Tagged with clothes …

Jan 25 2012
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vancouver

feeling like a real cyclist again

I’ve gotten to the zone where I can bike up the bad hill (with a bit of a breather break 3/4 of the way up) even in the rain. It wasn’t pouring today, so it was infinitely nicer out than last week with all the snow and slush (which I didn’t bike through). It’s starting to feel normal to bike, not like some thing I have to psyche myself up for, even on a mildly rainy day.

My rain pants (which I’ll bring the next time I go to New Zealand for tramping so as not to get made fun of) do keep a lot of heat in though, so whatever pants I wear under them are not soaked from rain just damp from sweat. I might have to leave some pants here and change my (below rain gear) cycling wardrobe.

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Jul 27 2011
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australia, library, teaching

getting out of the office, seeing new things

I walked through the CBD this morning to the NSW Parliament library. It was hard not to notice that Darling Harbour was full past the chocks with boats, but I made it past most of them before I did. There’s a boat show going on.

Then I climbed a hill and followed a man with a slightly shiny suit and expensive shoes but who complemented that with a green and yellow soccer scarf (that appeared to say England on it, though the green and yellow were exceedingly Australian) and ratty fingerless gloves. Oh how I wished I’d gotten a look at his face.

At Parliament I did some work that will hopefully be published in a UN handbook, so that’s cool. I got to mix my journalist skills with my library opportunities in a way that meant I could be boring for Holly in so many ways over dinner! Frabjous day.

When I got to Parliament early there was a bus full of school kids arriving for a tour. One of the teachers must have been Maori because he had a full-on facial tattoo to go with his teacher jeans and teacher blazer. It was pretty awesome. I wonder if it’s the first thing he talks about with a new class, or if he waits for a student to ask or if Australian kids are so culturally sensitive and aware no one would even think there’s something remarkable there. (I’m betting it’s not the last one.)

We went out for lunch at work because of the completion of a big long project and then I spent the afternoon troubleshooting as per usual. Home to make dinner and for Holly to set off the smoke detector with her bucket of foot-soaking water (I don’t exactly understand it either).

And now we’re sitting here on the bed. Side by side. Blogging. Because that’s what we do. Not a new thing, but still something I enjoy.

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May 31 2011
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australia, travel, 中国

when you find a stranger in the alps

My mother is complaining I haven’t been blogging enough. This is because she doesn’t read Librarianaut. Six posts in the last week. That she doesn’t care about my topics over there is a completely separate issue. (Hi Mom!)

Recently the exciting secrets I’ve been keeping from the blog include how I went to get backup keys to my apartment copied, and the place in the mall told me I had to go to a certified locksmith. I suspect that’s because these keys have “Do Not Copy” stamped on them.

The other day Javier was playing guitar in the common area. It turns out he knows something like three songs and can spend hours trying to play them correctly.

Friday was the last day at work for one of my coworkers. We went to the fish market for lunch. At the fish market there are very few vegetarian options, which wasn’t a problem for me, since I could have a greek salad. But my boss felt bad so he ordered me two salads and potato wedges. It was an amount of salad designed to be ridiculed.

My boss was so happy today when he learned I know a bit about Photoshop. At quarter to five he got me to install it on my computer so I can begin graphics tasks tomorrow.

The last couple of days have been very rainy. I told Holly she should bring a Chinese umbrella since throwing one away there and buying a replacement here that costs ten times as much would be annoying. I think I’m also going to forgo trimming my beard till she can bring along ultracheap clippers. So far that’s the main thing I forgot to bring from Canada that I kind of need. It’s one thing to have a massive hobo beard when I’m off travelling but another when I’m going to work every day.

I do love the small office vibe we’ve got where I don’t have to feel underdressed in jeans and a half-buttoned shirt (over a tshirt – I don’t expose my Hemsworthian pecs to the office just yet). It’s possible I’m being ruined for corporate work, but that’s all right with me.

Okay Mom, there you go, a pile of boring minutiae. This is what happens.

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Apr 25 2011
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australia, school, travel

your troubles in your old kit bag

So in two(!) days I’ll be getting on a plane bound for Australia. My Occupational Training visa has not come through yet,and last week this was a cause for much anguish. The Easter weekend and the time delay in sending things around the globe means there’s little chance this visa will be ready for me to begin work in a week as scheduled.

