you must fight to live

Since I came back to Calgary from Golden(I don’t yet feel like calling Calgary home), I have been moping around with allergy symptoms. I have gone to the emergency room twice because of it, the first time they gave me an epi shot and the second time they gave me a four-day dose of Prednisone, which had the opposite of the intended effect. The Prednisone was supposed to reduce the inflammation, but my face(high cheekbones, eyelids and just under my eyes) immediately swelled to epic proportions. I didn’t take the last day’s pill, but my facial swelling hasn’t really gone down, just relocated back to my cheeks. I have been suspecting several foods, but then it has stopped making sense when I haven’t consumed them and still puff up. Last night and this morning I puffed up from some raspberry gelato, and upon looking up “raspberry allergy” I realized I might have an allergy to salicylates, which are the same as the active ingredient in Asprin, but occur naturally in many foods.

Read the rest, and feel better about your own diet.

About a month ago I’d applied for a job organising a wearable art show ACAD has once a year. I had an interview several weeks ago and hadn’t thought about it since. The other day I received an email entitled “Hello ArtaWEARness Coordinators” about organising a meeting and stuff. This was news to me, as I hadn’t heard from anyone since my interview. I asked about it, and it took several days for a reply. I tried not to get my hopes up, but I guess I did anyway. It turned out it was a mistake and somebody had been given the wrong addresses. So great, I wasn’t hired after all. Read the rest(including my angry letter)

I guess being homesick doesn’t get you the job. I have applied for about 10 jobs in Golden, and it hasn’t got me anywhere. I sent off one final email about the job I really wanted - they’d said they were waiting for funding and would let me know as soon as they found out. Instead, they didn’t contact me at all and then passed me over for an interview out of their 41 applicants. I feel exactly like this person on Craigslist. I also enjoy his or her use of the term “douche nozzle”. So it looks like I’ll have to head back to Calgary, defeated. I have applied for 19 jobs in the past week or so, but haven’t heard from anyone. Hopefully I can find something I don’t hate too much, that isn’t too far away. At least I will get to see Nelson. It is extremely difficult not to take it personally when I am constantly passed over for employment. I have experience! I am friendly! I show up to work on time! Agh! They aren’t even hiring at gas stations around here. When I bring in a resume, it feels like I am barfing on the counter and then asking the person there how they like it.

Well, if Nelson had stayed at LP he probably would have been laid off by now. Their lumber yard is pretty much empty. The mill in Radium just announced that they’ll be closing “indefinitely” in a month. My mom’s boyfriend has worked there for 15 years and doesn’t really have any other skills to speak of. Whether or not the recession was originally started by the media, it’s becoming tangible.

I am so frustrated.
Original post.

Last night I started reading a book I bought for Nelson at everyone’s favourite winter holiday time, The Walkable City by Mary Soderstrom.

Here is the rest

I feel really stupid. I was posting in this thread and seeing my social fears like that made me realize how serious they are.

Read the rest of this entry. There are charts, and stuff.

My dad is a little bit weird when it comes to groceries. Instead of figuring out what he needs to buy and then going to the store, he just buys the same things every time. I’ve been cleaning the fridge a bit and trying to make space for my groceries, because we have vastly different diets. Here is the current tally:

* 6 cartons of eggs, most half full
* 12 containers of plain yogurt
* 25 bottles of Manuka honey
* 6 bottles regular honey
* 5 packages of butter
* 7 cans cream corn
* 6 cans split pea soup
* 4 cans maple beans
* 6 packages corn spaghetti
* 9 packages corn macaroni

Non food:

* 5 bottles shampoo
* 4 bottles conditioner

See original post

So I’m in Golden. Nelson just left. I wonder if I made the right decision. I’ll probably spend my evening cleaning the house. While my dad did clean the kitchen, the bathroom is kind of gross, and I need to move some tools from the living room so I can get this easy chair out of my bedroom. The bed is uncomfortable and crooked for some reason. I almost miss my Ikea sofabed now, and it was kind of like sleeping on the floor.
My dad’s gone for a week, too, so I am alone for now. Nelson and I have basically been together every minute since he moved in last April. That’s a lot.
On the way home yesterday, I noticed my face was starting to swell up, so we stopped in Canmore and bought Benadryl. By the time we passed Banff, I was panicking and wondering if my breathing was changing, so Nelson turned the car around and took me to the hospital in Banff. They don’t fuck around, they stuck an i.v. in my arm and poked me with some adrenaline. I don’t even know what I ate, which is scary. I’m okay, but all yesterday afternoon I felt like I hadn’t slept in days. Yuck.
See Original Post

Question: If you use scented products, how many is too many? I mean, think about it. Scented laundry detergent, scented moisturizer, scented face wash, body wash, deodourant, shaving cream, shampoo, conditioner, hairspray, not to mention those weird “feminine hygiene” products. (Hygiene is in quotation marks because of the obvious debate between having a chemically-scented crotch or just letting it smell like, you know, a vulva.) After all that, what about perfume? If you wear perfume do you stop using other scented products or just slather the stink all over the place? Hmmm. Perfume alone is a little much for me, and since dating Nelson, I have had to cut out a lot of other scented products I hadn’t even thought about. If we’re in a department store and have to walk through the makeup department to get through, or the cleaning products aisle in Superstore, his eyes water like crazy and he can’t breathe, turning what never used to be an issue into a huge one. When I think of perfume, anyway, I think of my grandmother, spraying on Chanel no. 5 every day on the same clothes and hair. Stale perfume over stale perfume. She gave me a vacuum cleaner last time I was in Golden, which I have unrelated bad memories about(I had really long hair when I was a kid, and the vacuum cleaner seemed to really want to eat some), and every time I use it, that damn Chanel wafts into the air again. Maybe this perfumed everything business originated when everybody smoked and couldn’t smell anything, anyway. Read the rest of this entry...

