I'm In Vancouver!

And I'm having a freaken blast!

I've gone for sushi and spanish tapas and coffee. I've purchased a black long-sleeved Esprit shirt, two (one bright pink and one light green) long-sleeved Gap t-shirts, a beautiful lavendar Roots zip-up hoodie, knee-high low-heeled black boots(here), and Jim's birthday present.

I'm going for sushi for lunch and then hope to meet up with Freya later today. I've visited with Melly and gone shopping at many many wonderful Vancouver stores that just have so much DIFFERNT stuff than at home. I also went shopping with Julia and Jason and purchased half the city (see above). Must also mention that Jason is making me some FIG CHUTNEY to take back home with me. I had some here already (okay, so I kinda grabbed the bowl and wouldn't share) when Jess and Lisa came over and we had a great visit. I also met two of Jason's friends and they were a hoot!


Envy me. Oh yes.
xoxo
jenn

Pet Peeve

*phone rings at 10:00pm last night*

'Hi Jenn? This is [the girl I tutor]. Right. Um, I need you to come tomorrow at 11am as well as the scheduled 4pm."

S'cuse me? Because I'm sitting at home just putting my entire life on hold waiting for you to call? "I have a meeting at 11. At my job." You know, that other part of my life that exists when I'm not sitting around waiting for you to give me duties...

Student: "yeah, but - um - I have these three papers to hand in tomorrow."

We meet five days a week. As Cali states poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine... "I'm sorry, but you already changed this week's schedule once and actually got rid of the 11am session we had scheduled and I now have a meeting then."

Student: "...."


So what do I do? Right, I start feeling guilty. This student depends on me. She also has just financed my new front brake pads. I like to help out. I want to be supportive. "Listen, I'll give you a call from work and see what my schedule looks like..." The half of my brain that isn't a wuss groans at me "noooooooooo!!!!"

Student: "okay, good. Thank you"


I phone mom. Mom sets me straight. I find spine again.

Now I just need to phone her. I hate crap like this.

*grumble*

NEED MORE JOBS!

Any input on what I should be when I grow up?

Do I want a real job?

Do I have any idea what my real job could be?

I'm considering all these jobs that sound just fine, but I worry about what they mean for my long-term career goals.

And then I realise I should probably get me some of those long-term career goals.

And then I realise I'm PMSing and this will probably not feel so horrible in a week.


In other words, the job I thought I might like I never even got called for an interview. Now I'm looking at this academic advisor job which sounds cool. I mean, I like telling people about what they need to do to meet graduation requirements. I think I'd rock in that job.


Finally, I've been offered the chance to teach this spring. Two choices: intro to feminism and pop culture or a course on First Nations women's lit. The second would be 'easier' as I've got the stuff all ready to go. But I'm drawn to the first one for some variety and fun. Any input? WHat all would you teach for feminism and pop culture?

(no really, what texts? I need suggestions!)

xoxo
jenn

Remember my request for that cheque?

I think that influenced my spending yesterday. I think that influenced my buying that particular eyeshadow yesterday. The Lise Watier eyeshadow. The beautiful peacock blue. The $16.99 eyeshadow.

Yeah. What the hell?

*sigh*


But also YAY! I'm wearing it tomorrow and that one fact has made a monday exciting!!! I've planned out my whole morning around putting it on!

As borrowed from missionbear.

This is your challenge: reply to this entry with your earliest memory of you and me together. And you can know me a little or a whole bunch. Do feel free to interpret as you wish.

If someone could be so kind...

I have now saved almost $3000 by quitting smoking close to 2 years ago. I would really like it if someone could send me that cheque.

"There is a big difference between breaking the law and having a law designed to break you. We will not be broken."

-Jinny Sims

Thanks to Julia for the quote. And thanks to the Bears for their solidaridoo. And thanks to Jim for supportive emails as I'm feeling rather poopy today. And thanks to Leone for bringing my tea into the living room. And thanks to my dad for saying he would go to jail for mom.

And thanks to my mom for being someone who has always inspired us to decide when enough is enough and when to stand up for something we believe in.

