The Curious Mind of Xta

Happy 41st Heather!

2010-06-24T16:34:00.000-07:00

Repeatable recipes 1: Rice Pudding

2010-01-16T00:19:00.000-08:00

1/3 c brown sugar
1/3 c white sugar
2/3 c arborio rice
1/3 c glutinous rice
1 tbsp pumpkin pie spice mix
1 pinch cardamom
5 c 2% milk

Add all items to 5quart slow cooker, use whisk to blend spices into milk. Turn on high, cook for one hour, stir, cook for another hour, stir, turn to low and cook until desired consistency is reached (about another 20-30 min).

Nom!

Would have been better with raisins cooked in, but a certain picky eater that I live with (and love!) doesn't like the texture, so instead we had pistachios and I also had raisins sprinkled on top. I like my pudding a bit creamier, so I pour some Almond Milk on top, nom nom!

I feel proud: this is a blend of a bunch of different recipes and my ideas of how to make it better (brown sugar! pumkin pie spice! two rices!) and it totally worked.

Oh, Intentions and Gratitudes may just be Twittered

2010-01-10T02:24:00.001-08:00

... since they are shorter bites, rather than a list of multiples.

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChristaGiles or see the updates automatically post to my profile on Facebook.

(for those of you who don't know what Twitter is... it is sorta a mini-blog, 140 characters max per "tweet"... and if you follow that link, you'll see my page. Everything that starts with a "@" sign and someone's user ID is a response to something they've posted either to me, or just as a general message on their Twitter page. If you don't see the "@" sign, then it is just a comment that I've put out there for the world. Intentions and Gratitudes will be labeled as such, everything else is random!)

The Gratitude Project: Day 30

2010-01-08T10:24:00.001-08:00

1 - for knowing Tillie, and getting to know Robin, who are the people responsible for getting me into this project... anyone who points me on a path of gratitude is a brilliant being.

2 - for the energy burst last night that let me finish my list of house chores: organizing my clothing (incl getting rid of tattered or misfitting underthings, socks with holes, clothing that I never really wear), cleaning out the fridge (I'll just say... ugh... and yikes!), and scrubbing the sticky off the kitchen floor

3 - for knowing Phil, who joined us on the drive back to Vancouver from Williams Lake after Christmas, and the discussion that led me to what will be my next phase of daily postings: Intentions and Gratitudes.

I'll be doing this until mid-April, in recognition that I find late Winter and early Spring challenging. Each morning, I'll set myself an Intention for the day, whether it be a specific action/goal to achieve, or a feeling or flavour to hold present in my thoughts. Each night, I'll express gratitude for something special that I experienced, felt, or witnessed that day.

Feel free to join in, if this seems like it would be a good thing in your life!

The Gratitude Project: Day 29

2010-01-07T09:44:00.000-08:00

1 - that I was able to keep on track and get a good chunk of my chores list done yesterday

2 - for the gifting of usable things (made chili in my new crock pot, that came from my Aunt Roxie after my cousin Colin turned it down {too big for their tiny place}, looking forward to attempting more dishes) and the using of gifted things (C ordered a MIDI connector yesterday, which will let me hook the piano up to my laptop so we can get rid of the gigantic XT computer that is collecting dust in the livingroom {it was either a gift from my Dad or from Paul... and has done its job for almost two decades, but since it now requires to be turned on a half hour in advance, then turned off, then turned on again before it will actually boot up and show anything on the screen.. a replacement is a good thing!} after transferring all my Cakewalk files to 3.25 disks to rescue my compositions over the years

3 - for the kindness and assistance of strangers: the folks on the John Bridge Ceramic Tile forums are incredibly generous with their time and knowledge, and have been providing quick answers to my questions about plumbing, tiling, fake walls, etc. We will have water in the bathroom after this weekend (hooray!!), and then I get to start tiling, wheee!

The Gratitude Project: Day 28

2010-01-06T11:21:00.001-08:00

1 - that bright light is casting its glow around the house, and I get to go rake leaves in the almost-sunshine!

2 - that C aquired a second-hand iPod for me last year, when mine died, so I have the ability to listen to podcasts while I rake leaves (and manage laundry, and clean the fish tank, and empty the fridge)

3 - that I'm excited about tackling that list of things-to-do because a) I'll feel good about accomplishing concrete things and b) I'll be able to have some personal knitting time later today, to begin getting my thorny band figured out and setup and perhaps even started!

The Gratitude Project: Day 27

2010-01-05T11:18:00.001-08:00

1 - that I didn't get hurt last night, despite being very confused and continuing to ride at close-to-usual speed around the Stadium Skytrain area, where new fencing and barricades have appeared that may or may not be isolating OR closing the bike lanes along Pacific Boulevard. Lack of signage, not so good. Biking again after holiday break, very good!

2 - that the West Coast Seeds catalog that just arrived has me excited about planting, tending, and harvesting delicious food!

3 - that I have a few hours this afternoon between knitting lessons that I get to call my own, and will use to attatch my NaSweKniMo hood to the sweater body, and get started on the giant thorny vines that will be banding the whole thing!

The Gratitude Project: Day 26

2010-01-04T00:54:00.000-08:00

1 - this is actually a bit late, but finding out via Christmas cards that I am an aunt! C's neice calls me Auntie Christa, whee!

2 - that I was able to overcome my usual loath-to-clean-and-tidy habits, and stick to it: the living room and the bedroom both look pretty darn good. Still a layer of dust in the living room, but all the books have made it back from various corners of the house onto the shelves, AND are in alphabetical order (after I had a minor near-meltdown and then realized it was just books, and C's version of sorting would be easier) AND completely merged... which made C point out that we were stuck with each other now :)

3 - self-awareness and an understanding partner: three near-meltdowns in the last 24 hours make me think that I may be allergic to January, as it was this time last year that my brain chemistry went screwy and I was struggling with hysteria on a daily basis.. hopefully this year I can tap into some of the things that seemed to help previously, and minimize the angst.

The Gratitude Project: Day 25

2010-01-03T02:34:00.000-08:00

1 - tasty chinese food in good company, celebrating a lovely person's birthday! Thanks, Tilly!

2 - barren wooden floors, swept clean by our new robot. (Can anyone remember the name of the robot vaccuums in RAH's Door into Summer? I know the book is around here SOMEWHERE... but not sure exactly where.. and Robot needs a name)

3 - being worthy of angst (though I understand that less angst is preferrable)

The Gratitude Project: Day 24

2010-01-01T12:28:00.000-08:00

Special what-was-I-grateful-for-in-2009 edition:

1 - that I recovered my sanity before doing permanent damage to my relationship with C, in those horrid early months of 2009 when I was swamped by sour brain chemistry that left me negative, agitated, and wallowing in fearful thoughts for hours at a time every day

2 - for the abundance that allowed me to travel to lovely places: Carrboro NC (Hoop Path retreat in June), Saltspring Island (our two-year celebration in Aug), Seattle (PAX in Sept), Toronto (BIL's wedding in Oct), and Williams Lake (home for Christmas)

3 - that the Saltspring trip put C and I on the same path for our renovations - we left Vancouver stressed and indecisive, and returned with a vision (light walls, wood trim) that is slowly taking form - and that our renovations haven't been a hardship. I think we both have a pretty good sense of what is and isn't important in life, and reno hiccups aren't such a big deal: Yesterday's replacement of the bathroom subfloor got stalled after we finished cutting the second piece of plywood only to discover that it wasn't the same (correct) thickness as the first piece already glued and nailed down... so today we'll work on moving the water heater and insulating the ceiling before we head off to dinner with my relatives. No biggie :)

How was your year?

The Gratitude Project: Day 23

2009-12-31T09:39:00.000-08:00

1 - that 2009 was such a darn lovely year. Possible post of year-wrap-up and year-to-come later today or tomorrow

2 - that we had a lovely date night last night, seeing the pretty movie called Avatar... (Robin, sorry it didn't work out, and we'll make other plans soon!)

3 - that there's a reasonable chance we'll have our toilet rehooked later today! Off to pee in a bucket, and then swap vehicles (return truck, take car with snow tires for planned-but-now-postponed snowboarding excursion)

The Gratitude Project: Day 22

2009-12-30T08:29:00.000-08:00

Three things that I am grateful for today:

1 - that I keep getting positive reinforcement - if something is bothering me, and I can identify it and talk about it, fear-easing and resolution and other good things happen as a result

2 - that the result last night was that I went to a house party where I knew very few people (normally = eeek!) but everyone was friendly and chatty and comfortable and I had an awesome time (including some dancing in the living room, whee!!)

3 - that despite having torn out our bathtub yesterday (okay, C took a sledgehammer to it and tore it out while I was still sleeping off the stomach bug), I got to get squeaky clean... having spare enormous food-grade vats that are *almost* Christa-sized (I could kneel, but not sit) and a clever partner who thought to unhook the washing machine supply line so we could use it to get water in from the laundry sink, all made for a pretty darn entertaining bath experience!

The Gratitude Project: Day 21

2009-12-29T14:16:00.000-08:00

1 - that I don't have hoop or knitting classes running right now, so having more sick days isn't a problem

2 - that there are a ton of really helpful contractor and tradespeople online who are happy to offer their expertise, and that another DIYer is doing a project similar enough to ours that I could read through the 21 pages of that thread and learn tons about how we should tackle things

3 - that I had time to soak in the tub once more before it gets demolished today!

The Gratitude Project: Day 20

2009-12-28T18:05:00.000-08:00

Warning: some grossness to come!

This post is coming late, too.. I've usually been writing in the wee hours, but last night I made an effort to get to bed at a reasonable time to make up for all of the late nights and less-than-ideal sleeps... but got paybasck this morning with a stomach bug that has kept me in bed, or kneeling over the toilet, all day.

1 - for C, whose immediate reaction to "I feel kinda gross" was "I think you should take the morning/afternoon off", and changed plans from tearing out the tub (which would require the removal of the toilet, too) to doing a bit more demolition on unneeded walls and doing a dump run instead, so I could have toilet access for whatever it was that my bod was going to throw my way

2 - for my general health, when a day of feeling gross and throwing up a couple times is the worst that I have to deal with

3 - for my Aunt Roxie, leader of the extended family in keeping in touch and on top of gossip, who has invited us to a dinner with a visiting and local cousin - one I haven't seen in... 10?... years (due to living in different parts of the country), and the other I haven't seen in a few years, since I stopped guarding at UBC where he trains for triathlons. She and my Uncle Don have always thrown fabulous dinner parties, and her style of showing extreme delight and enthusaism and support for anyone's passions has always been a welcome thing in my life.

The Gratitude Project: Day 19

2009-12-26T19:16:00.000-08:00

Missed yesterday's post, but there was a lot of gratitude expressed at home in Williams Lake :)

Today:

1 - to be back home in Vancouver, in my comfy bed, with my sweetie, all safe and sound

2 - to have a week ahead that will see major progress in the recovery of our bathroom. Tonight or tomorrow shall include mass amounts of planning, and I am close to giving in on my lovely-but-not-so-workable design idea in exchange for getting it done.. and I'm okay with that!

3 - to have had a glorious visit to my parents, sister, and brotherinlaw, plus their dogs.. and to have packed sufficiently warm clothing that I didn't freeze! Special handmade gifts were also awesome (mixed CDs, knit dishcloths, a sweater drying rack) plus a "to treat yourself" gift that I haven't decided how to use yet.. whee!

The Gratitude Project: Day 18

2009-12-24T22:04:00.000-08:00

1 - for my mother's cooking, and the baking of the various people involved in the church's "cookie walk" - a fundraiser where people bake an enormous amount of cookies, then have them all laid out around a room (with ingredients, nut warnings, etc), then other people take boxes, fill them up with all the cookies that look appetizing, and then pay by weight as they leave.... mad shortbread skills!

2 - for the Christmas Eve service that included TUBA (!!!!!) at the beginning and end, with a nice little Dixieland clarinet in the middle, and a slightly hyper/wired minister having a private chat with us before the service that included little religion but a lot of welcome.

3 - for C, who came to the service with me, even though religion is completely against his beliefs. I am really happy that I can be spiritual, and he can be scientific, and we can still get along.

4 - for my mom's answer, when I saw her bring presents out to pile under the tree and asked, "Will you still love me even if I didn't buy any presents because I thought we weren't doing that any more??": "Yes. You're here, and that's present enough."

The Gratitude Project: Day 17

2009-12-23T09:24:00.000-08:00

1 - that the temporary glitch that was rendering my new iPhone (thanks, bosses!) unusable/dysfunctional finally cleared up... and that I've chosen the option to have 5 long-distance numbers always free to call: Mom n Dad, Heather Home, Heather Cell, and Chris' parents will fill those spaces perfectly.

2 - that I was wide awake at 8:30, so I could start cycling the laundry in an attempt to be ready to hit the road by 11

3 - that my dad called at 8:45, so I was awake enough to figure out how to answer my phone... and that he warned us it is -25 up in Williams Lake! Hooray for warnings to pack really warm clothing! Last dozen years in WL at Christmas would -maybe- get down to -10. Climate change sucks.

4 - that Karen is house- and fish-sitting, so everything will be healthy and happy when we get back!

The Gratitude Project: Day 16

2009-12-22T09:19:00.000-08:00

1 - that I have a day off work today, to do running around stuff (including trying to return the ugly-but-functional bathtub faucet/trim that we bought while still thinking of getting a fancy wall spout that needed a particular type of diverter), recover the living room (because I have done a reality check, and I am unlikely to start hooping daily in the small bedroom, but it will hold excess stuff nicely), and do more research on my have-iTouch-may-want-iPhone options

2 - that I have a sweet man sleeping beside me who makes me happier

3 - that I was able to sign out a CAN car that has snow tires on all four wheels, so we can drive home to Williams Lake tomorrow and hopefully make it there with ease! Looking forward to an awesome visit, plus all the knitting time while driving

4 - (woot, extra gratitude!) that the fourth or fifth idea I've had for making myself a knitted hood/scarf combo seems to be working so far!

In case I don't get online once we're in WL: for those of you who celebrate Christmas, have a merry one! I hope you are able to follow those traditions that make you happy (I'm excited about going to church on Christmas Eve to sing songs, and pass the peace with people who watched me grow up), and that your loved ones do only lovely things (I'm lucky - no family angst to deal with). For those of you celebrating other things, sorry about the crazy schedule that my holiday-of-choice imposes on the general public... but hopefully you are able to benefit from it somehow!

Be well, be safe, and know that you are loved.

The Gratitude Project: Day 15

2009-12-21T09:38:00.000-08:00

1 - that I am hale and hearty, so the only health concern I currently have is that my body is super-achey-sore from renos. Yesterday we took out the cast-iron waste/drain/vent pipes in the house, and replaced them with new-fangled ABS.. and it worked!

2 - that C is a wonderful partner who works hard and was willing to stay home and keep working on the ABS installation while I went to the staff Christmas party for the yarn shop, so that we would have a working toilet and shower this morning! Also, he was calm in the face of my morning freak-out yesterday when I realized that neither of us had a really firm idea of what had to happen to make this all work! (two great minds plus research plus the internet = win!)

3 - that the two owners of the yarn shop are wonderful, generous bosses who don't hesitate in sharing the success of the shop by gifting us with fantastic things at the end of the year! (part of the gift was a skein of glorious handdyed cashmere... expect to see a lacy mini-shawl in a few months, in the yummy delicious sea greeny-blue that I've fallen in love with lately :)

The Gratitude Project: Day 14

2009-12-20T09:51:00.000-08:00

Today's list seems to have add-ons... and I'm okay with that.

1 - I'm thankful that in my 17 years of lifeguarding and teaching swim lessons, not once did a child under my care drown... (unlike the icky dream I had last night)...

2 - I'm grateful for inheriting the strong work ethic that seems to run in my family (though I managed to miss the money-management skills)

3 - I really appreciate that C is so interested in the work that I do - last night he was watching me attempt to develop a logo and favicon (the little image that appears next to the URL, like the orange-and-white B for Blogger that is up there right now) for my online classes... and when I was stuck with "CG" looking like CoverGirl, he steered me away.. and when I started playing with CX (not really seriously), he pointed out that the X could become knitting needles... so I'm the prescription for your knitting woes! Fun, no? Now if I can just get it to show up on my Ning site like it is supposed to... (feedback on it is welcome, too... I'm not 100% happy with it yet, but I like the direction it is going in...)

The Gratitude Project: Day 13

2009-12-19T02:01:00.001-08:00

1 - that I am in a stable enough place that I can give notice at one of my jobs, so that starting in mid-January I won't be travelling all the way out to UBC for anything other than polo, and I'll have Wednesdays and Fridays to work at home on my design work and developing my online classes (and still being open to scheduling private lessons nearby)

2 - that I didn't break anything (other than perhaps the wax ring holding the toilet in place) that wasn't meant to be broken today, while I worked on demolishing the tiled floor of the bathroom. Tomorrow, we plumb new drains and vents!

3 - that C is willing to accept my invitation to dance a little bit around the house, so we had a nice cheek-to-cheek groove going to "Stormy Weather"... kinda appropriate, no? I do love dancing, and partner dancing with someone you love is a truly beautiful thing.

You?

The Gratitude Project: Day 12

2009-12-18T01:38:00.000-08:00

1 - I'm grateful for the day's traffic flow at the yarn shop - quiet at the beginning (while I wanted to finish weaving in ends of a new sweater) steady through the early afternoon (kept it from dragging), and then solidly busy before emptying right at the time that I wanted to take off early... so I felt like I'd earned it

2 - for the planets aligning/fate/whatever that allowed me to find the outfit I wanted to wear tonight with less than 10 min of searching. In the current chaos of my laundry, that's pretty fabulous. Note for new year: weed through clothing AGAIN, with more strictness this time about what gets to stay (should be easier, as I'm doing it of my own volition this time, and already looking forward to it - perhaps subscribing to The Unclutterer blog has had some effect

3 - for the wicked awesome good time I had at the Mad Skillz Vancouver festival fundraiser: the hooping workshop I ran first thing was a hit - lots of success to see, and lots of great (happy, satisfied) feedback from my participants, fun to watch other hoop instructors teach their set, and then a wicked good time dancing to the many-piece funk band that closed the evening.. hooping to live music in a space where everyone is fully aware that there's hooping going on, and they are leaving me to dance as much as I want... is an amazingly good thing. Oh, and getting to do some dancing with Chris, showing off what we've learned in Blues Class, was awesome too.. (more excited about the dancing, not really caring about showing off or not)

It was a good day (as they all are!). How was yours?

The Gratitude Project: Day 11

2009-12-17T00:55:00.000-08:00

1 - that I finally figured out a work-around to be able to chart my sweater collar in Word (my go-to software for tables and charts, 'cause I already know how to work it)... even though it refused to do a 130-cell-wide chart. The solution? Do 130-cell-LONG chart instead - it doesn't have a height limitation for some reason!

2 - that even though I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off 30min before hoop class tonight (door paint-stripping and dishes were left a bit late in the day, so when it came time to start gathering my gear for my usual leisurely bike-loading and THEN I remembered that I had to make a hoop for one of tonight's students AND THEN I couldn't find the pipe cutters and called C and he didn't know where they were and I looked around some more.. and then I gave up and hacked away at the tubing with some a) garden shears b) tin snips and then c) hair scissors and finally got it).... EVEN THOUGH all of that was going on, I was able to stay real through the chaos: it IS my fault for procrastinating and doing fun stuff earlier in the day, No the universe isn't out to get me, and if I am a bit late to get to class it will be okay - my students are understanding and will accept an apology if I need to offer one. Used to be that I'd spend a lot of time kicking myself and saying bad things about myself and my habits and generally carrying the guilt and bad self-talk for days... so I've come a long way!

3 - the sun came out today for a few minutes, and I was in the room with the patchwork curtain my mom sewed for me a handful of years back, from a description of an idea I had... the room was glowing with a warm, gorgeous light and I felt very lucky and loved.

The Gratitude Project: Day 10

2009-12-15T23:56:00.000-08:00

1 - that lessons I'm learning in one part of life (Relationship: "Ask for what you want, and you'll probably get it") carryover to others (Online Class: Ask for more detailed feedback, and you'll get it)

2 - that my boss shrugged off my report of the irate woman who demanded my name and stomped off when I turned her away from the closed shop because my class kept getting interrupted by people trying to come in and shop.. I LOVE having a mellow/understanding boss, after so many years at the UBC pool with someone I couldn't relate to (racist, sexist, homophobic) or work under (inconsistent, unclear, unsupportive)

3 - that my students love me, even when I'm tired and make mistakes while "helping" them with their projects so they have to be confused and re-knitting stuff for 3/4 of the class before I figure it out properly (hooray for diagram sketches!)

Where's your gratitude sense at right now?

Meet Electric Ruby!

2009-12-15T09:31:00.000-08:00

This bike has been a work in progress since early Aug, when I suddenly had a fierce longing for an Xtracycle, to turn into a bike commuter, and to haul my hoops around the city in a fun and highly visible way.

Base Frame: Giant Cypress - steel frame hybrid trail/road bike, bought from BSP on Pacific at Burrard waaay back when I lived two blocks away.... and she was still covered in playa decorations and dust from three summers ago!

Extension: Free Radical by Xtracycle, purchased at Aaron's Bicycle Repair in Seattle after a test ride of Aaron's own extended bike. Had a fair number of glitches in this, including mis-hearing information about the frame size (it was for a 26" wheel rather than the 700c wheel on the Cypress, so for a while I was riding with a rear wheel stolen off C's mountain bike), not reading any documentation that even the proper 700c frame adapters wouldn't fit my wheel until I got a lower profile tire, getting a new style of side loaders with old style attatchment instructions and parts, and bolts for the brake remounting that didn't fit...

...but through it all, the gang at Xtracycle were awesome about answering emails and shipping parts quickly (even to a hotel in Seattle when I was there for the PAX conference in early Sept).. and the attention that I get with it on the road (or especially when I pull into MEC to buy something new) is pretty darn awesome... much thanks to C for helping me with the install - it took about four hours the first night, and then several hours here and there as we tweaked the wheels and refitted the brakes!

Front electric hub motor: Nine Continent from the Renaissance Bicycle Company, which happens to be just up one block from my job at the yarn shop, and again crewed by people who were super-quick to answer emails and switch parts when I had issues (sticky throttle was the main one... has taken a couple visits to bike repair shops to get the spokes tight and happy to stay tight)... having this motor makes all the difference in hitting the giant hill out to UBC for work or waterpolo practice, and still having enough energy and leg strength to play and then make it back home! The battery pack doesn't last *quite* long enough, I tend to run out just before the final hill on the way home... so I'm debating buying a second pack and just hauling it in the rear bags to swap out when needed!

Hoop rack: 1/2" electrical conduit from Home Depot - actually one of the early loads hauled home post-extension (others included a giant reel of electrical house wire and a whack of lightbulbs). Bent the leg ends first, about 12" from each end, and then bent the middle by eye, until the legs were the distance of the side holes in the Free Radical frame. I still need to build a better attachment system, but I've got the webbing and clips on hand already. It will have beefy, adjustable clips on the top of the A frame, plus clips on either side of the Free Radical frame with straps to either keep the front edges of the hoops back out of the way of my legs (Riding Mode) or to keep the back edges of the hoops even with the back of the frame (Elevator Mode) for the times when I'm taking Skytrain home (due to dead battery and-or cold/soaked rider).

My riding gear is evolving: I've got decent warmth provided by wool riding tights I've had forever (from MEC, no longer stocked), and a hoodie I knit over two years (with glitches, since I forgot what I had planned with the hem years back and knit an extension in Oct that leaves weird bumps at my hips), plus neoprene booties and gloves that are reasonably water resistant, old Goretex-fronted pants that don't handle downpours but at least let my legs move (unlike two pairs of waterproof pants I've bought and returned recently), a polarfleece balaclava and a handknitted hat and scarf that all work together to keep everything except my eyes and the bridge of my nose warm. I'm still on the lookout for better pants and gloves that don't get damp and cold.

My loading system is also evolving: I have a 30L drybag from MEC that gets all my clothes, books, yarn, laptop, etc for the day, plus open totes (synthetic) to hold my cable locks, U lock, and raincover for the bike, and extension cords for the days I'm hauling Big Pink (my stereo that pumps out the tunes for Saturday Circus). These started to live in tote bags when I realized what a pain it was to unload everything from the side bags behind the hoop rack so I could load the hoops in and out... still a pain, but way easier now that I can just lift out the two totes instead of each item individually. On my make list: either straps to attach the drybag to the top of the SnapDeck, so the tote bags can live on the side opposite the hoop rack, OR sew a giant vinyl bag that will live on top of the SnapDeck and have easier-access-yet-waterproofish storage for my daily gear. Digging things out of the bottom of the dry bag can be a pain.

Anyway, she's a sweet ride, and I love her! Part bday present from C, part self-investment from me... she rocks!

The Gratitude Project: Day 9

2009-12-15T01:27:00.000-08:00

1 - that it is 1:30am, and I'm just about to be unconcious. Hooray!

(I can't remember such a long period of my life that had as much commentary on my sleep patterns. Sorry if this is getting tedious.)

2 - C and I got the plumbing diagram done, including agreeing on the design of the bathroom refurb, and opening the tub box to see just how pretty it is!

3 - My NaKniSweMo sweater that was supposed to be done last month is at least continuing to make progress - I got enough sketching done today that I'm pretty sure I'll be able to start knitting the top band of the yoke tomorrow, which will eventually connect to the band of thorns that will go around everything (hood, front, bottom)

Hope you're at least THINKING about gratitude, even if y'all aren't WRITING! :)

The Gratitude Project: Day 8

2009-12-13T23:38:00.001-08:00

1 - that C and I made time to go to Tilly's cheesecake party, where an hour turned to three in the company of comfy, delightful, entertaining, connected, thoughtful, and lovely folk. I do well in small groups, more so than larger circulating parties (hey, new insight for the evening! .. heh, points out a bunch of my insecurities actually, involving being boring, or awkward, or abandoned, or unwanted...)

2 - that the conflict that occurred at waterpolo on Thursday night (I wasn't there, heard about it in my role as Omsbud for the club) didn't carry over to practice tonight, and that those of us who showed up managed to make a good game of 4-on-4 last for close to an hour (without dying, though I did get more battered than usual tonight!)

3 - that it has been okay to postpone our electrical planning until tomrrow, so I can catch up on my sleep - four hours after a late-night/early-morning party just wasn't enough. Oh, and that I've probably already had the flu, so I can afford to be a bit run down.

What are you grateful for?

(PS: Hi Robin!)

The Gratitude Project: Day 7

2009-12-12T19:11:00.000-08:00

1 - I am grateful for the opportunity to hear that people value my voice - when it is the lone one shouting(ish), others agree that what i am saying needs to be heard, not that I should have kept my mouth shut.

2 - for the company of my longtime hooper friend, Dave, at this afternoon's Saturday Circus in the crisp chill - inspiring to watch, and good company to have as I work through my own challenges

3 - for the hot water that now lasts longer, due to my sweetie turning up the tank. Asking for what you want really does work!

And you?

The Gratitude Project: Day 5

2009-12-11T23:46:00.000-08:00

1 - Melatonin tablets work! I remembered that we had some left over from our Japan trip a couple summers back, and that I had read somewhere that they were good for regulating sleep patterns. Popped one around 11:30 last night, and shortly after 1am I was out like a light (C confirms that I was sleeping as soundly as he's ever seen, including hard to move when my legs were overly tangled in his)

2 - On days when I have specific lists and timelines, I can DO them! I'm not a hopeless cause! Today: visited Dresssew, successfully avoided buying $2 yarn, came home and raked leaves, cleaned the fish tank, did some laundry, blocked a sweatercoat, and am just about finished my video homework for the week!

3 - that I'm comfortable keeping time for the activities that I love (and that help my business grow).. I'm totally looking forward to hooping at the Saturday Circus tomorrow afternoon. Woot!

If you're joining me in the Gratitude project (30 days of posting three things, no matter how small, that you're grateful for..), please leave a link to your blog, Twitter feed, or Facebook ID so I can check it out!

The Gratitude Project: Day 4

2009-12-10T23:22:00.001-08:00

1 - that C and I can have discussions and planning sessions around our home renovations that are calm, rational, and full of self-awareness ("I thought this..." "I have been that...")... so even when it is feeling like crunch time, we're not struggling with relationship angst.

2 - for the time in my schedule to pop in private hoop lessons in exchange for (what turned out to be) private blues dancing lessons. http://nightanddaydance.com - David and Diane are excellent teachers, and we're learning lots!

3 - for recognition at work as "the colour expert" - so I get days like today, where I get to spend 20min working with a customer to find a colour for a scarf that will look good (no, great!) on her... and where she winds up choosing my main pick (though without pressure - she took a selection of yarn outside with a hand mirror to look at them in the natural light, and came back having switched from her main pick to mine!) ... I like helping people find the right colours, comes from spending too many years rereading "Colour Me Beautiful" when I was a kid.

