I'm thinking about changing platforms again, which I think is a bad bad thing in terms of consistency, but...
I started building a portfolio website over the winter, but I never quite finished it, mostly because I didn't have all my clippings together and everything. And since I work on a touch pad on my laptop and not an actual mouse, getting everything exactly where I wanted it was a little touchy.
As part of the website though, I had built in a blog page, though obviously I never used it, since I never launched the site. (Or thought I didn't launch the site. I Googled myself the other day and my site came up as one of the results. I have no idea how it published itself in its half-finished state, and I'm not impressed.)
I just finished my weekend (Monday and Tuesday), but since I have no plans to run away to Vermilion or Wainwright next weekend (places I've run away to for the past two "weekends"), I might just hole up on my balcony and build myself a website. (Though I might run away to Paradise Hill on Sunday — for work though — and I'm trying to resist the temptation to run away to Edmonton for a couple of days.)
Can I get a verdict? Should I build a portfolio website with a built-in blog? Or keep the two separate?
Wednesday, 28 September 2011
Monday, 26 September 2011
Flipping brain switches
"People who don't know me very well think that I'm quiet. People who know me very well wish that I were quiet."
That kind of applies to me. I can be "not quiet" when I'm with close friends, but at a certain point, when the group gets too big, I get quiet again, no matter whom I'm with. I think it surprises people who know I'm a journalist that I'm not an extremely extrovert personality — it's more something I switch on and off as needed.
It even surprises my mom, and when she does the following, it bugs me to no end. She'll call me to tell me something, and I'll reply something along the lines of "Oh, that's nice." It happened when my brother placed really well in the area and provincial Skills competitions this year. They called to tell me — "Congratulations. Oh, that's nice." That's really all I had to say. Then my mom gets after me, "Use your journalistic skills. Ask your brother about the competition." No Mom, I'm not working. If he wants to tell me about the competition, he can tell me about the competition. Otherwise, we're going to sit here and listen to each other breathe on the phone. A friend from school and I were talking a while ago — her family does the same thing to her with photos. Both of us are of the opinion, when we go to family events, we're not the designated photographer by default. At least ask us, nicely. And we'll consider it, considering it's already what we do all day, all the time.
So that part, the interviewing and photography, I can switch on and off. The part that I can't switch on and off, and it even bothers me sometimes, is the editing part.
I know there are a ton of complaints about the grammar police. Some, like this post, even make some valid points.
On the flip side, grammar saves lives. Which is it: "Let's eat, Grandma," or "Let's eat Grandma"?
The one thing I really do try for is that if I'm going to point out the errors in someone else's copy, my copy, to the best of my ability, is going to be as clean as I can make it. Still, there is a lot to be said for a fresh pair of eyes, not only by someone else, but even if you put copy away for awhile and come back to it later.
When I wrote my column about Sept. 11, I spent so much time on it and got so close to it that I developed sort of a mind-reading approach to it. Essentially, I forgot to tell people in specific terms, until the final paragraphs, that I was talking about Sept. 11. The words "Sept. 11" actually didn't appear in my copy until the second- or third-last paragraph, because I was so used to thinking, "OK, I'm writing about Sept. 11, I know I'm writing about Sept. 11, so everyone must know I'm writing about Sept. 11, and I don't actually need to say Sept. 11."
Seriously, it would be nice to be able to flip my editing brain on and off, and I swear, I really do try. If I feel like I absolutely must correct the press release with the poor grammar and lack of CP Style, I try and bury it on my desk under some other papers so people can't see I've made corrections to a piece of copy that will never actually see the light of day again.
The last time I was in Calgary, B., a friend whom I've worked with on a bunch of copy and newspapers, and I went for coffee. B. is now the editor-in-chief of the school paper, and he brought some proofs of the paper to show me. The first new online edition of the paper I work for had just gone up, and so we switched — I took his proofs, and he took my phone to look at the new online edition.
We talked about a million things that night, but I kept absent-mindedly flipping through his proofs, and even though we were talking more about layout and design, at one point I started digging through my purse for a pen; there was a correction I wanted to make. B. started laughing and even said he had thought (but forgotten) about bringing me a pen, because he knew there would be copy editing that I would catch, as much as I would try not to.
See, but at least that's an appropriate time and place. What's not appropriate is correcting and editing tweets (of other people) on Twitter. See my problem?
That kind of applies to me. I can be "not quiet" when I'm with close friends, but at a certain point, when the group gets too big, I get quiet again, no matter whom I'm with. I think it surprises people who know I'm a journalist that I'm not an extremely extrovert personality — it's more something I switch on and off as needed.
It even surprises my mom, and when she does the following, it bugs me to no end. She'll call me to tell me something, and I'll reply something along the lines of "Oh, that's nice." It happened when my brother placed really well in the area and provincial Skills competitions this year. They called to tell me — "Congratulations. Oh, that's nice." That's really all I had to say. Then my mom gets after me, "Use your journalistic skills. Ask your brother about the competition." No Mom, I'm not working. If he wants to tell me about the competition, he can tell me about the competition. Otherwise, we're going to sit here and listen to each other breathe on the phone. A friend from school and I were talking a while ago — her family does the same thing to her with photos. Both of us are of the opinion, when we go to family events, we're not the designated photographer by default. At least ask us, nicely. And we'll consider it, considering it's already what we do all day, all the time.
