...

crazy that my time here is just about half over. i am having a good time but im so excited to come home.
sorry about the boring post...
lots of love to everyone.

survival

2007-10-31T15:43:00.000-06:00

well. i seem to have survived my little episode yesterday. thank you all for your support. it meant a lot to me to have people's encouragement and love. last night after writing my post i went and had sourkraut and sausages with pam and bernd (the owner of the house we're staying at). he gave me wine to make everything better. and after dinner pam and i debriefed a bit about the day and i cried and expressed my frustrations and struggles and then i felt better. and then i went and had a shower and got ready for bed and watched ratatouille in bed on kyle's ipod. and i fell asleep rather peacefully.

today we had a bit of a later start so i was able to read some emails and prepare myself for the day and i made myself a promise that i was going to rise to the challenge and learn and take corrections but i wasn't going to allow myself to be injured by negative attitudes or mean people. i decided to make myself proud today instead of sad and self-pitying.

and it was a good day. i felt way more on top of things and i was able to dance much more freely without my own doubts in the way. plus i think christina knew that she went a little bit far yesterday. and i think she needs a day off... she's been working 7 days a week and so yesterday she was short tempered and today she was slow moving and less motivated (which was much easier to deal with...) i'm a little bit worried what's going to happen as her stress rises though. i think we're in for a stressful couple weeks. the show opens in just barely over 2 weeks and we have a lot of work to do...

so, i don't think i'm quite out of the woods yet but i am feeling better today and i feel confident that i can get through this and i will be so grateful for the lessons i'm learning while i'm here.

today...

2007-10-30T12:25:00.000-06:00

Today was a truly horrible day. Last night and this morning I found myself feeling very small in a big world and far away from people who care about me. A losing combination of homesick, lonely, defeated and insecure. I tried to give myself peptalks all morning to try and get on top of things and swallow my emotions and I got a bit of a handle on it. But I think Christina could smell my insecurities and basically she tore me apart for 8 hours today. I know I deserved some of it. My heart wasn't in it. I let my emotions affect me too much and I wasn't dancing at 100%. But I don't really think I deserved all of it. And it was hard too, because she was yelling at me for (among other things) doubting myself, which is exactly how I'm feeling. I am doubting myself. I'm doubting wether or not I'm good enough to be here or strong enough to be away. She was really hard on me today and it took a lot of mind power to not break down.

This week (and this is no longer just about rehearsal today) I'm struggling with a number of things. I think I have some hard lessons to learn while I'm here in Austria. I'm struggling to not rely on other people for comfort, to find confidence on my own, to find the line between being meek and humble and being shattered and weak. to know when to address issues and when to swallow hurt feelings. to deal with issues but not dwell on them. to not let other people affect the way you think about yourself. to move on and do a job when you don't feel you have the strength. to navigate a big world on my own without the luxury of being able to run into someone's arms and have them make me feel better and help me fix my problems.

sigh...
19 more sleeps.

day off number two

2007-10-29T16:28:00.000-06:00

today we saw the sun for the first time since we got here. it's amazing how much that can affect your mood. especially when you have the day off and are free to do as you please. we decided to split up and do our own things today and meet up for dinner later on so i slept in and read in bed for a while and then put on my new little sweater dress and went for a long walk around the neighborhood (it was long half because i was enjoying it and half because i got lost and had to backtrack all the way back so i knew where i was...)
After my long walk i took the tram downtown and went to the dom im berg which is the theatre we'll be performing in. I didn't go into the theatre because they dont let you just walk in there but it's really neat because it's inside a cave in the side of a big hill and then there's paths and stairs all the way to the top of the hill where you can see the whole city and there's an old clock tower and bells and a fortress from world war I. It was really beautiful (although there were lots of couples making out... one looked like they were both about 14, laying in the grass in front of everyone...) and I had a great time wandering about and taking pictures (i didn't take any of people making out). It was nice to just relax in the sun and not have a schedule or anything and feel like I was actually experiencing something about the country I find myself in. So that was nice.
And then I wandered off to the call centre and had a nice little chat with kyle before meeting up with the others for dinner. We went to a little place called Kuba (or Cuba) which had pictures of fidel castro and che guevera up but it sold mostly hamburgers so, who knows... but the hamburger was good and it was nice to have some familiar food to eat.
I took lots of pictures today so once I figure out how to upload them onto this German speaking computer, or find an english speaking one, I will post some to show you all.

a not so lazy but still uninteresting sunday

2007-10-28T15:08:00.000-06:00

nothing much to report today. i had a long rehearsal and that's about it. it's true that nothing is open on sundays here, except for one little japanese restaurant we found close to the studio. so fortunately we had lunch. the only other place we found was a little tiny fruit stand where i bought some little red things that turned out to be dried marashino cherries. pretty gross, actually...
we had our first rehearsal with (almost) the whole cast there today. usually when we rehearse it's only the 4 of us 'canuks' (as they call us) so it was kind of nice to meet and work with all of the austrian girls too, although it was a much slower process and it therefore felt like a very long day.
tomorrow is another day off, which is exciting... i'll keep you posted on the adventures that are bound to occur...
oh, and add one more thing to the list of things i miss about home (actually 2 more things):
dryers and fabric softener (towels get scratchy)
oh. and also, soft toilet paper

to leave this post on a positive note, here are some things i greatly appreciate about austria:
1. chocolate
2. specialty coffees
3. yogurt
4. cheap cheese
5. i had a good sandwich today that i bought at the shell station (it was open too)
6. pretty architecture
7. cute boutiques
8. i love that all of the doors and cupboards have little keys sitting in the holes all the time to lock them
9. a lot of the rehearsals are actually pretty fun
10. i have a cozy little bed
11. i love my luggage that my parents bought me for my birthday
12. i'm very thankful to have internet access at the house i'm currently staying (although the computer is quite slow)
13. i like that most of the trees here still have their leaves (even though it is quite cold)
14. i like that the trams are on time and they have little signs at each stop that tells you how many more minutes until another one comes
15. i like that when i travel i realize how much i love my life at home and how much i love the people that i share it with. i hate being away from my family, friends and fiancé but it makes me so excited to see them again.

list to be continued...

first day off

2007-10-27T17:51:00.000-06:00

Today was our first day off here in Austria. I slept in which was quite nice and then we got ready and headed off to meet lise in Hauptplatz, one of the downtown squares. We got cappuccinos and nutella crepes and started walking around to various stores we'd had our eyes on. We ended up only having time to get the big stores out of the way and we'll definately return to check out the smaller boutiques. It was fun to browse around although always a little funny to shop with people who have different style than you. They tell you to buy the things you don't really like and say they suit you and then say the things you do like are unflattering... makes the decision making process a little more challenging - and we all know how good i am at making decisions to begin with...
After some shopping (which was a little exhausting - the stores were packed, I guess because nothing's open on Sunday and stores are only open until 5 so Saturday is people's only chance to shop) we went home and had dinner with Annette, the lady of the house we're staying in. She's a really nice lady and keeps trying to teach us german even though deep down she knows we're hopeless... She made us wienerschnitzel. It was pretty good, actually.
And then we all went to see the Graz ballet's show. It was a 'modern ballet' and it was the most bizarre piece of work I have ever seen. It was called bad animals and the choreography was, well... convaluded maybe... it included a lot of good old modern dance clichés like the dancer in the fabric tube, text for no good reason, video projection for no reason, a watery and impossible to follow story line, smooching for no good reason, obnoxious and incredibly loud music, lots of undulating bodies and zebra striped pants... it was super weird. But I must say, the dancers were great. They were all ballet dancers so they weren't entirely in tune with the ways of the modern but they were still quite impressive (although some of them were horrible actors).
After the show we went out for drinks and when we arrived at the restaurant our table wasn't quite ready yet so they asked us to wait in the cellar. It was a big stone wine cellar and we ended up hanging out there all night. We sat on wine crates and ate oysters. It was pretty fun. The cellar was a little cold but I was okay with it because no one was allowed to smoke down there and we were with a couple of chain smokers and I've already been nearly suffocated a couple of times this week.
And now I'm home and ready for bed. Rehearsal again tomorrow and then another day off.

one other thing I've learned in Graz:
it's very difficult to call or take a taxi when your address is zveinundviersig peterstalstraße.

adventures in a foreign land

2007-10-24T12:49:00.000-06:00

know what's weird about being here? I'm halfway accross the world and my life is more or less exactly the same. I wake up. I go to rehearsal. I go home. That's pretty much it. You'd think I'd be seeing the sights and shopping and doing all kinds of fun things, but the reality of it is that everything here closes by 6:00 and we usually rehearse until 6. We buy groceries on our lunch break. Not a lot seems to happen here after 6, which is funny cuz i read on the internet that graz is supposed to have great night life. although it also said october was one of the best times to travel because it would be pleasantly warm (it's not).