Well? If you aren't interested in starting a full-on Gratitude Project yourself, you can still at least post one or two things happening in your life that are particularly good :) Join me!

The Gratitude Project: Day 3

2009-12-09T09:56:00.000-08:00

1) I'm reeaaally grateful that I finally managed more than 5.5hrs of sleep last night. As a leftover from having the flu/whatever for those two weeks last month, my sleep pattern has been whacked - awake until 3:30amish, and then up at 8:30am and unable to get back to sleep. Last night, I shut down my computer just before 2am, listened to the CBC news and a bit of the show afterwards, and was probably out by 2:15... and managed to dose through until 9:30. Serious progress!!

2) that I've managed to attract and keep so many darn lovely people/students in my weekly knitting and hooping classes. It is just so awesome that I don't dread ANY of my work committments, and instead look forward to each one.. and that the variety continues to sit well with my mental and physical needs. In January, I'll finish up my work on the West Side - haven't been teaching at Urban Yarns this fall (due to a miscommunication about when I'd return, plus lack of demand...), and have decided to stop teaching springboard diving (though HM! Maybe I should check out one of the newer pools closer to home.. I've always wanted to get staff priveledges in the Vancouver Parks Board system) because the two+ hours of transit out to UBC for an hour of diving plus a bit of admin work seems like a waste. Instead, I'll add Friday to my 'work at home' days and really push myself to get more patterns out, and get my online teaching off to a good start!

3) that my dad was computer-positive really early (I think I was in grade 7 when he brought home a Commodore Vic 20), leading me to be really comfortable with technology... and that I've managed to hook up with techies as friends and loves for the stuff that is beyond my mastery. (not saying that I COULDN'T master the stuff... I'd just rather knit!) Today's job list includes taking photos for patterns and ads, editing them in Photoshop, getting in on the live chat for my online course on teaching online courses, sending out an email newsletter to my hoop students... oh, and tearing the walls of the bathtub and shower down, while listening to podcasts.

Fun!

What are you thankful for today?

The Gratitude Project: Day 1

2009-12-08T02:05:00.000-08:00

Hello blog readers! I know it has been a while... at some point, I'll write a big long post explaining why, but for now just know that it is all good (and if you want to see more stuff, follow me on Twitter as ChristaGiles, or hook up with me on Facebook!)

I'm joining Tilly's (via Robin?) gratitude project: I'm posting 3 things each day for the next 30 days that I'm actually truly grateful for, no matter how silly or small.

1) my health

2) the good connection I have with my family

3) the extended family/friendships I've made - especially neat to see how my circle has ...expanded in the last two years!

(there, big ones taken care of, right on day 1)

(Posted to my blog on Day 2, having started on Facebook but then realizing that I had more to write than would fit on a single status update)

Day 2 of Gratitude Project

2009-12-08T02:03:00.000-08:00

Join me (and Tilly!) in listing 3 things for which you are thankful, every day for a month:

1 - I get to work in a place where I'm happy to chat with 95% of our customers, and there are bright colours and amazing textures all around (and I get discounts!!)

2 - I'm a member of MEC, and I can push my enormous bike in the door, fiddle with my broken headlight, and have a staffperson walk over and start processing my exchange with no hassles (and then watch people admire my bike for the next 10 min while I shop)

3 - my wonderful partner is excited to talk shop with me, after I have been antisocial all night while I do homework for my "how to teach online courses".. and his input is valuable as he can make me see the parallels between online gaming companies and my two businesses, and I now feel pointed in the right direction for my next batch of development work!

A bit of catch-up.

2009-04-01T23:21:00.000-07:00

1 - visit http://christaknits.com to see my new knitting site, including a buncha stuff about patterns and whatnot

2 - visit http://christahoops.com to learn about my new dealie-O offers to work at bringing new students in, and rewarding past students for sticking around or referring folks to me

3 - follow me on Twitter (I'm ChristaGiles) to get semi-daily updates of 140 characters or less (whee!)

4 - share my excitement about having a pattern accepted into a knitting magazine in the fall!

5 - share my excitement about having a free pattern get a significant mention on Cast On, the world's most popular knitting podcast... hopefully next month with my name and the pattern name actually attached :) (heck, mystery mentions with pleas for help in identifying can be good, too!)

6 - share my excitement about going to North Carolina in June, for an extended weekend of hooping with the Hoop Path folks.. Chris is coming, so I'm going to try to build his mad hooping skills, along with helping him teach hoopers to juggle more :)

7 - share my relief that the whacked brain chemistry of early January and February has eased off and I'm operating with a much more even keel these days

8 - send good healing vibes my way to help me deal with the fatigue that has been hitting me for the last couple weeks

9 - send more good healing vibes that the weird bit of skin on my shoulders (not a mole, not a zit, not an ingrown hair) gets quickly identified and dealt with by a dermatologist as soon as I can get in to see one, and that the minor squiggly internal pain that makes itself known during, ahem, intimate moments shows up on the ultrasound I'm getting in a couple weeks as nothing to be worried about.

10 - be amazed and impressed that in the last two months I have pretty much kicked caffine (no more chais), Starbucks (waaaay less non-chais and no cookies), and overly crappy eating.

11 - be more amazed and impressed that I have managed to stop aquireing yarn and am instead making progress towards paying off my credit cards while knitting (and weaving, and spinning) from my stash

12 - be pleased that I am still happily in love with C, and this whole relationship stuff (including working through the bumpy bits) is a whole giant chunk better than what I thought I could ever have, back when I was running solo.

Love you!

Testing...

2009-01-27T16:39:00.001-08:00

HeartBeat
a knitting pattern by Christa Giles
$5.00USD

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Another To-Do list...

2009-01-27T15:46:00.000-08:00

(carried over from last Tuesday)

1 - done (again, today)

2 - done (fairly, along with getting feedback on it from Kim, so I feel on track)

3 - not done, will do next

4 - turns out I don't have the errored pattern on Ravelry yet, so I won't post errata until it is up somewhere

5 - saw a wee bit of Obamaness. God, the man can talk!

6 - Still on today's list.

7 - NEW - compile submisison dates and data for various publications and put it all in one place

Today's To-Do list

2009-01-20T15:44:00.001-08:00

1 - thank my sweetie for the lovely laptop that lets me work from cafes on my weirdly broken workdays

2 - write copy for my new knitting website, along with continuing to plot out the content, now with the first pattern error that needs to be changed and appear in an Errata page

3 - update http://christagiles.com - it still talks about lessons at Little Nest, which I was trying to do last year

4 - list the errata on the pattern page on Ravelry

5 - watch a bit of the ObamaFest

6 - get PayPal button code for each of my patterns ("Buy it now" and "add to cart") to pass to Kyle

Progress progressing progressively.

2009-01-18T01:50:00.001-08:00

Less resolutions, and more of a to-do list for the next year:

1 - finish cleaning and sorting the studio, so it becomes a functional-er workspace. This includes getting all the files off the old clunker machine (thank you Kyle, it served me well for a really long time), getting rid of the IKEA egg-shaped desk that noone else thinks is nifty (I thought it did a really good job of fitting in the weirdly shaped free space in the kitchen for a dining table in my old place), and figuring out something that will function as a desk (or at least a laptop support) at the height that my recently-freely-aquired stenographer chair will lower to (not low enough for a regular desk, for whatever reason). This does also include the potential for a yarn give-away, as I get it all in one place and perhaps take a good look at what I will never use, even if I take up weaving and make a billion blankets, wraps, throws, table runners, and tote bags.

2 - get rid of the clothes that don't flatter me, or that are unlikely to fit before they go out of style, and aren't suitable for revamping into cool things... and the underwear with holes, single socks, and painfully pokey old underwire bras.

3 - continue my quest for personal wellbeing - this currently includes being tested for hypothyroidism (runs in the family), diabetes and low iron (since we're drawing blood anyway), keeping an eye on my mental noise (hopefully the recent bout of anxiety is attached to a thyroid problem, but I've already had a chat with my wonderful psych {from the days of work issues} which brought some awareness and relief in the form of acknowledgement and a reality check), and a continued plan to eat healthier while being full of self-love for the shape I am right now.

4 - submit at least one design to a publication that I respect: knitty, Interweave Knits (or Spin Off), and the like... and being prepared for rejection, but putting lots of work into making the submission as inspiring and polished as possible

5 - get my knitting website redone (yay again for Kyle) and start blogging regularly, possibly with some teaching-ish articles with unique content, or other things that will help me build my readership and pattern sales.

6 -standardize my current patterns to help me feel more confident about my presentation when I approach yarn shops or pattern wholesalers about carrying my patterns.

7 - use my new fibre-world-domination guru to figure out if (6) is even a route to pursue, in this world of online- and self-publishing

8 - write a book of knitting patterns (I may leave the actual publication for next year)

9 - find a method of publicizing my hoop classes that I can comfortably do (since sending press releases to newspapers appears to fall outside that catagory), to maintain at least one, but hopefully two, classes a week

10 - continue being happy, fun, and interesting... for myself, and for my relationship with Chris. I'm still digging it madly :)

Emails from Japan (with all typos intact)

2008-09-08T14:48:00.000-07:00

Sunday Aug 24
We made it! Delayed flight leaving Vancouver, but the smoothest flight I've ever experienced (aside from the stews pretty much demanding that everyone close their window shades for a prescribed nap-time in the middle of the afternoon! How was I supposed to knit?!)... Tokyo airport was a minor adventure, but no mishaps, and no major time frame for us to stress about, so everything just flowed fairly nicely. Got our train into the city, an hour on an express train that took us past rice paddies, housing lots that could be in Richmond, lots and lots of tech-business places, a few giant malls (the one logo I recognized was the TOys R Us giraffe), and then into the main Tokyko train station.. where a nice man saw us struggling to decipher the map and pointed us to the correct platform.. where we then jumped on the first train before actually figuring out if it was ours, but it was.... got completely lost while looking for the hotel, but eventually fired up the laptop for the map, got our bearings, went back into the underground train tunnels, and got here. (interesting note: the homeless folks here build cardboard tunnel/shacks for themselves in the train hallways, and don't seem to get kicked out)

Hostel room is tiny (Chris can touch both walls at the same time) but has the comfiest memory-foam matteress I've been on (okay, we took the bunk bed mattresses and combined them for a double-thick).. and I need an instruction manual for the toilet. Really.

Off for a quick shower (rainy and warm, but still need to shower off a day of travel) then we'll go in search of food before crashing for the night!

Love y'all!

X.

Subject: First full day in Tokyo
Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:24:47 +0000

Got lots of sleep - I think we were back in the hostel somewhere around 10pm.. dinner wound up being McDonalds 'cause we weren't feeling adventurous enough to go into a place where we'd be ordering from pictures, so familiar was good... between Nyquil and melatonin, I was able to sleep 10-11 hours, and started being awake around 7am.... Chris managed to ooze until about 9, when I was poking him to get up so we could go eat, I w stop as STARVING!

Cafe down the street that we had passed last night served danish and bagelwiches and mango juice, numm... then we started wandering towards the tech-geek-central part of Tokyo, only to pass right through the BEAD part of Tokyo! Seriously, at least two blocks, looks at least two streets wide, EVERY SINGLE TINY SHOP sold beads. I'm looking forward to going back tomorrow :)

Tech central featured a 7-story department store - the noise level reminded me of going to a midway carnival, but instead of hawking rides, they were hawking the latest washing machine, massage chair, or laptop... nothing turned my crank, but their toilets DID have english translations, so I know know that the buttons include 'spray', 'bidet' (not sure how that is different), and 'music' - yup, you can't hear me flushing, but you can listen to this song.... wierd. Chris avoided temptation so far, though model train stuff keeps catching his eye...

Next stop: a park that appeared to be right beside a train station, but turned out to be fenced in, and we walked the wrong direction around the whole block to get to its gate. 150 yen ($1.50ish CAD) each got us into what WOULD have been a quiet sanctuary, but the cicadas (we think) were crazy loud - kinda like the store we were at before) and it took a while to drown it out. This was the manicured sort of garden, paths and bridges and koi and turtles that seemed to want to go for my fingers rather than the grass I was offering... but lovely. Oh, pouring rain, but still lovely.

Then, to the Tokyo station - central downtown. We wandered in a call-it-lost-but-we-aren't-trying-to-get-anywhere sorta way for a good chunk of time, and then my feet voted for another longer train ride, and we headed east to try to hunt down the yarn shop I've been saving for... 30min on an express train later, we hit Kichijojii and the 8-floors of craft shop gloriousness that is Yagakuza (or something) .. EVERYTHING. leather, glass, fabric, yarn, model making, screen printing, painting, EVERYTHING. All the specialty stores you could ever want, in one place. Gah! I got out alive.. but might ask to go back tomorrow.... finally made it out of there, and discovered a giant plaza/covered walkway/open shops kinda mall... clothes, food, music, whatever.. and in every direction you can see, at every intersection, for another few blocks. Kinda like Metrotown, but... different. Hey, turns out I'm bad at decriptions at the end of the day! Ah well.... had our first authentic no-english-spoken-here meal at a noodles-and-tempura place, where the lovely pictoral me nus posted outside did their job. Another half hour of wandering somewhat desperately, and Chris spotted an area map, which after a few minutes managed to show us which small alley to use to find the yarn shop. Woot!

Yarn shop was crazy-small... just a bit bigger than my childhood bedroom, loaded to the ceiling (including rafters) with lcones of glorious yarn labeled only in Japanese, but after a short attempt of drawing a sheep and asking the sales woman to write the kanjii for wool so I could read the tags (I had my picture of a silkworm prepped, cotton in my head...)... she handed me a printout with a translation of all the fibres, and did a reasonable job of leaving me to it. I managed to only spend about half of my splurge money, and have some really neat stuff: super=fine boucle mohairs and fine wool to match and be held together for sweater-y things... wool-and-stainless-steel and paper yarns (this paper is linen, with little bowtie tufts every cm or so) to make interesting, moldable scarves... some cotton yarn that has been laid flat and glued to look like strips of bark, for a hat... and some other things that are falling out of my brain right now! Ooh, and a book that people online have been raving about, by the lead designer of the store. Very clean, modern Japanese style garments and accessories.. should be interesting!

More wandering.. perhaps TOO much wandering at this point, as my feet are swollen over the sides of my birkis, but we hit a grocery store to get some in-room nibblies, and head back the long way through some residential alleys (with curious blinking red lights set into the ground right in the centre of the intersections) back to the train, and then manage to find the right exit for our hostel on the second try. We've got two more nights to get it right, and then Chris will happily trade this place in for somewhere that ISN'T a single-bunk setup. Poor diddums!

Heh... so, 1022pm, my feet are up on a pile of blankies (just 'cause it has been pouring rain most of the day doesn't mean it is cool), and we'll be watching one of Kyle's movies to finish off the night... Chris is in charge of tomorrow's itenerary, though I'm planning to spend some time heading through Bead Row, and hopefully finding some fine craftwork rather than just mass-market stuff to see.

Woot!

Love y'all :)

More tomorrow, I'm sure...

X.

Subject: Tuesday in Tokyo
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 22:14:04 +0000

We had a lazy start and didn't get out of the hostel til after Noon.... headed into Tokyo station, and went looking for the Tokyo International Forum - so far, this has been our quickest seek-and-find location so far! This is a beautiful complex, with the feature building having a foot-ball shaped footprint, and being many stories high with an open atrium to see the steel-and-glass structure - way cool! As we walked towards it, thinking hungry thoughts of lunch, we could hear music.. I thought it was a guitar player playing with a recording of a fiddle, bass, and other instruments, but as we got closer I realized he was doing everything himself! Super-tall, prob around 6'6, and long thin fingers (made me think of elves) that were suited for his playing style - thumb wrapped around the fingerboard to play bass notes while his fingers did melody and harmony, along with some very dramatic plucking and pulling of all the strings for various effects. Bought a CD after listening to one song 'cause I was too hungry to hear more, but the CD is awesome!

Tasty lunch in a french cafe - I failed to take enough care to check what I was ordering, and wound up with seafood pasta.. I'm not really into eating baby octopii, or prawns with all their legs still attached, but working around that it was tasty enough. Served with a yummy soup in a delicate teacup, fresh spongy bread, and then a tasty cheesecake, it was a delight! We ate pretty non-regional today, actually, hitting a Wolfgang Puck Express for dinner, which served Earls-like food.. today will be better, as the traditional hotel we're heading to will be featuring all local specialties in the set dinner.

Next stop: Harajuku! If you've ever seen pictures of Japanese kids dressed in crazy costumes (Gothic Lolita is one name for them), then this is the place... tiny street jammed with trendy/cheap shops on both sides, packed with 16-20somethings (and us).... was crazy fun! Crepes-to-go seem to be the food of choice here, there was a stall every 10 shops or so... We managed to leave our umbrella in one of the stores, but made the (poor) decision not to go back for it.

I knew that there was a button/trim/ribbon shop somewhere within walking distance, and had a vague idea of where the roads would be, so we walked... and walked... and walked... and it was POURING, so we were pretty soaked. Found a train station that was NOT what I expected, so stopped for a map check, reoriented ourselves, hopped on a metro subway to get closer to one reference point I knew of, and then set off again with vague hopes of finding this shop... STILL pouring rain, we're getting drenched (though still warm and of relatively good cheer), when I spot a shop selling vintage kimono and fabrics, oo! I step inside, then go back outside to brush the excess water off my arms so I don't drip... a couple minutes later, I'm dry enough to poke through the fabrics, and found a very pretty length of narrow fabric... as we wrapped up the transaction (hooray for patient Japanese salespeople!), they asked if we had umbrellas... then promptly offerred us two! Profuse thanks, of course, and then I grabbed my sketchbook and drew a button and roll of ribbon... they were watching over my shoulder, and one of them quickly got what I was trying to ask, and a few seconds later the other woman was escorting us out the door, and walked us three blocks (through twisty street-alley things) to the shop! Super-cool.. her English was about as good as my French (high school level, 20 years later), so we chatted a bit on our way, and when she dropped us off at the shop, and I turned to look at it, my eyes got wide and my jaw dropped!

La Drogurie carries everything you could possibly want in the way of elegant and fanciful trims. Ribbons (the most expensive one I spotted was $70 a meter), cords, buttons, beads, feathers, velvet cut flowers and butterflies, felt by the roll for making bags and slippers that you'd then embellish with stuff... it was awesome! Beautiful shop, too, but they wouldn't let us take photos :( Think of what your gramma's jewelry box would look like, if she were a drag queen who fancied Marie Antionnette! I picked up a few things, ribbons to go on a bag (one has fish, the other has 'X's), velvet flowers to go on hats, a few buttons... I didn't buy any of their yarns as they were fairly standard things, and pretty overpriced.. all on cones or skeins, nothing name-brand, but nothing that needed to jump in my bag.

We were feeling pretty dry by the time I was done, and now had umbrellass, so we went wandering.. it was dark by now, and Chris had an idea to go back to the crazy Harajuku area to see what it was like in the evenings, and I put him in charge of navigating... If Harajuku was Robson Street, and the trim shop was on Denman, we wound up on West 4th ave! Eventualyl figured this out, hopped back on a train, and got back to Harajuku for dinner at Wolfgang Puck, then wandered back into the much-less crowded streets... the shops were all closing up, and it was still pouring, so there wasn't so much to see in the main strip, so we headed off into side routes.. found some neat architecture - I'm not sure if they have zoning between commercial and residential, but it sure doesn't seem like it - and some dead ends and something that may or may not have been a shrine and may or may not have had a closed sign in front of the entrance.. but we didn't hurt anything, so that was okay!

Got home, vaguely started packing up so we'd be ready to check out in the morning (now today) to catch our shinkasen (high speed bullet train) to Sendai, on our way to the ryokan (traditional hotel) and onsen (hot springs!!! woo!!!!)... I think the timing will be perfect, lots of sitting and then hot tubs for our legs.. tasty food, napping, and all sorts of other relaxation goodness. We'll check into the hotel around 3, spend the day there going back and forth from our room to the outdoor springs, and then check out in the morning and go exploring through Sendai. We're planning to leave most of our luggage in lockers at the Tokyo Station... it sounds safe enough, and we won't have to haul major suitcases and backpacks around Sendai.

7:15am - I'm still waking up early, but since Chris crashed last night just asfter 10, and he appears to be awake, I may not go back to sleep... there's an early -morning fish auction somewhere that is supposed to be quite a spectacle!

Love y'all!

X.

Subject: Wednesday in and around Sendai, Thursday all over the place...
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:38:47 +0000

Wednesday, we got up, packed and checked out of the Ninja Hostel (I think I forgot a pair of flipflops in the shoe racks, but we'll go look tomorrow when we head back to check out Bead Alley), then hit Tokyo station and figured out where our high speed train aka Shinkasen was leaving from.. got in a bit of a rush at the last minute and didn't find a decent supply of food, so we ate kiosk crap on the train and looked on with envy as a bunch of nearby passengers unpacked their bento box lunches full of tasty goodness.

Got into Sendai, hit the Info Centre to get a map and figure out the train to the Iwamatsu Ryokan/Onsen (traditional hotel with hot springs), and the lovely woman helping us called the ryokan to confirm when we would be arriving at the train station, and when the next shuttle would pick us up... a bit of nerves through the train ride, 'cause we didn't have a map listing the stations and weren't sure if we were going the right way, or would miss the stop, but a fellow passenger was able to confirm that Sakunami Station was indeed this direction... so, we hopped off at the right place, followed the line of people, and spotted a man holding up a sign with Chris' name on it, wooo! We made it! Piled into the shuttle van, where a woman in traditional attire handed us moist faceclothes to freshen up during the drive. Check in was smooth, they had all the info our helpful friend had setup via email for us, and then the fumbling started:

We were shown our room by a porter... stepped in, and there is a small space inside the door, and then a raised area. I knew that we were supposed to remove our shoes and put on slippers, so I started poking in the shoe cupboard, only to be informed (in alarmed sign language) that this was HIS job, and he'd take care of us. Okay, cool! Got into the room, and it was HUGE... (and somewhat confusing, more later)... he left, and a few moments later there was a knock on the door and our server came in. Totally wonderful, with a tiny bit of english and a lot of patience, she gestured that we should sit down, and began to prepare tea for us... being waited on was a new experience (hush, Mom...), but neat! She checked that we had read and understood the two sheets of rules and policies in English, and then when I started asking questions, things got tangled. Apparently, I don't like the unknown, so I was trying to find out WHERE the onsen was, WHERE this other place we were supposed to scrub first was, if there would be baskets or hooks or something for our robes (which she had gone out to get larger sizes than the Japanese sizes that were folded in the closet waiting for us)... and she didn't understand, and I didn't understand, and we were both trying really hard to get somewhere... which was when Chris stepped in and told me to chill, take a couple breaths, and just let her go through her routine. As I did that, she offered to show us the onsen (which was something I had been trying to get across..)... and things got better from there!

Two areas of the onsen: public baths (indoors) and the rotenburo (outdoors, open air) - the public baths had bamboo floors, baskets and shoe lockers, mirrors and hair dryers and all that, along with the sit-and-scrub showers and then a giant slate pool with HOT water... the rutenburo was down in a wooden structure with 88 stairs winding around the side of the hill towards the river... halfway was a room for relaxing and cooling off, with a watercooler and cups available, another set of steps down had single bathrooms, another set down had the women-only bath (very similar to the indoor public bath, but with open windows), and then another set down to changerooms and then four mixed-gender open pools: one was the size of most public hot tubs, with just rock around it, another similarly sized had cedar around and into it, another about three times as large and long overlooked the river, again with rocks, and the last was tucked down around the corner of the hill, half set into a cave, with concrete slab flooring. They were all HOT - between 42 and 50ish degrees, and lovely. The river itself was about 8m away, and the hills around were lush forest, so it was a really nice setting. It wasn't very busy, I think there were only four or five other people ever using it at the same time as our visits, and no one talked to us... when I went on my own during a time when all the outdoor pools were reserved for women (with a guard at the elevator who turned Chris away - we hadn' known the schedule), there were a half-dozen women using the space, and I got friendly nods and "Konnichiwa!"s... So, showering and scrubbing with nicely scented soap and then hot tubbing, over and over and over again in the period of just under 20 hours? Totally Christa's Heaven! I loved it!

The other special treat at the ryokan was having dinner served to us in our room.. we had requested vegetarian meals, to avoid difficulty with our food preferences, and had read a blog online that mentioned the lovely side dishes of vegetables that this place served. Our server surprised us by presenting us with a typed English menu that the chef had made, explaining what each tiny, beautifully presented, dish was. It was YUMMY! A non-alcoholic wine apertif, bean curd custard in a glass, veggie soup and a steamed mushroom cream dish that both had their own burners to cook while we started on the other dishes.... veggies in sauce, fried potato with a HOT pepper that I accdently ate whole (ouch!), rice with a variety of beans, veggie tempura, clear broth with noodles, traditional pickles, and then grapes and an orange for dessert.. and a good thing there wasn't more, 'cause we were STUFFED! Everything was lovely - my fav was the little star carved in the top of every mushroom! (one of the mushroom types was a cluster-bunch of long-stemmed, tiny-capped shrooms... reminded me of the squid and octopus I'd accidently ordered the other day!). The server also did the traditional kneeling and scraping as she left our room... took a while to get used to that, too! Breakfast was buffet-style.. and I TRIED the Japanese things, but it was the Western food that I filled up on!

Train back into Sendai (we missed the hourly shuttle bus by 10 min, so I got to tease snapper turtles in the entrance pond for a while), wandered around for a bit, then another train north to.... Matasomething or other... famous for its string of hundreds of tiny islands! Beautiful little place, quite geared towards the tourists (this was the first place I've seen the truly cheap souvenier trinket shops), but that meant there were nice facilities in place. We strolled the seawall, then paid a bridge toll to go onto one of the nearby islands that was set up as a natural park - one of the particularly neat things was the spongy path! Cement/rock paths were covered by a uniform layer of peat moss, or something like it! Not hard-wearing enough, as some torn spots showed, but really nice to walk on in the places where it was intact! Something nasty bit at my ankles, and I was swatting them as we walked, then tonight on the train Chris pointed out the giant red rash I had on both legs! Doesn't hurt, and is fading already, but grrrr....

As we walked back to the train station, we saw a number of signs "in case of tsunami, safety is 250m this way", etc.... I don't know if they had been hit in the past, or just realized that it could certainly happen again, but they were prepared!

Back to Sendai, and we were both wiped so we rebooked our train back to Tokyo for a couple hours earlier, and made it to our new hotel just before midnight. We're in the area that is known as the busiest station during rush hour, and I'm kinda looking forward to watching that.. at 11pm at night, it was as busy as many of the other stations we'd been in mid-day, so it should be interesting. A quick walk around the 'hood showed a bunch of cheap, late-night food places still open, and a number of bars, so we're guessing that this is a university district, but we'll figure out more tomorrow. 1:30am, time for bed!

Oh, description of our room at the ryokan: entrance area, step up to a hallway, on the left is a room with two sinks and a fridge, tucked in behind is a room with just a shower and tub... to the right is a sliding door/wall into a small space that could be a second bedroom, with the closets holding futon and bedding in here.. then straight ahead is another sliding door into the main room with tatami mats and a low table... then forward towards the balconey, and step down off the tatami platform to a small table with two chairs. Toilet? Yeah, we finally found that back in a door right beside the entrance, including toilet slippers that you use only inside that room. Fascinating :)

OhayO Gozaishimasen!

(good morning!)

X.

Subject: If this is Saturday, we're in Asakusa...
Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:13:37 +0000

*asakusa is a subsection of Tokyo(

- weird japanese keyoboard, I'm using the common machines in the room outside our newest hostel door while Chris is on the laptop playing games, so sorry for any weird typos,m I'm just gonna leave 'em in for flavour!

Friday - stayed in the comfy hotel until arund 1ish.. attempted to do laundry, but I apparently overtaxed the dryer, so two hours later our stuff was still damp, and I was itching to leave, so we pulled it out and spread it around the room to 'dry'.,. yeah, right! Two quick stops away on the metro took us to ShinJuku, one of the major sections of Tokyo, and to their government building, with free viewing areas on the 45th floor... poked around that area for a couple hours, then swung east to the 'seedier' part of Shinjuku (their adult entertainment palaces have photos at street level that are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond what we'd deem acceptable for the top rack in a convenience store) mixed in with shops and restaurants.

