People who bring their children in public(children who obviously need naps, but the parent spends several hours in the mall)
Peoples’ definitions of copyright(they are ALLL WROOOONG)
Twilight fans
AHHH
Phew. I have made some good friends working there, and I am glad to have a bit of “design” experience under my belt. Plus, they let me listen to whatever music I wanted, which was fantastic. Being in the middle of the mall, though, ugh. My distaste for kids has turned into an all-out abhorrence. They’re not even cute. I’d rather have a cat.
“It is illegal for me to sell this image which belongs to someone else, to you.”
“It belongs to me, because I found it on the internet!”
Plus people sometimes argue up and down that a word is spelled a certain way (like the wrong form of “you’re” or “your”) and force us to print it on the shirt that way. It makes me sad inside.
And yesterday, this guy came to the kiosk and told me I lied to him because I said, “I guarantee your shirts will not shrink,” and then they did shrink. Nobody ever guarantees anything, he was just putting words into my mouth, plus I don’t even remember when he was there, probably at least 2 months ago. He said his shirts were unwearably small and he wouldn’t go away. I said they were preshrunk, but he said, “I’d remember if you said that, because I don’t even know what preshrunk means.” He obviously just wasn’t listening(we get a lot of people like that, where you’re happy if they heard you at all). Plus if it’s the guy I am thinking it was, him and his friend were extremely rude to me, wanted me to copy their design from their business card(logo in Papyrus), and when I got annoyed and suggested they bring it on a cd instead, since they were so picky, they said “We don’t have time for that.” They were jerks. Don’t expect help if you are a jerk. Anyway, it’s not my fault you incinerate your clothes in the dryer when the label clearly says Tumble Dry Low.
Last-minute packing, as I have a few hours before work(my second-last day!). It’s really hard when neither of us are home at the same time. My uncle is supposed to be helping us move, but I haven’t heard from him in weeks, which is making me nervous. It feels weird the last few days before a move, when you feel more and more an outsider from the house. All our stuff is being replaced by the other roommates’ things, plus Jen just got a whole bunch of furniture. It’s an eerie feeling. I’ll be glad when we get settled in. Also nervewracking: the resident manager was on holidays for weeks so we haven’t heard from her either. I’m sure it’ll be fine, but we haven’t been able to give her our damage deposit yet because she was out of town.
Eep!
A suitable distraction: Wendy’s training videos from 1992 are fantastic. I felt kind of smug when I kept thinking it looked more like early ’90s than ’80s, and then saw the date stamp at the end. The title lies!
I spent all day packing to move. I filled two more garbage bags with stuff, even though today I was less focussed on getting rid of things. It would be nice if Nelson and I were both home at the same time to do this, but this will have to do. I’m pooped. Time for art21 and some crochet. If Nelson hadn’t packed the scanner, I’d post a drawing.
Packing ruins everything. Uh, I’ll just describe what I’m working on: I had kind of an epiphany late at night about my waxed pieces. I’d felt stunted because I felt like the next step was logically to cover the entire body, but every time I started to think about traditional garment shapes I got bored. I thought about it so much I thought maybe the pieces had been “completed” in my head and no longer needed to be made. Then I realized I could just make body coverings(I called them the “coverings” series, after all) as opposed to garments. I’m working on this crocheted cone that will cover the body(arm and face holes) which I will then ferment and then cover in wax. I’m excited to see the finished product! I’m glad to be excited again.
For some reason I really want this piece to have a beak as well, and 14th Century plague doctors come to mind.
I don’t know either. I’ll make it and see how I feel. If only my scanner wasn’t packed! Glarg.
Sunday morning I set up my embroideries in the gallery. I forgot the memory card to my camera, so here are pictures of washing to try and get the pencil out, for now. I’ll get a picture of them installed soon. Never again to quilters’ pencil! The only thing that got it out was soap and water, and near the end one of them started to bleed colour.
Rinsing. Spidery!
I thought it would be pretty quick to get them set up, but somehow it took an hour and a half. Because I had started with small squares of cloth, they warped and stopped being square, so we had to draw a map to line up all the tops. Several people thought my cheese one said, “Would you like a bak of cheese?” because the second L is a bit warpy. I might sneak it down, pick it out and redo that part. They’re confusing enough as it is.
I hadn’t been in the studio in so long that when I went to open my rust dye(started in June), it had been so long that some of the fabric had disintegrated and the soy beans(used for an acid) had started sprouting leaves. I laughed hysterically.
Excuse the mess.
The usual nasty rusting smell was replaced with the smell of garden soil. Who knew? I’ll take pictures of the dried/cleaned pieces sooner or later. I need to get one of those silk-softener washes.
Other things of interest(of the less moldy variety):
We got the apartment! We’ll be moving either August 31st in the afternoon, or September 1st. I’m SO excited for my own space. Still no word on if my dad can bring my couch before he goes on holidays. If he doesn’t, we’ll just have to hover for a month, I guess.
I’ve still been seeing the psychologist. She’s made me do a few scary things like call someone about an apartment listing from her office(awkward!) and check my grades(I still hadn’t). The homework is now to do small embarrassing things on purpose to prove to myself that nothing bad will happen, like switch spots on the c-train a bunch of times. I have been nervous about this.
