Today was 420 day and there was a huge event on the steps of the art gallery. So much selling of weed and weed-food. With banners advertising prices and varieties and such. It was odd seeing it all so concentratedly open. There were biker-types and hippies and a bunch of high-school students wearing Portland NBA hats. After I realized stuff was happening, walking around downtown was fun. It was easy to spot people who were obviously going to the square, but it was more fun to watch people avoiding the 420ers.

I’d gotten some books from the library so I went down to the harbour to read comics in the sun. I hadn’t been to the square where the Olympic cauldron before, and though I’d seen the Digital Orca from a distance today was the first time I got up close. It was made by Douglas Coupland. Maybe if I’d paid better attention to the Olympics I’d have known that already, but there’s a handy plaque I read it from.

Tomorrow I’ll head up to the North Shore Writers Festival to blog it up. We had a meeting yesterday and it is not as intense as it might have been. It’ll be a longish day, but fun. There will be wine and cheese I was told to eat a lot of. I plan to comply.

It was sunny today, not warm exactly, but it felt spring-like. So I went out to the water to read and look at the mountains. I’ve written a draft of my last paper for the term and it’s turned from something I was ready to abandon into a piece of writing that actually has some interesting combinations of ideas (about irreverence towards books and how China Mieville should influence a youth services librarian). It must have been a very excellent day because for the first time ever I opened the front door on the first try.

I’m doing a video booktalk/trailer for an excellent YA pirate novel (A.S. King’s The Dust of 100 Dogs), and I own a bunch of pirate Lego, so using that Lego to illustrate the trailer seemed like a great idea. A few weeks ago I supplemented my Lego collection with extra hairpieces and some less masculine torsos and I was good to go.

Now, everybody in class has to make a video, but you can also just do a video booktalk. Getting out the Lego and building sets and taking umpty million macro shots isn’t a course requirement. But I’ve realized this term that what I’m really excited about in librarianship is doing cool stuff with young people. Playing with Lego and making something cool to show people is something I’d actually like to do professionally (and doing media-creation YA programs is something libraries can get into). This was completely the kind of project I can get lost in. If only all homework was like this (I’m sorry to my friends in cataloguing this term).

As of now I’ve got 30 pictures for my 90 second trailer and I’ve figured out exactly what gaps need filling. I need to do at least one more action sequence, a leaving home sequence that’ll recall the one already shot in the other timeline and a handful more Lego dogs (so I can turn them into 100).

I also appear to have left my phone in my jacket pocket with the ringer off since Friday night and never even thought about looking for it, so engrossed was I in Lego. Apologies to the person who tried to call me.

There is something about the way a hockey game is called that is calming just because of its familiarity. While baseball commentators on TV or radio can annoy the hell out of me (Buck, McCarver, Morgan) because of the inanity of what they say, I barely hear the words coming from the hockey game. I know friends of mine have strong opinions of who is damned good at their job in the booth hanging over the ice, who should never be allowed near a mic and who should have retired fifteen years ago, but to me hockey all sounds the same. It’s just this chanting cascade of names in succession (Tanguay to Jokinen to Iginla to Jokinen shoots Luongo saves), and it’s soothing as all hell.

Sean, who preferes football, and I have talked about the American ability and proclivity to mythologize the fuck out of things (he’s better at explaining it than I am). Listening to these games today I was thinking about how the announcers’ hockey chant is less a mythologizing than a ritualizing. In the game itself there’s no room for much more than the names, while baseball announcers have epochs to tell stories between pitches. Baseball’s got sagas while hockey’s doing rosaries.

Kind of bullshit, I guess, but something I might keep in mind. For future refinement.

My weekend was also kind of crappy with my lack of being called about the most recent student librarian gig I’d applied for. On the posting it said the interviews were going to be today, so when I didn’t hear anything by 5pm on Friday I figured that was yet another job missed somehow. I dwelt on what I could possibly have done to make my application better, brooded on the possibilities of ever finding a job when I graduate without recent library experience, and generally buried my head in books.

And then this morning I got a call saying I’ve got an interview tomorrow. So that’s all right then. I still might not get the job, but I’ve got a chance. A little bit of income, and the experience in a university library setting, would be so very excellent.

Doing this kind of thing is much easier than I imagine it used to be when you couldn’t lie in bed with your laptop all day, reserving books from all over the area to be delivered to places conducive to being picked up, or just getting the documents loaded onto your computer. I did go out to the VPL to grab a stack of books. Just for the thrill of going to the library and hurting my shoulder by overloading my bag.