Most entertaining chunk of the day; we were stopped by two young men asking for directions... turned out to be a ploy by ESL students to strike up conversations with foreingers (okay, that isn't the keyoboard, I'm just tired).. a few minutes into the conversation, I mentioned that we were jugglers, and one of the guys really lit up! He openeed his bag and hauled out a trio of orange peels glued back together (Chris thinks they might have been just totally dried whole oranges, but I have my doubts), and asked us to show him.... so, 15 miun of juglging on the street, then he asked if we wanted to go to a restaurant and keep chatting. Cool, I thought, a local would take us to a japanese restaurant and help us figure out the menu! Er, no. He took us to McDonalds. Ah well.... as we sat, he showed us a handful of amazing magic tricks with a deck of cards, or a coin and a scarf. Seriously skilled, was neat to watch.. but Chris and I both checked that our wallets were still in place as we left!

Puttered around for more of the evening, until the skies opened up AGAIN.. but this time it was with a ferociousness that had the locals in awe... giant lightening, huge thunderclaps, and water that was pouring down the road.,. I took off my Birks and was running around barefoot *without concern, their roads are incredibly clean).. we took refuge in a restaurant where they handed us an english menu, took our order and brought our food with a bill, and then didn't repond to requests for our drinks to be refilled... tasty food, odd service.. but the people sitting around us were really willing to be helpful, so they made up for the staff.

This morning, we checked out and found a laundromat just a couple blocks away to finish drying our clothes, and then loaded up with luggage we hit the transit system again.... got boggled a few times, just with moments of indecision of which order it would be best to achieve things, but we eventually settled on going to our next hostel, dummping our bags, seeing the Samba parade, hitting bead alley, and then heading back out to Narita airport to pick up Chris" /our friends Brian and Michelle. As we got to the metro stop for the hostel, there was a backup of people at the exit to the street... watching the rain DUMP. AGAIN. Heehee.. I'm quite amused by all of it, and now that we'll have enough umbrellas to go around, it doesn't bother me. Walked to the hostel (google Asakusa Japan Carrot Building and see if anything comes up), sat for a bit to dry, then merrily carried on.. the Samba festival was neat - we only managed to hold out for about 20 min of the crowd and noize, but giant marching bands, hoards of Samba clubs, and feathered costumes galore was pretty entertaining to watch. If you didn't know, the fourth largest population group in Japan is Brazilian, after China and Korea... interesting history bits, google it if you like :)

Headed to the airport on the express train.. and as it pulled away, we heard that there were TWO terminals at Narita.. and we had no idea which one they were coming in to. Eventually figured it out (too late, at the wrong terminal and 15 min away), but we were just 20 min late to when they got to our meeting spot, so it wasn't too tragic. I felt like an old travelling-Japan-pro as I made suggestions about the transit passes they should buy, and led us through the various train and metro stations... heehee :) They've both done TONS of travelling through Asia, but this is their first time in Japan.. Michelle is of Chinese descent, so she's expecting people to chatter to her in Japanese and be confused when she doesn't understand.. but she'll be travelling with us three, tall, white folk, so it may help a bit.

We still have a day or two in Tokyo before heading for Kyoto.. not sure what ELSE we'll be doing, but I've got a hooping meet-up planned with a couple locals tomorrow afternoon in Yoyogi park, and there's a forecast of NO RAIN! Should be awesome.

K, 8pmish and we're heading out for dinner somewhere, and wandering the area... more later, of course :)

Love you!

X.

Subject: When we last saw our heroes, they were heading out in the rain...
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 00:38:28 +0000

... where one of our umbrellas got scooped or switched or 'borrowed' from an umbrella stand outside the restaurant that was a few blocks away... ah well. We foucond a cheapo umbrella in the same stand, figured someone just upgraded theirs so it was okay to take it, and headed off.

Wandering the area around our hostel in Asakusa showed a seedier part of Tokyo than we've seen before.... arcades and gambling places were busy, while shops were shut down and homeless folk were sleeping in or under cardboard boxes, or chatting with each other and watching folk go by. Nothing threatening, but then again, I find the area around Main and Hastings in the downtown eastside of Vancouver to be perfectly comfy..

The same area seen in the daytime was PACKED - this is apparently a major source for souveniers (still not sure about that spelling), so lots of shops with a range from kitchy nothings to high-end handmade knives. We were on our way to eventually meet up with some hoopers, so I was packing my foldable hoop around, and when we passed a pile of bags outside one of the shops that had a couple hand-taped hoops lying on it, I made friends with the owner - he was involved with one of the samba crews from the parade yesterday, so his crew gathered around as we chatted. When I unfolded my hoop, they went MAD! Folding Hoop! Look! ... I did a few moves to show them the style of dance I did, then gestured at his hoops to see how he use them... turns out to be poi style, and when I 'asked' to try them, and showed him some harder variations, he was impressed (I am SUCH a show off...) and then I gave him my hoop to try, and he immediately figured out Beam Me Up and a couple other things. 5 more minutes of various languages helped them figure out how I had made the hoop, and I gave them a business card with hooping.org and bodyhoops.com - she makes and sells folding hoops in the same style, if they decide not to make them themselves. Whee! I'm famous in Japan!

We headed to Harajuku, with one transit mis-step as I led everyone off the train at Shinjuku onto the local metro line.. only to realize that I was heading for our old hotel, and remembered that Harajuku is actually a stop on the main train circle. We had a couple hours to spare before meeting the other hoopers, so we headed for the NHK Broadcast Building so Chris could pick up a stuffed character that he liked.. Domokun ( spelled SOMETHINGlike that, I thnk) is a big brown blocky creature with a giant toothy scary open mouth and long arms to wave around... if you YouTube it, look for the 'Best of...' clip to see some funny bits. (I've started doing the Domokun dance wheneverI get excited about something, 'cause it makes Chris laugh). Turned out that it was some special NHK day, and there were a ton of kids and parents wandering around the area - there were play stations (help your child walk across this bridge of individually roped swinging logs!) (EEE! what are they thinking!!), something the Red Cross was doing (maybe tagging your child in case they get lost, or stranded in an eearthquake), and then little stage performances with giant animation characters.. I pity those poor actors inside the costumes, as it was still sticky and hot.

(Oh, the WEATHER! We had clear-ish sunny weather Sunday and Monday... I actually wore sunscreen at the park, and collecteed more freckles yesterday...)

When we headed back to my pre-arranged meeting spot at Harajuku station, one promenade area had a performer (or a group - one bunch of 7 doing amazing a capella stuff) every 10m... and they all had tiny portable amps and speakers, so you could stand in one spot and hear the competing sounds from all the groups.. some were excellent, others not so much,but it was a neat thing... along the edge of Yoyogi Park, we continued on and saw larger groups - full-size drum kits, speakers on stands, laptop computers hooked in... and then we came across the Elvises!!! Two seperate groups of men in black (leather, in most cases), with big pompadours and old-skool sunglasses... they were just setting up, then as we walked farther but continued to look back, they started dancing! You know how in high school, you'd stand in a circle with your friends and face each other as you danced? It was just like that.. not really performing to the crowd surrounding them (well...), but dancing for each other. Cool moves, too! When we passed them again later on in the day, one of the groups had started partner dancing with women who had arrived in their pretty vintage-style dresses... way cool!

Closer to the Harajuku station, we started seeing more of the Harajuku girls and the Goth Lolitas and the Goths.... kids (and in one case, a very-much adult) who spend a ton of effort putting together their costumes, then spending the day hanging around this one corner of the area so people can take their pictures. Google any of those terms and you'll see some amazing outfits... the one that I first thought was sad, but am slowly changing my mind, was an older man, I'd guess in his 40s or 50s, in a really poorly executed Sailor Moon costume. Wide-eyed, glittered and with a child-like smile, he wandered around and enjoyed the attention he received.... one poor band (all clean and tuxedo'd) was overshadowed when he stood beside them and flapped and waved his arms to attract attention.. all the cameras (okay, including ours) did indeed turn his way.. I went from being sorry for him in his low-level costuming, to realizing that he was having the time of his life, doing what makes him happy, and that's okay!

We met Tomo at Harajuku station, and then she led us through Yoyogi Park to their usual hooping spot under a giant tree! A couple of her friends joined us, and we spend a couple hours hooping (and sweating!!) and juggling (Chris found a couple jugglers nearby, and I sent Michelle off with a camera in stealth mode so we could finally get some shots of HIM on vacation), and it was delightful! Their hoop styles were based on HoopGirl moves, as that was the teacher-training that their instructors started with, though there are definitely flavours of Baxter and the Hoop Path - I think that YouTube has a similar influence on hoopers everywhere - and now they've got a couple of my fav moves too!

(okay, back to bed for another hour.. this one is being written in chunks)

(awake early the next day... in a different city)

After hooping, we were pooped but hungry, so we staggered through the craziness of the Harajuku shopping strip once again packed with young Japanese fashion-hungry kids... and eventually found a food court up on the second floor of a mini mall that provided us with miso-grilled noodles (yum!) and pineapple icecream, and after circling the busy room a few times, seats for four weary travellers. Headed back home with intentions of resting up for a bit, then exploring the Shibuya area, but Chris cried mercy for his feet, and we spent a quiet evening in our hostel room, reading and catching up on the most recent episode of Project Runway via YouTube (PR is a reality show, of fashion designers competing each week to create a garment under cerain guidelines, with specified materials.. fun! Chris is learning how to lisp like Tim Gunn, the designers' mentor)

The next morning got off to a slow start - with four people now having input on the day's planning, more negotiating is required. We eventually strolled off towards the train station, headed for the coastal entertaiment district of Obyau (I might have that totally wrong, but it started with an O)... but just as we got across the bridge by our hotel, Michelle's stomach started acting up, so we paused to look for non-walking options. This got us looking into the waterbus that we'd noticed under the bridge, and found that it had a route that went right to the area we wanted to visit, yay! .. but. Michelle decided that she wasn't up for the trip, and she headed back the hostel for a quiet day of tummy-coddling. Chris, Brian and I carried on, and the yet-again-helpful staff at the waterbus got us straightened out with tickets and the idea that we'd be transferring boats somewhere in the middle. The journey was pretty neat, though it was surprising how quiet the main waterway was.. we could see down some side-canals and there were a lot more boats parked along those banks - didn't see anything resembling the marinas of Vancouver. Each side-canal also had a gate with a heavy-duty wall that would drop down to cut off a rush of water in the event of a tsunami... seems these folks have it all planned out!

When we got off the waterbus, the area seemed filled with new, glossy high rise complexes.. I have a feeling that we may have been on a manufactured island, because this was the first place that we saw that lacked old teeny residences packed inbetween new highrises. We spent an hour or so poking around a multi-level mall, declining to spend $30 in a SEGA adventure arcade (Disneyworld for computer gamers) and then finding a little arcade tucked into a shop on the next floor that included a couple games Chris and Brian were familiar with, along with WhackAMole! (I have memories of West Edmonton Mall, and seeing that for the first time when I was.. 10?) Clothing shops, a Hello Kitty boutique where we found something for the friend who is fish-sitting for us (her request: something Hello Kitty that is practical. This is mildly harder than you might think.. but we found a nifty craft-style half-apron in black and red that looks liike a traditional Japanese design from afar, and it is only upclose that you see the Hello KItty face), and a pet store that specialized in GIANT BEETLES! Eeeek! Big scary horned ones, too.. yick. There were a handful of them in an open box display on the floor (think of puppies in a box)... and it took Brian a minute or two to figure out that they weren't just robotic toys. We also saw a cat cafe, where you could pay $8 to enter a room with a dozen cats to pet them, play with them, and have pictures taken.. apparently these are becoming popular as a place for people who don't have space in their homes for pets to come and enjoy the company of an animal. Brian and I were thinking about heading in, but between the price and the smell (room needed some serious ventilation help), this one at least was a no-go.

Next stop: the Museum of Applied Science (again, I may be making the title up.. but think of an extremely classy, adult version of Science World)... on the map it didn't look so far, but as I navigated us in the right direction (I have wound up in the role of map-reader and stranger-accoster, rather like the Julie McCoy of Love Boat that my friends compare me to.. guess it might be true after all) I slowly realized that this was a decent hike, say from Granville and Robson to Davie and Denman. We got there, and the building is GORGEOUS..looks pretty new, neat glass-and-steel architecture, and the inside shows that they put a lot of thought into the whole package, including some of the best indirect lighting I've ever seen bounced off black walls with alternating strips of matte and shiny sections.. dark, but light, and cool! We poked around a bit in the Natural Science area, until Brian pointed out that this was the one section that is the same at any science museum in the world, at which point we headed for the robot floor! First thing to catch our eye there was a working model of the internet, based on black and white balls that were sent through spiraling tracks and gates: you'd stand at a station, spin one dial to choose which station your message would be sent to (the first 8 bits of the message), spin another dial to choose the character or symbol you'd send (the second 8 bits of the message), and then slot white and black balls into the chamber overtop of the colour guides that had rolled into position with your dialed choices. Got them all right? Pull the lever and send them on their way, then turn the character dial to set up the second letter of the message. So, somewhere along the path the balls would take was a reader to strip the first 8 bits for location, and then once the balls made their way to the receiving station, that reader would identify the pattern of black and white balls in the second 8 bits to display the character on a screen. Chris and I were both playing with it from different sending stations, but had the same idea: he sent me "Xta" and I sent him "X (heart) C" - yeah, sappy :)

We headed out from there just in time to hit rush hour... we were game, ready for the packing experience of our lives (though I was thinking seriously about looking for one of the women-only cars)... only to be disappointed. The car load was no heavier than Skytrain at peak hours, so no packing or people running and jumping to hurl themselves into the cars... stopped off at Tokyo Station to let Brian see some of the neon lights around there (again, surprised at how non-crushing the streets were), then went home to find Michelle feeling much perkier. Rested for an hour, and then we headed out to Shibuya - Tomo's recommendation for a good time at night. We were all pretty hungry, so food was the first stop - a multi-floor restaurant that featured tatami mats (on the only night I'd forgotten to bring socks to slip on as I removed flip flops) and private rooms with sliding doors for each party. LIke most of the stand-alone restaurants we've visited, ths one lacked a non-smoking section, but the air wasn't toooo bad. The staff helped us out with an english menu, and the waiter was really good about clarifying things with us, and the food was EXCELLENT! The dishes that eventually made their way to the table included sashimi, sushi, soba noodles, a pizza, potato and rice fried thingies that are my new favourite delivery method for potato, grease and salt, and more... aside from an unfortunate desire to garnish every dish with bits of seafood (surprise krill! surprise tuna flakes! Augh), everything was pretty darn tasty, and we left feeling quite satisfied. Wandering the streets was an adventure - neon, restaurants, gambling arcades, and what we eventually realized were prostitutes: regularly dressed women hanging out at an intersection, dangling a hotel key in one hand... subtle, is she waiting for a friend? Oh, nope, she just went chasing after that business man until he brushed her off, and now she's back at her cruising station. We spotted some 'love hotels' in the area - by-the-hour rentals that couples use in order to get a little privacy away from their tiny house that may or may not be packed with mulitple generations of family members. Also spotted was a pet shop - tiny examples of dogs and kittens on display - mutts were listed starting around $130, and breed-identified ones were way more, so we wondered if there was some crazy licensing fee attached to that... I was voting for the idea that it is a supply and demand thing, but Chris and Brian argued fairly well against that.. (stupid math majors, hmph!). The style in kittens seems to be towards flipped ears - most were of the folded-forward type, but I saw one with winged ears that flipped backwards towards its neck! Cuteish... though I still miss my kitties :(

On the ride home, we were watching the woman sitting beside me on the train deal with the man sitting beside HER - sound asleep, he'd nod forward, then slide sideways towards her, then she'd nudge him back upright. We made several offers to switch places with her, but she waved us off with thanks... I've read that it is nothing unusual to Tokyoites to have someone fall asleep on their shoulder, and that they would grin and bear it rather than getting upset, though she seemed to get more disgusted as the time went on, eventually putting her sweater between them so he wasn't falling against her bare arm (though another offer to move was still turned down)... I was knitting, and if it was ME, I woulda poked him with a needle! As we got off the train and headed for the subway for the last leg home, everyone was feeling tired enough that we hopped in a cab. Dunno if it was a lack of clarity about WHERE the hostel was, or if there was some licensing issue that kept the cabbie from crossing a bridge, but we got a cab ride ALMOST home, and with a bit of wild driving, it was entertaining enough to be worth the six blocks of trudging hte rest of the way.

Taxis in the morning as well, to haul us and all of our gear to the train station, to catch a shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto. They don't have van taxis here, so we ordered two to collect us, and tried really hard to get the idea across that it was impoirtant that we all wind up at the same place. Didn't work, and we were let off at totally different places (picture Tokyo train station being about the size of the extended Metrotown complex). We hadn't thought to make a contingency plan, so Chris and I just shrugged, grabbed some food to go, and headed for the shinkasen platform. Brian apparently thought it wouldbe a good idea to check out the various taxi stands around the station, so by the time Michelle finally persuaded him to just head for the platform, they had 10 min to spare before the train left, and they caught up with us in a bit of a breathless state.. BUT, we all made it, and hopped onto the train. Our seats were rows 14 and 15, with both sets facing forward - I was surprised, because I had asked for four seats facing each other, but then Brian found the lever to hit to swing one set around, so we piled in, had breakfast as the city whizzed by, and then settled down for naps. The trip to Kyoto took about two and a half hours - that thing goes FAST! Crazier when we'd pass one going the other way, WHOOOSH GONE.. and made me think of old math classes and problems that started out "if Ben is on a train going in direction A at speed B, and Tony is on a train going in direction C at speed D..."... no fuss on the ride, just more scenery.. mostly city, but some rice fields, mountains in the distance, and hills that were closer enough for me to see the foliage that created such a neat tapestry of colour and texture - I hope to be able to see a similar area up close, to figure out what the different trees are (ooh, I saw a ginko tree on the street at Harajuku, too coool...).

We arrived at Kyoto station, and it was HOT... not quite as humid as Tokyo, but definitely another step hotter. Hit an info centre, and I started in on my important questions ("can you tell me how to get to this yarn shop...") with the staff, when the guys pointed out a sign identifying this place as the Japan-for-Japanese tourist info, noting that a Japan-for-foreigners info booth was at the other end of the station mall. We did get a map to the hostel from these folks, and the gang wanted to hit the hostel to drop their bags first before figuring out the rest of the maps and things (Brian and Michelle are packing enough to tide them over for three months of backpacking through Asia, PLUS a bunch of belongings that Michelle will be flying home to Toronto first, on her way to collect a bunch of stuff from Canada Customs where it is approaching the one-year limit before they toss it).. so with me in charge of the map, we headed out. I THOUGHT we were on the right street, but the map didn't quite match, so I went in a shop.. only to find that it was closed, and I was disturbing their naps on the restaurant benches inside, oops! Again, very friendly and helpful folks, and they pointed us in the right direction. A few more blocks away, as we were waiting for the light to change, a group of local teens were waiting too, amd smiled at me as we all fanned ourselves to stay cool, "Hot?" "Hi (japanese for hot, one of my 10 vocab words so far)"... so Kyoto gets even more friendly points, 'cause locals initate conversations!

The hostel here is lovely - two modern buildings, bright and clean, and the rooms are a bit more spacious (there is about a food and a half beyond my arms reach in width, and I'd guess the room is about 15 feet deep - pure luxury! Chris and I are in one building on the bottom floor right in front of the entranceway and across the hall from the bathrooms, so a wee bit noisy but quite bearable.. Brian and Michelle are in the other building on the 4th floor, and just as we arrived, so had the city inspector to check out the elevator, so they had to schlep everything up four flights of stairs.. but they have a couch! I think their room is designed for 3 people, and some booking glich got them an upgrade.. their side also has a large internet lounge, and a TV room on another floor which was already in use, so we took Chris' laptop over to their room to watch a James Bond movie (thanks for the loan, Kyle!)... I fell alseep halfway through, so I snagged Chris' cardkey and headed back to our room. BOOM BOOM BOOM woke me up, and apparently he'd been knocking for a couple minutes that I'd slept through, oops!

Whoops, before we were home watching movies, we headed back to the train station, hit the english-speaking info booth where I DID get my directions to the yarn shop, and also to a swimming pool nearbyish, and then we went for dinner. The station has a basement filled with restaurants and shops, and we found a very tasty meal (again, hooray for english menus) with multiple teeny dishes of a bunch of things that were fresh and tasty and beautifully presented, oh my! Dinner done, we headed off wandering. No one was keen on walking into the downtown area (prob a 20-30min walk from where we were) but we also didn't think we'd use a whole-day bus/metro pass, so I put on my Julie McCoy hat and used three maps (city map, bus map, and the hand-drawn-with-yarn-shop map) to figure out where we'd go... hopped on the bus, used Michelle's ability to read Cantonese numbers to guide us to the right stop (Kyoto is organized on a grid - named streets one way, numbered streets the other), so I got us on the bus going up the correctly named street, and she spotted the numbered street for our stop. The hand-drawn map included TONS of landmarks in english (Starbucks, YMCA, bar names, restaurant names, "crab" to note the place with the giant moving crab sign), so we quickly headed in the right direction and arrived at YARN!

This was another branch of the Avril shop that I had hit in Tokyo.. but a HUGE space in comparison! Double-height walls on one side covered in pegs to hold cones of yarn, a loft built up on the other side, to climb and explore, and helpful staff who knew the english words for the yarn content... I didn't go TOO crazy (okay, $100 of crazy), but picked up the bamboo-and-copper yarn I'd forgotten to ask for at the Tokyo shop (the white bamboo and orange copper make a pink-looking yarn, cool!), some hand-painted wool and silk goodness that the other store didn't have, more of the straw-looking yarn I've been knitting into a hat, some wool-and-silk cabled yarn that the Tokyo store DID have but only in bright jewel colours, and this is a warm, chocolate brown... and some silk chenille, hand dyed in tealy greens. My budget is holding up well - we've eaten quite cheaply, so I'm currently running with $500 to spend in the next four days, including meals but also including hopefully some local pottery and jewelry or hair ornaments, and maybe an antique kimono - we found a shop last night with some that FELT like slubby silk going for about $20. Crazy!

Today's plan will actually include some history - I think a castle is on the list, along with some traditional gardens... the hostel has a little sign that Chris pointed out last night, explaining that there is a sento (public bath) just steps away, so I may go for a scrub and hot tub later tonight, if I don't hit the swimming pool at some point. (I feel a bit of a jinx when it comes to locating pools, even though we've only been misguided once so far... ah well)

Wow, I've been writing for most of an hour.. time to get Chris up, so we can meet in the hostel's restaurant for breakfast at 10!

Love y'all :)

X.

Subject: Kyoto days 2 and 3
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 00:31:26 +0000

Oops I just read back and found a mistake.. "Hi" is Japanese for Yes, not Hot.. I dunno how to say hot,actually, should look that up along with 'sorry' and 'where?'...

We didn't hit the castle yesterday or the day before, so that's happening at 11:30 this morning.. Brian and Michelle are already off visiting another temple for photo ops, and Chris is still asleep (8:30am, that's reasonable) and we'll shower and pack and check out of this place by 10ish or so, then meet them at the castle.

Wednesday was the day I resigned from navigating... and aside from being mildly stressed about other navigators steering us wrong (okay, I need to have more faith that other people have similar skills..), I had a good time just tagging behind people and rubbernecking. After picking up transit passes from the Kyoto Train Station (a bit of a challenge in itself), we hit the subway and headed to the Imperial Palace. There was a definite lack of signage "this way to the palace" so it took us (okay, Brian) a bit to confirm that we were heading in the right direction, but eventually we got to the extended public garden grounds and started looking for the place to sign up for the tour (original plan invovled getting signed in, then hitting the castle a few blocks away, then coming back for the tour). The grounds have wide roads of crunchy gravel, and no particular walking paths other than that, so we crunched along, looking at neat trees (including probably one of the hugest non-coniferous trees I've ever seen), the occasional butterfly, and lots of unnamed ancient buildings. A busy gateway looked like it might be the tour place, but held one of the few less-than-pleasant Japanese folks we encountered.. I guess being a palace guard and having to deal with non-Japanese-speaking foreigners being in the wrong place kinda sucks... he did pull out a map and steer us in the right direction, so we eventually found the admin office where they photocopied our passports and gave us an application form to fill out, so that we would be able to enter the Imperial Palace grounds.

The tour didn't take us into any of the buildings, but wandering outside was still quite interesting. There was a variety of architectural styles, because the place has burnt down to the ground so many times that they could redesign it over and over again, each time including a design reference to a previous era. The brightest building was the place where coronations (that's not the right word for what happens to emperors, but you know what I mean) happen... white walls, and all the pillars and roof beams were painted BRIGHT ORANGE! It has something to do with Chinese influence at the time, though the Chinese version is more red, and the story behind it is that bright colours scare off evil demons. Other interesting lore: pine trees are revered here and get scuplted into a shape that suggests a person holding their arms up to the sky to be filled with the spirit of the god (s). Ceremonial life includes different gates into the compound depending on who is arriving.. the Emperor's gate is for his use, or his family IF they are travelling with him.. if they aren't, they get to use the Emperess' (sp?) gate.. and there's another one for nobles (along with waiting rooms divided by rank) and another one for servants (that's the one we got to use, though the tour guide suggested that maybe next time we visit, we'll have become visiting dignitaries, like PMs or Kings, so we could use the Emperor's gate! Neat!). The gardens inside the palace grounds were GORGEOUS. Okay, I get the whole Japanese-manicured thing now.. it isn't like an English garden of smooth lawn and hedges, and orderly planting.. it is about creating a mixture that is pleasing to the eye, always leaves something around the corner to keep you strolling.. and I'm sure there's a bunch of symbolism I don't understand. Hey, know those cement shrine thingies (cupola on four legs) that some people put in their gardens? I always thought those were along the lines of a garden gnome, but they were through the gardens here, and in the Temple we saw yesterday, so I think I need to revise that opinion...

We headed back to Kyoto Station for a meal in their underground mall - I had found reference to an organic buffet online, and we saw it in our rounds the previous day, so we gave it a try.. Brian and Michelle enjoyed their meals, and Chris and I were a bit 'meh'... buffet food just doesn't have the same fresh gloriousness as ordered meals, and while they had a decent variety, a lot of it was fish-based that neither of us were excited about. Next stop was a dessert restaurant - Brian had spotted the local specialty, a giant sundae TOPPED with a slice of cake, and he was determined to challenge his body to eat one (he's dropped about 6 pant sizes since we saw him last, hard core exercise and diet control), but wanted us along to help, just in case... we made it through, but for the next hour or so he was moaning about his body going into shock with all the refined sugar it hadn't experienced for months... I coulda licked that sundae all by myself! (wussy!)

Chris and I decided to have another quiet night at the hostel, spent a bit of time up on the rooftop deck admiring the lights (Kyoto is much less about high-rises than Tokyo...), avoiding the cockroach that he had squished outside the elevator the night before (ick!), and just chillin' and reading and watching Xmen... (cultureal overload? Watch some commercial dreck, it always helps!)

Yesterday morning we decided to rent bikes rather than damage our feet with more walking, but a few blocks away from the hostel realized that we should have upgraded to mountain bikes! The standard upright cruiser that everyone in Japan seems to use doesn't have any gears... it is amazing how much harder a gentle slope is, without the ability to shift! Brian led us along the start of a temple walk... which started going off track as soon as we hit a steep hill, got off to walk our bikes, and Chris pointed out a glass shop! Heehee... we DID make it to a temple (I'll figure out the name later, but it is up on the hillside of eastern Kyoto) but with a bit of poking around pottery and gift shops along the way.. the temple was HUGE - spread out over a good chunk of hillside, making use of the natural bushes and trees around it rather than having a garden, but with lots of water features - I'll have a picture of me dipping water from a big dragon scuplture, that one's for you Heather!... lots of gongs, too.. this was a Buddist temple (oops, might actually be a shrine), and there seems to be something significant about ringing a gong three times. They are hung up at ceiling height, so to make them ring, you'd grab a massive rope and haul on it so the top whacks the gong... we've also got a picture of one of the ropes - at least 40cm across in diameter, with beautiful coloured ropes plied together and then the whole thing is covered in macrame, with the slope of the macrame knots exactly matching the slant of the rope plies... gorgeous! Other interesting thing: a number of smallish rocks, about the size of a loaf of bread (sometimes sourdough rounds), with vague faces or body features carved into them.. and fabric aprons! I'll have to look up the festival, but these aprons all looked like they had been out in the weather for a while.... I'll be curious to find out what that is all about. (we're random sorts of tourists, not hauling interpretive guides around with us, just going "I wonder why..." and sharing ideas, but generally not searching out the real answers! Slackers, us..) The temple area took us a couple hours to get through, and then it was time for food.. bike ride back down the steep roads (look for a picture of me doing no-feet, wheeee!), then pedal along the sidewalk of a busy street (that's what they do there, no bicycles on the roads, oh, and no helmets either!) until we found a restaurant with plastic food that looked tasty. Soba (buckwheat) noodles have become a safe staple for Chris and I, and they were tasty enough...