Last night, Pam, Lise and I did take a gamble and went out for dinner. It is rather difficult to find a restaurant and order successfully in a foreign land. and my german-english dictionery doesn't seem to keep up very well. We ended up in a little underground restaurant for which we were underdressed and couldn't understand the menu very well. They did happen to have one that had some english on it (but only one so we all sat on one side of the table to read over eachother's shoulders). I ended up having some weird potatoey dumplings and a mound of saurkraut.
After dinner we went back to the tram station only to find out that our tram stops running sometime before 8:00. So we decided to get dessert. We wandered more or less aimelessly through the rain, one of my companions with a sad and hilariously broken umbrella and the other walking with the type gait only found in a person who has severely sore legs and is still somewhat constipated...
We ended up in the diveyest, smokiest little restaurant - full of fake palm trees and paintings of fish. And our dessert ended up being really quite terrible. But we laughed a lot (partially because they give you a shot of schnapps after every meal to aid in digestion) so I guess it was all worth it in the end.

things i miss about home

2007-10-23T15:24:00.000-06:00

1. the obvious: kyle, friends, family
2. sunshine
3. warmth
4. heating you're allowed to leave on all day (the dance studio was freeeezing today. it was a like a horrible horrible dream)
5. showers you're allowed to leave on even when you don't technically need the water... like when lathering.
6. heated bathrooms (especially bad when standing wet and naked when lathering)
7. heated computer rooms
8. water pressure
9. english menus at restaurants
10. english altogether
11. no smoking zones (i have a stuffed up nose from smoke inhalation and my scarf stinks)
12. english kezboards

do you like how almost all of the things i miss are wasteful things we do that are causing our world to destruct? pathetic, isn't it. saving the earth looks good on paper but i haven't quite gotten used to the practicality of it all... sigh. it's rather bothersome that we can't save the world and stay warm at the same time.

but i am having fun. just felt like making a list... there might be things added as time progresses. but in the meantime, i'm off to my drizzley cold shower.

day one

2007-10-22T15:25:00.000-06:00

today was our first day of rehearsals. and we had a great time, actually. the studio that we were working in today is really beautiful, big windows, hardwood floors... it was a long day and we worked hard but i think we were all feeling excited and motivated and we had fun and got a lot accomplished so that was good. will most likely have bruises and sore muscles tomorrow but that's just the life of a dancer, really.

Other than that my day wasn't terribly eventful other than a funny and perhaps inappropriate event involving an anonymous canadian companion of mine finding herself constapated after traveling and another of my companions giving her a pill to help take care of it only to realize that the pill was actually to cure traveller's diarrhea. oops. so then we had to go to the apotheque (drugstore) and to spare the ailing one further embarassment she stayed outside while the other one and i tried to explain our predicament by miming and stumbling through the german-english dictionery. so today's german word of the day is verstopfung - constapation. i feel i am allowed to tell this story because they don't know about my blog, so they won't know... i'm a bad friend...

we also went grocery shopping. brie cheese is way cheaper here than at home.

learning how to count in german. i've got up to 9 pretty good but 10 is hard to pronounce.

I'm worried that the dog here is going to die any second.

apparently austrian guys make horrible screeching rooster noises at girls when they drive past sometimes. this has only happened once so far but it was startling and therefore memorable.

long day tomorrow. time for bed.

enshuldegung

2007-10-21T16:54:00.000-06:00

today is my birthday. i wanted to write happy birthday in german as my title but the only german word i currently know is enshuldegung and i don't even know how to spell it. it means sorry. i'm not sure why whoever invented the german language insisted on making all the words so long. it makes them terribly difficult to remember them. i'm also not sure who invented the german keyboard and mixed up all the letters on me. not impressed.
in any case, i am in austria. so far i'm having a good time. not a whole lot to report yet as most of my time since leaving has been spent traveling and sleeping. the flight was long but safe and i think my no jet lag pills worked. i was rather tired but mostly due to the fact that i'd hardly slept in 30 hours. so after a good 13 hour night i felt pretty good today. pam and i have spent some time wandering the streets here and downtown graz is very beautiful and european looking but nothing is open on sundays so we havent been able to do any shopping or anything - but we've definately made plans to. there are lots of really cute stores and an h&m on every other corner. The house we're staying in is just outside of the city in a beautiful little area. It's not very european looking but the house is huge (it has an elevator in it) and it has a big natural pond with lilly pads that the house goes out over and it has a glass floor in a place so you can look in the pond - apparently you can even swim in it in summer. The couple who owns it is very sweet. They found out it was my birthday today and they sent pam down with a little almond loaf with a candle in it and a gift - a dvd of an austrian ballet. so that was really sweet, especially since nothing is open on sundays so it wouldn't have been easy to find things.
In any case, I should go to bed. Tomorrow's the first day of rehearsals so I need to be fresh as a daisy. Auf Wiedersehen!

wedding photos

2007-10-01T21:10:00.000-06:00

I got an lovely little email from my christie friend the other day. it didn't say a whole lot but it included all of these funny little weddingy photos and i liked them.

i love this picture. i think she's so cute. i've been trying to find a little veil like this one everywhere. unfortunately the days of millinary art are over.

if i knew this girl, she could be my flower girl. i like her free spirited ways.

aaw. who doesn't love a couple on a tandem bike. kyle and i will have to recreate this picture one day. although i'm unwilling to put myself into those knee socks and ugly shoes and i'm pretty sure kyle's unable to grow a beard even remotely like this man's work of art.

we want to have an old type writer for our guestbook table. we'll have to find ramona a dress like this one.

and this last one is of my three bridesmaids. aren't they lovely? obviously the blonde one is lindsey. the one in the middle looks guilty of something... i think she's tami because the other one looks more like christie.
hopefully they'll look happier at my actual wedding...

the outrage

2007-09-27T21:31:00.000-06:00

so kyle and i decided to design and make our own invitations... actually that is a total misrepresentation... let me start again:

so kyle and i have decided that kyle will design and make our invitations (with the help of our lovely print studio friend jeanette) i don't really have all that much to do with it except for approving the designs and wording and offering emotional support and addressing envelopes. but one of my jobs was to find envelopes and paper for the invitations so after a careful search i found the right ones online. they were the right colour and paper and a pretty good price. it seemed like a great find - until...

the shipping cost... we got charged $25 for shipping. $25 seemed steep but we sucked it up and didn't complain. i'm sure the paper's really heavy or something. it's probably fair...

but then... when kyle got home today he found a notice in his mailbox saying that we couldn't get our package until we paid the $40 duty fee. 40 dollars!! 250 envelopes and 250 sheets of paper were only $80 and we paid $65 just to get them to us! 60 dollars for a package worth 80!!
that is what my friend lindsey would call
highway robbery

seriously. the nerve.

getting older...

2007-09-14T11:11:00.000-06:00

I turn 24 in a month, i'm about to become a wife, i spend my saturday nights knitting and drinking tea and today i found...
my first gray hair.
i've been eased into the whole aging this because last year i thought i had a gray hair too but it turned out to be a blonde hair. i get those every once in a while but i think today's gray hair was the real deal. when i thought i'd found one last year i taped it into my journal to commemorate the event so now i can go back and compare to see if this one is my real first one. it will go into my journal as well. my kids will probably want to see it one day.
well... i'd better get back to my knitting...

when in doubt - knit!

2007-09-13T16:41:00.000-06:00

well. i've been having a combination lazy-productive week. i'm only dancing from 9:30-11 every morning (except when I skip class like yesterday) so i've had some time to get stuff done. except that I can't always figure out what I should be doing when I have the time. It's kind of an annoying thing - especially since I just realized that this week (which is almost over) is my last week off before the wedding but I don't totally know what all I should be doing to prepare. so usually that means i knit. but i do have some knitting to do so it's not entirely irresponsible... plus it makes me feel better because i can actually see my progress. it's almost as satisfying as checking things off a list.
In other wedding news, Kyle and I finally decided on a venue for our wedding which is a huge relief for us and we're pretty excited to move on with plans. We're having the ceremony at Broadway First Baptist Church and the reception at the Fort Garry Hotel. I think it'll be really pretty.
And today Kyle and I met with a friend who is going to help us make our invitations (Kyle's going to design them and then him and Jeanette are going to screen print them. I think they'll be beautiful) and then I wandered the streets looking for pretty envelopes - which I didn't find.
I also was recently offered $1000 to change my wedding date by my uncle who wants very badly to be at the wedding but feels it would be irresponsible to take the time off work to come (he owns a petstore in calgary and apparently christmas time is an important time for retail). As tempting as it was and as much as I felt bad for his situation, I don't think Kyle and I want to dely the process any further. We've been waiting a long time for this.
And now I'm at work and thinking I should do some knitting to keep my mind off of some of the cute new fall things that I can't afford but keep staring at me while I sit here...

hello blog

2007-09-07T17:49:00.000-06:00

it's been a while since i've found myself here, in blog world. It's been a busy month, what with planning a wedding and being in a show and other exciting things. Here are some of the things I have recently learned:
1. I have very expensive taste. I do not have any desire to have a rediculously expensive wedding. I just want a pretty wedding. As it turns out, the things I think are pretty are usually out of my price range. But sometimes I buy them anyways...
2. Wedding cakes cost a lot more than you might think...
3. My fiance has fallen madly in love with a vacuum cleaner at Home Outfitters

In other news, after my show last weekend (which went very well, thanks to everyone who came to see it!) Kyle and I went to the cottage to relax and for my show bruises to heal. Kyle was trying out a new camera. These pictures are nice:

While I was at the cottage, I also decided that I might like to be a tea maker. My mom has a big herb garden and with it getting colder these days, I would like to dry them all and make tea. But whether or not I actually will is a whole other thing... In my head I'm rather domestic but unfortunately, my life doesn't seem to always agree.

