Well, another day

No matter how many times I do it, job interviews freak me out.

Today I had my interview for junior don. At my school, the dons of each floor are at least one year outside their undergraduate, so it's not a student thing. It's how we can have a student patrol and no hired on-campus security service.

Students can apply to be junior dons, which is what I did. I hope that goes well, because it means a big break on residence fees, and it would be fun. Luckily, one of the members of the interview committee told me I nailed it. I find out next week!

Also, I'm getting sick. Why, why does the sick come back now? I am halfway through Holy Week, which means church every day, culminating with a sick three-hour midnight service and then a massive party. I am looking forward to it.

And Phil is due to arrive at any moment, to stay for the weekend. I got a lot of work done in advance, to prepare for goofing off and doing nothing. It's going to be warm and sunny. Hooray!

Nurse Jackie

As if I needed something to procrastinate about, I have become addicted to Nurse Jackie. Luckily there's only been one season and a bit so far, so it won't be a huge waste of my time, on the whole. Especially since I'm probably going to finish it, like, tonight.

Seriously though, this show is GREAT. Edie Falco does a fantastic job. Often, when shows try to be a drama and a comedy at the same time, both sides fall flat. In this show, it is both so well. It is darkly humourous like early Grey's Anatomy, and all the characters are great. Big fat recommend.

I love Libraries

I have always loved my local library, or any libraries at all, really. The smell of books and the quiet heads bowed over books and papers have a nice, comfortable vibe. This library in Somerset, England is a little different.

More here.

I don't have any fun stories to tell today, but last night was Big Night, the annual talent show. It's a fun time with neat acts from heavy metal to highland dancing. Last year Phil and I hosted it, pre-dating period. We were pretty cute, and we matched our outfits - I wore a fierce red dress, he wore a red shirt with his suit. It was a huge ton of fun and people still mention it to me from time to time, which is nice.

At intermission of this year's Big Night, I called Phil on the phone. I felt nostalgic.

I hate cold and wet together

It's been so sunny in Halifax that we've all forgotten what it can really be like in the spring.

I woke up this morning and it was so grey I actually said "no", out loud, and rolled over into my bed which had suddenly become ten times more comfy by comparison to the wet and the cold. But alas, I had to get up and going.

As a sequel to The Week of Library, I present... The Week of Journalism! I have a lot of journalism assignments due next Tuesday (like all of them... why, universe... why?), so my life right now is eat, sleep, read, interview. Repeat. Today I went down to city hall to see how things go there. Unfortunately I missed the throwdown in the afternoon, but was able to follow it via livetweet. I hung out in the jschool and watched the tweets. It was a strange experience.

Well, I'm beat, and I've written the lede for my journalism article, so I think it's bedtime. Nothing to look forward to but many days of rain and assignments. Joy.

No more research paper!

3500 words later, I’m still feeling a little drained.

Well, the current drained feeling probably has more to do with staying out late on a Sunday night, which, incidentally, is a stupid night to party. I knew that. It’s obvious. But it has never been more obvious to me than right now.

After a night of shenanigans, which left our host’s house a mess, everyone stumbled out into the night and it feels a lot like we’ve been stumbling ever since then. Over the course of the day, I heard various stories of headaches and confusion (“someone from that party called me at 2am, and didn’t know who he was talking to or why he called”), while I buckled down to polish my essay to a finish. I handed it in at four and felt great.

Felt great until five minutes after I handed it in. I stopped into the KSU office to say hello to a friend, laid down on the couch, and didn’t get up for two hours. Something about the last minute paper mode or adrenaline or whatever, but I didn’t feel it until 4 this afternoon. Then it was brutal.

Luckily, the universe offered me four hours of last minute work and a perfect excuse not to go crazy tonight. I finish my shift at midnight, and maybe I’ll stop by the bar for a quick drink. Nothing too crazy. Very low key. My foggy heads demands it.

Paper Weekend

So I did it! I survived! And the paper was done 23 hours before the due time. I am very proud of myself.