After lunch, I took a turn at navigating - I thought we were pretty close to the Kyoto Craft Centre, and had found a museum of history and weapons that the boys would find interesting, so off we went... only to spend the next hour being somewhat lost, then finding that the Craft Centre was closed (dunno why, but it is behind construction barricades)... then off to the museum, only to find that IT was also closed, though more in the 'we're not open today for a random reason' than anything else. This WAS the spikiest building we've seen, though - barbed wire on top of metal spikes on top of wooden spikes... guess they were serious about their collection not heading out the door! Getting back onto Brian's planned route, we aimed for the 'prettiest street in Kyoto'... higher-ish-end tourist area that was indeed lovely (made me think of Yaletown)... classic Japanese wood-and-paper architecture, beautiful road surfaces and gardens inbetween the buildings, and lots of shops, including pottery that was in the $300-for-a-bowl range, and a glorious picture of a bamboo grove done on glazed clay tiles.. up in the range of multiple thousands of dollars. I did snag a vintage men's kimono here (in a 'everything for 1050 yen' shop - that's about $10CAD) in a sage green.. not entirely sure what I"m going to do with it, but it hangs well on me as a long, elegant coat... (yeah, exactly... I don't HAVE elegant clothing, so I'm not sure when I'll ever wear it!). If I had been thinking about things more, I would have looked through the women's section for fabric that I loved, even though they'd all be too small for me, I could still use the cloth to make something else at that price)... Chris picked up a door hanging that we'll use to cover a closet downstairs, and then we had an icecream and/or shaved ice break before wandering on.

Headed back to the hostel to clean up for the evening, hit the Kyoto Station again to book our train seats for coming back to Tokyo, then caught the subway towards downtown, and walked across the bridge (about a third the length of anything in Vancouver - there's just a small river cutting through one side of the city) to the Gion district - nightlife and geishas here! We bought tickets for the show at Gion Corner, with demonstrations of traditional Japanese art forms. It started with an abbreviated tea ceremony, then we watched two women playing Koto - long stringed instruments where the sound is changed by pressing down on the elevated strings - they don't hit a fingerboard like guitars, just air, but it creates a waah-waah effect - I'm sure you've heard it in 'this is the music of Japan' background music.... and while they were playing, another women created a flower arrangement. (apparently not an original one, as our english headsets mentioned it being a recreation of a sample available in the lobby for closer inspection). Next up was traditional court music and dance - I wouldn't be surprised if they had grabbed six men off the street and handed them instruments to play for 10 minutes, this was the most cacophonic 'music' I've ever heard, outside of experimental jazz ... but the dude doing the traditional symbolic dance was at least interesting to watch - Chris said the costume made him think of some First Nations regalia, with a wooden mask and then muti-layers of clothing including a heavily fringed (though short-fringe) top layer. Not my fav part of the whole performance, though the bunroko part that came next was! Bunroko (sp?) is low-level comedy, formerly used as interludes in the very serious, stylized Noh performances before becoming recognized in its own right. Known for being very accessible, we were able to follow the story line thanks to our guidebooks, and I really enjoyed the actors' physical and vocal skills (you're tied up.. show that you are becoming drunker only with facial expressions) and the costumes - the Lord was shuffling along in what I'd call adult jammies - his 'feet' were tucked into pants that dragged 30cm behind him! Much fun. Next was a traditional dance performed by two maiko - apprentice geisha - which was lovely in a very stylized way.. I don't think I've ever moved my hands that gracefully! The clothing and hair was as ornate as you'd expect, and their faces remained expressionless throughout. Last up was a puppet show, or an exceprt from one... three people manipulating one puppet, all in black with their heads and faces covered, except for the 'master' whose face was exposed. This was... okay. We had a synopsis of the story, but there didn't seem to be much going on other than the 'woman' tramping back and forth, tossing her hair, and eventually climbing a ladder (okay, that was cool) to a bell tower. Much stomping that didn't seem related to the actions on her legs... I dunno. All in all, the show was good - 50 min to see Japan! Tonight only! (okay, no, they do two shows every night)... but it was a good sampler.

Off to eat, we headed back over the bridge into a little alley chock full of restaurants that Brian and Michelle had spotted while wandering the night before... Kyoto seems to shut down early, so a lot of the places were already closing or had a very limited menu still available (this was about 9:15pm).. we wound up in a place that specialized in leek, with leek in just about every dish on the menu. I had an incredibly tasty meal of leek-and-potato tempura (all chopped up then battered and fried kinda like a hashbrown), miso soup with tofu balls that reminded me of bread in a french onion soup, and some skewers of chicken that were so good we ordered more... Chris had udon noodles with some sort of yam soupy sauce to go on top - a very subtle flavour, and somewhat odd texture, but not bad, and Brian and Michelle did tofu and sashimi, including giant hunks of octopus tentacle! What can I say? I'm just not a tentacle kinda girl. They headed back to the hostel to do laundry, and Chris and I wandered the city a bit more before heading back, though the only things that seemed to be open at that point were bars... wait, I guess the same is true of Vancouver, so I shouldn't be surprised.

9:30am now, so I'll gonna wake Chris and we'll get on with our day.... I'm hoping that the Raku and textile places won't be the bombs that I've read in people's reviews of the Kyoto Handicraft Centre - it looked so good in the guides, but visitors said it was just a giant shlocky colleciton of cheap souveniers... glad I didn't drag everyone out that way yesterday!

Alright, love you.... the photos I've mentioned will eventually be appearing online, prob Facebook and Flickr. I'll send you links when that happens :)

X.

Subject: Coming Home!
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2008 01:56:16 +0000

Japan has been lovely, but after a couple hours in Akihabara (known as Electric Town, home of all things electronic and electric, we'll be scoping out LEDs today along with other things), I'll be happy to hit the train out to the airport, clear all my yarn and knitting through security (the yarn is coming home in the carry-on... if my clothing gets checked-in and misplaced, I know where I can buy more easily!), and then beat the sun home (our flight leaves at 6:30pm, we arrive at 10:30am, all on Sunday).

A bit I missed from Kyoto days 2 and 3 was on the way down from the huge temple, passing a group of schoolchildren and teachers, all with clipboards in hand, eyes wide watching us go by but not QUITE getting the nerve up to talk to us.. Michelle guessed that they were supposed to be practicing their English, so I turned around and asked if they wanted to practice on me. The boy who was out in front turned bright pink and smiled as he backed away, but another stepped forward, and with some prompting from his teacher, asked where I was from, what my name was, and a few other questions.. then he pulled out a map of Japan without any writing but three red dots, and asked if I knew where Hiroshima was - that's where they were from - .. I got it right, and then he pulled out an origami crane and asked if I knew what it was.. I'm still not sure if they were looking for 'origami!' but I answered 'peace crane', and they presented me with a lovely packet of origami papers!

Okay, catching up.. day 4 of Kyoto we DID hit the castle.. and it was pretty cool! Giant moat (15m wide?), nightengale floors (not squeaky, but indeed sounding like birds when you stepped anywhere, a warning system for intruders), and ancient paintings on the walls and ceilings (doors stayed closed against the light, and no photography as flashes harm the paintings. The outer walls were stepped all the way up for archers to rush to the defense, and the inner palace had its own moat, not sure if the bridge was a drawbridge or a push-the-bridge-off-this-side thingy, but the doors to the keep were super-thick.. Chris took a bunch of photos, so they'll be available whenever we figure out how and where to post 'em.

Post-castle, Brian and Michelle headed off to another temple, and Chris and I hit the Kyoto Textile Centre, just in time to catch one of their 6 daily kimono fashion shows, all modern styles, then we wandered upstairs through the mix of cheap mass-production stuff and very high-end one-of-a-kinds being produced by artists we could watch.. a man making paintbrushes chatted with me about their purpose (larger pouncing styles used with stencils, dainty soft ones for freehand) and their bristles (goat, horse, and boar), another was pleased that I knew enough Japanese to ask "shibori desu-ka?" - Is this shibori? .. as he was working tiny stitches into the fabric to form a resist similar to tie-dye. I picked up a giant skein of indigo-dyed silk (okay, it wasn't tagged, but it FEELS like silk, and it LOOKS like indigo dye) and a small coaster-patch of shibori in indigo, and then Chris was about at his maximum for craft exposure.

We headed for the train station - a couple hours early, but we've learned that things take us long enough to figure out that it is more relaxing to take an extra hour to find stuff, and THEN sit down to eat. Dinner was at the same tasty place we visited on our first day, and the extra time took us through the 9 story department store, including their fun stationary section (sheep paperclips! mini purple pens!) and the basement floor filled with FOOD! We grabbed a bunch of bakery items for the train (crazy amounts of packaging, as usual, but it DID include a nifty piece of ice-ish... didn't steam like dry-ice, but also didn't melt into a puddle of water ), picked up our luggage from the locker where we had stowed it at the start of the day, and headed back to Tokyo.

The hostel for the final leg of our journey was a few subway stops outside of Ueno... this time we had a four-bed room with ensuite - the most spacious place we've had so far, but also fairly run down (though it smells a lot cleaner than the last place in Tokyo we were at), but the inside of the elevator and all of the walls in the stairway are covered with pictures, magazines, paintings, suggestions of places to visit.. really quite neat! Our ensuite is a toilet in one cubicle (have I mentioned the tank style where the refilling water is actually pouring out of a tap at the top of the tank so you can rinse your hands before it goes into the toilet basin? Cool design), an open-access sink, and then a shower and tub room - HUGE tub, in the deep soaker style but with more length than I had seen anywhere else, and I was happy to have a chance to do some tub-reading in the mornings when I was up earlier than everyone else.

We got in on Friday night, and decided to go check out Roppongi Hills - the expat area of the city, where english-speakers tend to go if they want to hang out with their own kind. BUSY BUSY BUSY place, and fairly scuzzy - every street corner had a bunch of touts - men trying to get you to visit a particular club or restaurant, the first thing Chris and Brian heard was an invitation to a titty bar - and a handful of men openly staring at my chest. Bleah. This was the first (unfortunately, not only) slimy experience I had in Japan, and it left a sour taste in my mouth and a longing for the more polite company of Japanese (or Vancouverites!) that I had become accustomed to. We had dinner in a western restaurant (Wolfgang Puck's cafe, where Michelle had the best chicken salad of her life) and then hit a cab to get home.

Saturday we visited the 'Institute for Nature Study' - which I had hoped would be something wild and crazy-new, but was yet another manicured garden - and then split up. I wanted to hit more craft things on my own, so I could take however much time I wanted, and the three of them wanted to spend a few hours in Akihabara looking at tech stuff. They had fun, and I had amazing luck! I headed back to the Avril shop we had found on the first day, got lost a bit around the train station and then headed in the right direction... I eventually realized that I was getting close, but was one street too high. In the block between streets, though, I found a little mid-end craft shop that carried something I'd been searching for: ...acck, the japanese name escapes me right now, but they are dainty flowers made from folded fabric, sewn into hair ornaments that Japanese women would wear with formal kimonos.... kanzashi? Maybe... and a couple other hair pins with pottery sakura flowers (cherry blossoms), and a pretty bandana type thing (they might put it to use as a gift wrap, I'll use it as a bandana).... hit Avril, and in the two weeks since I"ve been there, they had shifted the shop around so all the summer yarn was hidden and the winter stuff was out. I was looking for a second yarn to carry with the indigo silk I'd picked up in Kyoto, so I could use bigger needles and make the yarn go farther, and after three rounds of the shop I had what I wanted.. along with 30grams of five tweedy silk yarns in coordinating colours so I can knit or crochet an ombre-effect of something, with the colours flowing into each other as I knit with three strands, and swap colours in and out as I transition along... and some wristlets machine-knit in a tube of the same yarn in one colour.

Heading back from the yarn shop, I found the tiny button store we'd spotted earlier in our trip - just at the point where I stopped to wonder 'have I gone too far and missed it?!" I looked up and saw a giant button sign hanging right in front of me, tee hee! Teeny walk-in closet of a shop, it had a lot of lovely buttons and beads, but I restrained myself (I was also down to just $40 on hand at that point) and bought some lovely buttons to hopefully go with some of the greenish yarn I bought.

Happily broke, I made it back to the hostel (minor transit glitch - as I transferred trains at Tokyo station, I realzied I could have gotten off three stops earlier as the routes overlapped), and we headed out for one last bit of Japanese fun, a burlesque show/speakeasy! I had looked for burlesque shows online before we left Vancouver, just curious to see if there were similar activities to what we'd do for a special night out here in town (Chris actually hasn't been to a show, but I've been out with the girls to several), and found Cherry Typhoon, a local performer with a bilingual website with her show schedule. A bit of hunting, and then asking a local, got us to the Samurai Cafe, where the tiny upstairs room was converted into a show lounge. We snagged one of three couches, and everyone arriving later sat on cushions on the floor (a couch beside us held a couple and their two children, one still nursing and the other about 3)... it was smoky and loud, but fun! A bit of burlesque, a neat duo of guitar player providing background grooves and a storyteller who had a small box frame with a stack of photos - he was narrating a picture book, pulling one picture out to display the next as he went along. It wasn't in English, but his second story was a long tale of some horses and their riders falling off as they clip-clopped (japanese sound is different, but obvious) faster and faster around the world... and just about all of it was sound effects rather than words. We were the only english-speakers in the crowd, and Cherry helped us out with an introduction and welcome, and a brief description of each act (though her banter was all in Japanese).. in between acts, we got our hands on enough wrapped candies from dishes on the table that Chris and I could do a mini juggle act, which gained us great applause and entertained the 3-yr-old mightily (the baby had kept herself entertained by picking up something (imaginary) from a woman and transferring it to Brian's hand and back). We didn't make it to the end of the show, between tiredness and smoke-buildup, but headed out, watched Chris play a game of Pachinko (like Plink from The Price Is Right) with the manager standing behind us (large crowds of tourists who don't understand the games apparently need supervision), and staggered home.

That's it.. oh, second slimy incident was outside a convenience shop, where a street-ish looking man walked over, stared at my chest, and gestured 'big boobs, niiiice' with graphic sign language. I moved behind Michelle (the guys were inside getting drinks), and he just moved to see me again. Brian came out, and I moved behind him, and the dude eventually gave up and left.. but it was waaay too.. unstoppable? for me. Yickyyickyick. Too bad I don't go for violence. Ah well. If that is the biggest glitch in the trip, it was a pretty darn awesome trip (and it was!)

Here's hoping for another smooth flight home.. next email will be from Vancouver :)

Love yall!

X.

Sunday Sep 7

Our departure from Japan was fairly uneventful... got to the airport with time to spare for a stroll around Akihabara (I got a pair of nifty earphones that have little wires on the back to keep the buds in place while I hoop!) and make a quick trip to the Post Office so Chris could mail a postcard to his niece, and I could buy the Hello Kitty Kimono series of stamps... they had stuck in my head from an earlier visit to the Post Office (for international bank machines, and to add a rubber-stamp stamping into my log book - didn't actually find something that looked properly commemorative, so I've probably got some "Fragile!!" "Live Animals!" or some such in kanjii stamped into my book.

Flight was a teeny bit bumpier than the trip over, but still lovely. Watched the Sex in the City movie (not bad, pretty much a 2-hour version of a TV episode), taught a flight attendant how to knit (she started it, I swear!), managed to get Chris a veggie meal that was closer to something edible for him, but still had enough things that I got a decent share, and we made it home!

It is 1pm here... which means (I think) 7am Japan time, and we haven't slept yet. I feel pretty hyper right now, but I'll try for a lie-down and see if I can nap a bit.. I don't work until 8pm tomorrow night (hoop classes start up this week, with a LOT of brand-new faces, yeek!) and Chris told his job that he 'might' be in to work tomorrow, so we've both got another day to get our body clocks figured out.

Oh, and I have a WooLee Winder sitting at the post office to be picked up! Woot! (this is an attachment for my spinning wheel that will wind the bobbin automatically, so I don't need to stop treadling and drafting, ever! More spinning, faster!... I can't decide if I want to get spinning, or start playing with my collection of Japan yarns.. or do what I SHOULD, which is finish up my Maiwa samples for the workshops in early October... )

Happy to be home, safe and sound.. the trip was awesome, travelling with Chris is as lovely as living with Chris, and I have a slightly expanded Japanese vocab (I MAY be up to about 15 words/phrases...)... so for now, Sayonara!

X.

Okay, I fell. Hard.

2008-03-11T16:19:00.000-07:00

So.. what I didn't mention in that last post (yes, the one I wrote in October), but briefly alluded to in the one before that written in September, is that I Met A Boy.

Several times, actually.

The first time was online, through OKCupid, where I was once again puttering in an online dating scene without real hopes or intentions of actually meeting anyone in real life. The conversation went along the lines of this:

Him: your profile looks neat, and I like to converse with people in person. Want to have chai?

Me: uhm, thanks, but I like to get to know people online a bit first.

(yes, this is why I'm so succesful at dating. Really.)

Second meeting: Saturday afternoon, in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery, I'm hooping with friends... Jugglers are playing downstairs in the rink, and one of them starts climbing the stairs towards us while tossing clubs. I grab a second hoop, run down the stairs, and start showing off that I, too, can do tricky things while climbing stairs. We may (or may not) have chatted a bit. I did not introduce myself, or do anything in particular to extend a conversation.

(yes, this is another example of why I am not so successful at dating. On my side, though, I will point out that I didn't start talking about Death with him until well past our first official date.. but that comes later. See? I've learned SOME things...)

Third meeting: I am downstairs at Robson Square on a Friday night, with hoops and poi to play with and share while dancers fill the rink during BC DanceSport's Summer Series... I am hooping and poi-ing, and a guy comes over and asks to try my poi. He gets a non-basic move going, and we start chatting... turns out he doesn't do poi, but he juggles, and he has just translated a juggling pattern into the poi, and is doing quite well. Half an hour goes by, and I'm starting to think that this fellow is kinda interesting.. possibly the most interesting person I've met in a while, and maybe I should do something about it. Do I? No, not yet.

(see? Still yet ONE MORE reason why I've sucked at dating.. but wait!....)

His friends come and find him, two women and another man.. I get introduced, and we're chatting awkwardly as a group, when he turns to me and asks if I'm on OKCupid... and aside from feeling mildly embarrassed about this coming out infront of his friends (c'mon, cool, succesful people don't use online dating sites, right?), I am excited to realize that this means that we're already connected with each other, so I don't need to ask for his phone number or anything. Woot! We parted ways, and I rushed home, hopped online to OKCupid, and sent him a message asking him out for chai.

August 6th, 2007th was our first date. What made it particularly special? He was LATE. Late late, no phone-call-I'm-on-my-way late, but red-faced-have-I-just-been-stood-up, he's-30-min-late, I-feel-stupid late. We were meeting at Starbucks in Chapters, and after arriving early, wandering the main floor a bit, wandering back into Starbucks, and repeating for half an hour, I was SO mad/embarassed/nauseous that I was finally getting myself a chai and giving up, when he arrived, breathless, and looking utterly horrified and being very very apologetic.

Thank God, 'cause it made me accept the apologies and give him a second chance!

He'd gone for a motorcycle ride with a friend out to Harrison Hot Springs, and hadn't properly accounted for the time it would take to ride all the way back into downtown to meet me. So, I'm jittery getting over my anger, he's jittery getting over the fast ride, but we managed to get our drinks, and headed over to the steps of the Art Gallery to chat and watch people go by.

Now, here's the weird thing, that I don't totally understand: For most of August, we hung out a couple times a week, at the hooping/juggling things downtown or going for motorcycle rides and dinners or walks, or whatever. I was always a bit uncomfortable, and felt awkward around him.. we'd hug goodnight, but that was it.. and I would leave questioning whether or not I wanted anything more...

When I was about to leave for Burning Man, I had just about decided that it wasn't going to go anywhere. Being the non-confrontational type that I am, I didn't bother mentioning this to him, and headed off with plans to be mentally free and open to meeting a sweetheart on the playa, and come back and 'just be friends'. Instead, I went off to the playa, met a sweetheart and had a fabulous time, but also came to a place of recognizing that I had to be more brave about letting people in, and initiating the step to get past the awkwardness MYSELF, to see if there was possibly a decent relationship out there waiting for me. So, less 'when it is right, it will all be perfectly easy, ' and more 'when it is right, I'll know because I've put the effort in, and be willing to continue putting in effort'.

Came back into town, went on a couple more dates, opened myself to the attraction that I was feeling for him, had the MOST awkward goodnight hug ever (soo badly wanted to lean in for a kiss, but couldn't make myself do it), jumped online right after and sent him a message saying that I wanted a kiss, and could I have a raincheque? .. and then collected on the raincheque at the next earliest opportunity.

Uhm, yum?

Yes, Yum.

YUM. Yumyumyum.

Things didn't go smoothly right away... but they've worked out, with the most incredible, effective communication that I've ever managed in a relationship, and the last sevenish months have been absolutely lovely.

A couple noteworthy points along the way:

I had started feeling overwhelmed by the urge to say The Three Words... but swallowed 'em down. Too soon, too scary, what if he freaks out? One night, we were cuddling when he caught a weird expression on my face and asked about it... "Uhm, I have something to tell you, and it is scary..." "Does it start with the letter L" "Uhm, yeesss..." (pause) "Are you a Lesbian?" (much laughter) "Yes! I am a lesbian!" ... and for a couple weeks afterwards, I could occassionally lean over and whisper in his ear "I am a Lesbian" as practice, before I got comfortable with telling him that I loved him.

He came home with me for Christmas, which would be both the first time he'd meet my family, and the first time we'd take a road trip. It was amazing, that the seven-hours-more-like-nine-in-bad-weather of driving, plus three days of strangers in high loads (including my dad roping him into fix his old computers), didn't drive him crazy. I missed his cue of "let's go see if Tim Horton's has chai!" (which apparently means, Honey, I really need to have some time away from your parents, can we leave?) but managed to clue into it later, so we had a Christmas night drive-around-town that included visiting the horses in the Stampede grounds, and seeing a housecat stalking the handful of deer that were out for a midnight snack in someone's front yard. Other trip highlights included a freshly-snowy walk to my family church, where my mom's history as Coordinator (aka secretary) got me keys to go in to the empty sanctuary and play my favourite piano for him... and having him grab me and squeeze so hard 'cause he had no idea I had mad piano skillz... and then tackling each other into the snow on the way home, to make snowangels. The boy is Fun.

The communication thing has been one of the most.. enlightening?... thrilling?... awe-inpiring?... parts of our relationship, where I'm continually thinking "OOHHhhhhhh, THIS is how this is supposed to work! Dang!", whether it be about our labelling status (he's my Boyfriend, which just feels so much better than the silly Significant Other I had in my early 20s) (yes, it has been that long since I've had a more-than-a-few-dates-or-just-friends-with-benefits relationship), money issues (he's making lots more than I am, but I'm too proud for charity.. so he can buy me safety gear for riding his motorcycle, but I'll buy myself snowboarding gear and passes and we'll share food and outings), or the various other things that can go un-spoken and then become problems... or get spoken of, and be dealt with in a wonderful, functional way! With check-ins! So cool.

Time spent in his company is lovely... I can knit or spin (on the new wheel I bought before Christmas, with permission to set it up as his place so I wouldn't have to choose between spinning or hanging out with him) while he plays video games, work beside him on his spare computer, read in his tub while he's in his workshop, wake him up early to drag him out to Fibrefest (ooh, more fibre to spin!), or spend a weekend-and-a-bit puking my guts out while he offers to hold my hair out of the way.. yes, that would be this past weekend, and he managed to cope with a very sick, whiney, semi-conscious, not-very-much-fun-at-all me without getting grumpy or going insane... and I love him even more for it.

He's smart, funny, sweet, playful, interesting, interested, (yes, those are two different things), thoughtful, balanced, creative, active, cuddly, mellow, handsome, and he makes my toes curl (particularly when I'm not sick and whiney) in a really good way.

Oh, and he's gave me a coupon for us to take dance lessons, hidden in a beautiful wooden box he crafted for me as an incentive-to-clean-your-room-present-turned-Christmas-gift. Yes, we have Cleaning My Room dates. Can I say Man of my Dreams? I never knew he existed, and I'm so glad that I've found him.

(taken at my 35th birthday party - in the background is my lovely friend Erica, who saved the day by taking on my hoop class last night when I decided at the last minute that I was still too sick to work)

A girl named Fluffy (BM 2007 part 3)

2007-10-10T00:30:00.000-07:00

(okay, the reveal of the Playa Naming will come later... I think I didn't get it til Thursday, and I'm only at Monday night so far...)

Monday night, post-unpacking, the whole group of us decided to ride out to The Man and check it out... This year's theme, The Green Man, had a fair amount of eco-content, and part of that was being hosted at the pavillion under the Man, traditionally filled with works of art but this year filled with exhibits and demonstrations of eco-friendly goods and devices and such, that Burners could see and explore and then go home and seek out.. for this wasn't supposed to be an experience of advertising or sales, just 'educational'... anyway, pavillion with a lot of diplay thingies. I wasn't quite ready to settle in and read through it all, and figured I had the whole week to come back and check it out (oops, wrong, but more on this later).. so I spent a bit of time staring up at the faces that someone had carved lovingly into the giant logs that were holding up The Man. Angled together, somewhat like teepee poles, prob 5-6m high (okay, I'm making that up, I have no idea.. but high, okay?) with the bark peeled and all these faces looking out from them.. new-age totem poles. Was cool. All around the pavillion were trees that various artists had created. The one made of bones was pretty creepy, but I really enjoyed the TreeSaw - a tree whose trunk was the centre-point for a giant seesaw! No handles, not particularly shaped, just a giant slab of wood that you could straddle and hope that you didn't slide too far one way or the other.. and then you would get nasty BUMPs when your partner on the other side would shift their weight so your end slammed into the ground. Ouch, but fun.. but the first point this year that I had to turn away and remind myself that I wasn't on 'injury prevention' duty.

Monday night was the lunar eclipse, fully visible from the playa, and there was a hooping party to celebrate it... which I couldn't find. Rode around the area where it was supposed to take place, eventually gave up, hooped briefly beside an art car (okay, moving night club) that had awesome music, and then it drove away... so I headed to the far end at 2:00 to see if there was still a giant sound-camp there.. hooped for a little while, alone but not freaking out about it, shared my glowing LED PsiHoop with a couple people who were brave enough to ask, and kept an eye on the slooooowly moving eclipse. Way cool.. but much browner than I expected. Got tired, started heading for home... when I hear someone yelling "Open your Eyes! The Man is on Fire!!"... over and over... and sure enough, the Man was burning. Six days early. I was almost back at our camp, and ran into a campmate who had also heard the news, so we rode out (with the rest of the lookey-loos, yeah) to see what was happening.. got to watch two high-pressure pumper trucks hose the man down for a good amount of time, and then the DPW (Department of Public Works, the crew who build and teardown the event) started yelling at the crowd to Get the Hell out of the Way so that they could get in and work on the rescue effort. I didn't make it back to see if the pavillion contents were moved, but the Man DID get rebuilt by the end of the week, to burn at the appointed time.... apparently a bit of the rebuild effort was serindipitous, that someone in Reno had a huge amount of green neon that he'd been hanging onto for years, hoping someone would come in and buy it all... and lo! A buyer was found :) The person who set fire to the Man.. well, I'm not sure if I should believe them, but the posters with his costume'd photo on it said he was out on bail and ready to sign autographs. Bizarre, but not surprising at this event.

Tuesday I discovered the Black Rock Bookmobile just up the street, and snagged a bunch of mystery novels to read during my afternoon siestas.. and Tuesday may or may not have been the day I wandered into Camp Artica (three spots around the playa that sold ice, this one was Ice3, Ice Cubed), saw a giant lineup outside and a bunch of folks inside looking harassed, and asked if I could help. Next three hours were a lot of fun (okay, wait. .the first hour was a lot of fun, the next a bit okay, and the third kinda tiring)... as I got to help sling bags of crushed ice, and ice blocks.. after the first thirty minutes or so, of watching and getting in the way and figuring out what sort of system would work, I wound up standing on the tailgate of the giant ice trucks, where I could reach the blocks or bags that were being set down by the two slingers working inside the truck, and then pass them directly to the runners taking orders from the cashiers, or break the packs up for smaller orders (a six-pack of bags of crushed ice could be taken as-is, or dropped down to a four- or three-pack, with the remaining singles stacked in another pile)... eventually spelled off the slingers in the truck, and realized that the job I had been doing was cushy compared to schlepping the giant bags and blocks from the pallets stacked farther back in the truck. The whole shift wasn't quite the social opportunity I'd hoped for, though everyone on the crew was pretty darn night.. next year, though, I think I'd like to take a swing at running one of the tils, 'cause then I get to see/meet/greet everyone coming through! I DID have a lovely social moment at the end of the shift, though, when a man from the next shift came up to me to tell me how beautiful he thought I was.. face, body, attitude, everything :) Lovely compliment! One of the things I love about Burning Man is that everyone seems to feel freer about giving and receiving compliments - it isn't the same sort of suffocating oh-god-will-s/he-think-I'm-a-fool-if-I-say-anything atmosphere that is present in day-to-day life... refreshing.