But. I have a tourist visa to enter the country. And really, there’s nothing I can do here while we wait for the Australian government to approve of me in all my glory, so why the fuck not go? And that’s what I’m doing. It would be nice to start work and actually be receiving a paycheque but the fact remains that my room in Vancouver is rented out already, so it’s couchsurf here or be a tourist in Oz.

Now I’m packing up my room to put things into storage till Holly and I return to Vancouver in January. Essentially all my books are packed. I have an entire bag of Tshirts that isn’t going to Sydney. I’m almost at the point where anything that isn’t packed can either get tossed in a random box or be thrown out and it won’t really matter one way or another.

I’m restricting myself to taking two carryon bags for the next 8 months. Mostly because I like that kind of challenge, but also because then it feels a lot less like I’m “moving to Australia for 8 months” and more like I’m “going to Australia.” Going to Australia is a lot less freakout-inducing. I mean, I’m really excited about this and everything, but still, crossing the planet isn’t something everyone does really lightly.

I like living in chunks of time (part of why I like being back in school with its semesterization), and I don’t think this is as worrying as beginning a job or something without an end in sight, not knowing how next year at this time would be different. I mean, next year at this time Holly’ll be here and I’ll be taking summer courses to finish the degree inshallah. The year after that: completely unknown (except that Holly and I will not be separated by oceans; I can’t wait to be done with that).

Anyway. Two days till I leave and I have a bunch of packing left to do (plus voting).

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Nov 08 2010
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books, vancouver, writing

free as in oatmeal stout

After a meh sort of meeting at school today, I stopped off for ice cream and beer, both of which were sorely lacking in my part of the fridge. I’m walking up my street, bag with ice cream in one hand, box of beer in the other, and as I was approaching a skinny woman probably in her 20s, she said “Hey, how’s it going?” I think that’s what she said. I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me. I glanced at her, and she was wearing big sunglasses and clothes that rode that thrift-store-hipster/actual-hobo line pretty well. She had been talking to me, and she eyed my box of beer.

“Hey, umm, would I be able to trade you a pack of smokes for one of your beers? ‘Cause I’m really hung-over and you’d just be saving my life,” she said. I stopped, and kind of made my “I don’t think so” face as I formulated the sentence about me not needing a pack of cigarettes.

“Please,” she continued. “I just need something to drink. I’m so hung over.”

That’s what convinced me. The fact that she felt that her being hung over was a reason that’d convince me to trade beer with her. It just seemed so illogical there was no way I could not reward it. This might seem to contradict completely my denial of Halloween candy to that kid for not having a costume last week, but he didn’t even try to convince me. His heart wasn’t in it. This woman really wanted a beer, and this was her form of legitimate reasoning. She was so convinced it would work, she said it twice. I had to respect that.

So I opened my box of beer and gave her a bottle. She was rummaging for smokes and I told her not to worry about it. She told me karma would smile on me and I told her to have a good afternoon.

And then when I got home I found, not five dollars, but my copies of Machine of Death waiting for me. I’ve only read a couple of stories so far, and I think I’m going to wait till December to really sink into it. I’ve got the electronic version ready to go on my reader so it’ll be good travelling material. If you want to buy a copy, now that the “Let’s Be an Amazon Bestseller for a Day!” push is over, I’d probably get it from Topatoco, where you can buy loads of other books/T-shirts/gewgaws made by other indie creators I’m proud to be, however tangentially, associated with.

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Sep 05 2010
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school, vancouver

it’s the weekend

Yesterday I bought a bike. Which is kind of scary for me, because biking involves more physical activity than I prefer, but I also don’t like crowded buses. I hope I’ll be able to stick with it for getting to school and back. And that it won’t get stolen too quickly. It’s nice and light and simple and it’ll probably be good and healthy for me to ride more.

On Friday we had a “Meet your classmates” thing at a bar in Gastown (I will slowly internalize all the neighbourhood names so this city will make sense even if I’m not looking at a map). I had a good time. I didn’t meet many people because the people at the table where I first sat were pretty great so why go mingle? There were jokes about librarians/archivists as organizers and we talked about storytimes and I told people about my issues with the uninspiring administration of the Winnipeg Public Library system. (Although one of my classmates took years to get onto the on-call page list in the Portland Public Library, so yay WPL for having less demand for your jobs.)