And I did laundry and bought groceries. Wee. Exciting. Aren’t you glad I’m writing about this?

So many of my classmates seem so much more busy than me. All with their multiple jobs and things. I’ve just got my classes and the assignments, which I might as well do now since maybe I’ll be getting a job at some point to cut into my schoolwork time. This term I don’t have any pressing reason to get my school stuff done early, but I’ve kind of gotten the habit started so it seems better to be working on that stuff than not. It’s basically procrastination from writing or thinking about the future to be working on homework.

Yesterday I tried to get a SIM card but failed so you still can’t call me in Vancouver. I’m still on Skype though, and really, isn’t that all a person really needs in this day and age? The only thing is that I can’t really receive texts. I might get a cheapo pay-as-you-go number for those rare times I need to communicate out of WiFi range and to spoof as my CallerID number for Skype.

Today we moved a bunch of stuff out of storage and into my room in my new apartment. Holly and I both really like my new roommate Emma. We got keys, drove to the storage locker, did a quick selection of important stuff I’d need (like a bed and a pile of computers and books), got lunch, unloaded the van, almost got a parking ticket, carried the stuff up to the fourth-floor apartment (Emma and Holly did that so I could get the van back in time), and then sat and chatted for hours before heading home on the SkyTrain and stopping for pizza.

Now we’re just drinking tea.

Interestingly, there was barely any mention of any aboriginal history. That’s interesting because places here tend to make more acknowledgement of the traditional lands events happen on. Yes, it’s just lip service and doesn’t change any poor treatment, but now I miss it when someone doesn’t at least make the ritual pronouncement.

We also went to see some contemporary art at a free gallery, which I really enjoyed and had a pancake lunch which I enjoyed at the time but my guts decided to make me regret afterwards. We also met a woman who was selling some sort of medicinal goop and jewellery made from broken plates, and heard her speak at length about different schools of Buddhism (I was wearing my prayer beads but quickly tried to make it clear I’m not actually Buddhist). Holly and I were ready for me to get reprimanded for wearing symbols I didn’t understand, but she didn’t seem too frustrated with us. She kept on making references to toking up in the 60s and decided Holly was a child of those days in spirit.

We also spent some time listening to a pretty excellent busker, Mark Wilkinson. Holly’d heard him while we were talking to the Buddhist woman and wanted to find him and sit and listen. Sadly, there weren’t any free tables at the cafes right there, so we sat on planters to listen. He did an excellent version of Hallelujah but his songs were also good. We got EPs.

I always forget when I’ve been off a bicycle for a while how much I love the bicycle as a transportation method. We rode to Circular Quay through the CBD and even though I cursed at Javier’s bike when it slipped gears on me (oh for my bicycle in its storage locker back in Vancouver) I loved being on a bicycle again. I know Vancouver January biking won’t be this pleasant, but I’m looking forward to it. This morning we were talking about long-distance biking and I would like to do that someday. Do a real trip on a bicycle. Probably not over the rockies, I’m not that hardcore, but maybe heading down the coast a ways would work. I don’t know if my bike would be the best choice, being an urban single-speed, but someday I want to do that.

And the day began with reading Murakami (*contented sigh*) and blueberry muffins. Holly makes them in torn-in-half diet coke cans, because we don’t have muffin tins and because she is awesome and resourceful.

Last night we went and watched Christa Hughes belt out songs in a square and we danced at a silent disco. The silent disco was under a couple of umbrellas. There was a laptop DJ spinning tunes but instead of heading into loudspeakers they were beamed into wireless headphones. People stood around watching the dancers bob up and down to the sounds in their heads. The headphones hung on clotheslines when you were done so people could move in and out. Holly and I danced for a song then left in the middle of Hey Ya! so that others could enjoy it. It felt so selfish to dance to the music no one else could hear but as part of a project, it’s better. I like how art works sometimes.

We also wandered into an exhibit filled with elastic bands stretched around a room, but the curators/artists were too busy with their own conversation to make it at all accessible. Selah. A guy who made cufflinks out of old watches was my favourite. He had the salesmanship of selling prettied up discards down perfectly. I really wanted to buy a couple of cufflinks but I don’t have the right kind of shirts (though that’s remediable) and I’d already spent a chunk of money on myself earlier (I bought 1Q84 at Australian book prices). They’ll be back next week if I change my mind.