In other news, I want to get a little bit more active. Considering I do nothing to get off my butt at the moment, anything would be good. A bunch of my friends are all on a hot yoga kick, which sounds fun. I used to love doing yoga! Moving to a new city and filling my life with new things has crowded it out of my life.

Anyway, I hope all of you have had a lovely weekend. The weather here was beautiful, perfectly befitting the arrival of spring. I managed a couple hours reading outside which working on the paper.

Tonight is the changeover party for the union council, so I'm going to go celebrate finishing my paper.

St. Paddy's Day

So, I know I probably won't have time to post later on, so here are a couple of links on stupid Conservatives, from my morning reading:

"Birth control won't be in G8 plan to protect mothers, Tories say"- As is clearly laid out in the story, birth control is an integral part of helping the women who are dying in pregnancy and childbirth. For a country that's supposed to be the great lefty north or whatever, just how conservative our Conservatives are freaks me out.

"Tory bill proposes publicizing names of violent young offenders" - Ditto my last statement. Come one, we have bigger fish to fry.

Tuesday

Tuesdays are the worst days of ever. I have tons of class, I'm tired, and the week seems to stretch before me. Unending. Painful.

Sitting here thinking about how much I hate Tuesdays makes me think of Tuesdays last year. As the day when I took my journalism classes, it was my longest day of the week and it was full of painful lectures. I used to give myself the night off from homework, just to congratulate myself for surviving it.

It was also time off because that's when I started having regular Tuesday tea dates with Phil. I would go over to his room after I finished class, plunk myself down in the chair by the door, and sprawl. Usually I whined too. I have no idea what he found so attractive about that, but we're coming up to our nine month anniversary. Nine months of a long-distance relationship (some times longer than others), of phone calls and emails and hand-written love letters and whirlwind visits.

Phew. Nine months down, six until we get to see if we can stand one another in the same place for extended periods of time.

Library Marathon, Day 1

It's going to be a loooong week of work.

Most of my "library time" was actually spent sitting outside the library, catching up with friends. Important developments occur over the weekend, even when the boyfriend is around to distract me from them. The result? I am now working on a late assignment. Ho-hum. I would love to work up the effort to care, but this is a tiny assignment, and sometimes, I just can't bring myself to, as my dad would say, rate it high on my give-a-shit meter.

The weirdest part of my day was actually before it had really begun. I set my alarm for the usual 8:00am. I hadn't gotten to bed until about 2, so I was tired. It was obvious just how tired when I felt like I was hitting the snooze every thirty seconds, even though it was five minutes. I thought I was ready to be properly awake at 8:20, so I turned off the alarm and turned on the radio.

The Current was running a radio doc about searching for answers in the crash of that french plane over the ocean, a few months ago, I think. But I fell asleep again, so I listened to the story and saw it in my head. I was a character, I'm not sure who, but I distinctly heard the narrator going throughout the "dream". I wasn't really asleep completely, because I came to fifteen minutes later when I realized I should stop and get up. It was a very bizarre experience. It was like lucid dreaming, but different. I wonder what it's called.

Weekend Update

My original plan for this weekend, visiting Phil in New Brunswick, fell through, so Phil instead came to me. I got no work done. Surprise.

So, now my week promises 24/7 in the library. Hopefully I will get some time for other things, like sleeping. Oh, and St Patrick's Day. That promises to be good.

I don't really have anything to add, but any positive vibes my way this week would be excellent. Oh brutal.

DSC_1568

From the workshop tonight - better quality than the last upload.

Dancing + The Insecurity Machine

Tonight, I love dancing. Jennalee, ex-exec of Dance Collective, choreographer, and lovely person, is in town for the weekend and so did a hip hop workshop for us. She graduated last semester and moved to Victoria, where she's doing exciting things like joining crews and dancing a ton. We miss her, but she's on to bigger things and we wish her all the best.