My stuff hasn’t arrived from Winnipeg yet, but it isn’t too bad. I brought enough clothes with me to get through, although it means I’ll be wearing my patched, holey and comfortable jeans to school instead of my “nice” ones. I think I will survive without a public shaming.

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Feb 10 2010
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sports

i miss baseball

Not that I get to watch baseball on TV or anything, but I miss it. I miss keeping track of players and the storylines and all that. It’s like a soap opera (Sean would say mythology because that’s what Americans make out of their sports) that isn’t dependent on writers. Even just this offseason stuff, there’s a lot of neat things happening. I can’t wait for Tim Lincecum’s arbitration hearing when San Francisco tries to say “This kid? He’s not worth that much!” I’m looking forward to the heartbreak that the Mariners’ fantastic offseason has the potential to produce when the season begins and nothing goes as well as it might have. There’s just so much potential waiting to be ground down into dust and torn labrums. I look forward to April and beyond.

The Olympics? Sure, fine I guess there’ll be storylines and stuff, but it’s hard to get excited about these people you see once every four years for a few weeks. Baseball is a grind. A grind of millionaires yes, but a grind.

And man oh man, do I ever want this shirt.

Thus concludes my brief digression into sport. (See? Not a book review!)

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Nov 29 2008
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Uncategorized

failure and justification

I am wearing new pants because I failed at Buy Nothing Day. But they’re pants in a whole weird direction for me so that’s something. And I think I am conscious enough of my habits of consumption that BND isn’t necessarily for me.

Yesterday was the only day my mom and I could get together to go Xmas shopping for Sri’s son. I had to go along because I’m about the same size as him and would thus make a practical tryer-onner of clothes. It only took an hour so that was pretty good. And because so many of the shops were having “buy one get one 50% off” sales I got a pair of pants out of it. Not just pants like the kind I wear all the time, but jeans. It’s been ten years since I wore jeans. And even then it was mandatory as part of the Westgate choir casual uniform. I figured I’d be able to take this step backwards because I have slowed down in always having a book in the cargo pockets of my pants. You can blame the cell phone for that, since it’s got a whole shwack of books on it. And I wear sweaters with pockets. And I carry a bag around more often than I ever used to. So the necessity of cargo pants isn’t quite there any more. And a different colour of leg accoutrements didn’t seem that unreasonable.

You can tell I’m self-justifying here by my many sentences starting with And. I’m building up a wall. One sentence after another to hide behind. You probably don’t care. There’s nothing to hide about. But sometimes a cat just has to bury his new clothes in the backyard.

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Nov 27 2007
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books, tv, winnipeg

… and thorough

Today wasn’t as bad as it could have been. It turns out Canadian homes are pretty well insulated. The electricians came this morning and the heat was out for most of the day while they installed … a new electrical box? Is that all they were doing? I guess there are some more outlets around the house too. Some of them may even be grounded.

Without the heat going all day in the -20ish weather (maybe -17C) I was sure I’d be chattering my teeth down to whatever you call the stuff under your enamel. It’s an old house, and drafty. So when the heat first went out I left to buy groceries, a somewhat foolish decision as I bought things that needed to be frozen and thence opened up the powerless freezer to dump the things in, allowing all the cold out. When I could have left the ice cream out on the porch instead. Smart boy this one.

At that point some of the house’s lights worked but the internet didn’t so I got some reading in. I wore an extra sweater but it was okay. Then all the power went out and I left to go buy socks. A cold day really drives home the fact that you own only three pairs that enclose your entire foot.

On my way back I had to stop for some filming for a sitcom that was happening on Ellice. The show’s going to be called “Make It Happen” and it’s about a family of driving instructors. The guy who stopped me from getting in the shot was telling me about it. Of course he compared it to Corner Gas.

And then I got home and the heat had been turned on and I parked in front of a vent and absorbed its emissions for an hour. Almost finished Shikasta, the Doris Lessing book I started reading after she won the Nobel Prize.

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