October in Review

1. The leaves continued to change colour and fall.

Whee! It's autumn!

2. I got sick.

Boo for sick. It really set me behind to have this horrible hacking cough that lasted for weeks.

3. I got trained to do new things at work.

I work at a Neighbourhood House, which serves the area of the community it's in. I work at the West End one, downtown. I started volunteering there last year for experience so that I could get into Education. I tutored kids in an after school program. It turned into a job and last month I learned to do a number of new positions, working with different age groups. It's crazy, that I get paid to have so much fun: going to Science World, the Planetarium, the Maritime Museum.



Fun at Science World!

I lost two of my kids there, even though we were going one room at a time. They couldn't find me, so they got an employee to track me down, sending him looking for a "blond lady in pigtails". He eventually found me, despite their help, and all was well. Boy, did I feel like a bad leader that day! (Weird flashback to the time I hid in a McDonalds when I was four because I thought it would be fun. I can now understand why no one else thought it was funny.)

4. Teacher Strike in BC.

Well, someone thought it would be a good idea to make it illegal for teachers to strike, so that they could jam a crappy contract down their throats, in the manner of the last few governmental regimes. This time they went on strike, regardless, saying that they weren't happy with 40-kid classrooms, 120 schools shut down and money for special needs cut.

5. My aunt got married.

Congrats!

A friend of mine whom I met in Japanese class back in college asked me to be her Maid of Honour, so I watched this wedding with particular interest. I've never been in a wedding party and I don't want to mess it up! So far, it doesn't seem so hard. My duties seem to include:

-Shopping for pretty dresses (And for once not have people want to kick me out of the store for feeling up the silk! Heza-san's got quite the set of aluminum oxide and carbon strapped to her love-digit, which seems to be the ticket to respect in these fancy dress places. I keep waving around my title -- which I make sure to pronouce capitalized -- so that they know my place of power. It's fun.)
-Wearing a pretty dress
-Buying coordinating jewellery
-Walking down a short carpet to make sure it's safe to pass
-Eating (I didn't make the same mistake this time as I did with my grad dress -- I ordered it a size larger so that I could eat. Well, larger than my waist, as my bust weighed in at a size 2, with my waist at an 8. Even with the "cookies" in to help "my girls", the top still gaped ridiculously. There will be many alterations.)
-Partying (both of the respectable-ladies-eating-crustless-cucumber-sandwiches-cut-on-the-diagonal type and the doing-semi-disreputable-things-in-the-middle-of-the-night type. Both sound fun and I get to plot them out. *evil cackle*)

6. I started a new job!

When I was in kindergarten, I used to carry my pencil box on the flat of my hand, telling everyone I wanted to be a waitress when I grew up. When I got hired in a kitchen in Grade 12, I never got promoted to Front of House because I was "too good of a cook". Blah. I found out the hard way that no good cook ever leaves the Back. (I still find it amusing that I was considered a good cook, when I can't, in fact, cook at all.)

My brother is working at a small family-owned business and he needs me to cover the Tuesday shifts for him, so I'm working there on Tuesdays for now. I get monies and a free meal. It's the best food I eat all week.

I haven't even screwed up yet! Well, I got someone's foccacia bread to them late once, but that's it. I'm liking it, even though there's a million things to do at once. Lucky for me that everyone is more involved in their own conversations to pay much notice to my inexpert service.

7. I saw Broadcast with opening band Gravenhurst on Hallowe'en.

Imagine the Cardigans meets Aphex Twin. That's Broadcast. British minimalism with a computer side. Gravenhurst, the opening dudes, had quite the 90's angsty rock ballad sound, ala Bush X, which I quite enjoy, and is also bit on the hard rock side.

My brother, the indie rock snob, told me about it. We went for the outrageously low sum of $17, sat in a bar with about 100 people and got the live and personal preformance. These guys didn't even have roadies! At the end, we got T-shirts and only-available-on-tour minidisks, sold to us by the bands. Sweet!

8. Dan and I went as Jayne and Kaylee for Hallowe'en at Jen's party.

Don't ask about the Inara Shawl. Oh yeah, I renamed it. It's now the Inara Shawl. But it's not done. It's sitting fringeless in a shoebox. I'm hemming and hawing over the size. Maybe I should just throw up a pic and see what your brains think.

I found, to my surprise, I could pull off a Kaylee costume with pieces from around the house. Well, the silk Chinese jacket I got in a Seattle thrift shop a couple weeks ago really made it work.
I'm still amused that I got that there and not here.

9. I now attend the University of Washington.



Or so the signs around school tell me.



I research for my history papers at the Koerner Library of Humanities the Health Sciences Center.



I live in Seatt--

Wait. No, I don't. What's going on?

Each year, UBC gets about 50 TV/movie shoots a year. Most of them are for crap like Smallville and Tru Calling, which most students just ignore or mock.

This October, we got 88 Minutes, some Al Pacino flick. Ooo... It's all the talk. Dan even saw him while working in the library Center. I wish I had. Not because I'm particularly an Al Pacino fan, it's just a Vancouver thing. People collect sightings of famous people here. I never see anyone. Dylan has served the likes of Jessica Alba and Keri Russell when he worked at Zin, on Robson, but all I have on my celebrity bingo card is several Christopher Gaze sightings, but he hardly counts since he's so local.

*sigh*

I've got to start hanging out in more hipsterly stragetic locations around town.

10. I started a new blog.

I know, I've already one (okay, three), but I really needed this one! Okay, no I didn't, but who cares! That's what being a North American is all about: unneeded excesses! So here it is:

Nadia's New Blog

It's one of those trendytrendy 101/1001 blogs, in which I document the completion of 101 self-set goals in 1001 days. I know, I know, I don't have all 101 goals yet. I will get them up -- they're sitting in margins of school notes.

I guess that ends the exciting October tales. Now on to November, a sneaky month that has piled a test and two research papers in the span of three days. But after that comes Harry Potter, and with it a new character to dress up as. Only two weeks away!