A Belated Announcement

2007-08-11T11:52:00.000-06:00

Well. It's been a week and a half and a mass email since I had news to share so I'm sure anyone who checks this knows already that Kyle and I are engaged. But it's still exciting, well at least for us it is.
Here are some pictures of our big day

This one makes me laugh. We decided should take the traditional engagement picture with the hand on the chest -casual yet definately posed- and then Kyle spruced it up.

We got ice cream and it was delicious.

Then we had a surprise picnic. Everything was perfectly planned out and lovely.

And then we were engaged.
It was all very exciting and beautiful and we are very much looking forward to being married.

baby

2007-07-27T10:01:00.000-06:00

here's my fake nephew, tara and jacko's baby Manuk:

he's pretty cute... kyle's mom made that blankey for him. she taught me how to crochet many years ago.

my days are fairly uneventful. not working as much which means trying to occupy myself without spending money. i'm bad at that... but, i am working on a latch hook project that i started last night. kyle bought it for me at value village. it's an incredibly ugly old kit from probably the 60s or 70s to latch hook (using their afro technique) to get a nice frizzy baby owl named hoohoo junior. i'll be sure to post pictures when he's more completed.

7 things.

2007-07-25T15:29:00.000-06:00

so... apparently i've been tagged and i got in trouble last time i dropped the ball so here it goes: 7 random things about me:

1. When I was little I had huge ears and I refused to wear anything other than pink sweatsuits.

2. I hate the words nostril and tabernacle

3. I secretly love McDonalds french fries

4. I dream of one day having a little house of my own with window boxes, a bedroom closet and a craft room with windows.

5. I would love to open a yarn store one day

6. If I had more time, I would design and hook rugs. I would love to be a rug hooker... but not a regular hooker...

7. My left big toe cracks with every step I take. My brother says he can always tell when I'm in the next peice in a show because in the blackout he can hear my toe cracking as I walk on stage. I was recently told by a choreographer not to feel self-conscious about it because it was just another way for me to communicate with my audience.

I only know one other blogger so I guess Lindsey is now tagged...
these are the rules:
* I must post 7 random things about me.
* Tag 7 other Bloggers to do the same.
* Post the rules and the Bloggers I tagged here.
* Leave Tagged Bloggers a comment on their blog so they know they have been tagged.

in other gross news

2007-07-20T14:13:00.001-06:00

i just removed a sliver from my hand with a stitch ripper and mini tweezers from a manicure set.

grossie grosserson

2007-07-20T13:03:00.000-06:00

So. Another slow day at works leads me to read my sister's blog which leads me to a gross story telling contest at www.adventuresinbabywearing.blogspot.com in which you can win a fancy little dustbuster. Now, I do not have kids and after reading the stories in the contest, I might never have kids. But it wasn't specified that the story had to involve children and so I thought I would include this nice little tale:

As many of you know, my boyfriend, Kyle, runs the youth program at a downtown church. We are usually there until fairly late on a Sunday night and on one particular winter evening, as the kids were leaving a homeless man, looking a little worse for wear, managed to slip through the open doors. How he managed to do this is beyond me as once he was in the building he was the most slow moving individual I have ever witnessed. Kyle was very friendly towards him and offered to call him a cab so Kyle and the homeless man walked to the back of the church to make phone calls. Meanwhile I was waiting in the entrance with CJ, another of the leaders. We were talking and the phone calling was taking some time and I was getting tired so I decided to sit on the chair by the door. So I sat. And I thought: man, that is a bad smell that that guy left behind. And I sat. And then I thought: do my pants feel wet? Slowly I put the pieces together...

What happened next was a flurry of motion and panicked dialogue between CJ and I - me yelling that I'd just sat in homeless man pee and him wondering why I had sat there when the man's pants had clearly been wet and me thinking this was not a helpful comment and then him remembering that he had a pair of extra pants in his car and him sprinting out the door to get them. All throughout this transaction I was standing in the oddest position ever as I tried to keep my thighs away from the back of my tight skinny-legged pants (very difficult and awkward). Maintaining this contorted stance I did a crazy looking run to the bathroom and whipped off my pants and tried to wash my bum in the church sink (also diffucult and awkward). CJ returned and threw his pants in through the door. After my horribly inelegant sponge bath I put on pants that were a number of sizes too big for me and returned to the lobby to wait for Kyle.

That's more or less where the dramatic part of my story ends.Kyle returned finally and ushered the man out the door and into a cab. We stood there for a moment before he noticed my pants.
Where did those pants come from?
CJ's car.
Why are you wearing them?
I sat in homeless man pee.
...oh...

After that we had to try and figure out what to do with the chair. We ended up making a big sign that said "this chair has been peed on, please dispose of it accordingly". My friend Luke's favourite part of the story was when, after we wrote the sign, I wandered towards the chair and the boys had to stop me from sitting down again. Clearly I have very poor judgement and memory when I'm tired and in shock...

new developments

2007-07-19T17:48:00.000-06:00

I'm feeling very independent and domestic today. I'm house sitting for friends of Kyle's parents and I rather enjoyed my morning of laundry, plant watering and tidying. I can't wait to have my own house. I also got my legs waxed and met Kyle for a lovely lunch at the Don Deli. And then I heard it was going to be 37 degrees on Sunday so I decided it was time to get over certain insecurities I feel and buy myself a pair of shorts. I do not like showing my legs due to paleness and dark hairness. But I did it. I bought a pair of shorts and I'm wearing them right now and feeling rather empowered. If I can wear shorts comfortably, what could possibly stand in my way?

In other news, last night I became a pretend aunt for the first time. I've been a real aunt for years but never a pretend aunt. Last night Kyle's sister had her argentinian baby. His name is Manuk (manOOK) and he lives in argentina for now and Kyle and I have a hard time picturing him without a long goatee like his dad. But everything went well (except for the unplanned cesaerian) and the family is happy and healthy. He weighed 9.5 lbs and was 21 inches. (i think) hooray for pretend nephews!

post.

2007-07-16T17:39:00.000-06:00

so.. friday night i went to melissa's birthday party. it was a girls only party because nils was out of town. i think it's weird that my spell check underlined melissa and friday but not nils... it was fun although kyle was sad about being left out.

saturday we drove out to the lake. it was my dad's 50th birthday. it was a happy day.

sunday i came home and had a rehearsal. and then lindsey and i tried to come up with a good hanging out plan but as usual we just ended up sitting and talking anyways so i don't even know why we try

today i switched things up a bit and worked at the fringe festival setting up old market square and bringing chairs to the venues.

and now i'm tired and deciding between foraging for food, having a bath or reading. i know i could do all of them but i'm not sure i have the energy so i might have to choose.

and because this post is kind of boring and i haven't posted pictures for a while, here's a random assortment:

this one is canada day at the lake

this one is kyle and i at cj and erin's wedding. kyle was a groomsman. i was late cuz i was in a show.

and this last one is from when a house right by my house was on fire. it made me nervous when kyle and i were walking home cuz we turned towards my street and it was filled with smoke everywhere and knowing my family, i wouldn't be overly surprised if it had been my house... but i'm very glad it wasn't.

hooray for days off!

2007-07-12T17:26:00.000-06:00

i had a rather lovely day yesterday. i had the day off and christie, lindsey and i went out for breakfast and for a little shopping trip. it was more of a window shopping and trying on day and we had a good time looking around and being girls. We ended up at Lindsey's house where we had a lovely avacado salad and spinach and cheese ravioli and revels for dessert. aaaand.. we went to see the fifth harry potter movie. even though we had bad seats (who knew people would be so punctual on opening night...) it was quite enjoyable. For those of you who read lindsey's blog, this will be a repeat but the fifth book was not overly wonderful. It was wonderful in the sense that it was Harry Potter but it just lacked the happiness and whimsy that the earlier ones have. It was kind of depressing. Nothing good happens to him. But the movie did not leave me feeling glum. They kept lightness in the way the characters interact and added some quirky little touches that didn't take away from the plot. All in all, I must say that I was impressed. I haven't been a huge fan of the movies up to now, but this one was really well done. hooray for harry potter!

long post but very interesting and well-written so you'd better read it all.

2007-06-27T11:04:00.000-06:00

I've had another series of busy weeks that don't translate into interesting posts.
I've been working regularly at my little flower shop and about once a week at poppie. and I'm in a show this weekend so rehearsals tend to occupy my evenings. it's an interesting piece in which the choreographer is collaborating with the poor tree typewriter band so while we're dancing there are typewriters typing and then at the end they read what they've been writing - sort of spoken word poetry-ish. it's neat. except that we haven't had much time to put the piece together and it feels a little less than ready to be performed. we tried a run in the theatre yesterday and it was slightly disastrous. but it will come together I'm sure... i hope...

top five other things worth mentioning:

1. THE GRAD:
Christie and I had our graduation ceremony from continuing education's apparel design I. It was primarily/almost entirely middle aged people graduating and all the speeches were talking about how brave we were for going back to school and balancing our careers and family and going for it, even though we're older. so that was nice... the best part of the grad was that i found a corsage in the fridge at work that was too old to sell (and in my opinion, too hideous to sell -ooh speaking of ugly corsages... I've another good story to tell in a second...) so i made Christie wear the ugly corsage the whole night to celebrate our graduation. it was huge and full or daisies and wax flower (current day baby's breath) and big organza bows. it was quite lovely on her skinny little wrist.