She did two workshops tonight. The first one was more classic hip hop - a little pop, a little lock, and a little bit of Jennalee silliness. Even though it was the more kind of stuff she has taught before, I could see the newness in it from her experiences in Victoria. The second hour was all new - contemporary and hip hop all together. She was worried about how it might go, but it was wonderful. And it was to Cosmic Love by Florence + The Machine, which I downloaded yesterday, and which rocks. Go look it up.

I loved dancing tonight. Especially in the second hour, Jennalee gave us lots of room to move and do our own thing. I quit dance when I was 13 and the only thing I hate more than my body was putting it in a leotard and dancing with tiny girls. When I had to special order a size big enough for me, and it took forever to come in, I quit. I have a vivid memory of wearing my sweats and looking at myself in the mirror across the room, an elephant among the tiny, beautiful creatures. I didn't go back. And I have always regretted it.

Today Stella admitted to her blog world her own insecurities, and opened the comments to others to share their own. It all came spilling out for me. This year, being a DanceCo executive, has been amazing. It's been a step in the door. I have danced! Having the title helped me feel kind of like I belonged. Like, "I have this title. I am legitimized". Obviously, the self-consciousness was still there and bled through and it did so in a completely negative way. I acted more like I knew what I was doing when I didn't really. When I needed to reach out and get some help. But I was too worried about losing my grip on this thing I'd lost one already.

I know I'm not a fantastic dancer, and it is too late, really, to change that. I can participate in it, which I love, but I will not be the other girls who move so easily and with such beautiful poise. I can only try to follow along, and stand in awe of them.

Also, my writing is slipping and after a bad bout of being heavily edited in everything I write, I have lost it. And I've convinced myself that my mom is the only one who thinks I can write, and really I can't. And I have no skills. The insecurity, it seems, runs deep. This year has been a good one for avoiding it, but I can feel it swallowing me up again, after all this time, and I'm scared.

My day on the set of ER

Reading the 170 pages for class tomorrow. Working on my research paper. Reorganizing my sock drawer. All things I would have rather done today than spend eleven hours in the ER.

At about 3am last night, I woke up in excruciating pain. It was in my shoulder and my side, radiating up and down, and it came with a creepy numbness in my arm. After trying to walk it off (I thought it might be muscular) and scaring the pants off Student Patrol in the process, they called the duty don who decided I needed to go to the hospital.

When we arrived at triage, I explained what was going on, best I could, between the short gasps of breath I had to take to avoid making the pain even worse. Apparently my symptoms seemed serious enough that I was bumped up the list and was in a room in no time. Well, in a room, ready to wait.

Luckily, the duty don on call was my good friend Chris. He stayed with me a long time, dozing on the chair next to me and waiting for doctors and test results. He was a bit of a mess come morning and I finally convinced him to go home around 9:30am. I stayed until 2pm. Since I left in such a hurry, I had no books, no music, nothing. As soon as the intense pain subsided some, I was very, very bored.

A chest x-ray, blood tests, and a VQ lung scan later, I have learned two things:

1. It seemed like I might be having a pulmonary embolism, but the tests ruled all that out. My lungs are working well - hurray! However, my side still hurts quite a bit. The doctor says my chest wall is being irritated by something, and it will go away... eventually. At least I can breathe now, unlike at 3am.

2. Hospitals are more like ER than I would have thought. I was witness to a whole lot of gossiping - as if I wasn't even in the room! Students can be adorable - my radiology student did the scans wrong and had to start over. Adorably. Everyone is as buddy buddy as it seems. They hugged all the time and called one another "buddy" and "babe". Also like on ER, this extends to the paramedics who were always hanging out in the hallway with patients on stretchers.

The ER I was in is the trauma centre for the province, so they get all the excitement. I didn't witness much - but they do hide the trauma rooms better than on ER. I walked past the ambulance bay at one point, and it led into this oppressively somber hallway. I don't even know why, it just made me shiver. They do helpfully cover the windows of these trauma rooms in order to avoid the clingy family situation from ER.