Again, I have a feeling that I may be getting my days mixed up, but I *think* that Tuesday was the night of hooping at Centre Camp - Philo of http://hooping.org/ had organized a time slot in the centre for us to gather and hoop together, and it was good. Group hoop with a bit of struggle for space, and then Stefan of http://groovehoops.com/ organized us into showcasing regions.. "Canada" got to be its own, and all three of us were from Vancouver! Vicki, Jonilyn and I hooped madly, and got cheers from the crowd, and then got to sit back and keep watching the other amazing folk from around the globe. Video link to YouTube to come, whenever Jonilyn gets around to posting her footage. Party afterwards saw us head to the Flying Monkey Pub - good music, a nice platform that I was able to sprawl upon (and have my first practice-flirting session with another man sprawled thereon) and later claim as my Sharpie-Tattoo parlour: my gift this year was body art and time spent applying it for individuals.. poor Vicki got my warmup effort, a mehndi-like design on her wrist, but the hoopers and non- who lined up later got some nifty abstract work.. hmm, I should see if Shadjuah got a picture of his, a giant orange spiral/swirl/swoop down the side of his torso.. cute little gay boy :) A bit more hooping outside with our LED hoops (it could have been a commercial for Patrick and his brand, http://psihoops.com/ ) and some fire hooping (I was wearing dangly fire-hazard clothing, so I didn't do much), and I was done for the evening. Vicki and I headed to find a women's party, but it had mostly been over by the time we arrived, so we headed back to our respective camps.

PsiHoopage issue: I'd run down the batteries by this early point in the week, but Ali had brought her charging unit so we could plug the hoops in and light 'em up again.. but something went quite wrong, and instead of lighting up brightly when plugged into the charger, my hoop went dead. Yikes!! This is a $300+ hoop, that may perhaps have carried some warnings about taking it onto the playa, perhaps even with some suggestion about using tape to cover the plugs and switches to protect them from dust... which I didn't do. Slacker. Anyhoo... the hoop never did regain charge that week, and I was quite freaked out about ruining it within the first month. but when I got it home and plugged in here, it lit up just fine, and has been working well ever since. (shrug)

Morning hooping, late night hooping, hooping at the Lemuria party where a big Vancouver camp was hosting their home event for the week, and I had a TON of admirers stopping by to watch and chat with me, and hooping at an unnamed camp that had the best lit outdoor space with a nice corner where I could hoop and be less likely to have people accidently walk into me or my hoops... and THAT camp seemed to be home-away-from-home to a bunch of thickly accented fellows who ranged from being nicely complimentary and interesting, to staring and then asking where I camp so they could come find me later. Yeek. Anyway, good music, great space, and lots of people excited about playing with my spare hoop and trying things out... this place, and the Deep End (a daytime dance camp - full sun and heat, eek!) were awesome hoop spots whenever I came by. Good times, good times...

One more picture of hooping... and then the next installment will (possibly) hold the story of how I came to be known as Fluffy. Check out my cowboy boots: best $7 ever spent at a thrift store.. add $20 gel insoles, and my feet were happy for the whole week! And gawd, I love men in skirts :)

The Blissful Burn

2007-09-25T13:53:00.000-07:00

September has been .. busy. Good busy, socializing and dating busy along with work busy, but man.. I'm looking forward to October (not that it is really promising to be any quieter, but there's a FAINT chance...).. so, without further delay, the tale of my trip to Burning Man 2007.

I was gifted with a free trip in an RV bought by Ali and Brian, a couple that I had met through hooping (Ali and her friend Gracie did a private lesson with me, and then they've all come out to some of our hooping parties). The weekend before we left, I borrowed Wolf's truck and hauled most of my gear and my bike out to AnB's place in Abbotsford, so they could start loading the trailer, and we could decorate our bikes. I got to meet most of their friends who would be camping with us, and it was a lovely afternoon.

THIS.. is travelling in style.

Saturday the 25th, I haul the remainder of my gear and my LED hoop (was performing with it in North Van the night before) onto Skytrain, and head out to Surrey to be picked up by Ali and taken back to the carefully controlled chaos of last-minute loading. We didn't manage to get too far on Saturday, despite planning to be on the road by noon: RV parts still getting fixed, another Vancouverite needing to go back into the city to get her passport, and a challenging case of the trailer brakes engaging when the headlights were turned on, all resulted in us not even getting as far as Seattle by the wee hours, so we slept in the RV (floor, couches, chairs, beds) at a WalMart.

(if you haven't heard this.. apparently there's some history with a WalMart exec's close relative getting in an accident due to falling asleep at the wheel, so all WalMarts welcome overnight stays in their parkinglot, no questions asked)

This was the first of THREE WalMarts we'd hit on the way down, with close to two hours being spent in each buying food, clothing, gear, whatever... odd, but I wasn't the trip planner :) Riding in the RV was pretty luxurious, with leather couches and beds, a giant TV screen for watching movies on the road, and good company - these were some of the most mellow, easy-going people I've travelled with.

Scary part: I woke up on Sunday feeling really hot... then got the 'hmm.. I wonder if...' feeling.. and then managed to climb over everyone and get to the bathroom before I started throwing up. Spent most of that day feeling shaky and rotten, slept a lot on the back bed during the drive, thought I was over it and would be okay, then got sick again.. and on Monday morning while we were again in a WalMart lot, and Brian was working on the RV, I was on my knees in the WalMart bathroom for about an hour, being sick and waiting to be sick and wanting to not be sick and wondering if I should get them to drop me off in Reno so I could fly home and just skip Burning Man this year.... the 'what should I do?!?!' part was more distressing than anything else, just 'cause I was heading into a challenging environment without a whole lot to offer in the way of medical services..... but, luckily, I got through it and was feeling at least 80% normal by the time we were heading through the small towns on the way to Black Rock City, aka Burning Man.

We had been aiming for midnightish Sunday/Monday, and with all the delays it was around 6pm Monday by the time we joined the lineup, and close to 8pm as we were getting to the gates. Gate pirate came on board to collect tickets, check for stowaways, etc... and he confiscated a bundle of sage that one of the women had collected along the side of the road.. though he missed the giant bag of more sage she had in the back! Even though this year's theme was 'The Green Man', no vegitation would be allowed on the playa, too MOOPy (Matter Out Of Place). Onwards to the Greeters Station, where the BM virgins in our crew would get to ring the bell... and I got a surprise smooching session with the Greeters' shift Lead! Monday at Burning Man is labelled 'MakeOut Monday' - and I guess this guy was living up to that :) Nice start to the event, anyway...

Got through the gate, found our pre-planned location already staked out by the folks who got there earlier.. we camped at 5:30 and E - a great location that I will be aiming for next year. The city is laid out like a clock, with 2:00-10:00 divided into city streets and 10:00-2:00 open playa for art installations... and then the streets are labelled alphabetically as they move farther away from the center circle road, always called "Esplanade". This year, the farthest circle road was Jungle.. so being at Estuary and 5:30 put us pretty smack-dab mid-city, half way from everything! Another perk: we were right beside the porta potties, so instead of challenging the RV potty all week, it was a quick stroll across the street. I also adopted the potty bank: RobbiDobbs is the Queen of Potties, and she was part of the group I camped with last year.. on Tuesday, I ran into her twice while she was restocking the potties with paper, and offered to help.. and by the end of the second restock, I had agreed to take on the potty bank myself, and we'd arranged a drop-zone where she could leave a few bags full of paper rolls for me to restock whenever I was in camp. Easy enough job, and the people waiting in line or using the potties were always willing to help and let me know that they appreciated what I was doing :)

Tuesday morning involved setting up our camp shade structure.. Monday night we'd hauled all the bikes and gear out of the trailer, and loaded in mattresses and sleeping bags and personal gear for the four of us travelling with Ali and Bryan and their son, Dylan.. the RV would be their home, and we had a luxurious, mostly dust-free trailer (Brian had thought ahead and had filters to tape over the air vents for us..) Shade structure was a HUUUUGE piece of desert camoflage net, which we strung onto a giant 'U' shape build of electrical conduit, covered with some foam noodles, and then hauled up onto the top of the trailer, our RV, and the RV of another couple travelling with us... three sides secured on vehicles, the fourth side got some more conduits to prop it up, plus rope to secure it all in the windstorm.. and voila! Huge shade structure with room for our bikes, bike rack for the bikes without kickstands, the BBQ, a hammock, 20ish camp chairs and lounges.. and it was lovely. I learned that the heat of the sun shining on the trailer would wake me up at 8ish, but I could crawl outside, set myself up in a lounge chair, and doze for another couple hours.. and this was also a good way to spend 4-6pm in the afternoon, dozing or reading and being mildly antisocial (with the other woman who was happily also being antisocial and reading) and just keeping myself recharged for the rest of the night....

And now, I'll leave you with this teaser pic:

To be continued.. the story of Goldilocks and How I Got My Playa Name.

Burning Man, Take 2.

2007-08-25T07:03:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm awake about a halfhour before I really need to be (thanks, 9am NLS class at the beginning of August.. ) AND I scrambled around YESTERDAY getting everything ready 'cause my ride said (at the last minute) that she was going to collect me last night after my gig hooping in N Van, rather than me heading out on Skytrain this morning. Later last night, plans changed to return to the original thought: skytrain out to Surrey, she'd drive in from Abbotsford to collect me and take me back out to the giant-RV-and-enormous-trailer staging area in their oh-so-normal subdivision, and then we'd be OFF to the so-utterly-far-from-normal Burning Man.

What will make this year different than last?

1 - I'm not freaked out. I know what to expect, and I will be fine, and I'm really calm about that.

2 - instead of camping with mostly strangers.... oh, wait. That's still pretty true. I've hooped with Ali and her friend Gracie about four times, met A's husband Brian three times, their teenage son Dylan twice, and some of the rest of our compound-of-RVs once.

3 - rather than having a handful of aquaintences from Vancouver scattered around the site, I have a handful of friends from Vancouver with known locations and another handful of international friends from either last year or from hooping workshops spread around the site. Much less concerned about moments of loneliness this year (don't remember being concerned about it at the time, but I certainly wound up being a loner for most of the first few days, when I wasn't in damage control mode)

4 - avoiding damage control mode: I'm not camping with a bar, I'm not camping with a friend, and I'm not camping with a camp mayor who will molest my friend so I then have to support her, get his ass arrested, and get ostracized (I'm so shocked that word is appearing in this blog) by some idiot members of my camp. Hopefully everything will remain smooth and chill this year!

5 - I'm packing in bins rather than plastic bags, so hopefully my tent organization will be a bit more functional. Also, less spillage will occur on the floor of the tent, since this time my waterjugs can be on top of a bin and thus fill my bottles without having to precariously balance the jug with my knees while aiming at the bottle. And dribbling.

6 - I will probably get to discover if having one's period while on the playa is as obnoxious as everyone says. I'm guessing not, but hey, I pill-planned around it last year to avoid the question, and this year I'm not on the pill and it should be arriving smack dab in the middle of the week. Why is this a challenge? Can't put tampons into the porta potties, and there ain't no garbage cans. Dumpable and reusable Diva Cup, here I come! (didn't get this in time to give it a test run last month, so we'll see...)

(and I figure most of you readers are intelligent enough not to be squeamish about reading that last point. If you are, I'm kinda shocked that you know me well enough to be reading this blog)

Okay, 20 min blown, time to get on with the rest of my prep time.. next step: breakfast while reading in the tub, and then a leg shave, woo!

Love y'all. Back in a couple weeks.

Purple Sheep Douche

2007-07-04T14:38:00.000-07:00

I shoulda listened.. I shoulda believed her.... I shoulda known that combining wool, vinegar, and dye, would smell like sheep douche (though it DOES currently appear to be a really pretty colour of purple!). (to hear who I am talking about, listen to Christa Knits, the episode with Rabbitch!)

Big messy fun today, though with a horrible start: the Pyrex measuring cup I was using to heat/dilute the yellow dye powder into water, in the microwave, EXPLODED! Ka BOOOM! Little teeny pieces of Pyrex EVERYWHERE... along with 250ml of yellow dye. Nice, eh? So, spend 30min cleaning that up, saddened that I had no more yellow dye with which to mix colours... will need to hit Maiwa on Granville Island on Friday to pick up more, methinks.

Currently I have some roving cooling down in a stock pot in the stove, after simmering in its water/vinegar/dye stock for the last hour. It was squirts of all the colours I managed to make sans yellow: magenta, purple, deep blue, turquoise, and blue/green... and currently looks like deep purple. I'm hoping there will be SOME varigation to it when it has cooled down enough that I can rinse out the dye and see what happened! I also have four melted knockoff ziplock baggies containing various balls of light coloured wool that I squirted dyes onto.. most also looking 'purple'. The one that DOES look interesting is the sock yarn that I put onto of plastic wrap on the table, and squirted colours on different parts - still pretty mixed, 'cause I hate clumping stripes in my knitting, but it at least has light and dark areas, so there should be SOMETHING neat to watch when I knit it up...

Anyway, time to bathe, and get ready to teach my Design A Sweater class tonight! I'm hoping the yarn might be cool enough to rinse out one and take it with me, but I'm not holding my breath.

The crazy things I do...

2007-06-16T04:22:00.000-07:00

Today, I watched a whole season of Dead Like Me. Okay, minus two or three episodes... but, seriously, I did a disk this morning, and two disks tonight. Gah.

I also knit through most of them, so I've got sore wrists and fingers, but my linen haltertop will probably be done in the next week! The design isn't at all what I originally envisioned, but I'm digging what is happening with it right now anyway...

Oh, and one other crazy thing I do? I volunteer to hoop at special events (when I can't convince them to pay me to do it...) ... and then I get pictures like this:

Which is the photo that best captures the extreme joy I feel when I'm hooping. Wheeee!

Taken by a parent or teacher or board member of the elementary school down by the Roundhouse, where I was hooping a couple weeks ago, to animate their walk-a-thon celebrations. One of the more low-key things I've done, but it was lots of fun... obviously :)

Puppet Bike!

2007-06-11T23:36:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGh6gr4NJlM&mode=related&search=

Wow... the things you find when reading knitting blogs that are totally unrelated to knitting, but totally make your day!

Keep checking out the related links on YouTube to see more of the Puppet Bike clips! Dancing kitties! Alligators! Foxes!

Way cool. I love that people develop these unique ways to support themselves!

Oh, and let's say that you have til the end of June to get back to me about blog reading priveledges. Thanks to all of you who have already responded :)

Lurkers, reveal thyne selves...

2007-06-09T02:15:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to be switching this blog to 'invite only' (hoping that I can, I haven't actually checked yet...)

.. 'cause I'm hoping to become more of a known name (celebrity knitting train trips across Canada, anyone?) .. and I don't want my past (or bitchy present) to haunt me.

So, if you want to keep reading, post a comment here or toss me an email with your Blogger-attached email addy so I can add you to the list of permitted readers.

I'll prob give it a week or so, don't dally too long!

I have famous podcasters doing me favours.

2007-06-07T02:55:00.000-07:00

http://www.quirkynomads.com/guest/singing.wav

This is Sage Tyrtle of Quirky Nomads, singing O Canada for my mid-June podcast that will have a LOT of Canadian content. Listen here, then visit her show at http://quirkynomads.com and check out her episodes - I suggest that you choose an un-numbered one, so you don't wind up in the middle of an audio play.

Falling in love with Thursday nights.

2007-06-03T12:37:00.000-07:00

Find us playing at Kits beach near the Watermark Restaurant any non-rainy Thursday night. Bring cameras :)

Oops, I've fallen...

2007-06-01T08:15:00.000-07:00

.. off the wagon, but look, I'm back on!

I still smell faintly of fuel, after doing three burns with my new fire hoop last night! It is lovely, and I can do waaaaay more things, with more grace, than my last stumpy hoop.

This morning I need to gather together something that reads fairly costume-y, but that will breath enough that I won't die while hooping out in the unseasonably-warm Vancouver heat! I'm hooping down by the Roundhouse this afternoon, for a special school event they've got going on there... should be fun!

X.

Wow, back pain?

2007-05-30T08:54:00.001-07:00

It has been such a long time since I've had lower back pain, I'd forgotten how depressing it is...

Not sure why, but I've had an ache in my lower left back/upper left hip for the last couple of days, and it is spreading towards the centre now. Means I won't go out hooping in the sun today, and I'm a bit worried about doing the pool setup and takedown for the Zajak meet this weekend, wah!

On the non-back pain side of things, I've found out that the hooping segment will probably be on the 6pm news tonight, yay! .. and my other plans for the day include buying bungee cord so I can make collapsible hoops, maybe hitting a rock and gem shop so I can find some nifty things for my jewelry-making aspirations (may change that to going to a thrify-junk shop to see what I can find in terms of jewelry that needs to be reworked.. like Mom's enamel pendant that I now love since changing its setting)... .. and something else that I just forgot during the conversation my roomies are having about computer games.

zzzzZzzzZZZzzzzzz

2007-05-29T00:16:00.001-07:00

My body has gotten incredibly good at shutting me down when it wants to go to sleep.

I'm going to try to briefly resist it. Oh, no, apparently I'm giving in.

Fun weekend.

2007-05-27T22:05:00.000-07:00

Waterpolo, hooping on the news (CTV 6pm news, should air Wed or Thur, and I should have a heads up about that), hooping with stilters, hooping with hauling the stereo, really yummy falafel wraps, new shoes, fun with friends, more waterpolo, fun at a yarn store (why do I keep buying yarn), fun with friends making fire hoops, and now gathering my stuff together to go crash at Kyle's for the night before we catch an early bus to White Rock for his gramma's funeral. Ah, life. :) Love y'all.

Hm.. generalizations, anyone?

2007-05-25T23:04:00.001-07:00

Your Birthdate: September 19

You are resilient, and no doubt your resilience has already been tested.
You've had some difficult experiences in your life, but you are wise from them.
Having had to grow up quickly, you tend to discount the advice of others.
You tend to be a loner, having learned that the only person you can depend on is yourself.

Your strength: Well developed stability and confidence

Your weakness: Suspicion of others

Your power color: Eggplant

Your power symbol: Spade

Your power month: October

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

I've misplaced my fear, have you seen it?

2007-05-25T11:19:00.001-07:00

Somewhere, in the last two months, I seem to have lost that bit of me that would keep me from flirting with people, talking to strangers, or staying late at a fire spinning session after all my closer friends have left.

Last night's burn was fun, though I managed to both lightly singe my hand and briefly set my pants on fire... but my safety dude had leapt up, ready to douse me with a blanky, and it went out on its own as the fuel burned off. New fire poi got spun for the first time - a little shorter than I've used before, but that means I can do windmill arm circles and they won't hit the ground.. and I tried a number of moves that I really should have practiced more when I WASN'T using fire, oops, silly me.

Today I'm stiff and sore, and a bit surprised about that.. didn't think I hooped/spun enough yesterday to account for this, and the yarn shop work wasn't that physically demanding. I DO understand why my wrists and thumbs are sore, though... but I really really really want to finish this cute hemp bag I'm crocheting.. yes, crochet. I've figured out how to read crochet charts, and the world is mine!

(okay, it is just another method of manipulating fibre.. but dang, its fun!)

Today's plans: bath, breakfast, reading... then probably packing my hoops onto my bike (jury-rigging a support off my rack rather than hauling the trailer, since I'm just taking a couple down) heading downtown for some personal spin time, then joining the monthly Critical Mass ride for the first time, where hundreds of cyclists ride through the streets. "We're not blocking traffic, we ARE traffic!" Should be a party!

Whoops, I missed another one.

2007-05-24T09:52:00.000-07:00

My body is actually getting much better at signalling to me that I need to go to sleep RIGHT NOW... my late night reading-in-the-bath sessions have been ended mid-book, when I realize that I've not processed anything in the last three pages and that I'm doing dropsies in the tub.

I'm still digging this experience, though.. as Kimberly says, writing stream-of-conciousness stuff is easy, and it makes me actually LOOK at what is happening in my head. Not a bad thing. And, it is excellent practice for the day when I start blogging about my knitting on a near-daily basis, which will (should) help kick up my online interest.. that, and posting photos, which knitters really dig.

I got a lovely comment from the queen of knitting podcasts today, while squealing over her recent invitation to be a guest star on a knitting cruise to Alaska... "Christa, your show is really good. You'll get there. You're the only podcast focused on design." ... so I have my hopes and dreams of hosting a Knitting Across Canada on the Train tour... or cruising, or flying to NZ, or SOMETHING...

.. I should prob work a bit more on the actual publishing of my patterns, first. And getting on Knitty.com. That would help.

Ah, roommates.

2007-05-23T02:19:00.000-07:00

As one is gently snoring on the couch a few feet away from me, and the other is in bed, after setting up his computer so I could watch the last two episodes of Heroes... I can reflect and realize that I do enjoy living with these two interesting men... and would probably enjoy it even more if I did a bit more of carrying my own weight around here, rather than just paying higher rent (I got the biggest room by far) but doing no chores.

Maybe I'll readopt the bathroom... since the one thing I can't handle is the ring in the toilet bowl, I've been cleaning that for a while, but I'll make an effort to do floors and surfaces a bit more often. Maybe I'll also clean my room and create the workspace I've been talking about forever, organized in a way that will totally work with my style of dumping things as soon as I walk in the door (don't change the person, change the system).. so I will have less crap in the living room.

Having company in the house is generally lovely (still haven't brought anyone home to shake the walls when they're around), and is particularly nice when they cook for me, or bring me snacks from food runs, or show me nifty artsy things they've done and want to hear my opinion... Yeah, I dig it.

See yesterday's comments to read about the TV thing.

9 hours of post-production later...

2007-05-22T02:40:00.000-07:00

.. and Episode Six of the Christa Knits podcast is up. Visit http://podcast.christagiles.com to see the show notes and download directly, or search for "Christa Knits" in iTunes.

Don't have much else to say.. I'm tired, didn't get quite enough sleep last night, weird dreams.. and I think I might have fractured or splintered my elbow on Saturday, from a bad hit to the funnybone with a staff.. but funnybone hits don't usually stay tender and tweaky three days later, eh?

Tomorrow, CTV is coming to tape a segment on hooping for fitness. I'm going to try to put a helpful spin on my approach while not selling out completely, all while trying to make sure that my class is functional for all my students, not just the cameraperson trying to get the best possible shot. Wish me luck! And, nerves! And, a halt to my blushing!

RIP

2007-05-19T23:37:00.000-07:00

Earl Snedden - I have no idea when he was born, but he passed away today, in Ontario, where he has farmed with my aunt Marilyn, for all of MY life.. I don't know enough about his life before that time to say if he's ever been anything other than a dairy farmer.

It was cancer, and it has been around for long enough to be a slow, drawn out fight that we're glad he's at peace. Mom is heading back east to be with her sister, and that's about all that Heather (my sis) has relayed to me so far.

He is the second uncle I've lost, without really feeling that I know anything about them as individuals... and I'm thinking about changing that with the remainder of my living relatives.

Hey, you... friend or family member of mine reading this... I love you. If I die tomorrow, I've had a wonderful life with no major regrets, just minor ones that remind me to be more daring in the time I have left. Hopefully you can say the same :)

Pros and Cons of being my own boss

2007-05-18T23:04:00.000-07:00

Pro - I get to decide whether or not I feel like working. Today, not so much.
Con - I get to be really freaked out about the lack of consistent income. Today, mildly freaked.

Pro - I get to hear feedback about me and my business, and take all of the credit for it.
Con - I get to explain to people that "Hoop Play", in capitals, is something I've been using as a brand for my classes since Jan 2006. And no, I'm not a bitch for asking other people to choose something else for their own sessions.

Pro - I'm sooo much happier!
Con - ... Oh, right, that whole lack-of-security stuff. Pffft. Totally worth it still :)

Shortie for tonight, 'cause the roomie is sleeping in the living room since his dad is in his bedroom, so I'm gonna go find some vampire porn and soak for a bit. Cute Russian polo players tomorrow! (and isn't it odd... I can't think of any other occassions where I repeatedly use someone's ethnicity to identify them.. but all the waterpolo players from Russia get lumped this way. Curious.)

X.

I wonder why...

2007-05-18T01:32:00.000-07:00

.. I have such an innate distrust of people who want to be my friend.

I don't recall being burnt by friends as a child.. unlike people who pretend to want to date me, but that's another story... anyhoo, I wind up being very suspicious when I hear people say that they want to know me better.

This has happened enough times over the years that my friends, those people that I DID let in past my walls, know that it is a rare and special thing for new people to be added to the mix. Phil was actually teasing me about it recently, "Christa's got a friieeend, Christa's got a friiieend.." .. and I AM enjoying the new circle of people I am spending time with, hoopers and poi-ers and jugglers, all.

The one that has me freaked out? People from high school finding me on Facebook.

I have such bitter bitter memories of my childhood and growing up in Williams Lake and people being MEAN to me... that I don't know if I'm open to engaging in conversations and spending time on these people. Part of me wants to be open to their new wonderfulness and allow bygones to be gone... but the other part is still standing about two feet back, body turned half away, looking over my right shoulder with narrowed eyes... (funny how an emotion can have such a strong physical POSE to go with it, eh?).. and wants to shake my head, say No, and go read a book in the bathtub.

Comments? Personal experiences to share? Pros and Cons of renewing my connection with these folk?

Cop out post today...

2007-05-17T01:15:00.000-07:00

I'm really enjoying reading other people's blogs - especially those of you who have jumped on the 30day challenge, and I apologise to those of you who aren't getting enough comments from me, please forgive me.

Today was a mix - massage with Vince (good, to get over the bad pain in my neck and upper back), Chapters time (good, except for the lame book I chose to read), Button Button time (good, could have used less 'what about this one?!' help from the shop worker, but she was nice and trying hard), DressSew time (good, got some grommets for a bag project and managed to NOT buy non-grommet things), random bead time (okay, didn't find a stellar-yet-cheap piece of boulder opal, but got a cheap-but-nice piece of something-jasper)...

.. and then, the sad time of hanging out with Kyle and his family as they are sitting a vigil for his grandma, who is slowly making her way out of this world, with brief and confusing yet slightly entertaining swings back into lucidity. Good bit about it: the ward where she's located is on the same floor as the maternity ward, so we got to see and hear a lot of babies - good reminder of the cycle of life!

Tell your loved ones that you love them, often!

Why I stay up til 3am

2007-05-15T07:58:00.000-07:00

[2:25:53 AM] Rebekkah says: Sage, can you remind me where Whore Landlords came from. The name, I mean?
[2:26:02 AM] Rebekkah says: I have a vague memory of it from earlier.
[2:26:06 AM] sagetyrtle says: I mean, if you CAN'T buy a fucking FABULOUS t-shirt for CHARITY then fuck YOU.
[2:26:16 AM] sagetyrtle says: Rebekkah - Just a sec, I'll show you.
[2:26:19 AM] Brenda Dayne says: christa was blowing her landlord, REMEMBER!
[2:26:20 AM] Rebekkah says: yeah, but did it say whore on it?
[2:26:28 AM] Rebekkah says: ooh yeah!
[2:26:33 AM] Brenda Dayne says: it was from that conversation
[2:26:45 AM] Rebekkah says: Okay. I thought it was a green room name. But not sure.
[2:26:52 AM] Brenda Dayne says: christa may STILL be blowing her landlord... for all we know
[2:27:06 AM] Brenda Dayne says: but, you know, we should talk about her behind her back
[2:27:08 AM] sagetyrtle says: It was NOT from that conversation. Geez.
[2:27:19 AM] Brenda Dayne says: Are you sure?
[2:28:11 AM] sagetyrtle says: Look, if you're not going to spend 4 hours a day memorizing EVERYTHING you hear on QN, then what the fuck am I *doing* here?!
[2:28:12 AM] sagetyrtle says: *grin*
[2:28:16 AM] Brenda Dayne says: Christa is ALSO blowing her entire water polo team. Or so I heard (that'll teach her to miss tea)
[2:28:42 AM] Brenda Dayne says: sorry, sorry sage.
[2:28:44 AM] Rebekkah says: Well, she has an excuse. She's obviouly *tired* after all that.
[2:28:53 AM] Brenda Dayne says: of course she is
[2:30:15 AM] Brenda Dayne says: okay, must go, I am terribly busy and important you know
[2:30:25 AM] Brenda Dayne waves to all the little people

Yes, these are fellow podcasters and knitting designers, part of a chat room on Skype where we discuss very serious things... oh, and slander whoever doesn't show up.