2. THE UGLY CORSAGE:
The other day I got a call from this lady who wanted to order a corsage for I guess her daughter's grad. And she wanted something unique so she decided she wanted 3 big orchids (we usually put 2 which is already too huge for my liking, so 3 is mammoth) and then she wanted a vine attached to it that could wrap all the way up her arm... plus a big chocolate brown bow at the base and two strands of chocolate brown ribbon at the top that could criss cross all the way up the arm like a ballet slipper. PLUS she wanted us to add rhinestones all throughout the corsage... and then when she came to pick it up she decided it wasn't big enough and added a fourth orchid and more rhinestones. it was rather challenging to respond to this lady and keep my voice at a friendly and helpful tone. hopefully the poor grad wasn't too surprised by this not-so-subtle addition to her outfit...

3. I HAVE CONQUERED MY FEAR OF BICYCLES:
I have been riding my bike to work recently. for those of you who know me I have a not-entirely-secret fear of bicycles, which is funny considering my boyfriend is on a bike more often that he isn't these days. I like riding the tandem bike because I don't have to steer (or pedal if I don't want to) because I tend to run into things like trees and curbs. But I have conquered and it turns out it isn't nearly as bad as I thought it was. I think I had a couple of bad experiences lined up and it turned into a bit of a complex. As it turns out, trees aren't that hard to avoid after all...

4. MONDAY MALL MARATHON MADNESS AND MIDNIGHT MEETING
On Monday Christie and I went out for breakfast and then went to the mall for the first time in ages. (we tend to not be mall shoppers) But we had a lot of fun and got a lot of cheap things. The mall is a bit of a strange culture. There are many hilarious people there that make me glad I'm not a teenager anymore. After the mall had tired us out I had a rehearsal but then I picked up Christie again and we eventually ended up at the airport to meet Lindsey's flight. We had this whole plan figured out where we would give Lindsey's parents a card that told her to follow balloons and then we attached a trail of balloons around the airport that lead her up the stairs to one of the last black and white photo booths that remains in the city. and one of us would be holding the last balloon sticking out of the booth. but we didn't want to sit there forever with our arm out at a 90 degree angle so I was trying to spy over the balcony so I could see when she was coming but there were a bunch of things blocking my view. And Christie was taking pictures of the balloons when she noticed a girl coming up the stairs and kind of running. She thought that she was just trying to get out of the picture but then she realized it was Lindsey and screamed NOOOOO and Christie and I jumped up and sprinted down the hallway and launched ourselves into the photo booth and jabbed out the balloon. So it didn't end up being very smooth in the end but it was still a fun memory. And we got good reunion photos...

5. AND IN RECENT NEWS....
I was at work yesterday cutting rose stems when my dad called and said that there was a message saying to call Faye at the studio and it was urgent. Faye is the co-director of my program so after I finished my roses I called her and she told me I had been offered a professional job working on a duet with a choreographer named Christina Medina. It takes place from mid October until mid November... in Austria. My airfare and accommodation is taken care of plus I get a fairly reasonable honorarium and I get to go to Austria for a month and perform in a show there. So that was overwhelming and exciting news. I had from yesterday afternoon until this morning to make my decision, but really, how do you say no to an experience like that? Made me feel a little crazy afterwards though. Rosie was worried I was going to break all the Gerber stems because I was a little spaced out and they break easily when you put those little tubes on them... But I didn't break any because I'm a good little florist.

didn't nail it...

2007-06-16T13:29:00.000-06:00

You Are Likely an Only Child

At your darkest moments, you feel frustrated.
At work and school, you do best when you're organizing.
When you love someone, you tend to worry about them.

In friendship, you are emotional and sympathetic.
Your ideal careers are: radio announcer, finance, teaching, ministry, and management.
You will leave your mark on the world with organizational leadership, maybe as the author of self-help books.

The Birth Order Predictor

nailed it for lindsey, but i don't feel i relate to any of these things, really. maybe a little bit... i think it was the question about the woods that lost me.

description of a haircut

2007-06-13T11:19:00.000-06:00

I got my hair cut yesterday. As I don't have a camera, I cannot show you what it looks like. So this post probably isn't all that interesting... But I'll tell you some history about my haircut because I'm sure you're interested and, frankly, I have nothing better to do right now... So here is is: I was in a big dilemma for quite some time about how to cut it. For a long time I was determined it was time to chop it all off. It hasn't been cut since October and it was looking bad. But my hairdresser moved to India so I kept putting it off because I didn't know who to go to. And then the salon called me to say that my hairdresser was coming back and wanted to know if I wanted to make an appointment. And so I did. But right before my haircut, my hair started looking good again so I had second thoughts. But they got cut off anyways. It's not as short as I had thought about doing it, because as it turns out, my hairdresser is back for good (I thought she was just visiting) so now I have the option of going back to her if I want a bigger change. But I did lose a lot of hair. It doesn't look super different except for my pony tail. it's a wee little tail. just a spriglet, really.

a rather boring post summarizing a rather busy week

2007-06-10T23:31:00.000-06:00

So... what can I tell you about this week? For my first week off, I've managed to keep myself rather occupied. I won't bother giving you all the details, as they are rather boring when listed off. it mostly involved rehearsals and trying to get my room into a liveable state again. It's been an embarassingly long time since it was last cleaned. Thursday my sister and I had a nice date involving yummy turkey wraps and buying cheap clothes. Friday night was the last senior high youth event of the year. It was pretty fun. It was called the Hot El'eventé which obviously means we stayed in a hotel for the night. We got there and hung out for a while and then went accross the street to value village for a fashion competition including a walk off in the breakfast room and then we played in the pool (which was surprisingly small) and went on the waterslide (i have a lot of bruises from that) and after the pool we went to the drive-in movie theatre and saw ocean's thirteen which didn't end until about 3:30 and we went to a salsbury house after for latenight breakfast. So we didn't get back to the hotel until closer to 5. the sun was already coming up. It made me a little stressed because I had to work at 10. But it was a fun evening the kids had a great time. and then I worked from 10-5 and had a reahearsal from 6-10. so that sucked after having 3 1/2 hours of sleep. that's not how i normally function. but today i got to sleep in. i slept like a rock for over 12 hours. it was lovely. And that's about all I have to tell you. except for this: I am in two shows this summer and I have two weddings to go to. Is it odd that they both are at exactly the same time? especially because one of the weddings is on a thursday (and I think it's going to be a super weird wedding so I'm disappointed I have to miss it). that's definately all i have to say for now.

birthday photographs

2007-06-06T23:24:00.001-06:00

So, as you know it was Kyle's birthday this weekend. And as I think you know, his aunts and uncles happened to be in town so we had a birthday feast. Here are some pictures of it:

This is the birthday boy with his cake. (and me in my new favourite hoodie. i know it doesn't look like much, but it's soft.) Kyle likes to make unhappy faces in pictures because he thinks when he smiles it makes him look bulbous and chubby...

Something about Kyle's hair in this picture makes him look less like Kyle... In any case, Kyle's sister Tara sent him a soccer jersey all the way from Argentina. She's going to have a baby soon. An Argentinian Gaucho Boy...

This is him... and her... this picture looks different from the others because it wasn't taken at the feast. Because they weren't there. Because they're in Argentina having babies.

I have no explanation for this one... actually I do: Kyle and I were seriously tired. We can't keep up with the old folks anymore... they're wild.

Group photo minus Kyle's dad. From left to right we have Terry (Randy's brother) and his wife Jan (Darlene's sister) - they're from BC - and then Darlene and then Kyle and I ( I was being sneaky because Randy was concerned with fitting us all in the picture and I wanted to see if he noticed that he couldn't see me even though I was in the centre... he didn't... ) and then from Regina we have Lorraine (another of Darlene's sisters) and her husband Elwood (he likes ropes but hates snooze buttons).

And this final picture is of all of us after they came to see me dance. I was incredibly sweaty but they hugged me anyways because they liked the show...

a lovely disaster of a birthday

2007-06-05T10:11:00.000-06:00

Last night Kyle and I went on a Birthday Date. It was a bit of a hectic day for me because I had a lot of shopping and things to do in preparation but I had no car so I was running around and getting shin splints most of the day trying to find the perfect presents. I ended up getting a car for about an hour and was able to get everything ready after all. And then I had a rehearsal from 4:30 - 6:00 and Kyle had a job interview at 5:45 just accross the street so we arranged to meet when we were both finished.

