Somebody To Love

…how pale I am, in this case.

I wear pants all the time so my legs don’t see sun. Today I shaved my legs for the first time this year, which really made the paleness obvious.

Does anybody else shave with both hands?

I have so many assignments due in the next month that I’m starting to worry that there won’t be time to finish them all. One of them is a website for Web Design, so stay tuned for that addition to this site. As well, I’ll probably redesign to match that site.

August can’t come fast enough.

This weekend has to be one of the first that I’ve really enjoyed in London. Funny, since I wasn’t even in town for half of it. Saturday me and Dean walked from my place to downtown, and spent some time in Victoria park watching the squirrels dig up the nuts they planted last year.

On the way there we got to walk under a train, and Dean managed to get some really good pictures of it.

We also saw another chair in the river.

Later on I dreaded my hair. Sectioning it was a pain, since I’d never done that before. Not to mention I couldn’t see what I was doing on the back of my head at all. I got Dean to help with that part, so if any of the back looks weird you guys can blame him. I’m going to.

(Please excuse the pile of crap). The finished product:

Today was another fun adventure. We went to Oil Springs to visit Brier Run Alpacas since it’s shearing weekend and they were having an open house. One of the alpacas kept yawning.

I gave one of the puppies a good ear scratching and he begged for more attention when I tried to leave.

I also bought some brown fibre to spin. It’s got small amounts of blue silk streaked in it, and is going to be very pretty once it’s spun up. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it yet, but I plan on taking pictures of the process when I do decide.

I finally got my marks for last term. I was starting to worry that I wouldn’t get them before starting the new term. Not that it really mattered since there was no way that I’d get bad marks. But I was hoping for straight As. It turns out I didn’t quite get that, since I had one B+, but it was close. Much better than last term, that’s for sure.

I’m trying to be excited about next term, but so far I’m ambivalent about most of the classes. I guess we’ll see if I’m more enthused once they start and I have something more than a course outline to go on.

There’s a workshop at a conference in Windsor next month that I want to take. I’m not sure if I can do that without having to pay for the whole conference though, so I wall have to contact them and see. One of my courses this term might get into that stuff so I wouldn’t have to worry about it at all. I find out on Monday though so I won’t have to wait long for that.

I’ve got the rest of the month off from school (bliss!) so I’m using it to catch up on any and all crafty things I’ve been wanting to do but haven’t had time for. Sort of. As my crafty readers can tell you, when we go somewhere we bring plenty of projects and plenty of materials to start new projects because you never know when you will run out of something to do (which reminds me: when I get a car - must keep yarn and needles in trunk).

Unfortunately, I forgot to take into account what happens to my gauge when I am no longer stressed to the roof. So my weaving tension is all off, my Vintage socks are huge, and I stupidly thought that not bringing all my supplies when leaving home for 3 weeks would be a good idea.

I do still have my spindle with the yummy green silk/merino that I can work on, and the Peacock Tapestry (which is no longer grounded since I’m in the mood to put up with its tantrums this month). I’ve got plenty to do.

What is bothering me is that I can’t finish half the stuff I brought to work on since this time I listened to reason and didn’t bring my UFO bag, all my needles, and a bunch of spares “just in case”. Now it’s the case that I need them and they aren’t here.

I was having all kinds of these thoughts when packing on Thursday since my pills and my coat are safe in my locker at school, and not here where I need them.

Still, there is a silver lining. My birthday is coming up and we’ll be driving down to my grandma’s house for the weekend for that (my first birthday party in 18 years and I’m so excited). It will mean a bit of a detour off the highway, but London is roughly halfway between here and there so I can grab stuff from my apartment and my locker without too much fuss.

Now the next time I go somewhere and get asked why I need to bring so much, I’ll have this meandering story to tell by way of explanation.

I had a pretty laid-back week off. The first weekend I went to Cambridge. On Friday I finished my homework while Dean was at work, and tried to keep Sierra somewhat amused since she was sick but not sick enough to let me be until I was done. Saturday we went wandering off to find the Region of Waterloo’s library headquarters in Philipsburg, since there was a library job posted and it would be a good place for me to work when I’m done here.