So close! Grant Lawrence just read one post previous to mine on Radio 3. Oh well. Said Radio 3 has inspired me to talk about the wonderful show Nelson and I attended on Saturday, the Rolling Tundra Revue with The Weakerthans and Constantines.

Absolutely amazing. Oh Suzanna opened for them. She reminded me a bit of Neko Case, with kind of an alt-country feel. The Constantines were a surprise, because I hadn't really heard them much before. I think the bass player was pretty drunk, and being stuck behind two monster-tall people made it so that mostly I only got to see him for the majority of their set. Nelson was tapping his foot to the music and realized that all their songs are the exact same tempo. I guess that's what happens when you date a drummer.

The Weakerthans were so good I basically exploded. Samson is a constant smiler. The only thing that would have made it a better show would have been if they'd played Utilities, or if John, my rhombus couch singalong partner, had been there. Maybe another time.

[caption id="attachment_134" align="aligncenter" width="393" caption="So smiley."][/caption]

My mom and Geo are heading to the Dawson City Music Festival this summer. I wasn't keenly interested until I realized it is a lineup of bands that I like. Damn!
Original Post.

If a non-profit organisation prides itself on being diverse and inclusive, how can it discriminate in other ways with a clear conscience? Monday I had a job interview with a non-profit group which provides the homeless with food, job advice, haircuts, etc, for a government-funded art instruction summer job. I’ll be honest - as the interview went along, I felt less and less qualified for the position - but that isn’t the point of my frustration.


Wherein I complain about being a mistreated atheist

Homesick, swap luck meetups, etc.
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Okay, so it did snow yesterday, but I think it might actually be "spring" in Calgary. It's hard to tell, of course, because the snow melts, comes back, melts, etc. It's pretty gross. Anyway, I have spent all morning distracted from studying and thinking about how great it would be if I could ride my bike to places I need to go. Bikes are really chic right now, apparently, because I have been inundated with things about bikes, rubbing it in that the weather sucks and the relative unfriendliness to non-vehicular traffic that is Calgary. My Bust magazine had a thing about riding a bike while wearing pretty clothes, which seems a little bit dangerous, but which I may envy anyway.
Read More... (where I talk about bikes and post a picture of my bike and whatever)

I slept for 13 hours last night, and today I made a printable meal plan and shopping list.


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I was reading a thread on Craftster about how people don’t appreciate hand made gifts because they associate home made items with poor quality, or cheapness. (Read More...)

Nelson and I have realized that we keep spending all our time watching tv and then realizing that our day is shot and it’s time for bed. So we’re going to try to stop that, and we’ve made a list of things we need to be doing instead.
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I’ve been pretty stressed out, I guess one might say. It’s that time of year again, where everything seems to build and build until it is almost impossible to finish everything. A few weeks ago some such thing happened, where a 10 page research paper on Russian Constructivism was pushed so far back that it had to be handed in late. It took five days to write, and I swear everyone’s name is Vladimir. When in doubt, Vladimir. Right now I am working on a silk screened kind of Constructivist pattern, but the colours I print with seem to change the era, which is kind of weird.( Read More...)

I’ve been on reading week since monday, but I don’t seem to have accomplished anything. Things that are due in the next two weeks:

1. A cheese costume for printing on cloth. I still have to finish printing the fabric and then assemble the damn thing. AHH!(monday)
2. Art history midterm take home paper, which includes ridiculously vague questions(monday)
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Yes, I am pretending the link to my other blog is a cut tag. What are you going to do about it?

Well, I wanted to make you a muxtape, but as all good things come to an end, it no longer works the way it once did. Instead, here are 10 artists that I have enjoyed in the past year. I suppose there is an inordinate number of banjos, but what are you going to do about it?
This is much easier than making little paper cd cases and finding friends to give the cds to, which is my usual mode of attack. I still actually have all the mix cds I made as presents last year, if you want one. Anyway, without further ado, here is your audio valentine. (Read More...)

Apparently there is no way to import entries from my wordpress, so I shall paste stuff. Nelson was silly and bought me a domain name, so this stuff is from here.

I’ve been trying to teach myself to knit for my Materials/Design/Concept class, where we have a research project about anything that will help our artistic practice. So! Inspired by Knit Knit and other contemporary artist-knitters, here I go.

I began with this book, The Ultimate Knitters Guide, which turned out to be less than ultimate.
s-guide-sm
The book is way too detailed, and has a gimmicky flip-book at the bottom with information about the different stitches. It describes overly complicated ways of doing everything, even making a slip knot. Ridiculous, I say! I became angry and ended up with very sore wrists attempting to knit from this book. I didn’t even get as far as the patterns, which were all for bulky ecru-coloured sweaters.

Knitting: Day two.

Stood in front of the craft books at Chapters for 20 minutes until settling on the Domiknitrix book, not just because it was kind of cute and covered in vinyl, but it has great illustrations and actually says why to do things a certain way. It seems to me knitting needs a lot more hardware than crochet, and I keep wishing there was a hook on the end of the damn needle.

I have had this journal since 2002. It's time to start fresh, um, or something.
Plus, this is also my online portfolio and c.v. page.
I am amazing!

Whee!


Oh, I guess I'd better post a link to it, huh?

That is all.

Probably I won't be posting a lot here anymore, not that I have posted for months, anyway. I cordially invite you to view my wordpress, though.