So we did. And as we walked to my car we noticed it had been mispaced. So then I had to make a whole bunch of phone calls to try and find it while we stood outside. A good thing about us standing outside figuring stuff out is that one of the guys who interviewed Kyle came out and asked him if he could start tomorrow (today). So Kyle is now a Bicycle Courier which is exciting and pretty much perfect for him as long as he doesn't get hit by anymore cars. So then Kyle and I went on a romatic birthday stroll to Higgens and Main to find my car in the Dr. Hook lot. There seems to be no reason why they towed it. Unless my meter broke after I parked there because I did pay for enough parking and they towed me half an hour after I got there when I paid for 2 hours... Oh well.

So when Kyle and I got home we decided to go to the Dandelion Eatery for dinner and we walked over there to find it closed. So we decided to go to Mise and it also was closed. So we ended up at Fude wich was delicious in the end and they gave us free dessert because it was Kyle's birthday. So the disasters ended there and we had a lovely evening and he loved his presents. And fortunately Kyle doesn't mind disasters. He says they just make things more memorable.

finally....

2007-06-03T11:10:00.000-06:00

It's already been a week since my last post. This week has been hectic and full and it's finally over. Kyle and I both finished our craziness within 16 hours of eachother. Friday at 4:30 we had a showing of the piece we've been working on with Bill Evans from New Mexico. It was kind of fun, actually. We were all exhausted and didn't want to do it but we had our showing in the theatre upstairs with lights and we showed our piece and the level 1s and 2s showed their piece and Bill Evans (who I believe is in his 70s) tap danced between each piece. He was amazing. Kyle and his parents came with his aunts and uncles from out of town. It was nice to have them there. And then Saturday Kyle had his last exam of all time at 9:00 in the morning and it was his birthday yesterday too. So after his exam him and I went out for brunch at the Falafel Place and wandered the city together looking at antiques and loctite (which was particularily exciting... kyle needed it for building wheels for his bike. I bought an antique locket and a big cameo ring). It was a nice relaxing afternoon. And then we went to his parent's house for a birthday feast.

I slept in this morning and it was wonderful. I have a 4 hour rehersal this afternoon, though and I'm not super excited about that. But at least it has nothing to do with school so it'll be okay.

Other highlights of the past week include our grad dinner. One of the co-directors of our program hosts it and cooks for days before the meal. It was amazing. We had about 6 courses and all of it was fantastic Italian food. It was a nice evening. I'm going to miss all my fellow 4th years next year. We managed to bond in a special way over the past 4 years and it's sad to see us all disperse. Only 4 out of 10 of us are staying in town. Actually that's a lie. 2 more will be in town next year, but right now they're in Africa and Israel. I'm sure we'll all see eachother but it's still sad to say goodbye after spending virtually every day together for 4 years.

Other than the grad dinner my week didn't really have any highlights... It was stressful and busy and exhausting and sweaty. And I had a grant proposal due on Friday which didn't help matters at all. But I'm done! It's all done! woot!

this post does not deserve a title... it's not really about anything.

2007-05-26T22:45:00.000-06:00

our house is cold.
my dad says the furnace is broken
i think he's trying to cool down the cat.
the cat is in heat.
she's driving me crazy.
she won't leave me alone
she sounds like she's dying.
it makes me stressed.
last night she slept with me and kept trying to lie on my face.
she was all squirmy and making her weird trumpeting noises.
she licked my nose.
this very instant she is rubbing her head between my hands as i type.
i'm counting down the days until she gets fixed
5 more sleeps

i didn't do a whole lot today. i worked. it was busy in spurts. lots of serious shoppers though, not a lot of window shoppers. then i went home and wanted to eat eggs. but we didn't have any so i went to visit christie at f&q and then i went to see a show at wcd. the guy was a really good dancer. there was lots of rice... then i came home and had eggs. i bought them at 7-11 but once i got home i realized we did have eggs all along. then i talked to christie on the phone. and now i'm going to read for a while. how's that for a wild saturday night?

the stagette

2007-05-26T09:42:00.001-06:00

alright. well so far the camera is winning by a landslide, although it seems like my 2 voters know something i don't...

so last night after dancing all day, i went to my friend darby's stagette. it was pretty fun. we met at massawa for dinner (ethiopian food) at 5:45 (i was a little stressed about getting there on time. but as it turned out i was the 4th person of 8 to get there. i was pretty proud of myself). We had dinner and then we were picked up by a limo. darby was really excited about the limo. she was really surprised. nicole had a pretty veil for her to wear and a little sash that said 'one night only'. she looked pretty cute. she said she felt beautiful.

the limo took us to the bdi for ice cream (darby had never been there) and she had to find a guy to buy ice cream for her. there was hardly anyone there because it was pretty cold. there was an older guy there - bald with a big white moustache and i told her that he was the guy. turns out he was very sweet and bought her a hot fudge sundae. he was there with a younger couple (his daughter) who was tami's friend katie and mike (except i didn't recognize them at first... i didn't know she was pregnant. she warned darby that she got married and then look what happened...) and then we drove around and played silly games in the limo and arrived at our final destination...

the oc. formerly the beach. formerly scandals. one of the trashiest teenage barstar clubs. darby had never been to one of those, either. i was told i wasn't allowed to wear my jeans and my friend alia pulled out what she called a 'carpet skirt' which was miniature and fuzzy... so i had to wear that and we all went dancing in our little skirts with all the little made-up teenagers. more of our friends from dance joined us and we had a lot of fun. darby had a number of tasks she needed to perform at the bar and succeeded at almost all of them by the time i left. she seemed to be having a good time.

kyle was out of town and was terribly worried that i was going to see strippers for the stagette.

and now i'm at work. it's rainy and slow, which is kind of nice after my busy week. i can just sit around and read all day...

the polls are open

2007-05-24T21:42:00.001-06:00

today is my little brother's birthday. he's 20 years old. this marks the end of teenagerdom in my household. momentus. happy birthday daniel.

on another note, i think we shall have a quick vote:

here's the situation. my grandparents generously gave me some money for my graduation. what sound i buy with it? here are my two thoughts. i'll lay them out for you and you can vote. it'll be very democratic and fair. except that i only know of 2 people who read my blog so if they vote for different things i don't know what i'll do...

option 1: i've always wished i had some kind of birthday or something in the summer because i would love to have a pretty silky summer house coat. sounds lame, i know but i love putting on my house coat in the morning and having a cup of coffee and writing in my journal or reading a book. the house coat i have now is thick and fleecy and hot and i miss the tradition in summer. especially because i typically have more time to sit around in the summer. but it's never really a priority to buy something like that for yourself, seems like you should get it as a gift. but i have no gifting occasions in summer time and october is too late. so i was thinking about getting a pretty one with my money and maybe i'd have some left over to buy this perfume i found in the states at victoria's secret when christie and i were there. we both fell in love with different perfumes and debated the whole trip about getting them but when it came down to it, it was too expensive. but i still have my little smelly card and i smell it all the time and think about asking for it for my birthday or something. so potentially i could get both. i don't have any perfume. it seems fun and lady-like.

option 2: i don't really know if i could afford it, i'd have to do some shopping around but i'd like to have a camera. just a little one that i could use and post exciting things for my 2 blog readers to see... it seems like it could be a good thing to have... for example. i have been wanting to use my blog to record different projects i'm working on - knitting things and other crafts. i knitted a sweater after christmas that i was pretty proud of and i still haven't posted a picture because i always forget to make kyle take a picture of it for me. plus i've been putting off writing a post about how we have a new cat because it seemed like i should have a picture of her on it to make it complete but, same deal. so i'd kind of like to have a camera so i can take my own pictures when i want them... (she's a nice cat, by the way.)

so there you have it. voting begins now.

kyle finally put more photos up on his flickr so i can finally add them to my posts...

2007-05-23T20:45:00.000-06:00

today was another exhaustifying day. although fortunately i didn't have anything to do this evening so i had a nice long bath and read a cheezy francine rivers book and then sat in my housecoat and ate ice cream. and now i think i might head up to bed. i didn't sleep well last night despite my determination to go to bed early. my whole body hurts and i'm stuffed up. so i'll leave you with some pictures from my recent past. here they are:

These two are ones kyle took at our dress rehearsal. i think they're nice.

And the following two are from Mother's Day:

This is me trying to frantically finish my homework - a sweater for kyle. he was keeping me company and being my model and photographer...