I've been very active the past couple of days, and therefore VERY tired by the time I get home, so I haven' t stayed awake for the regularly scheduled 'tea time' chat... it happens at 2am my time, which is great when I'm in my usual night-owl mode, 5am Toronto time, for Sage the eary-riser, and who knows what time it is in Wales, which is where Brenda lives.

So, an explanation: No, I am blowing neither my landlord nor my entire waterpolo team. (a certain Russian, however, makes that kinda appealing... not the WHOLE team... just him.. ./grin) That reference was to a conversation we had at the end of April, where I said I had to go to sleep soon because I had a lunch date with my slumlord (just kidding, Wolfie)... which, interpreted by these lovely women, quickly became a scene where I wasn't meeting him to provide rent cheques, but other services-in-lieu. Yep, they're raunchy women.. gotta love 'em :)

Off to podcast.. 'cause what else am I gonna do when I'm awake at 8am?! Damn.. no, wait.. lovely sun :)

The ups and downs of a day.

2007-05-14T22:13:00.000-07:00

(written whilst listening to the roomies and friend listen to a zombie movie, where someone is about to be prophalactyly killed so he doesn't die and then come back as a zombie)

Up: got to work on time. This is something to rejoice, because I have a harder time of it at this job than anywhere else, perhaps because I know that it is 'just' a yarn shop, so I don't have the same urgency as I used to, with the pool and shifts and stuff.

Down: got to work already wiped. Reasonably good reasons (?) but still, tired and blah isn't a nice way to start the work day.

Up: had a really tasty lunch. I took time before leaving home to throw together some salad ingredients I bought yesterday: tomatoes, mushrooms, carrots, baby greens and tomato tortillas, in a Tupperware(tm) box. Num! Super energy for the rest of the afternoon!

Down: my class didn't show up for hooping at the Roundhouse. 3 registered, 3 regular drop-ins, and no-one showed. Checked my email after the fact, and saw that two had cancelled earlier in the day... but still... c'mon.

Up: Since my class didn't show up, it meant I got to dance around for 40 minutes by myself, and work on some things I haven't done much of.. one of which was playing with dramatic, performance-worthy moves.

Down: I went too hard, and now I've got a kink in my neck.

Up: I get to go read in the tub for a while to get the kink out.

Down: After that, I need to spend 3-4 hours doing recording and editing for the podcast that is supposed to be out tomorrow. Somehow I lost a couple days this week.

Up: Tomorrow, I get to hang out with Jake and Christiana a bit more, either heading to Lynn Canyon via Lonsdale Quay, or hitting Granville Island

Down: tomorrow I find out whether or not the May NLS crash course will be running. I've been planning to finish off my VISA payments with the May and June courses, so it would be sad if it didn't go, money-wise, though I'd be happy about being able to hoop and play polo.

Undecided: Vancouver Folk Music Festival really needs me for the Security post I've worked for the past five years, and wanted to avoid this year. Apparently they are being renamed "Safety" - so now, before getting into really emotional, bitter, battering arguements with members of the public, I get to tell them that they have to sit down for 'safety' reasons. Gah. Nice to feel needed, but...

Dammit.

2007-05-14T09:40:00.000-07:00

I got busted. I missed yesterday.. and I blame it entirely on the fact that I got invited to go fool around with someone last night, so I left the house at 11pm.. and normally my blogging happens around midnight. Oops.

Uhm, aside from that? I was unimpressed yesterday to find out that a guard I thought was incredibly reliable, was too disorganized/lazy/apathetic to bother calling me or the pool to say that he wouldn't be coming in for the private instructor-training we'd arranged yesterday. Okay, I could have called SOONER than 40 minutes after we were supposed to start, instead of just hooping around and figuring he was running late... but still. C'mon, dude, pick up the phone.

I'm also getting slightly worried about two things: 1 - the two giant freckles that seem to be changing and could therefore indicate skin cancer, and 2 - the tingling in my wrists when typing, riding my bike, and knitting. Grrr. I think I'll try to make a doctor's appointment for next week, or see if the BC Cancer Agency has some skin screening clinics coming up. TRalalalala.

I'll post again later tonight, to make up for it :(

Pussies.

2007-05-12T20:12:00.000-07:00

Okay, I don't normally like to use terms that are used for female anatomy as derogative terms.. but 'pussies' is just such a good, rhymes-with-wussy, word.. that I can't resist.

This is to all the big, strong, rough, tough CREAMPUFFS that were whining about how cold the pool was today. Yeah, so, its only 68 degreees.. is that gonna kill ya? You couldn't jump in, suck up the sting for five minutes or so, and then play? Nooooo, you had to leave, or sit on the bleachers instead of getting in, so we had no subs, and wound up having to stop early because everyone was tired. (okay, and because the goalie with no body fat woulda died if we didn't stop). It was fun, though :)

Looking forward to some sunshine tomorrow, gonna ride my bike wearing my nifty new skirt lookin' all cute n all! (okay, gak)

Right now, I'm off to soak in the tub with my legs elevated - the five hours of hooping while barefoot on concrete is perhaps not the BEST idea for foot health.. but dang, it was fun! Met Jake and Christiana today, a couple of friends I've only chatted with online and via helping each other out with podcasts, and they ROCK! They hooped, they poied, they brought me super-uber-hot-sauce that scares me... and I'm gonna take them up to Lynn Canyon on Tuesday for a teeny stroll and picnic!

What a lovely day I've had...

2007-05-12T02:59:00.000-07:00

.. waking up too earlyish again, but having bright warm sunshine to blame it on...

.. being able to find everything I needed for my drop spindle class, pretty much where I expected to find it...

.. going to MEC to look for bicycling liner shorts and a skirt, finding them, loving them, buying them... oh, and remembering to buy a waterbottle, too...

.. heading downtown and having more success buying the cheap cycling glove I expected to find at Simon's Bike Shop...

.. entering Sears and pausing to scope out the Clinique counter 'cause it's bonus time, and having a delightful sales lady jump to assist me... (and she managed to make her sales attitude feel unsmarmy, unlike the manager at Claire's who was talking to her staff about meeting their sales quotas, while on the floor or behind the cash register, loudly enough for customers to hear.. nice..)

.. having my mostly-weekly rub by Vince, and givin' it to him about raising chickens and panthers in Vancouver.. (ask him about this, I'm curious what he'll say)...

.. and then having a delightful drop-spindle class, with two women I already knew (one coworker, one a past student) and a couple who worked as movie prop builders, and were fascinating characters...

...and... now it is late in the night and I should rejoice in the final goodness that is a new episode of Cast On to listen to.. and I'll prob fall asleep within the first five minutes, but I'll hear the rest of it tomorrow.

Hooray for springtime Fridays!

Whoops, almost forgot to write :)

2007-05-11T00:53:00.000-07:00

BUT.. I remembered.. 'cause the last thing I do before I go to bed is spend a couple hours aimlessly clicking around my selection of favourite links.

This is not such a good thing, especially when the sun is rising early and hitting my window before 9am, so I wake up... but only with 6 hours of sleep. So, tonight, I'm going ot go to bed before 1am. Three minutes left to write, one minute to pee. Oh, sorry, too much information? C'mon, middle-aging woman here (that felt so weird to type..)...

I'm feeling better today, got a bit more rational and less defensive.. I guess it helps that my businesses are currently doing really well, have almost filled some of my summer classes already, and haven't done the promotional stuff yet.. and spoke to enough of you yesterday that the whole concept of talking vs attacking/defending, and supporting rather than protecting... dealing with the world from a concept of ... ack.. this was such a good phrase.. ah, yeah, abundance.

Abundance was the topic of a chat done in the SEARCH program by one of the co-leaders, who shared many incredible (some, horrible) personal stories with us... but it came down to this: believe that everything you need will come to you, and it will. Worry about things being taken away from you, and.. not so good things happen.

There's my thought for the night. Kinda "The Secret", eh? (no, I haven't seen it, just hearing everyone talking about it...) Or, karma.

Pee time!

I hate un-secret secretive secrets.

2007-05-10T00:21:00.000-07:00

Guh, like.. why? Do I really seem like that much of an ogre, to piss all over things to label them "MINE" and keep other people from playing in the same, public playground?

I don't like this feeling.. finding out from friends that another friend is doing something that she apparently feels uncomfortable talking to me about (because it is creating work for herself in an area where I have created work for myself)... because, by not bringing it up with me herself, it feels like she is putting my friends in a position of having to guard their words when they are talking to me.

Is this really painfully highschool, or is it reasonable that two adults are going through this? (or that this one particular adult, ME, is reacting in this way to something that may or may not just be normal behaviour .. whoa, just confused myself, hold on...)

Right. So... how do I approach her, let her know that I'm uncomfortable with the 'secretive' approach, and would prefer to help her PROMOTE this income opportunity for herself? Gah, even picturing me trying to initiate this conversation, I can see myself being intimidating and making her defensive. Crap.

Help? Suggestions? Comments? Personality adjustment?

Self-analysis, day three...

2007-05-08T22:47:00.000-07:00

.. in which I reveal my totally.. wait, positive language.. less-than-healthy relationship with money.

The Saga (mid-April): got $145 cheque from hoop student, deposited cheque, paid bills and spent remainder of money. (normal) Following week, went to deposit another work cheque, and the bank machine told me to contact customer service. I do, and am told that the cheque was stale-dated (older than 6 months, not eligble for deposit) AND in US funds. (wtf?) As a result of the now-bouncing cheque, and having been at $0 already, my account is now -$165, FROZEN, and will remain so until I have deposited enough to bring it into the black, and have it sit there for five business days.

AAAARRRRGH!

So, took me a number of days to get cash from the student, after confirming that the amount had indeed not been removed from her account... and of course, since I'd been cash-less for those days, I promptly had things to spend the money on rather than depositing it and having to wait a week to get at it.

Last week, I had enough other work cheques to toss in and get through the waiting period (while living off my VISA, which was a very negative feeling since I'm training myself to not think of it as cash...)... but today, more than five business days past the day I deposited it, I attempted to pay bills online and couldn't.

Phone customer service, "Can I please have access to my account again.." - yes, gets done. "Can you explain what 'overdraft protection fee' that I got charged is, if I was left 'unprotected'?" - sure, bit of a semantics problem.. "Hm.. can you tell me if I'm eligible for overdraft protection so this doesn't happen again?" - ten questions and one credit check later, No.

Took me a couple hours to get over the negative, self-beating-up-ness that I always get in, when I am reminded that I have poor credit... I acknowlege that it is my own damn fault, and I can point at exactly the things that keep my rating low... but I have no grokking of WHY I can't fix this.. and that, in itself, is frustrating.

I'm a smart person. I can DO things if I set my mind to them. Why is money management so hard?

(okay, giving myself some credit here: I've supported myself [mostly] since high school, I've got a roof over my head, food in the bathtub, clothes that I like, I know where rent is coming from... I'm doing alright)

I'm kinda curious about what sort of childhood training/exposure we're missing ('cause I know Heather is in a similar boat), to have this bizarre relationship with finances, when MomnDad are so.. functional. *shrug*

Ah well... I'm going to see if I can find a 'finances for dummies who are too lazy to follow the steps in the Finances for Dummies book' book. Wish me luck.

Love in my Life

2007-05-07T23:37:00.000-07:00

I'm listening to old episodes of Cast On - a podcast about knitting, and tonight I heard the one about the Muse of Tragedy, which contained a piece I submitted. It was a story about a sweater that I knit for my bro-in-law Dave, ending with the sweater being placed on his casket, and me wondering how my sister would continue on through life without him. The answer: she has, with lots of tears and missing, but also with shared memories and new joy wth her partner, Bill.

Along with pondering her habits of having a series of long, intense relationships, I ponder my habit of having a series of short, well-seperated, shallow ones.

My longest friendships are with ex-boyfriends or ex-lovers... except the boyfriend who I actually lived with for three years, but have spoken to ONCE since we seperated. He just wasn't worth it.

And.. that's what it comes down to: I used to think it was that *I* wasn't worth long relationships, in other people's eyes... but I'm coming to the realization that I have yet to meet someone who is worth that, in mine.

Whether I actually wind up settling down with a single individual, or work out my concept of living a polyamourous life, I'm enjoying being in a phase right now where, for the first time ever, I'm feeling confident about flirting. I am following up with people who indicate an interest in me, though not falling head-over-heels for them until I figure out whether I am interested in THEM.. though the ones I DO find interesting, still get the treatment of being visualized as a life-long, happily-ever-after, I-will-leave-my-current-lifestyle-to-be-with-you deal.. but I get over that in a day or two.

I've been close to a couple relationships to watch them flow from beginning to current-thoughts-of-forever.. and it has been pretty special. Watching Katie and Paul figure things out, and Phil and Claire work through life... its awe-inspiring! Same with watching my parents, married over 40ish years and still happy. Dang. Nice role models, all of you!

Someday.. I may join you. Potentially with more than one partner in tow, but, whatever :)

Brrrrrr.....

2007-05-06T19:58:00.000-07:00

I've been out of the rain for four hours, and I'm still chilled.

NLS Precert and Recert, taught at UBC during the May/June Aquatic Workshop, but scheduled to run in the outdoor pool due to shutdown in the indoor pool.

Candidates: 12 registered, but only 11 showed up. First day included a woman who got her NLS to work as a swim coach, but her skills sucked. We both agreed that she wasn't ready for the recert. Second day included an experienced guard who was allowed to register for the recert-only, and had some minor unpolished moments but was mostly good.

This is the only recert I can remember from the last couple years where ALL the participants could do the physical standards without problems. Yeah, the swim coach woman had a sucky spinal roll, but she wasn't drowning. And, they were all whiners, but they had the hang of CHEERFUL whining, so it was pretty fun. (oh, and one of them had a GORGEOUS smile, and used it frequently.. ./swoon) (I think I'm going to go see if he's on Facebook, just to see it again...)

Today, all testing: nothing shocking on the written, physical standards were a breeze, I'm still boggled by the non-breathing = CPR vs the non-breathing = AR and a pulse check, so I felt really awkward evaluating the unconscious removal, which is now (was always, but I didn't notice?) done with a second person on the removal.. so I don't really get it. Oh, dammit. I just realized I also forgot to collect the survey forms. Oops. The sims actually went really well, with the exception of one of the goofballs from the UBC staff totally getting hung up in an imaginary missing child being found by his parent, while someone was drowning in the pool... and that the very last candidate to go, managed to fail to demonstrate much ability at all. Guh! 10 minutes after the recert was supposed to end, everyone else has gone to get changed while they finish the major, this person had left the precert an hour early in order to get to work.... and I still feel guilty about failing them. Why is this?

There are two things I dislike about teaching advanced courses. 1 is working with people who don't pass. The second is feeling insecure about my knowledge and my decisions. I can fix the second, and have a specific idea of the questions I need to go to the NLS committee with (where is my FAQ handout on NLS and CPR? to start) so I feel like I have a grip on the new standards and how they are explained and applied.. but the people who fail? Gah. I take it soooo personally... and the candidates can see this, and often comfort me: "It's okay, I don't think I should pass... don't let it bother you..." .. but I don't really understand why that is.

Hm.. maybe I'll use some of these monthly posts to go into some of the things that I know I do and feel, and see if I can get some insight...

Time to head for a hot bath, and get some feeling back into my fingers.

An apple a day...

2007-05-05T23:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, so Katie and I have agreed to do a 30-day challenge of posting something on our blogs every day. We didn't discuss an actual start date, but I figured I would begin NOW.

Of course, this is currently just an extension of the last four hours that I've spent online, putting together a little shop on Etsy.

What is Etsy, you ask? Well... first, visit: etsy.com and look at the nifty collection of photos of handmade stuff, that may be related by theme, colour, material... or something a little more obscure. So far, so good? Okay, the details: individuals sign up with Etsy for their own shop. Mine is christagiles.etsy.com .. and the shop itself is free. The costs come in the listings, 20 cents (US) per item posted, and in a cut of the selling price, 3.75% from the final price, not including shipping. So... outlay, including PayPal fees, will be somewhere in the range of $1.. and I'll get $4USD for emailing something that I've already put the work into designing, doing pattern layout, and creating a PDF file...

.. now my only hope is that I don't need to redo all the info and photo input for relisting the pattern as it sells out (a suggested strategy is to post something every day, to keep your shop in the first page of the listings in every catagory you belong to..) so my time costs don't go crazy.

Woot!

Oh, and did I mention that I'm prob going to be in the 'Canada Knits!' column of Vogue Knitting, in the Holiday 2007 issue?! EEEEEEEE! :) The joys of self-promoting....

Ladeeez and Gennntlemennn

2007-03-03T21:54:00.000-08:00

Presenting the incredible, amazing, one-of-a-kind, Christa Giles.. with her INVISIBLE HOOP!

(crowd, this is your cue to go wild)

My Virtual Model

2007-02-17T22:49:00.000-08:00

How much does this look like me? If I'm trying to design something, is this reasonably accurate for body shape and proportions? Lemme know what you think!

colorstrology.com

2007-01-13T01:32:00.000-08:00

Heard about this on the Lime n Violet podcast (riproaringly funny, if you have an hour to listen to two whacko chicks talk about yarn porn, boob rocks, and Kilt Boys): An astrological reading linked to the Pantone colours. (if you don't know what Pantone is, I forgive you for not being a design geek like me who would know things like the leading international colour uhm.. control company? They make giant fans of paint chips, of every possible shade, so that people who do design (paint, websites, art, printing things, forecasting fashion, etc) have a common point of reference.

Anyway, here's what it says about people born on September 19:

You are an interesting and provocative person with strong principles and a seductive nature. The truth is very important to you. You are constantly challenging yourself and others toward an idea of perfection. You are a natural researcher and can do well in any area once you put your mind to it. Your personal colour enhances mental ease while protecting your boundaries. Wearing, meditating or surrounding yourself with the colour Cactus (Pantone 18-0130) increases your gratitude and recognition for all the teachers and life experiences that you have encountered.

Those of us born in September share the monthly colour Baja Blue. This is a divine and alluring colour that resonates with beauty, purity and wisdom. Mercury and then Venus move through the heavens during the month of September. This is a time when our thinking and our appreciation of beauty is heightened. Baja Blue increases our breadth of scope. It can help ease tension and promote tranquility. This colour opens the mind to higher concepts and a less limiting point of view. Wearing, meditating or surrounding yourself with Baja Blue encourages patience and eloquence.

I think it is nifty :) I even LIKE both of my colours.. and I thought that Sept 19 certainly sounds like me.. am I right? Second opinions out there?

http://colorstrology.com

(all the Canadian spelling of "colour" is mine, they're American, I believe..)

Now, off to hunt down that woman who creates weaving warps based on your horoscope...

New Years Eve and Me... a strange mix.

2007-01-01T02:38:00.000-08:00

The two things I hate most about New Years Eve are the coupley-ness (or at least pressure to hook up by midnight so you have someone to kiss - I remember one year in Williams Lake actually being happy that at least I was kissing someone.. even though he'd already made out with a couple other girls and fucked at least one of them downstairs at that house party while other people 'secretly' spied on them...)... and the drunken people.

[I just totally got stuck in babble-mind over "drunkenness" "drunkeden" etc... so now even "drunk" looks wrong. Say it five times fast, and then think about what a strange word it is...]

Not sure how Mom n Dad got me so thoroughly indoctorined (wow, big words.. that aren't necessarily spelled correctly, oops) against excessive drinking and drugs at an early age, but I was definitely the girl-most-likely-to-be Designated Driver.. and also the person generally on the outside looking in, watching all the other teens get drunk, do stupid things, get embarrassed about it the next day at school, and then do it all over again the following weekend... though I did sorta envy them for the way they could let alcohol ease that whole flirting thing. Guess getting rid of inhibitions might help, eh?

I spent most of the day poking around home, in an empty house as the two roommies are away for another five or six days.. then wandered down to Chapters for a bit, reading books that I wasn't going to buy, then off to Waves on Main, to sit and knit for 6ish hours. I wasn't left to wallow in loneliness, though.. phone calls from the family curbed that.

Mom, Dad, Heather... thanks :) You helped me get through the self-pity and get back to gratitude for the wonderful support network I have, and the great year I've had, and the hopefully great year ahead of me... and both the general chitchat and the "Everyone wish Christa a Happy New Year" shouts from the party environment made me feel better about sitting in a cafe by myself, knitting through New Years Eve.

I got a bit of exposure to the drunks on the bus, though no one was toooo rowdy (or vomiting or unconscious, another plus... no first aids due to alcohol, woo!).. and managed to get the sweater 95% done! Needs a bit more tweaking yet, but that can wait til next year... oh, wait, 2:53am... naw, THIS year!

Love y'all. Have a great 2007!

Burning Blog Trois...The People of BM

2006-11-20T16:00:00.000-08:00

This guy was the first to make me think, "Gee, Dad would have fun here..." This was a self-propelled... something. I don't know what to call it, but it was driven by an offset axel on the back wheel (kinda like a spinning wheel!) which was moved by bouncing up and down on the middle platform between the wheels. I saw it when it was participating in a obstacle course race put on by Kamp Apocalyptika, across the 3:00 spoke from my camp. (I don't remember what the first entrant in the race was, but the last was someone driving a truck over all the pylons, to great cheering by all..)

The Man would be off to the right - this is a shot taken on Esplanade, probably around 2:00 or 3:00, facing towards Centre Camp at 6:00. Note the dust being stirred up as people go by, and all the bicycles... Black Rock City is HUGE, and a bike (or a Mutant Vehicle, more on those later) is the only way to get around.

Art Project, with two of my fellow ePlaya Bar Campers. Pick up a rock, picture all your negative thoughts, fears and energies being forced into the rock, let the rock slide... Simple, fun :)

Another art project - I think this was called the Mandala? Beautiful bamboo structure, and HIGH up.. there was a gap of about 10 feet before the spokes actually started, so the folks up there were climber/monkey types. I asked permission before I took her picture, 'cause that's what you're supposed to do.

Free popsicles! Yes, in the middle of a dried-out lake (there's a special term for it I can't remember), there were people gifting free popsicles. Damn tasty. Oh, and this was one of the first people to pose with metal Dave for a photo op. Note my oh-so-stylin' costume: tube top cut for fring, shorts, massive PodBelt to carry everything I need, a bandana and shades.. ooh.

The ice lineup (and another shot of CostoSoulMate Chris).. this was one of two places on the playa that was allowed to sell things. Camp Arctica sold ice in block and cube format, for people to haul off on their bikes or other forms (pity the fool who had to pack it back without wheels).. for the bar, we'd usually take a two-bike rickshaw build by Desert Duck (campmate also on the pre-event build committee), three giant coolers, and spend about $40 per day to keep the bar and campmates supplied with ice.

Buildbuildbuild... Called something in Flemish that translated to "A message from the future", this became commonly known as The Belgian Waffle... the artist shipped in a ton of Belgians to build a giagantic free-form shape that acted as a nightclub for most of the event, and then burned all $300,000 worth of 1x4s on the last night of the event. So hot, I moved back from the safety margin.. HUGE fire tornados wicking off that thing when it went up... and such an enormous singular example of waste that I think more people will be ready for next year's theme of Green Man...

A lovely example of gifting: I was admiring this man's necklaces in the lineup for Ice, and was given permission to shoot them. A common gift for craftspeople to make are Burning Man pendants, bracelets or keychains, so others can wear their Burniness year round.

Costumes! The photo gallery at www.burningman.com will have fantastic photos of all the amazing things people were wearing around, but I liked these two especially. The guy said that the blower that kept the horse inflated was wonderfully cooling! This photo was snapped as I was sitting/dozing in the Quonset hut put up by the Body Painters Guild.. I was waiting for the henna painter to arrive ("well.. he's supposed to be here.. but sometimes he doesn't come in, or he comes in later...")... and after waiting an hour, I left.. and my friends who were getting airbrushed said he showed up about 10 min after I left. Ah well :)

Burning Blog Two....

2006-11-08T08:14:00.000-08:00

The last..3? k heading into the Gate had little signs all the way along it. This was a boring sign. There was a stretch of about 60 signs that related to the theme "Hope and Fear" either with a full quote on a single sign, or a story stretched over many signs. Good incentive to go slow, even if there wasn't a huge lineup of traffic. Other sign content included "no firearms or fireworks" and "no pictures without permission, no video without registering with Media Mecca". That was only somewhat successful (as my later posts of video will show, oopsie! I'm so bad...)

Gate story #1: the single snaky line branched into five or six lines to go through the actual Gate.. and while sitting in one of these lines, I noticed the stilts strapped to the car beside us, and was about to comment "Hey! Nice Stilts!" when I realized the driver was my friend Todd, and his passenger was my friend Natalie, both who have been students of mine in my Vancouver hoop classes. SCREAM! LAUGH! HUG! They'd already gotten started on.. tequila, I think? So.. pretty extra happy :)

Gate story #2: The Gate crew were dressed like pirates, and had actual pirate-y tshirts made, which mentioned plundering... their job was to make sure that we weren't sneaking people in.. and the poor woman who got us was pretty adamant that we somehow unstrap and unpack everything so she could stick her arm into the middle of the pile and make sure there weren't any bodies. After showing her the tie-down job (through the window, over the pile ' o ' stuff on the roof, in the other window) and that the back hatch wasn't gonna open without undoing that, she allowed us through anyway.

Gate story #3: now through the unfriendly-but-neccessary gate (they also check to see that you have the means to survive for a week, like water, and that you're not being stupid and trying to bring in pets).. we pulled up to the actual Greeters. "Have you been here before?" asked a lovely man in a floor length fake fur coat and fabulous fuzzy hat.. "No!" we cried with glee... and then were hauled out of the car, given wonderful warm full-body hugs from said lovely man, made to ring a gong and scream, which got much applause from those around us, and told "Welcome Home!"... there was pretty consistent gonging happening, but no one seemed to tire of cheering... He gave us each an info package, checked to see if we had a theme camp with a preset location to go to, and gave us directions to get there.

Gate story #4: as I was about to get back in the car, a woman from the vehicle behind me said "Are you Xta?" ... and it was Cin, one of the Virgins with Vaginas I'd met online when I was trying to organize that as a camping option, before getting hooked into the Eplaya Bar Camp... she recognized me by the hoops on the back of the car, BC plates, and the pictures I'd posted online. Putting this in regular world perspective: imagine driving into a city of 40, 000, and the person who is directly behind you turns out to be your roommate.

Gate story #5: After pulling away from Greeters, a scantily clad woman (also lovely) waved us down, leaned her head into my window, and tells us that today is MakeOut Monday, and our jobs are to make out with as many people as we can. A few other pieces of advice, mostly lewd, and then we were off... at a roaring 5mph.

We knew that our camp was located at Anxious (the first ring road back from the main Esplanade) and 2:45 (Black Rock City is laid out like a clock, with the entrance at 6:00 and the Man at 12:00).. so we started heading to the right... with a potty stop at the first potty bank we saw, where I immediately realized that having my head lamp out would have been a Good Thing. We also knew that our camp would have a big white star tent, and that the setup crew had promised that there would be some sort of a light show to make them easy to find. We were late getting into the city, about 1:30am when I'd said "Midnight!" in my naivite, so I was worried that they would have all gone to bed... but no. I spotted the star tent from several blocks away, "I wonder if that's it!" as I saw a white point with lots of colourful lights dancing around it... and then we were there.

Lots of greetings and hugs from people that I'd only met online, eventual setting up of areas and tents (the pre-planned camp layout had been toasted almost immediately), the first meeting of my back-door neighbour, DJ BigE, who has one of those deep dark growly voices that just sounds so... deep dark and growly, but he was really sweet and helpful... and then eventually an attempt to sleep.

Star tent, as seen from Anxious and 2:50. Note the stripper pole and hoop-friendly platform (and I DID hoop on it...)... feedback on the pole from people who knew how to pole dance was that it was too short, so they couldn't jump up high and twirl gracefully down on it...

Star tent in action, as "ePlaya Bar Camp". Yes, even though I'm a relative non-drinker, and generally dislike drunks, I was camping at a Bar. Next year, this will be different.. but it was fun. The few times I made it behind the bar and attemped to serve, I was generally pretty clumsy, but had fun anyway. This is also a picture of my boring day-time uniform: bikini top and shorts. Note for next year: create better day-time costuming so as not to feel like a boring spectator.

Someone actually managed to take a picture during one of my rare moments behind the bar... The guy in the flowered skirt is my CostCo Soul Mate, Chris. I love men in skirts :)

This was the view from 3:00 and Anxious. This is the home of Radio Free Burning Man, DJ Big E's project, and my first homing beacon (the second were the flags flying from the top of the shipping container Those Damn Texans had next door at 2:40.. yes, that was their camp name). This was also one of the loveliest pieces of finished construction that I saw on the playa.