Even though it feels horrible so much of the time, and we know we'd rather just be engaged in teaching and learning and just living our lives. But we know that at a certain point we can no longer accept what is unacceptable. And that the balance of power shifts too greatly when employers hold all the cards. That is what negotiating is about. Otherwise we are all just working at that crap job in the crap mall for minimum wage all hours of the day, all days of the week, with no security and no hope of being anything other than desperate.

I am so proud of the people in my life.

One Year!

Err, I kinda missed it - but Oct 7th was my one year mark for blogging! Whoohoo! I re-read my initial thesis related post where I thought I'd have my rough draft done in a month.


Hahaaaahaaahaaa HOOoooooohaaaaahaaaahaa!

*snort*

*giggle*














*sigh*


Yeah. A month... or six. Doh!

But it is done, and defended, and no longer running screaming through my head each time I chose to spend an afternoon lounging about in a pair of yoga pants and a tank top eating frozen fruit and watching fifteen episodes of Buffy. Which I now like to call "friday."

Thanks to everyone for being here this past year. Without you all feeding my ego I wouldn't have lasted half as long. Or at least I would have never added anti-spam features so I wouldn't feel alone.

I much prefer you all.

xoxo
jenn

Stolen from another blog

From the Letters to the Editor of the Dublin (Ireland) The Sunday Independent (as reprinted in The New Republic, Oct. 24, 1994):

Sir — I was shocked by the language of Molly McAnailly Burke's piece on lesbian rockers, and your allowing it in a family newspaper. The offending phrase "five writhing beauties hot for each other" should be "five writhing beauties hot for one another," since "each other" applies only to two.

— Sean O'Brien, Rathfarnham, D14

Courtesy of Creek Running North

My Living Room ROCKS!

Past two days have been spent getting rid of the last tenant's forest green (on three of the four walls in the living room/ dining room combo area). Lovely colour - but too too damned dark. Especially with winter coming.

So now we have an amazing warm cream which goes great with my plan for cream, blue, chocolate, cranberry in the living room. Trim is cranberry. Well - it will be next weekend. Done with the painting and have the blisters to prove it. Three coats.

That was friday and saturday.

Oh, and I belong to a new club. But I'll save that for another post.

heee!

xoxo
jenn

Well done girl

Just realised I have a yogurt stain on my jeans from breakfast (not really awake this morning) - and now I just got apple juice from my juicy apple down the front of my sweater. Not usually a big deal as 90% of the time I wear my black sweater (queen of cartigans). Today I wore my white one.

I will be under my desk for the rest of the day.

In Case Anyone Missed This...

The WD is being "moved" right now. There was a post saying as much a few days ago, but I think some might have missed it.

If you don't know what the WD is, please feel free to graze from the fruit platter and have some punch.

And in other news, I didn't see the end of the Apprentice but I would totaly have fired the "event planner" who thought cake was providing food for a tech expo. Cake is good when cake is good. But that cake looked nasty. And was boring. And had a spelling mistake.

*snort*

And tends to be a wrong choice unless it is that cake I got for Coral's birthday last month.

Did they fire her?

updating blog list

yeah, I should get blogroller or something - no?

Anyhoo, I just went to update my blog listing as I've found if it isn't listed along the side I tend to forget to go look. Not much with the brain functioning of late. If I've been leaving random comments on your blog and you like being listed, can you please say hi here.

I know I've forgotten a few. Like Dellraven to start... and Podgy.

right. off to edit some more.

j.

The Running of the Kitties.

... has been non-stop since we arrived back home. We think they are pretty happy to have us back.

And soon Jim will come back and see them too! A little bird just whispered in my ear that he'll be arriving again for a visit next month! The kitties were so happy I think they had a little tear or two.

So much good stuff. Lovely visit with the family and seeing grandma and grandpa. Lots of great food. Now back home with the kitties. Is very good!

xoxo
jenn

And here we all are!

The whole fam-damily is at the parental home for Canadian Thanksgiving. Which I never used to call Canadian until I started hanging out with all you online americans. So in case any of you get confused and think I don't know when the real american thanksgiving is...