Main difference: They called it "Emerge" not "ER".

The Sun

Today I love the sun, again.

I had so much reading to do today, I thought my brain was going to explode. Luckily I was able to do most of it sitting outside with my friends on the steps of the library. Shades on, no more coat than a sweater. I must have gotten a little sun today, because I can still feel the warmth on my cheeks and I'm tired in that from-the-sun-way. Ahh.

In other news, my hair is getting so long now! It feels like just yesterday I cut it all off for a pixie cut, and now it's down to my shoulders. Now that it's long, I feel like a) cutting it all off again (Oh Carey Mulligan... you make me want to so much!) or b) buying some styling things like a hair dryer or a straightener. Hair is harder to deal with when it's longer.

"We are BINGE DRINKING!"

Today, I love not being hungover anymore.

The campus bar is the hub of activity around here. Everyone meets there on Monday nights to catch up, dance, and drink the cheapest beer in the province. We love our musty, old, stained carpet and the rotting bar, the poor lighting and complete lack of air circulation. It's our little corner, in the basement of the academic building, and every Friday early happy hour, our halls of learning smell like local microbrew.

Once a year, we celebrate all that is our favourite place. The birthday party for the bar is legendary. Things break, people get messy, and everyone spends the next 24 hours recovering. I started lining up with my friends at 5pm. The bar opened at 7pm. The reason for the line (which started at 2, I'm told, and eventually snaked up four floors of stairs and back down part way) is the prices. Even after the prices went up a bit this year, the birthday prices started at $0.75/drink (beer, bar shot, anything) and the price went up by a quarter every 15 minutes, when they'd ring a bell at the main bar and the whole place would boo and groan. Needless to say, it takes no time at all to get silly.

There was a band, I'm told, and dancing, which I do remember. The usual breaking and bleeding also occurred, not on my part, luckily. Things got out of hand at 11, when they shut the party down early. I didn't make it to bed until... late. I think.

The next afternoon at union council, we were all pretty messy. It was my last council meeting, and we laughed and joked and drank Powerade. The only way I got through the day (God, I'm going to sound like an alcoholic) was by drinking to ward off the hangover. I watched the Oscars with my equally hungover friends, sipping ginger ale for my stomach and gin for the hangover. Today, no hangover. Thank God.

Oscarama

I know it's "mainstream" and I know it's cheesy and I know so much politics goes into the decisions... but I love the Oscars.

I am watching them with my friends, laughing at the funny bits and judging the bad dresses (and the presence of Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, and Miley Cyrus).

also... Lauren Bacall rocks.

UPDATE: Hell yeah, Kathryn Bigelow! Finally, a woman best director winner. A great moment.

Let in the sun!

In Halifax, the part of winter with teeth - the days of really heavy snow, or a wind that feels like needles on exposed skin - has been pretty limited this year. I didn't need to wear my winter coat for most of January and February. It put me in the mood of waiting for spring. It was cloudy and grey, but still warm and I was waiting for the smell of spring.

When I woke up this morning, the smell was here! I woke up at 8:30, bleary-eyed and confused. The sunlight was streaming in my window and everything looked green and ready. I love spring in Halifax!

Return

It's been quite a while since I've been in the swing of blogging on a regular basis.

I really got to thinking about it today when my friend Ange interviewed me about blogging for an assignment she was working on. We drank tea and talked for an hour about reading blogs and writing blogs and it was kind of fun. We talked for so long I was late for my next class. I decided that I wish someone would invent a search engine - blog thing that would show a diagram with a blog in the middle and a web of the blogs that it linked to and how often. Ange thought it would be like the blogger version of the lesbian diagram on the L-Word. Or also an easier way to find blogs by geographic area. I don't read any Halifax blogs, but I would like to.

Anyway, to try to get back into the swing of things I've decided to post every day for 30 days. I'll post something I like. Whatever that means. Today, I liked Ange interviewing me.