And this is Solomon on the tree swing my grandpa put up at the cottage for the kids. they love it. this picture makes me excited for relaxing summer days...

exhaustified

2007-05-22T20:53:00.000-06:00

so after one lonely yet lovely day off, i'm back at dance. and let me tell you how it went today:
9:30-11:00 class with Bill Evans from New Mexico. It was hard but fun and very sweaty.
11:00-1:00 somewhat useless performance workshop with Stephanie Ballard. we're learning a new solo for no reason in particular except to fill time.
1:00 - 1:30 eat lunch as quickly as possible without getting sick
1:30 - 2:30 body mechanics with Bill Evans. We learned about and paractised the 6 patterns of total body organization
2:30 - 5:00 rep with Bill Evans. We're learning a new piece for the show in December. It's fun but hard so far. It's very classical with lots of balancing and whatnot. Long dresses with sleeves. There's also a fairly lengthy solo part so the rehearsal almost felt a little bit like an audition too. So that was a little stressful and tiring since we were giving it our all the whole time. and the studio was hotter and humider than ever before. i don't think i've ever been so sweaty in my life as i was all day today.
5:00 - 5:30 Somehow in this time i need to go home, shower, find an black and white outfit, look fancy and lovely and get to a graduation cocktail party. Everyone else was done at 2 so they had lots of time to get ready. i ended up getting there closer to 7 and wearing a black and red outfit because in my haste to dress i stuck my foot through my black tights. red was the only other option (although to be honest, the red looked better anyways so i guess it was okay. an elderly lady told me i looked smashing as i frantically showed up at the building).
5:30 - 9:30 graduation cocktail party. Avoid getting drunk due to severe dehydration, shakiness from rushing and empty stomach.
9:30 - present whine about being tired to everyone who will listed (or read) and drink echinacea tea because my throat hurts and my nose is stuffy. I can't get sick - my schedule is the same for the next two weeks (minus the cocktail party, add another formal grad dinner and a stagette) and it's not an option to miss anything. So i might not survive if i'm not in prime form. Once I'm done whining I'm going straight to bed to finally put an end to my non-stop day. sigh. I guess I'm done whining now.

I suppose I've kept you in suspense long enough

2007-05-20T10:41:00.000-06:00

It's been a week since my last class so it might be hard for me to remember everything, but if I have a hard time, I did take notes... So my class has always been a source of hilarity to me. It's such an ecclectic group of people and it might be hard to explain in a typed fashion but I'll try.

This week (or I guess last week) we presented Men's Wear garments that we designed, drafted and sewed. It was a very interesting look into the lives of these women and what they seemed to like in a man. I'll try to keep it down to a couple best of the best so this post doesn't go on forever.

First off we have Bonita who has the most bizarre and hilarious voice I have ever heard. Her garment wasn't particularily hilarious. She made shorts for her husband but he wouldn't try them on because he was working night shifts and wanted to sleep. What made this one funny to me was that she added no shaping at all to the shorts because she said her husband was really fat and then she announced that she split her pants. This is not nearly as funny as it should be because you can't hear her voice.

Then we have Shona, a larger girl who sleeps through every class and snores. She got her boyfriend to come in and model the little cloak she made for him. The funny part of this was that they looked exactly the same. (man. this post is not doing justice to the hilarity. I need to show you the little face they both make which I can only describe as the chubby person frown but it's hard to describe things in a way that doesn't make me feel mean or worried that people will somehow find this on the internet...) Anyways he had a long black pony tail and looked pretty sweet in his cloak.

And then there's Aline who is the overacheiver of the group. Her homework is always perfectly neat and tidy and she has this funny little nasal voice. She's super anal about everything, she kind of reminds Christie and I of Angela from the american office but smilier. She started making jokes during the class while the teacher was talking about putting a piece of fabric behind the zipper in men's pants - a fly guard. She thought it was really funny imagining what types of things might get stuck in the zipper... Which was funny to us considering her character. For the presentation she made a men's flowy, billowy, peasant blouse. One of those ones that laces up at the top. She hand braided the cord for the lace up part and put in the gromets at 2 in the morning and smashed her thumb in the process. Her pattern was perfectly laid out and she had printed out pictures of stars wearing similar tops. I think one of the pictures was of Nick Lache. And... she told us that "her guy loves it and didn't want to take it off".

One of the girls also made what she dubbed 'the mullet shirt' which a lot of the ladies thought was a hilarious name. (older people still love mullet jokes). But the shirt was actually really funny. It was a dress shirt that had a mandarin collar and a panel in the front made out of stripey dress shirt material and the rest of it was this crazy hawaiian print. It looked insane. The girl said she made it for her fiance who does a lot of performing (we didn't ask what kind) and he wears a suit jacket while he's performing so when the jacket is on, the shirt looks like a regular dress shirt but when the jacket is off, it's a party shirt for the after party... ingenious...

And perhaps the most hilarious garment of the evening came from our very own Christie Martens who sometimes has a hard time with proportions in drafting. She made a zip up sweatshirt for a very oddly sized man. It was super long and kind of wide in the body... probably about mid to lower thigh and then the arms were ultra skinny (imagine that they're tight on Christie's little arms) and long. Plus to top it off, Christie didn't have time to go shopping for fabric so she had to make it out of scraps that she had at home. So... the main part of the sweater was made out of this horrible feeling bright purple scratchy polyester material and the design of the sweater included 4 panels in the front out of contrasting fabric. So for two of these panels she used a nice mint green valour, and 1 of them was mint green and white striped cotton and the last one was the purple again except she didn't have enough fabric so she had to cut it out of the back of her sweater and replace it with more mint and white stripes. Then the cuffs on the wrist were also stripey and wider than the rest of the sleeve. It really was something to behold. It was incredibly garish and hilariously shaped. She was rather embarassed to show it but the best part was that this one lady (Shona's mom) was like "ooh. I love the colours" and Shona (see earlier paragraph if you forget who she is) woke up and started taking pictures of it with her camera phone. Once Christie was done with her presentation she went up and asked her if she could take more and took close ups and from every angle on the mannequin.

I am disappointed at how poorly the most hilarious class translates in internet blog form. If you didn't find it funny, I can fill in details in person to accentuate the experience. I am also disappointed that I can't seem to think of another word for hilarious and it is thus overused in this post.

On another note, and to make this post as long as possible, last night was my last show. I am now a graduate of the Senior Professionaly program of the School of Contemporary Dancers. Even though I'll still be there next year, I have a certificate and a rose to prove it. Our last show was... memorable. There were some collisions and tripping and I did a somersaulty thing and popped the big hair clip that was holding my french roll in place and then had to dance very stiffly to try to avoid the inevitable avalanche. Close to the end of the piece the clip fell out altogether and I said to my partner 'oh no, my hair' and then she lifted me and when she put me down I very smoothly picked up the barette so no one would step on it and danced the rest of the piece with it in my hand. And then at the very end I keep having to grab hands with my partner and it was the one holding the clip and I lost it. My hair was everywhere and I couldn't stop laughing. I ended in a nice high release and I was visibly shaking with laughter. And that's how we closed our last show in the program.

prologue

2007-05-15T07:49:00.000-06:00

last class completed
hilarious post to follow

the end is near

2007-05-14T14:18:00.000-06:00

Tonight is my last class at the U of M for the year (my apparel design program). And after staying up until 1:00 last night sewing a men's wear garment, I'm excited to see the end. I'm excited this past couple weeks are over altogether, actually. It's been such a scramble to get everything done and to get from one place to the next. I haven't had a free evening in quite some time...

The most redeeming part of last week was that, since Christie and I had failed to complete our homework for our class, we decided as we pulled in to the parking lot at U of M that we had better things to do. So we left and had mini-cupcakes and milk in tea cups (we just happened to have them along) by the river. It was lovely. Other than that my week was a whirlwind of working and rehearsals and performances and sad family news and mother's day events and getting stabbed by fern thorns (by the way, taping a penny over a fern wound to extract the thorn does not work...)

And this week it's finally show week. It's always such a scramble leading up to performances and you're always wondering if you're ready and what not and when it comes it's almost a relief to perform. It brings a whole new enjoyment and passion to dancing that always surprises me a little bit. There's nothing quite like creating a new world on stage and living in it for a few short minutes. Even after all the stressful weeks and months of rehearsals (it's almost depressing to think of how many hours we spend preparing for a show), it feels fresh and exciting and fun. So on that cheesy note, you should all come to our show. Unless you find yourself a quarter to half way accross the world... then you don't have to.

scholarly celebrations and one long website address

2007-04-26T21:35:00.000-06:00

i don't really have a lot to report but thought it was probably time i reported something. my life has been a lot of the same. dance is busy, our show opens 3 weeks today and i think this caught a number of people by surprise so now all of a sudden the rehearsal schedule has been turbo-charged. and my apparel design class is still going strong. we have 3 weeks left of that too. last week we had to design and create some kind of children's wear garment. i made a little pink quilted vest with hearts on it and a hood. it was pretty cute actually. i liked it. it's a shame i don't know how to do nice finishing things, cuz it looks nice on the outside but it looks like a trainwreck on the inside... weird things are happening in this post. for some reason the pictures are different sizes and all of a sudden my text is blue and underlined. like one big website address... hmm. i'm choosing to ignore it. speaking of sewing that little love vest, I was a busy little bee this weekend. Friday night we had a youth event. it was an iron chef event and it was pretty fun. It was made much more fun by my nephew lending me his spiderman apron and chef's hat. so even though our food didn't taste very good, i at least looked the part.

saturday (ooh the blue is gone) i worked at the flower shop. i actually really enjoyed it. I was given complete creative freedom to make foam arrangements (where the flowers are stuck in the foam block, not arranging foam). I was happy with the way they turned out and my boss seemed pretty impressed. I would have liked to have taken pictures of them but, alas, i have no camera. anyways, i worked until 5 and then kyle and his parents picked me up and i had to fancy it up in a hurry for kyle's grad dinner at prov which started at 6. we were cutting it a little close. the dinner was goodish. the food was good but the atmosphere was crappy. it was in their gym and they didn't decorate it at all and the food was cafeteria style and the speeches were bad. kyle and i kind of went into it expecting it to be lame and it was, but we also realized it was actually a pretty significant weekend in his life and we were glad to celebrate it, even if the event was poorly planned... here we are: (we kept getting in trouble for ruining the grad photos. this is one of the better ones...)