It’s too small a place to be on Google maps. It’s more of a village than a town, I think, if that. Unless there’s a pocket of people hidden somewhere. We saw one intersection, with a few houses and a corner store. Except for a gated community next to a country club there was nothing else around. We drove around in there since the guard shack was empty. All of the houses were really nice looking, with nice looking yards. To the point where it was a little creepy. You can tell they have to keep things that way. It doesn’t look as if originality is permitted at all in the way you outwardly present your house. It made me want to see some of the crazy things those people must have done to the interior to liven things up some.

(more…)

I thought maybe my Rock-Band-obsessed neighbours had moved out since it had been almost two whole weeks since I’ve had to listen to their drunk off-key singing and horrible playing skills. No such luck.

They’ve been playing the game, yelling, laughing hysterically, and in general being assholes for about 4 hours now. I know London has a 24-hour no noise policy, but at the same time I tend to give these guys until 11:30pm to give it up because I’m generally up at least until then. So far I’ve yet to hear them play longer than that, at which point the drunken yelling also calms down and most people leave.

I feel sorry for whoever lives next to them downstairs though since they’ve been banging on the wall for an hour and been ignored.

Today me and Dean went for a 3-hour walk up through school, around on Richmond, and all the way back again. It was nice, but it really made me wish my orthotics would come in so I wouldn’t end up limping by the time we got home. I feel old.

I was proud that I went over multiple bridges without freaking out and freezing up. The last time we walked in those particular places was a couple of summers ago when we stayed at Western for a weekend so I could get my bearings. Those things freaked me out pretty good the first time. I still have trouble with the one on Oxford though, since I walked back from downtown once last term and had to stare at my feet and force myself to keep moving.

This time around we didn’t see any furniture in the river, but we did see a construction sign sitting there for all the world like it belonged. See?

We also saw a helicopter coming in for a landing on the pad in front of University Hospital. If we’d have walked slower we might still have been on the other side of the river and got a close-up.

Today was a good day. We need more nice days like this so I can wander around more.

Today my textbook for 558 arrived in the mail. It was a bit funny, since I was on my way back from picking up my hold at the library when the mail truck pulled in and when he buzzed and didn’t get an answer I kinda wondered and asked if there was mail for me. Turns out there was, and he was buzzing my apartment.

This wouldn’t normally mean much, since it’s just a boring old textbook. But the text for this course is an older edition. It’s either out-of-print or very nearly there since Chapters and Amazon have it listed but “temporarily unavailable to order” so you have to get it used. The bookstore doesn’t have them since the prof didn’t tell them to buy the new edition. It’s $150 and we don’t need any of the new stuff so we’re supposed to find a copy of this older one.

So, I get home after the first class and check the used listings to see what I can find. Turns out there’s a used copy of this book on Chapters’ website for $8 because it “may include highlighting/writing, some completed exercises, missing dustcover, crease and/or overall wear.” I’m thinking the book might be crap, but at that price I was willing to risk it. So I go for it anyway.

Today, I opened the package and see no evidence of any writing or highlighting in the book at all. If there are completed exercises I can’t find them. It even still came with the discs with the files needed for the exercises. It’s true, the spine is a little weak, but damn. I got myself a book in better shape than some of the stuff you can get used at the bookstore and for unbelievably cheap.

Like a good student, I started reading it right away. But then after about 3 pages of reading up on how awesome databases are and how they are the greatest invention of modern times I decided to read Confessor instead.

School has started up again and I’m really enjoying all my courses this term. They all integrate very well with each other and where I think I want to be going at this point so it’s so much easier to take them seriously compared to the required courses. One thing I’m eagerly anticipating is the release of Office 2008 so that I can finally open all these files that people with Office 2007 send me without having to go to school to do it. I hate going to school for things like that. In truth, I will go to to great lengths to avoid campus most of the time since it makes it more bearable that way.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful place. That’s part of the problem actually. The more time I spend at school the more stressed I get and the more I associate school with said stress and can’t enjoy it. Plus the NCB is ugly. It’s winter and I can’t fully appreciate the trees since I spend so little time outside.

I’ve got some socks that I finished to post later when I find the cable to the camera, and maybe another pair if I can finish Mis’ socks in a reasonable amount of time. I’m halfway through the first one but I broke a needle and might need to get creative to be able to finish these on the ones I’ve got.

Time for sleepz!