I got a grad check email from the registrar about the classes that webservice won’t let me register for, because I need them to graduate. I replied and mentioned the problem(again!) and haven’t received a reply. One of the social-anxiety things that has plagued me this summer was to go in and get this sorted out. It’s so frustrating! And this other girl had the exact same error on registration day, she emailed them and they fixed it immediately. This makes me nervous because why didn’t they do that, unless I am getting the error because I really am missing a prerequisite. ARGH
I submitted the embroideries for the Contextural exhibition. Somehow, it took an hour and a half to put them up with eight pins. The stitches had warped the squares a bit, because they were precut ones my mom had at her house(I was desperate for materials and didn’t want to wait to use uncut cloth). Since they weren’t quite straight, we ended up drawing a map on paper to match all the tops and then put the pins through the paper into the wall.
I witnessed an epic tantrum at work yesterday. Read about it on Childfree, if you want.
At times the show made me feel better about my own work, as some of the pieces were just so terrible. But then I was reminded that the contestants were on a ridiculously short time constraint – I mean, what would you make if you were suddenly thrown into first-year-type challenges but had 1/4 of the time to complete them? The worst of the worst was the Shock episode. Be shocking in two days? Give me a break. While it was an entertaining train-wreck of a show, I doubt the “fame” of the winner will be lasting or useful.
I found this post at Design*Sponge on how to paint furniture. It makes me pretty excited for moving, because we could get some cheapy things for our apartment at Value Village and make them look pretty awesome! YAY. Totally going to.
Image from Design*Sponge
I also found this page with tips on painting cheap laminate furniture, so I can redo our bookshelves and things and make them look a lot less dorm-room-ish. There’s a wallpaper store on 17th where we could get nice paper to line the back board of the shelves.
We looked at three more yesterday. I am so tired of hunting. All three we saw yesterday were the same price(around $875), 2 included parking, and one parking was $25, which isn’t bad. Heat and Water are included in them all, so we’ll have to arrange to have electricity as well. We’re kind of torn between this one on Northmount Drive and one near downtown. The Northmount one is really nice, with the biggest apartment kitchen I’ve seen and a ton of personal storage(even a little cupboard with your suite number in the laundry room!). Northmount was a bit darker and had no balcony. The near-downtown one had a little less storage, but more than any places in the area, and a little dining room. It’s 2 blocks off 17th avenue, so I would no longer be chained to the bus, which would be really nice. It’s also pretty short of a drive for Nelson to get to work(which will be at Chinook next month). It’s pretty bright and has a south-facing balcony. Here’s the Google Street View. We’re going to contact her and give her our deposit and everything really soon. I’m glad we stuck it out and kept looking. This one was number 12 of 13 that we saw(The Kildare in the previous post was after this – we saw this while waiting around to see that one, and Nelson saw a sign and called and the lady said she’d be right out. It was a happy accident).
- Bridgeland – Nelson took pictures(I couldn’t go). It looked okay, but no balcony, and he said it was pretty small.
- Princes Island Place – I got a lot of “meh” from Nelson, sometimes sending him is kind of annoying because I have no idea about anything.
- Crescent Heights – this one wasn’t even the same apartment as the photographs, and was tiny and in an awkward location. Even after just seeing the outside, I didn’t want to go inside.
- The “Curry Place” – before we arrived, the guy on the phone warned us that the place smelled like curry. And oh yes, it did. It would have been okay (although I didn’t really like the kitchen) besides the smell. At first we thought it would be okay, but on the way home we could still smell curry, like it was stuck in our noses. They’d already shampooed all the carpets and cleaned it really well, and the smell wasn’t going away.
- Calgary Place – Nelson said, “There’s a reason these pictures are all close-ups” about the brochure. It has a rooftop garden and swimming pool, but apparently the rest is pretty dingy.
- Vista Tower – Nelson liked it a lot (this and the last place were on the day we forgot the camera), but parking is an extra $100 per month(apparently down from over $200), and I always feel weird about paying to park at your own house. Utilities were all included, though, and it had a separate storage area across the hall, and their promotion for signing a 1-year lease is a free couch from The Brick.
- Massage U Knead – right on 17th avenue, above some stores. Clean, pretty basic, okay balcony. I think we’d be a bit cramped, though. We decided if we don’t find anything else, we’ll move there. Includes all utilities and parking.
- Inglewood – A bit far away, deep into Inglewood, but it was part of a 4-plex and was absolutely huge. I’ve never seen a place I actually thought was too big. Lovely, 2 bedroom, a little more than we wanted to pay, but included laundry and a huge kitchen. I don’t think I want to pay that much to live in a remote location(although still half an hour less time to get to school than where I’m living now)
- Mission – Nice kitchen, bright, no balcony. Nelson said the only really good part was the kitchen.
- Another Connaught(Don’t remember the name) – They accidentally showed Nelson the 2-bedroom for rent first, so when he saw the 1-bedroom he was less impressed. We’d get the 2-bedroom if we could afford it.
- The Kildare – In Connaught, hardwood, no balcony, weird kitchen(no room for a table), and he said there was other storage but never showed it to us, said there was a resident manager and never introduced us, and never showed us the laundry area.
Nelson’s going to see one today in Connaught, two more in Connaught tomorrow and one on Northmount Drive. I always have to work on his days off, so hopefully the photos will be sufficient.