after the dinner we went out for gelato. i had raspberry and passionfruit sorbeto after much deliberation. why is it that little decisions (like what kind of gelati to have) are the hardest ones to make? i had to test out a number of kinds before i settled. (and by settled i mean i pulled one of my usual tricks... i made the person working there decide for me - lindsey, you're familiar with this trick...) but in any case, it was delicious. and big. (note: i did not wear this big blue thing to the grad... i was cold. i'm wearing kyle's jogger)
Kyle got presents. He got a watch from his parents and money to buy new rims for his bycicle (woot). and he got an argentinian soccerball from his sister who's in argentina. he was pumped.

after the grad dinner and gelato excursion, we had to go way out to charleswood for my dance social. which was a hoot. which means it wasn't really and we only stayed for 20 minutes to see if we won any of the prizes. we didn't.

and then there was sunday, which saw us at the providence college convocation. it was also long and boring. and many people complained that it was hot. but i thought it was nice... look at kyle in his funny suit. the hood was the funniest part. although there were some other outfits that were much funnier. all the faculty were wearing different mideval suits. it entertained me.

hooray for graduating.

indelible strength top-coat

2007-04-14T14:04:00.000-06:00

it's a beautiful sunny day today. the first really warm day we've had this year. so warm, in fact, that i wore open toed shoes to work this morning, which in itself was exciting, although i had to say goodbye to an old friend of mine. On January 13th, Lindsey and I went to get pedicures before she left for the Phillipines. We got to sit in massage chairs and they did cheesy little designs on our toes. This isn't all that exciting, really, except that the little vietnemese women had a pedicure secret weapon. they have super powered nail polish. The design and the polish was still perfectly intact on my toes this morning except that they were half grown out so the top of the design has been cut away. i realize this sounds disgusting. but i was impressed. especially because i'm really hard on my feet. i've never had a pedicure that doesn't chip away within a week. i don't just sit around all day wearing shoes and socks. i'm always bare foot and jumping and sliding around which makes it almost futile to paint your toenails. so i was kind of wanting to see how long this pedicure would last. but sandals were more important to me this morning so that's the end of my little experiment. but i should note that it took me a very long time and a lot of cotton balls to get the little buggers off my toes...

a brief synopsis of my week

2007-04-13T16:33:00.002-06:00

nothing new to report really... let's think...

monday i had my class. it's a good idea to design a raincoat with no seams on the shoulders to prevent rain from seeping in.

tuesday kyle and i went on a coffee date. we've never been on a coffee date before. it was fun. i even got a present. he bought me lullabies for little criminals by heather o'neill. i think i would use the word bittersweet to describe this book. it's about a little girl who ends up more or less a street person in montreal. it's sad but not crying sad and beautiful too... it's really well done... that was a poor description of the book, but in all fairness, i haven't finished it yet so i can't be expected to have all my thoughts figured out just yet.

wednesday i drove kyle out to a little school off talbot because he's filming a promotional video for samson's (part of YFC). i ended up staying there with him which was kind of hilarious. he was filming a jr high girls volleyball recreational league game and everyone seemed to be getting flustered by his being there... including kyle. i don't think the girls realized his microphone is much better at hearing things than normal human ears and they kept saying stuff like 'do my legs look fat?' to which another girl would reply 'i don't know, why don't you ask him' and then they'd giggle and keep staring at kyle. it was fun to watch. kyle was all uncomfortable and flustered and cute and the girls were all goofy and giggly but trying to be cool and good at volleyball at the same time. everytime they screwed up they would be like oh no i hope he didn't see that. or ugh of course i screwed up when he was looking. it made me laugh...

and last night i worked. it was slow. my boss at the flower shop bought the cute trenchcoat i liked. so that was a little sad but for the best since i can't afford it anyways.

and tonight kyle and i are going to see a dance show. and my brother's coming home from thailand 75 days earlier than planned. turns out solo traveling is not his cup of tea. he misses his friends and family so it'll be good for him to be home.

and this is the bay. i've included this picture for no reason other than i like it and thought my post needed a picture. kyle took it when we went to the cannes liones at the art gallery with his parents. it's pretty.

and that's that...

I've been informed that it's time for a new post

2007-04-07T17:37:00.000-06:00

So. To summarize my last two weeks or post-free activity, last week was spring break which was lovely but, as always, too short. Christie and I had a homework and laundry slumber party, which is slightly less fun than normal slumber parties but slightly more fun than laundry and homework on their own. And on monday night we had our class and on Tuesday morning Kyle and I hit the road for the good old city of Saskatoon. I knitted the whole way and we listened to a lot of radio shows that Kyle had downloaded for the trip. It was a nice little journey. We got there on Tuesday night and met up with Kyle's cousins Erik and Yuriko. Had dinner, went to a movie. This is their place and them (sorry, the picture's a little dark on my computer):

And this is their rather energetic dog Chaco. She tried to eat my slippers. And Kyle's hand. She looks like a bat in this picture but she usually looks like a chocolate lab.

Some highlights of our trip included the zoo (ducks are more fun to watch than you'd initially think, and swans are huge),

the Great Lake Swimmers concert (we were excited about this because we were disappointed about missing them in Winnipeg because we'd be in Saskatoon, but the funny thing about bands on tour is that they play in more than one city, and it just so happened that after Winnipeg, they went to Saskatoon. They were amazing. We love them now more than ever. Especially because they now have a song about modern dancers),

Tim Tam Slams (which is an incredibly delicious snack involving hot chocolate or coffee, and Tim Tams - a variety of australian (i think) cookie. So good. Can you put brackets inside other brackets?)

and the art gallery, which had a really neat exibit called containment and a conservatory in which we saw these crazy looking tulipy flowers. I liked them.

On the way home we stopped in a miniscule town and met my sister and her family at the Chicken Chef (mmm) for lunch. She was on her way to Midale, Saskatchewan to visit her birth father and his family. This is Solomon. I think it might be my fault he crosses his eyes all the time. Jack has learned all my tongue tricks and Solomon is on his way to having active eyeballs like his aunt...

On the way home we also saw this weird UFO-like light in the sky. We have no idea what it is but Kyle had to stop and take a bunch of pictures of it.

And since we've been home, I started dance again. It's been nice because we started off easy. I've been done early all week. Although I realized that we only have 5 weeks left until our show and we've hardly done any work on our piece so I'm anticipating a sudden stressfull push to get everything done in the next little while.

And I have a new job. I still work at Poppie every Thursday night and every other Saturday but now I also work at the little flower shop next door to Poppie on the alternating Saturdays. So that's fun. I had my first day today and had to make arrangements and corsages and I even got to take home some orchids that are beautiful but are getting a little too old to sell. So it's a fun little job and I think it'll work out well because both places are small and can't afford to give out a lot of hours so they get to share me and I get to work more consistently and try to pay off my visa after christie's birthday pilgramage.

And yesterday we went to church for good friday and then Kyle's great aunt took us out to the Royal Fork buffet to celebrate her 90th birthday. She loves birthdays. She had a big birthday helium balloon tied to her walker so everyone could see it and would stop to wish her happy birthday all through our lunch.

And tonight we're having dinner with Kyle's parents... for which I am late...

And tomorrow I think we're going to go out to my cottage to see my grandparents who just got home from texas and have a little easter fiesta.

And i think now we're all caught up on my various activities...
my posts always end up being way longer than i mean for them to be. i'm sorry if they're really boring to read...

corresponding images (read previous post first, or simultaneously)

2007-03-24T23:18:00.000-06:00

here's kyle looking a little crazy after winning the game. they didn't get to keep the trophy but they each got a chance to hold it...and this is caleb and joel at boston pizza. since they didn't get to keep the real trophy, kyle, luke and i stopped at value village and created a little trophy of our own that we don't have to give back (in reality it's a trophy for public speaking, but it's good enough). it can be see in this picture:

and this is a picture of kyle's grandparents. it doesnt have anything to do with my previous post but i added it because i like it. it was kyle's grandpa's birthday today and i couldn't go to the party because i had to work. but Kyle took this picture and said he hopes that this is how is grandparents are always remembered. they're really lovely people who love eachother and love to laugh. i thought that was sweet and i think it's a nice picture. so here it is:
oh. and one more thing. a strange thing happened to me today at work. i closed the store at 6. but when i got in the car it was 7 (i was parked very close). and i thought maybe the clock in my car was wrong or hadn't been turned back for daylight savings time. but when i got home it was 7:20. which means that the clock at work was wrong. which means i accidentaly worked an extra hour for no reason... and no body even came in. i just sat there and wasted time. i had noticed that the clock on the computer was different from the other clock but i didn't really think about it, i just assumed the one on the computer was right. i don't know how i managed to get out on time yesterday... it made me feel very disoriented and confused. and silly. and late for a show i had to be at at 8. so i still haven't had supper. but i did have cupcakes at christie's house after the show... needless to say, it's been a long day. i'm going to go make a midnight snack.

this post makes me feel like a high school girl...