Which I wouldn't call american if I just were american. Unless I was hanging out with a bunch of canadians online..

Okay. So I'm home.


As for the almost eight hour drive home... a few notes:

• Leone and I decided deer should wear orange. Just when crossing the road.
• Pick-up trucks need to be banned. Or even just the people who drive them. Or just the ones to have to see if they can speed up in that last five seconds of the passing lanes to make it past one more car. Fuckers.
• There need to be more standardized coffee establishments between here and there. Especially right near the middle. Although the higher percentage of pickup trucks did seem to be linked to the lower percentage of places to get a good cup of coffee. You know how it is where you can tell you'd get the "look" if you asked for a latte. Yeah. Let alone a skim milk, no foam, soy milk latte. Them's fighten words.
• We honked for teachers all throughout the province. Our teachers are on strike as of yesterday. The rat-bastard provincial gov't has kept on their 'plan' to avoid actual legit negotiation and simply legislate a contract. Bargaining is a right. Making a pissy-bitch law to avoid sitting down at the table is weak and feeble-minded. Teachers have had it. School funding is being cut, classes are huge, wages are crap compared to other provinces, and this gov't recently ran around the province handing out MILLIONS of dollars for bullshit Olympics hype and ass-kissing. So the teachers have gone on strike. Each town we drove through we watched for the teachers outside the school and honked and waved. They all cheered and waved back. I'm very proud of my mom (who is a teacher, and a kick-ass one at that). She loves her job. She is not doing this for herself because she's starting to wrap up her teaching time. This is about the tone we are going to set in this province about education and putting the time and consideration into quality resources. Not for a bunch of lame-o crap 'woohoo' sports centres that will sit empty and useless like the Expo 86 stuff scattered around the province. The tieing of this issues to the Olympics is of my own doing, not the official teacher stand. Just so you know.

But I digress.

Here I am home for thanksgiving (canadian).

Gobble gobble.

xoxo
jenn

Not for a lack of trying!

I mean, I was here yesterday for about an hour- wandering about, waiting for blogger to be back up and running... but then I had to run away.

So sorry about the delay in posting. Too busy. Too too busy!

Last weekend was awesome. Went and interviewed poets. They were amazing! It was great too as Jim and I got to travel with the poets for three days and see them read multiple times. We hung out and ate together and then I got to interview them all. The interviews went really well... I think.

The first was - well - my first real interview and I was nervous as hell. But when we finished up he said that it was one of the best interviews he's had and that he was very impressed with my questions! Whooo!

The second one was more challenging. She had a tendancy to not go along with me on anything. She was more likely to ask me to clarify what exactly I meant by the question. Confidence faultered.

Third interview was a woman I used in my thesis - excellent interview which was helped by my having worked with her stuff for over a year previous.

And the final interview went very well. She had obviously been interviewed many times, and in the end she complimented my style. I then confessed these were my first interviews and she was surprised. She said I had a very natural style.

That wrapped up on Sunday and Jim and I got to stop at a Salmon spawing area. Funny event: as we walk down the trail towards the river, we see signs warning of bears in the area. BIG HUGE SIGNS!

Jim turns to me excited and whispers "if we are really quiet, do you think we could see some bears?"

At this point I pretty much yell out "NO! THE WHOLE POINT IS TO BE LOUD AND HOPE THEY CLEAR OUT!!!"

His poor face fell. But then we saw the salmon and he was happy again. And the area was just beautiful - all of it. And I found this great yarn shop where I stopped to buy Leone some wool - er, and me a scarf. It is so beautiful I wake up excited to wear it for the day. In greens and light creams with some burgandy woven throughout. I believe leone said it was a drop stitch.

So that was last weekend, and then I worked uni, stats can, and tutoring throughout the week, and then did more interviewing this past weekend... and I am so glad I'll soon be done two of these jobs. It is just a little much. And Jim is leaving on wednesday and that makes me so sad I can't even think about it. So I don't.

Hope everyone is doing well. Laura, I'm sorry I missed your call. I'll catch up with everyone soon.

Hugs and kisses to all,
Jenn