The other important homing beacon I used was from the keyhole plaza at 3:00 between Anxious and Brave... 'cause the nearest porta potty bank was at 3:00 and Destiny, so I learned to use the Rangers (police-types) at Brave, and the bright neon cross of Medical at Chance to find my way there... and then coming back into the keyhole, a lovely rune-inspired chill dome had bright blue neon lighting across the top.. and I could walk right beside them into the gap between our camps to find my tent. Took me about three days to figure out what was at 3:00 and Esplanade, the main strip, so for a while I just relied on the actual street signs they had posted all over the city.

Time to go get ready for Circle Craft Christmas Market, woooo! Uh, for just research purposes. I swear. Honest. I have no idea how that lovely crafted piece of jewelry/fibre art/metal art/pottery got in my bag. :)

Burning Man Blogs Begin! (yeah, two months late..)

2006-11-04T23:26:00.000-08:00

Okay, after finally uploading my pictures from my camera to the computer last night, I've decided that this will come out over the course of several (perhaps eight or nine) posts :)

Uhm.. don't think I'm going to get into how or why I decided to go to Burning Man (may have addressed that in earlier posts and I just don't remember.. and right now, I don't actually remember how I got to this point so...) Right. Onward.

Organizing was supposed to be easy. There was a ton of advice for Burning Man Virgins (henceforth referred to simply as "BM" and "Virgins") available online, at both the main BM site, the ePlaya (chat forum links to the main BM site) and a couple sites on http://tribe.net geared towards Virgins. I had (still have, actually) a folder in my "Favourites" for all my BM stuff, including links to Packing Lists, Camps to Visit, Costume Ideas, Food Ideas, Travel Plans, and more. I was prepared.

Okay, I was prepared mentally. In reality... I was in panic-mode. Didn't have the day-glo pink ripstop nylon (19meters!) sewn into a shade structure, didn't have the three-different-colours-and-pile-heights of fake fur sewn into anything, and didn't have really cool boots. (in hindsight, I did okay.. the two things I really could have taken and been happier with, were proper goggles for the dust, and better daytime costumes so I didn't feel like an observer. More on that later).

We had a roommate leave at the beginning of August (sniff, bye Lindz!) and another coming at the beginning of September (yay Brendan!), so I had a spare room to use as a staging area for all my gear.... and it worked wonderfully. On the last night before we left, I pared down my clothing to what I was actually ready to wear, attempted to make a couple last-minute things that didn't work (and one that did!), and got the rest of the "potentials!" out of the room. When my friend and travelmate Heather arrived on Saturday morning, I was ready to haul it all out and stuff it in the car.

The car. The little, small, not-so-big car... did a really good job of containing stuff. We spent at least an hour repacking it, all her stuff out, then sorting what we would need for the drive down vs what could hide until we arrived at BM, and then got everything back in with some sense of logic. Jammed in, in fact.. from the imaginary wall created by the front seats, to the roof, to the hatchback, it was solid. On the bike rack that H picked up for $20, were our two bikes, and seven hoops. Posed for pictures (though we can't figure out whose camera they are on).. checked for passports and BM tickets, and we were off! (okay, almost.. ran into two of H's friends walking down 33rd about a block down the road, so we stopped to chat.. and THEN we were off!)

Stop for Starbucks, try to remember which street actually led to the border, decided to go for the main crossing rather than try to find the truck crossing, and find out 500m later that it was a poor decision.. construction along the way gave us an hour and a half wait.. but once we got into the actual Peace Arch area, we took turns inching the car forward while the other person spun poi, did cartwheels, danced.. whatever. The Border dude was actually utterly cool - after our fears of "We're going to Burning Man!" resulting in a full car- and body cavity-search, it turned out that he was savvy about the event, and checked in with us that we knew we had to bring everything in, and asked if we had enough water. (stranger checking water supply #1) With assurance that we knew everything and had everything, we were through! On with the road trip!

I had made travel plans (according to one of the sites on my aforementioned collection of links) that included camping overnight at a Burner-friendly hot springs. Unfortunately, our unplanned delays put us about three hours behind getting there, and with neither of us being really happy about driving in the dark, we started looking for camping options that were closer. The travel guide mentioned three along the Washington/Oregon border point we were heading to, so we aimed for those.. passed the first one, didn't see signs leading to the next two, then Oops! We're in Oregon! And then Oops! We're on a stretch of highway with a meridian so no U-turns are allowed! And then Oops! I'm getting cranky 'cause I've realized I really really don't want to be driving anymore 'cause I'm scared I'm going to crash into something due to sticky eyes!

.. and THEN.. I make a wish, something along the lines of "I wish that we get to the next pokey town and find a RV site or SOMETHING that has a place we can throw down the tent and take really hot showers.

Three minutes later, the universe delivered. Rufus, Oregon has a lovely little RV site with tent sites (though we couldn't figure out which was which in the dark, so we just pitched on some grass in an RV site) and hot hot showers and the sounds of highway and insects to lull us quickly to sleep.. and we did. Breakfast the next morning in a truck stop, 'cause Rufus catered to the truckers (highways crossed nearby), with yummy greasy eggy food. Num.

More driving, and a stop at the hot springs around lunchtime.. lots of Burners pulling in, all sorts of interesting vehicles, and a bit of cash got us access to the barn, which was filled wall to wall with a big concrete pool, smelly mineral water pouring in through a pipe, and carvings ("GK loves BT" etc) EVERYWHERE.. it was hot, and slightly greenish and dim, but felt SO GOOD. Chitchat with others ensued, including a guy who had only heard about BM about two hours earlier but was now planning to buy some supplies and go... with a day of prep, whoa.

Stopped for groceries.. and pulled out the list of supplies we needed to pick up for the ePlaya Bar Camp, the group of people we'd met online and would be camping with. We had both committed to bringing a lot of mixer, and after collecting all of that, AND all of our own groceries.. we had two shopping carts full. Remember how full the car already way? Yeah, full. Two and a half hours later (now in darkness), we have completely emptied out the car, packed all the tents and sleeping bags and soft things inside a tarp, strapped it to the roof, jammed stuffed crammed packed all the food and beverages and the remainder of our gear back into the car (now including water, after the nice manager of the Safeway saw us rolling our carts out of the store and stopped to ask if we already had water.. stranger checking water supply #2.. and I had COMPLETELY forgotten that I had planned to fill all my collapsing water jugs, so she kindly pointed out that "someone" had turned on their faucet around the back of the building, and it was going to take her "a few minutes" to find someone with the tools to shut it off... and that she'd look the other way if I happened to keep all that water from going to waste.... so, thanks to Safeway and the three people who loaned me their containers for the week, I got free water. Woo!

There was a restaurant sharing the same parking lot as the Safeway, so once we had the car loaded, we CAREFULLY drove over the speed bumps to test out the handling, then pulled in for dinner. Staff at this place (and another we stopped at on the way out from BM) looked like they would be quite happy if the hoards of weird people would stop coming by, thankyouverymuch. We were careful to say please and thank you and show our appreciation.. but they closed up early anyways, so a bunch of fellow Burners were turned away.

It was now dark, and we were both tired and somewhat cranky, though pretty amused about the packing of the car, but I really wanted to get into BM just around midnight when the gates opened, because some of the other Bar Campers had told me it was "magical" to arrive in the dark with the electric energy of everyone's excitement... so I pushed on, and H dealt with me pushing, and after a bit more snapping at each other, and driving with sticky eyes... we got to this:

Oh. Hm. There appears to be something wrong with my picture uploader. Grr. Okay, I can deal with this...

Imagine, in your mind's eye, a long empty road. You are the only vehicle around. You see one other vehicle in the space of two hours or three hours. Then, you come to a town, and stop for groceries and dinner. Now, when you pull back onto the road, you have company.. and they usually pass you, since your car is overloaded and can barely move. But hey, that's okay, 'cause if you breakdown, at least now there's traffic on the road to stop and help you out. Another two hours of driving, and the traffic gets thicker.. the people who pass you are staying within sight now, as they catch up to the last people who passed you... more curves, more sticky-eyed driving, then you see a sparkling chain of lights in the distance! That must be it! We can see it already! You drive more... and once you get close enough, you realize that the sparkling chain of lights is the line of headlights of cars, bumper to bumper, now crawling in a slow lineup to an as-yet-unseen destination. A sign says "This way to Burning Man", pointing to the left. You merge (with some bickering about "Go now!" "Now!" "Now!" and a tight response of "Christa, *I* am driving.. I will decide when it is safe to go..").. and drive quietly along, now part of the glittering string of headlights yourself, following a red snaking line of taillights off into the distance....

Oh, there we go.

Oh, and I have a new blog.

2006-11-01T20:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.christaknits.blogspot.com

As part of my desire to create an online dimension to my knitting involvement (and pattern sales, and design critique), I'm going to try to be blogging there at least once a week. Honest. Like, scheduled. This one might get some of that action, too.

(if you're lucky)

X.

Does this sound like me?

2006-11-01T20:24:00.000-08:00

The Dirty Little Secret
Deliberate Gentle Sex Master (DGSMf)

Innocent but fundamentally sexual, like the word "finger". You are the Dirty Little Secret.

Few women have the confidence for sex mastery, and among nice girls, like you, it's almost unheard of. So congratulations. You've had plenty of adventures, but you've remained a kind, thoughtful person. Your friends appreciate your exploits. They even live vicariously through you.

Your exact opposite:
The Wild Rose

Random Brutal Love Dreamer

You seek pleasure, but you're not irresponsible. You are organized and cautious, and you choose your lovers wisely. One, you don't like dirtbags. And two, you like to maintain control. Or at least lose it selectively. You might notice that older men single you out. They have an eye for your sensual nature. Take it as a compliment.

You enjoy making people happy, and it's inevitable that many guys will fall harder for you than you for them. You're not completely comfortable in a serious, long-term relationship right now. Our guess is that the key to extended happiness will be finding a responsible, but kinky, mate.

ALWAYS AVOID: The Hornivore, The Manchild, The Last Man on Earth

CONSIDER: The Bachelor, The Backrubber

Link: The 32-Type Dating Test by OkCupid - Free Online Dating.

Test my buttons!

2006-10-26T16:00:00.000-07:00

Well, don't.. because I *think* they'll be fully functional. I just wanna see what they look like!

Scratch That.

2006-10-03T12:49:00.000-07:00

I'm not bad with money.. "I'm currently experiencing a cash flow problem."

./laugh

X.

Teaser Post

2006-10-03T00:06:00.000-07:00

I'm really sorry I don't have anything up yet about my trip to Burning Man. It was amazing, and I am looking forward to telling y'all all about it, but...

... I'm in the middle of a four-week program that is helping me to discover how to ... eek, there's a rat in the living room with me, that's soo creepy... might be a mouse.. I'm not moving unless it runs over my foot.... oh, so back to the sentence, discover how to create sustainable income for myself, in creative artistic-y ways.. like hooping, knitting pattern design, teaching glass beadmaking (haven't actually tried making classes yet, but I'm looking for a venue)... etc.

Tomorrow's session is all about finance. The facilitator has warned us that the discussion may make some of us cry. I'm prepared for this. Our homework tonight was to answer a bunch of questions about how our family handled money.. and all I can say, after doing the assignment, is that my parents and close friends all seem to have frickin' amazing money management skills (and willpower)... and I don't.

The secret part of me that wants to create an acceptable reason for this says that it is just because I'm so damn capable at everything else I do, that this is one of the few areas I can self-sabotage so that I don't have to learn how to deal with success.

Nice, eh? See what enough counselling experiences over the years can teach you? Anyway, wish me luck facing my demons, and getting the evil money monkey under control.

And thanks for all your support, and fabulous examples... I actually got teary tonight, remembering how safe I felt after having Paul tell me I'd never have to eat brown sugar and flour again (was once my meals for three days while I was waiting for a paycheque. many years ago) when I was freaking out about leaving UBC and not having any sort of financial safety net, 'cause he'd support me if Very Bad Things happened and I needed help. Graz, P.

(side note: how did I manage to surround myself by so many people who are competent money managers? You all rock, in various ways, but that's one of them.)

Bueno noches.
X.

Pride Parade Picture!

2006-08-08T23:58:00.000-07:00

Taken by the lovely Ali, blonde, tattoo'd, and becoming a kickass hooper after taking a private lesson with me! The hooper on the right is Cyndi, who has been taking workshops and classes with me since the very first Hoop Play at the Roundhouse in January!

I'm allergic to Summer.

2006-08-07T22:23:00.000-07:00

I hate these mid-life allergies I've developed.. sniffling and sneezing my head off in the middle of a warm day seems so.. wrong. Ah well.

So much to catch up on! Highlights in one paragraph or less:
April - did the birthday party, used the bike-cart-hoop-carrier for the first time, it rocked...

May - NLS course (which I don't remember anything of, other than there were a goodly number of participants).. lots of hoop classes and private lessons and hooping at the Children's Festival

June - Zajak swim meet (back to doing setup at the pool, which I always actually enjoyed), another NLS course, which wound up being TINY, only 4 people, challenging to teach but wound up being a lot of fun when we used members of the public as willing victims during the last couple days of sims.. started my official sweater-finishing service by doing the first mending job (to RAVE reviews, so the owner was able to wear her previously-ruined-due-to-huge-snag sweater again).. mmm... and lots of sun time, practicing for my Canada Day show... :)

July -... and the Canada Day show was okay. Decent enough for a first huge professional gig, learned lots of things (5 minutes good, 15 bad... shade good, sun bad..., warning crowd about possible throwing of hoops good, throwing hoops bad) and had a fun session of workshopping with folks before and after my melt-in-the-sun performance. Next day was Jazz Fest at the Roundhouse, LOTS of people to play with the few hoops I was willing to drag out, and a few fellow Vancouver Hoopers joined me.. also remet someone who'd used my hoops at last year's Folk Music Festival, spent the day in her company and became friends, and now we're going to Burning Man together! July also held yet another NLS course, 15 people to teach by myself, but they were a good crew so it wasn't bad... AND... Folk Music Festival was its usual amazing time, other than nasty evil lady who made me cry during my security shift (no relation to other NEL of the past).. and I got to go up on the stage for the closing act, and sing chords with Jane Siberry and 50ish other volunteers! This month also had hugely popular hoop classes happening at the Roundhouse... filled THREE sessions, woohooo! Practices after class for Zero and fire hooping at Illuminares paid off, that event went really well! (video will eventually be posted on my hooping site, once I free up some processing space on this machine)

August... oh yeah, Pride Parade! Heh, that was just yesterday, and I'm already so mentally beyond it... hooped the parade with another woman from my classes and a buncha stilters and spinners and the Carnival Band.. lots of fun, oh so hot and sweaty, thank goodness for ex's who roll past bearing icy cold water that they're willing to share! Good relations with ex's are so important... Parade pictures to come, too.. prob just posted here, though, because I don't think they'll suit my professional image on the other sites :) Also spent a fun night aboard the Britannia, cruising up the Indian Arm with 450 women and a handful of men on a Pride cruise... I was volunteering/working, as a way for me to be more comfy talking to attractive folks of this particular gender (and a handful of trans and genderqueer folk were around, too, to add to the blend!).. worked fairly well, and I learned that I don't need to be quite so polite to the friendly/pushy women who decide that mounting my leg and sticking their face in my breast is an okay thing to do without even introducing themselves or looking for a sign of welcome. I'm too nice.

Today was all about waterpolo.. I ref'd at a regional tourney out in Surrey for the South Fraser polo clubs.. and was reminded of all the things that I dislike about ref'ing... but I need to be positive and think that I'll get better and not screw up calls, and that parents and coaches would rather have ME on deck than having to do it themselves, or have someone worse than me. If they can find someone better, hey! Great! I could totally use that time to get ready for Burning Man.. but no, I'll be heading up to Kamloops in the middle of next week to ref the Provincials for three days, woo!

Exciting thing lined up for September (if I get in...).. the SEARCH program by the Alliance for Art and Culture www.allianceforarts.com which is a month-long, 9-5ish program to help artsy people like me figure out how to be successful at supporting themselves in whatver variety of ways they choose. Sounds good, eh? That will start Sept 18 (day before my 34th birthday, no presents required...) and run through the second week of October. After that, I'm hoping to teach a ton of knitting classes, and hooping classes, and follow up on whatever develops during the SEARCH program thingy. Wish me luck!

Oh, and I'm fully prepared to start PACKING for Burning Man with about three days to spare. Totally ready... to procrastinate more :)

Hope you're all having a wonderful summer! Sorry for being the worst person you know about updating my blog. (do you really care? I get more comments from Blaine than anyone else.. and most of you have no idea who he even is!)

Weather: Mostly hot and sunny. I'm so brown after all day yesterday in the sun (with 30 SPF reapplied often!) that people are asking me if I've been to Mexico. The braids with colourful rainbow elastics don't really help that...)

Chai: Just one, sitting in Chapters as my unwind time for the weekend.. was all go-go-go for prep and parade and polo, now some chillin' is due tomorrow!

Water: Played polo on Saturday, and am woefully out of swimming and passing shape, though my legs are still pretty decent from hanging out with all my NLS classes.. hope to get in and swim more in the next couple weeks before I head to the desert.

Craft in Progress: almost finished a Noro hat-with-curled-horns-if-it-all-works-out, hah, and haven't finished any of the projects I mentioned in the last post, oopsie! I've got a whole bunch of interesting bits and pieces floating around in my head for a Build-Your-Own-Horned-Hat class.. horns, ears, hair, tenacles, eyestalks... should be good :) ALso haven't started sewing any of the 10+ bundles of fabric I've bought for Burning Man costumes. Maybe Wednesday.

Wardrobe: Black and hot pink and red diamonds fabric shorts, which I *think* I bought way back when I worked at Fanny's Fabrics.. and have worn these for years ever since. Am planning to use them for a pattern for shorts for Burning Man 'cause they're so damn comfy. Bright pink sports tank thingy that works for home loungewear but doesn't provide enough support for public appearances :)

Dreadlocks: Have worn them in twists for most of the summer, don't think I've backcombed them since early May, and am now planning to UNdo them after Burning Man, since I am being realistic and admitting to myself that they'll never get dry in the wintertime... and I've seen a ton of people with dreads around the city, and have realized that it is more of a costume for me than an actual lifestyle. May redo the twists at some point, sans wax, but don't picture revisiting dreads at this time.

Hooping makes my world go 'round.

2006-05-30T00:06:00.000-07:00

Summer season of hooping kicked off with a gorgeous day up at Whistler on April 23rd, dancing to the Wasabi Project and Michael Franti and Spearhead.... SO good. Such a lovely day, so much hooping.. and a great road trip with a handful of other Vancouver Hoopers that I'd met at my workshops or online... Managed to avoid getting burned, except for just a teeny little area just at the bottom of that "X" on my top...

If you asked me a year ago if I would be a successful professional hooper within the next 12 months, I probably would have snorted and replied "Uhm, nooo...." and wondered what you were smoking.

Today, I had three hoop-work-related surprises:

1 - emails started flowing in at around 10:30am. Apparently, my roomie's g/f had submitted info about my hoop classes to something called Vitamin V, which is a daily email newsletter about hip happenings in Vancouver... requests to register in classes, queries about birthday parties, and an invitation to join a business network followed. (that last one, I declined... even if I COULD knit during the hour-long weekly meeting, I still wouldn't get up early enough to get downtown for 7:30am to listen to a bunch of people whose skills I can't afford and don't really need..)

2 - got a call from Heidi at Public Dreams... she was the Volunteer Coordinator for a few years, so I did a lot of volunteer work under her, and she is now the Performance Coordinator for their big signature events, in charge of organizing artists (say, hoopers who may or may not hoop with fire) to perform at Illuminares and the Parade of Lost Souls.. and she wants me to either be a small-scale performer in a garden-themed area of Illuminares, or to be part of and help organize one of the main fire shows! Oo! Note to self: hurry up on building that fire hoop, dammit!

3 - showed up to the first night of my four-week set of Beginner Hooping, expecting four people.. and got SEVEN! Three of them bought hoops, too! Like, Wow! I can actually pay mself something reasonable after expenses for this session! Wooooooo....

This is a continual reminder to me to have faith and express gratitude to the universe, for putting me on this path and sending things my way just when I am ready to experience them... it has been an amazing year so far, and according to a tarot reading I had done on New Years Eve, the rest of the year is supposed to be Most Excellent as well. I can't wait.

(wonder if that last bit causes any cringes in my parents, who identify as Christian and are deeply involved in the work of the United Church.. but who have stopped asking if I'm going to start going to weekly services at a local church here in Vancouver.... my idea of religion and spirituality doesn't involve a leader and followers.. more of a one-on-one relationship with the Supreme Omnipotent Being.. with or without noodley appendages.. and if you don't get THAT reference, Google "spaghetti monster" and have a good giggle :) Anyway... having put dreadlocks in, and THEN done a bit of reading up on it, it seems that my views are pretty similar to those of Rastafarians. Who knew, eh?)

Happy spring!

Weather: overcast, moving to sunny... which will be welcome after the last two weeks of dreariness.

Chai's: one, cold, in my knockoff Nalgene bottle just before tonight's hoop class.

Water: tub, plus a trip to the pool for what was supposed to be just a hot tub, but wound up including an hour of passing with Ali, Claudia, and LV from the polo team.. and LV taking time to do some drowning (er, I mean teaching) while showing me the finer points of getting rid of the ball quickly while having a big man pushing you underwater.

Wardrobe: tie-dye tank dress covered by handknit heavy-cotton sweater 'cause the house is still chilly in the evenings...

Craft in progress: Oopsie, have finished neither the Dink hat nor the hippie bag, but am 80% done a sweater that I will be giving to Vince in exchange for the use of ALL his camping gear for my trip to Burning Man. Only problem is, I ran out of the wonderful handpainted yarn, and the store doesn't have the same dyelot anymore, so I'm doing major fudging.. ripping out the hem, using that yarn to hopefully finish up the neck, replacing the hem and cuffs and collar with a coordinating solid.. It just ain't so beautiful anymore. Ah well.

Dreadlocks: Good news: no mold. Bad news: not particularly dreaded, due to lack of wax.. I've been in the water so much in the last month (due to teaching a bunch of courses) and have another month ahead of the same, that I've been afraid to wax, lest I trap water in my dreads and lett them molder. So.. spent three hours the other night re-backcombing them, and haven't gotten them wet since, so they're doing OKAY.... but not great. But not moldy! Oh, and sunburned diamonds on my scalp may look interesting if/when I shave the dreads off.. but all the flakes of peeling sunburned skin don't look so hot while stuck in dreads. :( Again, ah well. :)

Watch Me Hooping in my Blog!

2006-05-08T21:44:00.000-07:00

It kinda feels like Christmas...

2006-05-02T00:20:00.000-07:00

Presents everywhere! First, a hoop cart, made from an old kiddie trailer that Heather scooped from somewhere up in Williams Lake, and then Dad took over the work of ripping off the tent-like stuff, and doing a little chopping and fabricating of crossbars to allow the hoops to be loaded in and out, and then pinned in place. Add bungee cords, and more air in the tires than I had on the first day of use (gasp!) and I'm rolling!

Second present: a new-to-me CPU from Kyle. The previous computer that Paul gave me was wonderful, super-speedy, great for processing videos and graphics and stuff... but was buggy (I knew this when I accepted it) and refused to run Word or Excel or Outlook.. not so good for work stuff. SO, after a day of mucking around (two CPUs, one keyboard, one mouse, one functional monitor) getting files transferred back and forth, I'm mostly on the new machine (might have a few iTunes that need rescuing) and VERY happy!

Third present: an email out of the blue arrived on Wednesday morning, asking if I did birthday parties and if I was available on Friday afternoon. Off I went, on the bike cart with some new smaller-person-sized hoops in tow, and had a lovely time with the girls (and their moms, and the occasional dad)... twas fun!

Fourth present, and why this feels like two days before Christmas: the article in the Vancouver Courier that I was interview for, back in March, will be coming out on Wednesday. A photographer came over on Thursday and took some shots of me INSIDE that big bundle of hoops in the cart, and from what I could see looking at his digital display, they look pretty cool.. of course, I have my fingers crossed for the cover photo, but I'll accept anything, with all this amazing publicity that is about to be generated for hooping in Vancouver, and my Hoop Play classes! Wooooo!

Oh, yeah.. and the sun has been shining :) Freckle time again, and SPF 45...

Weather: Sunny and windy today... though I didn't get outside til after 5 in the afternoon, due to new computer setup.

Chai's: one, in my mug... I think I broke my resolution by accident on Saturday morning. Went out Friday night, buses took FOREVER to get Linz and I back home, and then waterpolo had switched to mornings so I had to get up EARLY on Saturday to get there... stumbled into the cafe between bus 1 and bus 2, and got an iced chai to go... in their disposible plastic cup... realized about five minutes later what I'd done. (hang head in shame)

Water: polo in the outdoor pool all weekend... rain, fog, mist on Saturday, nicely sunny on Sunday... and no swimming today! Hope to make some time tomorrow, before bellydance class and the hooping playdate afterwards...

Wardrobe: navy yoga pants that were the most amazing find in a regular-size store.. XL, long enough to actually puddle over the tops of my feet, and $10! Woo! Only problem now is that the waist is loose and I have to hike them up all the time, grr. Also from the same store: black skinny rib T that is long enough to stay DOWN while I'm hooping, worn over the wonderfully supportive bra that has handily cross-over-able straps to hide behind all my racerback hooping shirts!

Craft in progress: actually finished knitting the Dink hat, so now have to embroider the letters onto it... the non-felted bag has been set aside, since I realized I got the proportions wrong.. and I'm playing with hemp and wool blended yarn, to make a hippie summer bag :) I'm SO into this new look, its funny.. but that brings me to the newest catagory:

Dreadlocks: Counted them the other day, while retwisting after washing, and I have at least 82... might have miscounted, but I restarted on the low side. They are badly in need of rewaxing, but while I meant to let them dry all day yesterday after polo, I forgot my wax at the pool, so I've got 1-2" untwisted roots and ends, and still decently twisted middles. Getting fuzzier, too, with the occasional hair root sticking up (hair that would normally fall out and be brushed away now stays with the dread forever... kinda yicky, but whatever :) They'll help to fatten the dreads up eventaully)

Dreads are Done!

2006-04-21T22:10:00.000-07:00

One of these days I'll figure out how the heck formatting these pics is suppose to work. Anyway.. so, here's the two-day-old-but-not-"final"-product.. that will take a few more months! The dreads-all-down shot, the dreads-in-a-pony-tail shot, and the "Wow, I've never looked so much like the way Heather looks in photos before, I think.." shot... something about my smile and eyes just looks so Heatherish.. its cool :)

Nothing new to report, other than I'm still on a mad Burning Man high, was at MEC today eyeballing all the things I'd like to buy, but should really beg/borrow/steal instead! (okay, maybe not the stealing.. I think the guilt from having Mom blaming other people when *I* was actually the person stealing from church, and then hearing that she had to go apologize to them and admit it was her daughter.. kinda cured me.)

So... I'm gonna borrow Vince's 10-person, shiny-side-outable tent (bigger than Dad's, and shiny, and Vince accepts the mess of Burning Man)... hopefully get nice steel tent pegs from Dad... just bought 19 yards of dayglo-pink ripstop nylon to sew into a shade structure of some sort (planning to NOT lose my way back to my camp... "Hey, anyone seen that giant pink place?")

And... now I'll need the following:

collapsible water containers
a sleeping bag and pad
a solar shower would be lovely...
hm... cooler to hold a couple gallons of milk, since I figure I won't attempt to eat any differently on the playa than I do in real life (cereal two or three times a day, yum...)
a headlamp would rock
so would funky-yet-effective dust goggles
a sledgehammer for driving in stakes, and a prybar for getting them out...
a giant duffle or two for hauling camping stuff plus costumes and hoop making supplies :)
a foldy stadium-seaty thing
a hammock that doesn't need trees or major structures (this may be a pipe dream..)
candle lanterns
dust mask(s?)
bungee cords and rope

... and a bunch of other stuff, but I'll stop there for now. Any offers? :)

Weather: sunny enough to dress as it if was Spring, but windy enough I was regretting it at times

Chai's: One, whilst wandering Chapters (still keeping my resolution: no disposable cups!)

Water: hot tub and swim in the ODP - twas lovely, and nice to recover after last night's polo practice, which made my wonky shoulder tweaky enough to make me stop mid-scrimmage

Wardrobe: my new hippie-classy-dready look, which today includes an ankle-length black tiered skirt, green scoop-T, green pottery button-as-necklace, and lampwork earrings.. "Ooh! Look at me! I'm artsy!" Pffft.. but yeah :)

Craft in progress: all the stuff listed last time.. not doing much, so no progress to report :)

Burning Man 2006, here I come!

2006-04-17T22:08:00.000-07:00

www.burningman.com

The Next Phase of Xta Life

2006-04-16T10:46:00.000-07:00

Alright, sorry about the wonky formatting here.. these pics are "the freckles from last summer, soon to be renewed" "the dreads I want to eventually have" "the amazing hair sectioning job my dad did, in only three hours!" and "the before pic".