2007-03-24T13:50:00.000-06:00

well spring break is finally upon us... or me at least. we even had friday off because there were ballet exams happening at the studio. so on thursday night my lovely 4th year ladies and i had a slumber party and potluck. it was wonderful. we had tons of good food and stayed up late and did face masks and manicures and all the usual girly slumber party things. except that i think our manicurist had a little too much wine before painting nails... and kathleen made an ice cream sundae buffet and we had pancakes in the morning. it was a lot of fun. i'll miss those girls next year.

and i worked yesterday. so i guess my first day off wasn't totally a day off, and neither is today for that matter because i'm at work right now... but at least i can pay for my stupid parking ticket now... although i'd rather spend it on the cute little spring trench coat that sits in front of me and tempts me all day long while i'm at work. sigh...

and the most exciting news of this post comes now. i'll start with a little bit of history. this past summer kyle decided it would be fun to have a monday night soccer night with his friends so they met at the school by his house and played every week and their little group slowly grew. so they decided to play indoor this year to keep up the tradition and they started a futsal team (which is sort of like indoor soccer but a little different). and last night their little team won the championships and now they are champions of futsal. they were very excited. i am not usually a sport watcher but the game was pretty fun to watch last night. it was very fast paced and stressful. i think if i went to too many games i would get an ulcer. it's intense. but they won in the last 90 seconds and i did an involuntary two fisted air punch (i don't think i've ever done that before...) and then we went to boston pizza cuz it seemed like the right place to go after winning a championship... we had team platters.

exciting announcement

2007-03-21T15:33:00.000-06:00

well, it's official... after 6 years, 5 months and 17 days....kyle and i are... (the dots are for suspense)... going to get.... (more suspense here... what could it be?)... in the car and drive to saskatoon! we're pretty excited. it'll be a fun little trip. the most exciting part is that i only have 1 day left of dance until spring break. i've been counting down the hours.

today we had a belly dancing class with Shifra - Master of Zills. it was a good time. i got to wear one of those jingly coin hip scarves and shake it. unfortunately, i was not as good at the "boob dancing" apparently i'm not quite well-endowed enough to make it look like i'm doing anything more than wiggling my shoulders. But at least i looked the part in my little scarfy thing... i did quite enjoy shaking my hips and making seductive faces. my favorite one was the 'i'm shy' face where you kind of look out the corner of your eyes and have a hand beside your cheek. it's a good one.

hmm... what else... kyle made me a delicious omelet for dinner last night. and we gave a date to go to Michaels tonight to use our 40% off coupons. yep... kyle and i love craft stores...

sigh

2007-03-15T22:20:00.000-06:00

so... i slept through my alarm today. and apparently buying things in the states isn't as cheap as it seems whe you look at individual price tags.... i just looked at my visa bill and faced the ugly facts. they were pretty ugly... especially because i also had to pay tuition for my evening class and i had a sad little turn of events this afternoon... i had to go see an athletic therapist (which i also had to pay for, by the way) because my foot has been unhappy. so my mom picked me up and i had to drop her off at her hair appointment so i could use the car but i had a little bit of time to kill so i stopped by kyle's work to say hello. i was in for probably no more than 2 minutes when someone came and told me i was being ticketed for being in the loading zone. they had tried to tell the guy that i was coming right back and to let it go but he ignored her. and that's how i got a ticket. and i was sad. and it's expensive. and i have no money. dang. they seem to have raised the prices for parking tickets. it used to be that if you paid within two weeks it was $15 but now it's $50 and if you don't pay within 2 weeks it goes up to $100. so that was my sad little turn of events. i spent the rest of the night pouting and drafting the very close fitting trouser block from my aldrich textbook. on the bright side my foot feels a little better.

harry potter and various pilgrammages

2007-03-14T21:32:00.000-06:00

i've been delayed in posting recently because i've been re-reading the 5th Harry Potter book and it consumes much of my time. i must say that i'm quite anxiously awaiting the release of the 7th book. i know lindsey understands, she's already contacted me from accross the world a number of times to say how excited she is (speaking of which, i got your card and i love it and it was very exciting to receive in the mail and i feel badly i haven't sent you anything yet... but you just wait... it's coming). and i also must say that her presence will be missed on the dawn of this new era. i've already been invited to an anti-social picnic when the book comes out. from what i understand about this picnic, it will involve outdoor eating and reading and not a whole lot of talking. sounds pretty fun to me. so far it's just christie and her roommate and i. but we still have a couple months to recruit people.

i just got home from an amazing sushi meal with my family at wasabi on broadway. my family is leaving me. they leave on sunday to visit my brother and his wife in los angeles and then my mom is going to toronto and my dad is going to vancouver and my little brother is taking off on his own to thailand for 3 months which will obviously be an amazing adventure for him... and i'm staying here... maybe i'll plan a little road trip... to saskatoon or something...

speaking of road trips, christie and i just returned from a birthday pilgramage to wet seal. we had a rather great time, although lindsey was missed yet again. we left on friday after dance and got back late saturday night/sunday morning. we spent more money than we intended, and more time at wet seal than we ever would have imagined. and the other usuals - krispy kreme, target, rising bread co., continental breakfast... (the continental breakfast had a waffle iron... ingenious). Christie brought her camera but the battery was dead so we only took two pictures and I have yet to get them from her... but I will email her now and post them later... look forward to seeing our sweet 2 for $8 sunglasses... they're worth looking forward to...

titles are hard to make up

2007-03-06T17:57:00.000-06:00

well... here are the pictures of my starching project. the flowers are made of hand felted wool, each one starched using a different technique. the vase is made out of a lightweight jersey fabric starched with epsom salts which is why it's all white and cakey looking. epsom salts are much more useful in the bath tub. i do not recommend using them for starching...

Next we have a brief update of my weekend. Friday was our final school tour show. We all went out for lunch at Deluca's (who, as it happens, gave us very poor service. we were told that they didn't have enough chairs for us so we were going to have to make do with 2 chairs for 3 people. I don't quite understand how they got away with this as we were all paying regular price for our meals. Plus they made us line up separately and wait longer. Plus they didn't bring us water and then got mad at us for getting it ourselves and told us we weren't allowed to drink out of their expensive glasses and the lady called me sweet heart in a very condescending tone... PLUS they kept trying to get us to share our 2 chairs with other customers who came in and they acted all annoyed when we couldn't seem to squish more people in... anyways, this was meant to be a side note, I got a little carried away.)

After lunch we had the afternoon off and after wandering the exchange for a while I went home to have a nap. and i woke up extremely grumpy just in time to go to a youth event. but I seem to have found a bit of a cure for grumpyness. It's called wearing something that makes everyone laugh at you. And this is what it looks like:

We went tobogganing... toboganning?... and... it was fun. (by the way, that was a picture of me wearing my big suit. It's made of denim and is enormous. It used to belong to kyle's uncle who is much larger than me. I like it because it's warm and it keeps snow from getting in my pants as it's all one piece and, obviously, it's stylish - notice the stirrup hanging out of my leg...) Some people rode down the hill on a couch on saucers. One little junior high kid came up to Kyle and asked him if he would take a picture of him and his friend pretending to drink hot chocolate while going down the hill. He was very cute. See if you can pick him out. Here is also a picture of Kyle and I while going down the hill, in which Kyle looks like a hungry camel, and another one of me looking kind of creepy in my big suit (it looks like my eyes are going in different directions). And that's all for now. Stay tuned for more exciting posts, such as: craft night at my house and i'm almost finished knitting a sweater (well, i was finished but the neck was too tight... anyways, a story for another day)

A Nicely Capitalized Post

2007-02-28T16:15:00.000-06:00

I'm becoming quite a party animal. I was out until about 1:30 last night. A Tuesday. Kyle and I went to see Do Make Say Think at the Pyramid. I even had a Shirly Temple... They were great (both the band and the drink). I quite enjoyed the show although I was tired and felt slightly overstimulated at times. I felt a little bit like I was dreaming because my brain wouldn't always process the sounds properly. It helped if I closed my eyes, like at the Imax, but then I'd almost fall asleep. But it was a good show and it's been a long while since I've been to a concert. Kyle loved it. He was smiling the whole time.

My sister and her kids came to watch our show yesterday morning. It brightened our day. Morale was pretty low before the show started and then they showed up and Jack had a big box of timbits for all the dancers. Everyone kept talking about how cute they were and how much we all looked alike. One girl came off stage and was like 'there's a teacher out there who looks just like Wendy Church.' I guess she somehow missed everyone talking about how my sister was in the audience.

Behold the nephews:
Jack's the boogery one, he's five. Solomon's the cross eyed one, he's three. These are pictures from Christmas day when we went skating on the lake. For some reason I don't have any pictures of Ephraim but he's pretty cute too. Actually. I know why I don't have any pictures. It's because I don't have a camera. All the pictures I post are stolen from Kyle's flickr account so I'm limited in what I can write about by what he has posted.

I'll get him to email me the pictures of my project to show you later.