All dressed up with no place to go

There are a lot of Murphy's laws in journalism.

One that I'm still working on accepting is the dress code. In my experience, by and large, unless you're covering a major dignitary event or something in the same vein, jeans and a nice top will do. I find it a bit tougher being a girl — all the male journalists just get to pull on a collared shirt and jeans, every day, any day. While there are some nice feminine collared shirts out there, I generally dislike them on me.

Murphy's law: the day you wear a skirt to work is the same windy day you're asked to go out and cover a rugby game because the sports reporter is on vacation.

However, because of the part-time job I held throughout university, I have a lot of skirts and dresses, because of the dressy-casual dress code.

Usually, when I worked in the office I was always wearing a skirt or dress; when I started running lights and sound I might have been able to wear dark jeans but I never dared, though I always wore pants because of the way I tucked up in the chair in front of the sound board.

So now, finding something to wear in the morning (ie a nice top to go with the three or four pairs of dark jeans that I have) is sometimes a challenge, because the numerous skirts and dresses hanging in my closet are certainly out of the question.

I also know that I may longingly look at my heels in the morning, but I always choose flats. I have two pairs of heels — one are typical high heels, they're black and purple and not much else special about them, and the other pair are the best pair ever invented. They're round-toed and look like 1920s jazz shoes; they look very similar to what girls wear for dancing in musical theatre, as they have a strap on them too. And they are the most comfortable things ever.

I almost wore them one day, then though better of it. Funny enough, that day I got sent out to shoot a fire, and was traipsing through brush, up hills and through high grass. Comfortable and versatile they may be (I've been known to run through the theatre with them, like I said, they were made for dancing), I don't think they'd stand up to that.

So, in addition to a few more nice tops, I am in search of the perfect pair of flats. They dress up an outfit a bit, but it's also not the end of the world that I'm wearing them when I'm sent out to a marsh to photograph a beaver release. Though I'm also sure there's better footwear to be wearing.

The following flats criteria is all based on previous experience. In a nutshell, they will be comfortable enough that I won't feel every pebble when walking down a dirt road, durable enough that I can wear them every day and they will hold up for a considerable amount of time, made of some kind of material so they don't get immediately smelly (as all flats inevitably do), and cheap enough that I don't feel so bad when they only last a couple of months (remember, because I'm wearing them every day, in all kinds of conditions).

I'm not a huge fan of socks, and will wear flats well into October until the snow is deep enough that I look incredibly foolish, instead of just foolish. And the minute the snow is gone, I pull my flats out, and that's all I'll wear through the spring and summer.

Take that, Murphy's law.

A wireless love affair

Dear Starbucks — I love you.

Although I’m a regular coffee fiend (I once knocked on the door of the coffee shop at 6 a.m. because they hadn’t unlocked their doors yet and I had to be at school, but I wasn’t going without coffee in hand), I’m even more enamoured lately with their free wifi.

Because Shaw has a habit of literally cutting wires when old clients move out of residences, I’m without Internet until the middle of July, when a Telus technician can come out to the middle of nowhere to hook it back up (my dad thinks they might be sent out of Edmonton, which is why I have to wait until the middle of July).

I can still check Twitter and Facebook on my iPhone, as well as Google anything that needs immediate attention (like when my mother texted me to find out where a Petro-Canada gas station was in Nisku, Alta.), but there’s only so much browsing you can do on a screen that’s yay big. And I obviously can’t do certain things like read a Flash-powered newspaper website, and opening .pdfs seems to be touch and go. I’m not complaining – I don’t want to think about the state I’d be in without my smartphone, period – but I still wouldn’t mind being able to sit down after dinner and stream an episode of Grey’s Anatomy or The Big Bang Theory.

But the first things I checked out when I logged on to the Starbucks network last Saturday night? I admit, Facebook was one of the first URLs I typed in, but that was quickly hidden by other tabs, including these ones.

Son of Bold Venture - the blog of an Esquire magazine writer
Magazine Awards - hoping to download some good offline features reading
After Deadline - my inner copy editing geek is in love with this blog, which I found accidentally through this post.
The 6th floor - found because I was poking around the After Deadline site.
Brain Album - I haven’t spent as much time on this blog as I would like to. It’s the blog of a former Edmonton Journal editor, and it shows up on my Twitter periodically as she posts new items and tweets about it.
Meanest Mom - a blog I stumbled on and I keep coming back to, for inexplicable reasons
Read It Later - hoping to figure out the intricacies of the app. I’m still struggling with being able to access my lists offline. Also, creating my lists still isn’t as easy as I would hope – I have to figure out if there’s a way to “read it later” in TweetDeck, the main Twitter application I use. Because right now, my options in TweetDeck are to favourite the item, then later move it over to Read It Later when I’m on my phone or web browser.
Globe and Mail - I love the Facts and Arguments essays (most of them). Was trying to find something I'd read before, so didn't stick around for long.

I also Googled some magazine layout stuff, as someone made a comment to me that the newspapers in Europe have quite a different design style than their North American counterparts, which I’m now curious to explore.
This is one of the sites that came back as a hit and some of the links look interesting as well.

The sad point I’m trying to make, is I think I’ve crossed the geek line. I mean, who seeks out stuff that is basically work-related, when they haven’t had open Internet for nearly a week? Don’t people have better things to do like read FML and play Farmville?

Not me, apparently.

Famous last words

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

When I moved apartments a week ago, this girl made a lot of sense. I think our culture is really focused on "stuff," (unfortunately) and that's never more obvious than when you attempt to pack your life into boxes.

One of the things that bothered me the most is that it took three and a half boxes to pack my bookshelf. Don't get me wrong — I love to read, that's why it took me three and a half boxes. But three and a half boxes? Just for books?

I've already experienced one bookshelf purge, when I finally parted ways with my Babysitter Club series maybe five, seven years ago. (Remember those?) I think it's about time for another.

I have my favourite books, of course. They're the ones that I always reach for when I feel like relaxing with a good book (which, granted, hasn't been often in the past four years). The other ones are there "just in case," but they never really get picked up.

So packing up these three and a half boxes, I decided that this summer, I'm going to read every single one of the books on my bookcase and decide if they stay or go. The "go" ones will find a new home on a friend's shelf or be donated.

The timing actually worked out pretty well — there are no unlocked wifi networks in my new building, and thanks to the genius of Telus, they can't hook up my Internet for another week (don't ask my opinion on that, you don't need to hear those words).

So I have a lot of time to read. The problem is, I'm falling back on old favourites. The books I always read, I want to read again. Other books, like Number the Stars, are from my elementary/junior high school days and I should part with, but it is a topic I'm interested in. I know I should part with them, which is maybe why I'm subconsciously dragging my feet on picking up that book, so I don't have to read it and put it in the donate box.

We'll see what my bookshelf looks like by the end of the summer.

By the way, I also need to do the same thing with my clothes, but I think I'm going to time that with a (shopping) trip to Edmonton. ;)