I've decided that this is the time in my life when dreadlocks might work. My main work activity is artsy, totally suited for the look of locks. My non-main work activity is still mostly hip and casual enough that I should be able to pull off either really tidy locks (not during Month 1, from what I hear!) or get away with wearing a bandana or hat around 'em.

Burning Man happens at the end of August, so I definitely want them at least for that long.. if they are working well, and I can get all the Playa dust out, I'll keep them longer.. the one long-term goal I have that might not be dreadlock-friendly is being an international waterpolo referee... but that's a few years down the road, and I think I'll be able to wear them through the regional and provincial level stuff in the meantime.

And, it is freckle season! Yes, I DO wear sunscreen.. but I freckle anyway, and I like 'em! Spring is here, woo woo! Time to play, time to hoop, time to flake in the sun by the pool and read trash for hours... once it stops raining!

Remember: spend time doing what you love, living the way you want to live... embrace joy!

Weather: grey, overcast. Last week in Williams Lake it went from being sun-burningly hot, to hail and snow. Lovely, eh?

Chai's: back to buying them in person, but managed to keep myself to just one yesterday.. today, buying cartons!

Water: polo yesterday for the first time in a week-and-a-bit, and I totally hurt this morning. Hopefully won't be quite so bad this afternoon, and in mere moments it will be breakfast-in-the-tub time!

Wardrobe: warm jammies: blue mud-print baggy pants, the sweatshirt Dad brought back from UNB a number of years back, and my lovely Maiwa robe, the best hey-you're-self-employed-now, you-need-a-better-robe present I've ever given myself!

Craft in progress: hm... "dink" hat for Dave of Chub Creek podcast, non-felted bags for Urban Yarns (hope they don't mind my purple and green colour combo), periwinkle sleeves for the sweater I haven't fully visioned yet... yikes. That's a lot. Ah well.

PS - secret reason for all those pictures? I'm popping one into the ePlaya forum, so all of us chatting there can see who we're chatting with... and the blog was the easiest way for me to get url's for the pics! Shhh...

Dave Mitchell Nov 18, 1956 - Apr 5, 2006

2006-04-11T08:59:00.000-07:00

I called Dave my brother-in-law-ish, because he and Heather were never formally wed... but their partnership had the same quality and strength and love and playfullness as our parents' marriage.

Dave died peacefully in his sleep, of a massive heart attack. It wasn't a surprise, as he'd been diagnosed with incredibly high blood pressure in the last few months, but we are all considering it to be a blessing that he didn't die while on the road in his logging truck (potentially hurting other people) and that he didn't suffer a stroke and survive as a lesser person - he wouldn't have been happy with that.

I'm at home in Williams Lake, spending time with Heather and my parents, and looking forward to the service and celebration of Dave's life, happening on Wednesday. I'll post pictures of that when I have time, because I'll bet that you've never seen a truck memorial procession, or seen a reception held in the lot and hut of a truck detailing company... it will be good.

Be well, tell your loved ones often that you love them (or make sure that all the little things that you do carry the same meaning, if the actual words are hard for you). I love all of you. (yes, even the odd stranger who might read this blog. You are worthy of love, therefore I love you.)

X.

The One-Word Game.

2006-03-02T01:00:00.000-08:00

A friend sent me an email, asking me to reply with one single word that I felt best described her. I thought this was such a neat idea, I sent the same request out to my list of friends.

Here's what I got back, in order received, with the name of sender:

Passionate (Brendan)
Gorgeous (Zohar, who is a model)
Fierce (Katie... who hasn't even SEEN the *&^% I've stirred up at work yet..)
Creative (with some feeling of "well, duh!", from Rebecca)
Inclusive (Sophie)
Unconventional (Liana)
Amazon (Phil)
Tentative (David... which shows just how well he really knows the inner me)
Alive (sis Heather)
Hot (Shane)
Vital (Becky)
Insatiable (Felix)

I am Christa, and my friends think that I am passionate, gorgeous, fierce, creative, inclusive, unconventional, amazon(ian?), tentative, alive, hot, vital and insatiable. Interestingly, my two closest friends Kyle and Paul didn't send in their responses.. may have to hunt them down for an answer. and add to the list... ah well!

I think I'm gonna post that on my wall.. beside the giant checklists of self-employment and life plans that I have plastered up there!

Thanks for playing, everyone... These words made my week :)

Weather: I actually missed most of the day, stayed at home in jammies until 5pm or so.. was grey and overcast but not TOO chilly at that point.

Chai's: just one, enjoyed at Kyle n David's place prior to watching Lost... we're playing catchup on Season Two episodes..

Water: tub in the morning (well, noonish by the time I get through my morning emails and site checks n stuff) and polo practice at night.. thank god for the dedicated two other people who showed up, AND who made for an interesting hour of gossip and passing and shooting!

Wardrobe: Very... lame isn't the right word, but plain might be good. Purple longsleeve T from MEC, and jeans from Eddie Bauer that I finally lengthened to a ragged bottom, after owning and wearing them too short for at least 5 years. Oh, and hat made of pretty periwinkle-blue-with-bits-of-everything merino from Koigu yarns.

Craft in progress: 3/4 done a black seed-stitch and cabled hat (Rebecca gets credit for the seed, after her feedback looking at swatches I was knitting while visiting her and Paul in Seattle) but I can't FIND it now.. so I took the undyed wool-and-alpaca for some simple knitting on the bus while I listened to Crafty Pod podcast on my semi-functional iPod.

Just another day in the life of a Professional Hooper.

2006-02-25T21:42:00.000-08:00

My knees are still cold, almost two hours after I got out of the rain, and my false eyelashes are impeding my view of the computer screen.

My shoulders hurt, my costume is incredibly muddy, my boots are soaked through, and the hoop with the glowstick necklaces taped all over it is still glowing.

However.. I have a cheque in the pocket of my jacket, made out to me, from Public Dreams, that pays me for the time I performed and facilitated hooping tonight. This was my first paid gig. Woo!

Mountain Mardi Gras was a neat event. It was strange seeing it, in its very first incarnation, from the point of view of a performer rather than a member of the audience or a volunteer. This was the first time I was on the inside of the "green room" area, hearing the five-minute calls and the time-to-go calls of the green room manager, visiting with other performers during the down-time between our sets, and NOT being at the beck-and-call of anyone who needed help from a volunteer, or a volunteer volunteer-coordinator. (yes, that is not a repeat.. for a time, I was an unpaid assistant coordinator of volunteers for Public Dreams)... AND, not having to help with any take-down! I LOVE being a performer!

First set: arrive on first shuttle bus, which is ten minutes late so as I am walking into the green room tent, the performance coordinator is telling me that I'm supposed to be On, Right Now. Drop bags, dump jacket, slide on gloves, and GO GO GO. Ariel, the other hooper, and I were assigned to "animate" the entrance when the gates opened to the public, and to bring them into the Anansi Spider area where much fun and games were to be had. We started hooping 5 or 10 minutes before the gates opened, dancing hard and fast to get warmed up in the gentle wind and light SNOW! I discovered quickly that I had to keep my feet down and avoid any kicky steps, as the heels of my boots were caught frequently in my spiderweb skirt... BAD costume! Hooping around to live performers is also very different than hooping to CDs: performers stop, and chat about what they're going to play next, and leave you kinda hanging there with a hoop spinning around some body part... sad. Audience participation in this zone was slow.. the high point of this shift was having a mom and two daughters lined up working on some vertical hand hooping and behind-the-back passes, with success! And, proving that it takes very little to entertain small children, encouraging them to jump through the hoop (two inches off the ground) was well received.

Second set: accompany Pedal Play procession to a certain area, and animate with hoop dancing and workshopping. Great, no prob. Except.. no one knew where the procession was supposed to begin, so we followed a band out from the green tent, and wound up hooping around them in the middle of a treed area until the performance coordinator found us and got us sorted out. New experience: having three photographers snapping shots of me as I danced.. do I pose? Do I try to smile whenever I'm facing them? Do I stop dancing for the crowd while I dance for the cameras? Tonight, the answer to all of those was "yes". In future, hopefully it won't be. When we got to the area we were supposed to inhabit, after hooping along the path to get there, the people in the crowd now understood what was to happen when I handed them a hoop. There was quickly a mob of hoopers playing around a stilter while avoiding the wacky modified bicycles that were weaving their way through and around us. I actually did not see a single hoop-accident.. will have to check with Ariel to get her confirmation, but this seemed to be the safest crowd I've ever experienced, in terms of understanding what a safe distance might be for those wishing to stand and observe something else. Maybe it is Public Dreams' history of working with fire spinners that has people trained about minimum clearance requirements.

Last set: this wasn't really a requirement, but I wanted to hang around til the end to dance to the DJ from Beats Without Borders, so I plopped myself into the final procession. Darkness had fallen, so my battered rainbow hoop was pressed into service as a glow-hoop, with those cheap glow-necklaces you see at fireworks nights taped around the hoop with clear hockey tape. The silver ribbon of my spiderweb skirt turned out to be wonderfully reflective, too, so I could do less fancy arm moves and relax into twirling and spinning and letting my costume and hoop stun the crowd. (Okay, not stun. Maybe mildly impress...) The nicest thing about doing this set was the positive feedback I received from the performance coordinator, who was actually out in the parade at the head of the band.. "Go Christa! That looks great!" "Awesome, girl!" etc... Immediate, specific.. everything that feedback should be :) The least-nice thing about doing this set was getting to the end of the parade, to where the DJ was supposed to play, and finding out (after ten more minutes of hooping to a somewhat ragged marching band) that they were cancelling the DJ set due to the rain. (total truth: it was due to an important cord being missing from the amplifying gear they rented for the event, BUT, it was starting to piss rain pretty hard anyways, so either reason worked.)

Bus-ride back down to the SeaBus was a neat opportunity for participants of the event to chat with me about the hoops, and again providing more feedback.. once half the busload got off mid-way at a park-and-ride location, I took advantage of the space to change out of my soaked clothing. Stripping down in a bus, in front of people who think of you as a performer, is an interesting experience... they cheered when I took off my top, skirt and pants, but were silent asI changed into dry socks. Odd? Reasonable? Hard to say. Seabus brought a seatmate who I'd re-met on the way into the event, having chatted with her last summer about my hoops while waiting for a bus at Granville Island. Our conversation this time was all about employment, and working your dreams vs working safe... very interesting to be on the OTHER side of this discussion, instead of being the one talking about having dreams but not actually doing anything about them. Still feels good to be where I am right now.

Time to go get rid of the chill, and figure out how to get the false eyelashes off while retaining my real ones. Wish me luck.

Weather: crisply grey, followed by downpour. Brr.

Chai's: two. I managed to be early for Seabus both on the way to and from the event. How nice of Starbucks to now have a store on each side!

Water: tub in the morning, followed by a game of polo with a bunch of teen girls trying to get picked for the national team.. was nice to be able to tell the coach that I preferred LESS playing time so I could conserve my energy for the afternoon of hooping. (also nice to hear that he was trying to make sure I got lots of playing time so it was worth my effort to come out to the game.. how sweet!)

Wardrobe: the easy-to-pack-and-be-dry-and-warm outfit: big fluffy red fleece Modrobes pants, green stretchy longsleeve t, and black fleece Modrobes jacket. I'm so sad their store closed :(

Craft in progress: cream cabled cloche got finished, though ugly and non-wearable in current form.. pattern DID get written down, which is a good thing. Other two sweaters still incomplete, and unstarted... but I found a pair of almost-finished socks that I made with handspun wool, which were waaaaaay too tight to be functional socks, so I'm revamping them to be armlets. Cool colour combo of chartreuse and purple.. not much to go WITH them, but that's okay.

How much do I miss Katie? Let me count the ways..

2006-02-10T21:56:00.000-08:00

1 - I miss the 10-minute bitch-about-the-morning-and-previous-evening-shifts we had every day sometime between Noon and 1:00.
2 - I miss that, even when bitching about something, she'd crack a joke and we could laugh about it.
3 - I miss sharing the excitement of new things... for instance, I got to try a fire hoop tonight for the first time, and I'm half-tempted to go into the pool at 8:30 tomorrow morning to tell her about it, before her NLS course starts.
4 - I miss the way she could talk about Weight Watchers and dieting, without ever, at-all, not-even-once making me think that she might think I was anything other than perfect, just as I am... and that she would give me the funky clothes that used to fit her, because they fit me :)
5 - I miss listening to her talk about the nummy yummy meal she made the night before, sometimes with commentary about how easy it was, but again without anything resembling pressure for ME to start cooking for myself.
6 - I miss talking about crafts, daily, with someone else who is craft-passionate. The roomies are cool, Phil is even artsy, but they aren't crafty.
7 - I miss the almost-daily Steve and Derrick stories.
8 - I miss her smile, because it invades her entire face, and when I think deeply about it, shows her connection to her widely-smiling family who are also all cool.
9 - I miss the blunt talk about sex, the ups and downs and ins and outs and battery-assisted or STD-challenged (me, not her) but all of it empowering and open. Sex rocks. Being able to talk freely about sex rocks harder.
10 - I miss the intelligent, educated opinions and insights on politics and the environment and our effects on both
11 - I miss having someone else to sigh and shake my head with, for she knew what I knew, mostly felt what I felt, and understood the need to grin and bear it... and...
12 - I miss watching her do a better job of grinning and bearing it than I could do... it still amazes me, to this day, the things that Katie can take, waaaaaay past my intolerance-of-stupidity boundary.
13 - I miss having her catch my mistakes, but not lay guilt or pressure on me about them... I could fix it (what, like create test sheets from five months ago?) and that would be fine.
14 - I miss having her nag about the fixes that I didn't get done in a timely fashion... I could use some of that right now, about the things that I'm STILL putting off.. (sometimes I hear a Katie voice, or see a Katie face, that tells me I'm letting a bit too much slide... hence the WCB claim that is being filed on Monday, instead of last October..)
15 - I miss seeing her in the pink t-shirt that makes her look like she's wearing makeup, even though she isn't.
16 - I miss trying to keep my mess on my side of the desk space... and Katie ranting at me for stealing her pens.
17 - I miss watching her fool around with the staff, particularly KTS and Scott, who may or may not be in her bracket right now.
18 - I miss the teamwork, of knowing that there was someone else there who understood that the load was shared, and either of us would do anything to help the other out.
19 - I miss chatting with her over the front-desk as one of us moves past while the other plays cashier - non-stop multitaskers, anyone?
20 - I miss compromising the integrity of the facility, the furtive knitting under the cover of our desks, the two-guards-guarding-while-gossiping on deck, the baiting of the swim coaches, the teasing of the swimmers, insulting the annoying regulars.. and all the other bad stuff we did to balance being so damn good at our jobs.

She was the best co-worker I've ever had. Thankfully, she's still a friend, so I don't have to miss her so much... but it would be pretty cool if she was just around the corner here at home, when I want to share excitement about an interview or ask an opinion on my new website, or talk about my work plan for the day, or bitch about not getting my laundry done even though I've had 3 days to put a load in the frickin' wash...

MSN helps, but it just ain't the same. A toast: To Katie!

Weather: sunny clear and crisp, and bloody cold to be out teaching a hooping private at 7pm in the crisp, clear, CHILLY night

Chai's: one, when I had my mug with me on the way to the pool for a swim, plus a hot chocolate in-store (to avoid the disposable cup) on my way to the hoop private

Water: tub in the morning, a swim in the afternoon that actually felt GOOD for the first time since the polo tourney last weekend.. I don't remember ever being so stiff and sore FOUR DAYS after an event, I must be getting old...

Wardrobe: black flare-ish sweats that I bought for bellydance/hoop classes, but that are about two inches too short and need something sewn on, a long-sleeve MEC t in navy (new jammies top, accidently wore it out the other night without realizing it was food-stained), and the giant cream Aran sweater that Phil's Claire gave me, to bring my body temp back up after the cold night of hooping

Craft in progress: still haven't finished the last bit of the multi-coloured sweater, but it is living in the pile of clothes on my floor. Started a multi-textured sweater for my mom, still swatching the options, and also started a cream cabled cloche, carefully writing down the pattern in the hopes of getting it published! Go, me!

2006-02-02T00:49:00.000-08:00

I still haven't found enough deep, poetic, meaningful, truly true and won't-make-me-cry words to talk about Katie.

She's the GOOD reason that I've left the pool... from her support as I was realizing just how bad it was, and agreeing that it wasn't worth sticking out another six months, to her encouragement for me to go out and use my CREATIVE skills and follow the dreams I've been talking about for the last three or four years... rather than taking another pool job.

More later, I still can't do her justice.

The End of an Era...

2006-01-27T21:28:00.000-08:00

When I was growing up in Williams Lake, I was a pool rat. I'd go to the pool almost every evening for public swim, usually with my sister Heather, and play. When we were younger, she and I would play "Statues" where one person climbs or is somehow suspended from the other person's body, and then they both hold it frozen like a statue. Aren't kids games great? As I entered the awkward double digits (I don't actually feel utterly recovered from the awkwardness [is this word really spelled "wkw"??] even to this day...) I started getting into springboard diving, copying Heather's tricks, teaching myself new stuff, and doing a somersault for the first time to impress the boys I was playing "follow the leader" with... around age 13,14,15, another patron started coming to the pool regularly, and he was an ex-competetive diver, who REALLY showed me cool things.. I can remember trying to do a "gainer" (aka reverse somersault) from the side of the pool, and getting a knee in my jaw and biting my tongue.. but I eventually got the hang of it.

At age 15, I spent a couple weekends in Kelowna getting certified to teach Diving, and as a Lifesaving Instructor (wooo, that Instructor-Trainer was pissed having me in her class - no WSI, no teaching experience, she actually had to cover all the stuff she'd normally gloss over...)... and the the most incredible thing about those two weekends was that my parents drove me down to Kelowna, booked me into a motel, and LEFT me there to attend the courses, feed myself, and not get into trouble. Can you imagine? I can't remember if I spent the whole week between the courses down there, but there was a definite period of time where my parents were in Williams Lake, and I was alone in Kelowna. Craaazy. Anywhoo... back to Williams Lake, and when school started in the fall, I got hired on at Sam Ketcham Memorial Pool to teach diving lessons afterschool. Spring Break, I got my WSI 1. At the end of June that summer, I got dropped off in Langley (okay, this time at least it was at a billet's house...) and took my NLS in a crash course at WC Blair Wave Pool. (side note: at the end of the course, the NLS Instructors were doing my final eval.. and pulled the "we can't decide whether to pass you or not..." schtick. Their reason? "You keep trying to tell everyone what to do..." Holy foreshadowing, batman....

17 years, 7 pools.. (Sam Ketcham, Ron Andrews, William Griffin, Karen Magnussen, Lonsdale aka Harry Jerome, Eileen Daily, and UBC Aquatic Centre).. and I'm done.

I don't intend to ever guard again. After being harrassed to such an extent while guarding, I don't feel secure on deck anymore. I don't feel capable of returning to the 99.9% focus I need, to feel competent on deck. (okay, so I notice attractive people.. and the annoying people too, unfortunately...).. so, I'm done. Done done. Poke me with a fork, I'm done.

BUT, there's a bit of a loophole.. I'm done with guarding, but I still intend to be involved in Aquatics.... playing polo, of course, but also continuing to teach Lifeguarding, which I am still passionate about, and working with the Pacific Dolphin Swim Association to host swim meets and special events... and getting in to enjoy the bliss of swimming/gliding/floating...

...and if I should happen to be swimming during a public swim at UBC, and have the opportunity to pass a certain nasty someone who swims slowly in the fast lane, I shall. No violence, no abuse, I'm not like her... but being faster than she is, WHILE USING A KICKBOARD, will give me a bit of pleasure.

Leaving UBC AC didn't feel real until today... actually, not until I had about 30 minutes left, and went to say goodbye to the swim team. Public speaking always makes me tense and red-faced, but this went beyond, as I formally acknowledged that I would no longer see these people on a daily basis, to pull their ropes and setup their flags and curse about their sloppy habits and enjoy listening to them tease each other and watch them get faster and get bigger and grow up to being amazing adults... These people were my favorite "regulars"... there might be a dozen lane swimmers that I'd see through the week that had gotten past my shyness to actually exchange smiles, nods, or even chitchat.. but the swim team kids have been... half of Everything.

The other half-of-everything that is UBC AC to me is the staff. With the exception of Katie, they are all full-time UBC students, and aside from the TownSchons and Dan (The Caped Crusader) Minster and a few others, they AREN'T lifers. Instead, these are people who have chosen to balance school with work, and to bring their general good cheer and happiness to the pool with them. The staff room at the pool (and the front desk, too) is usually packed with off-duty guards, who just like to hang out here. During any first-aid emergency, I've seen at least the same number of off-duty staff as there were on-duty, pitching in to help and make sure that the patron was okay, ambulance called, equipment fetched, pool guarded... Voluntarily.

I felt like these people understood me... as a person who likes her boundaries clear, concepts to be black and white, and who is blunt rather than a pussyfooter, I was accepted as a stern-but-fair, reasonable-once-you-let-her-calm-down, yells-at-us-for-the-right-reasons leader... and I am honoured. (if anyone cares to dispute this impression, feel free to use the comments link below to set me right!)

The messages they wrote to me, in giant booklet format, included thanking me for helping them with their strokes, their lessons, pool changeovers, life problems, feeling good about being built strong rather than dainty... and commenting on the weird and wonderful things I brought to the pool, like knitting, glass beads, and mad hooping skillz for all the staff I managed to infect!

Things I learned from the staff and swim team? Lessee...

Taking orders for a Starbucks run is a Good Thing.
So are Sleepovers. And having breakfast made for you.
It is easier to cope with an annoying patron if you can secretly snicker about their nickname while they are talking to you. ("ComplainO" and "Vasaline Lady" will forever remain in mind..)
Discussing unpleasant things is best done in private locations, at calmer times.
Practice makes perfect. Or at least a whole lot faster.
5:30am is do-able. Even on a regular basis.
Team cheers make everyone feel good, especially with grunting involved. Or beaver sounds.

and... I have learned that aquatics is not a be-all and end-all thing. I have worked there through six years of staff graduating and moving on. Swimmers getting 'done' and moving on. Head Guards following dreams or ambitions and moving on. Now, its my turn.

I haven't heard back about the PT job I mentioned in my last post, and I'm okay with that. It's actually a good thing, to be shoved right into building the self-employed, self-driven life that I've dreamed of, and hopefully I'll continue to be the person who swims, rather than sinks. My plan from this point? Clean my room. Fill out claims paperwork. Do laundry. Set up hooping classes. Throw away the expired food in the fridge. Write and sell knitting patterns. Sew more, shop less. Promote myself. Stay fit. Maintain friendships. Survive, and do it well.

And... I have a lot to say about leaving behind the bliss of working beside Katie Trant, but that will have to wait for another day, it keeps making me weepy tonight.

Weather: cold, rainy, and I was dressed too skimpy for it.

Chai's: two... one on my lunch break, and one after the staff party where I received a $200 Starbucks gift card... Katie knows me sooo well, cause one of the hardest things to face, on a daily basis, was the idea of not being able to truly afford treating myself to a chai.

Water: baths and a bit of pool time during setup for the swim meet that started tonight (I have learned to love the False Start Rope), and a bit of leg-work and jumping, as I have been tagged as the main replacement goalie for our team heading to Seattle. Eek! I play hole, not goal! Ah well, cross fingers that I stop the shots with my hands, not my face!

Wardrobe: my idea of comfy-dressy, which is bare legs, flipflops (now off), a black knit tank top and a pull-on black skirt (actually used to be Katie's, when she used to be my size..) Nice, casual.. oh, and my hair is up in two little braided bun thingys, which I like but am paranoid will date me as much as the teased-and-sprayed bangs date women who are about six years older than I am...

Craft in progress: Wow. A blank. Haven't had anything going on in the last couple days, been more about paperwork and starting schedule calendars and stuff... still haven't finished that sweater, so that will prob be the repeat thing I finish, unless I jump onto re-knitting a cable-star hat that I designed for swim coach Derrick's baby.. loved the pattern, hope it will sell :) Hey! I can call it Maya's Hat...

Warning: Sappy Stuff Ahead!

2006-01-15T23:33:00.000-08:00

I am so lucky to have the good friends that I do. I don't have a lot, no big crowds or anything (actually, I think it is pretty funny that most of you don't get along with the rest of you..) but you all mean the world to me, and are such strong pillars of support, and safety nets to catch me when I fall... that I am about to take a great leap, even though I'm terrified...

The last few months have been really bad at work, as I've mentioned here.. actually most of the last few months haven't BEEN at work, but at home, or at the Union office, or at my psychologist's office, or kicking around being useless while feeling scared, or angry, or bitter, or confused... and last week while I was surfing to see if a job I'd been looking at previously was still posted, I found another two PT jobs posted that seemed to suit me even better: part-time work, with people that I know and like, doing structured work with specific outcomes and no supervisory responsibility or legal ramifications for work problems... and with enough money to cover my cost of living, but no extras. What better way to give myself the kick in the ass to go after all those other contract jobs I've been talking about forever but doing nothing about? So, I emailed my application in on Thursday night, and was planning to give less-than-two-weeks notice if I did get the jobs, since they're slated to start on Jan 25 & 26th. Cool, okay, should be functional.

Then, I realized that even if I didn't get this job, I don't want to work at UBC anymore... the daily avoidance-or-confrontation stuff SUCKS, and I don't feel capable of returning to active guarding, because I don't feel confident that I can maintain an alert, effective scan while replay-or-anticipate-danger stuff is going on in my head. So, rather than struggling through it and suffering the physical and emotional strain anymore, I have given two-weeks notice, and will leave at the end of the month.

So... back to those friends of mine....

Had lunch with Kyle, Jon and David, after K n J accompanied me to the YWCA to check out their studio space for a hoop class (looks very potential, yay!)... and they made me laugh, shared in the beauty I was appreciating of the city around us, and tossed around hoop class ideas (along with plans to attend CirKids and yoga classes, whee!)

Had a crepe with Zohar, who listens so well while I pour out all the feelings and emotional stuff (honestly, the strict difference between males and females in this aspect is pretty funny.. I'm not looking for SOLUTIONS here 'cause I'm smart enough to have come up with my own, just LISTEN dammit! ).. and then we went to look at shoes that we can't afford to buy :)

Went to a movie with Wolf, whose solutions are always so... un-do-able, but they make me laugh and generally help me to put things in perspective again, but tonight we were just watching a light, funny flick (Corpse Bride, I recommend it for the art, storyline is sweet too) that helped keep my mind activity down to a dull roar... and he offered me the services of his lawyer, and then accepted that I was unlikely to go that route, and kept my mind engaged with other amusing stories....

And got home, found that Paul had crafted a giant response to my report of computer wonkiness, and then we spent a while talking on MSN, and he told me all the things I know, but am comforted to hear again: I'll never starve, between my friends' support and my own efforts, and that I am loved and cherished by everyone who knows me well. I got to call him nasty names for getting me all teary-eyed, and we threw some insults back and forth, and made potential plans for me to escape to their place in Seattle for a break if I need it.

These are the friends that I spoke to or saw on Sunday. (think this was a record day, actually! It was great!).. but the rest of you have all weighed in at different points along this struggle, and I want you all to realize how much I appreciate you, and your support and love and wonderfulness. I'm extremely grateful that I have you in my chosen family (yes, even those of you blood-related, I'd rechoose you anyway!) .. and all the roomies with their crazy chosen-partners and friends just arrived, and made me all weepyesqe all over again, so I'm struggling to finish this!

Here I go, wish me luck, love you forever....

Weather: sun breaking through overcast, with occasional rain. Whoa, sounds like me today!

Chai's: one, in my mug, as it has been since New Years and will continue to be. No mug, no chai.

Water: polo polo polo.. we're gearing up for the Feb 3-5 tourney in Seattle, so practices have been a bit harder, but good.... yesterday and today were hard swimming, and hard playing, felt a bit slower today, and don't remember if I scored at all, but ref'ing was surprisingly good (shocked I could focus on the game, with all the traffic in my head..) and the play was all good natured.

Wardrobe: jammies, feet up and warm under a beautiful Aran sweater that Phil's (roomie) g/f Claire gave me, and shoulders wrapped in the...

Craft in progress: ... 80% done sweater, which is knit up to the neck, just need to decide if it is going to be a hoodie or plain pullover, and which is at risk of having its sleeves snipped, unravelled back, and reknit so I like them instead of just being okay with the weird increase pattern I was trying... may have lots of time to knit in the nearish future, who knows?

(dates are whacked in this post because I put it on hold for a couple days until I had actually DELIVERED the letter... I tried to edit it a bit to make more sense, but I give up!)

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