So that part, the interviewing and photography, I can switch on and off. The part that I can't switch on and off, and it even bothers me sometimes, is the editing part.
I know there are a ton of complaints about the grammar police. Some, like this post, even make some valid points.
On the flip side, grammar saves lives. Which is it: "Let's eat, Grandma," or "Let's eat Grandma"?
The one thing I really do try for is that if I'm going to point out the errors in someone else's copy, my copy, to the best of my ability, is going to be as clean as I can make it. Still, there is a lot to be said for a fresh pair of eyes, not only by someone else, but even if you put copy away for awhile and come back to it later.
When I wrote my column about Sept. 11, I spent so much time on it and got so close to it that I developed sort of a mind-reading approach to it. Essentially, I forgot to tell people in specific terms, until the final paragraphs, that I was talking about Sept. 11. The words "Sept. 11" actually didn't appear in my copy until the second- or third-last paragraph, because I was so used to thinking, "OK, I'm writing about Sept. 11, I know I'm writing about Sept. 11, so everyone must know I'm writing about Sept. 11, and I don't actually need to say Sept. 11."
Seriously, it would be nice to be able to flip my editing brain on and off, and I swear, I really do try. If I feel like I absolutely must correct the press release with the poor grammar and lack of CP Style, I try and bury it on my desk under some other papers so people can't see I've made corrections to a piece of copy that will never actually see the light of day again.
The last time I was in Calgary, B., a friend whom I've worked with on a bunch of copy and newspapers, and I went for coffee. B. is now the editor-in-chief of the school paper, and he brought some proofs of the paper to show me. The first new online edition of the paper I work for had just gone up, and so we switched — I took his proofs, and he took my phone to look at the new online edition.
We talked about a million things that night, but I kept absent-mindedly flipping through his proofs, and even though we were talking more about layout and design, at one point I started digging through my purse for a pen; there was a correction I wanted to make. B. started laughing and even said he had thought (but forgotten) about bringing me a pen, because he knew there would be copy editing that I would catch, as much as I would try not to.
See, but at least that's an appropriate time and place. What's not appropriate is correcting and editing tweets (of other people) on Twitter. See my problem?
Sunday, 25 September 2011
Things that keep me up at night
Five years later, I still have problems listening to the field show music from high school marching band. Not so much the parade tunes, because those were mostly pop tunes like the Beatles' Penny Lane and Green Day's Holiday, and I only have the mainstream versions of those songs, but I have show music from two of the three field shows I did. (I have the audio from the 2005 show, but found parts one and two from our 2006 show on YouTube.)
(By the way, if anyone has a recording from the 2007 Calgary Stampede Fanfare or 2007 MACBDA, I would love to have the audio for Bishop Grandin's Angels field show — I don't think there was a Music in Motion that year, and if there was, Grandin wasn't a part of it.)
Anyways, when I'm listening to the field show music, all I can hear is the tenor sax part. (Note: I was a tenor sax player.) Of course I still "hear" all the other parts, but I hear them in terms of how they interact with the tenor part, not how the four pieces are supposed to sound overall.
It's what happens when a) you live, breathe and sleep the music for pretty much June and July each year during the full-blown show season, and b) you memorize the freakin sheet music for nearly 10 months of the year.
Shifting gears, there's a parallel to journalism here.
Quite honestly, I hated learning CP Style (the grammar and style bible for most journalists in Canada; the U.S. uses Associated Press — AP — Style) in school. We were assigned a section each week and expected to regurgitate it the following week on a quiz. So I did. Then I went to my first internship and had 40 pages of copy land on my desk that needed to be copy edited each week. I learned a lot of CP Style that summer.
Then I went back to school for my third and fourth years and served in three different editor positions for two different newspapers. I learned even more CP Style.
I like editing. It eats at your soul sometimes, especially when you're editing work from someone you've edited before and they keep making the same mistake and they refuse to change, but I like editing.
I can also be a little touchy about editing. It's one thing for someone, anyone, not to know the difference between "there," "their" and "they're," or "it's" and "its." What scares me is when I see it in newspaper copy — I kind of hope journalists, of all people, would know better. OK, that's why there's editors. But I can still hope, right? (There was also a lot of "Clagary" when I was editing copy for "Calgary" newspapers.)
The parallel I want to draw is that if someone else listened to my show music, I think they would hear completely different music than I do — assuming they're not a tenor sax player. The same thing goes for copy. I think someone reading the newspaper is going to notice a spelling mistake. But if I didn't point it out, are they going to notice that I was accidentally inconsistent with my use of "yoghurt" and "yogurt"? (CP Style prefers no h, in case you need to know that in order to be able to sleep tonight.) Or are they going to be able to find the two mistakes, one grammatical and one CP, that I made in this column? (Two mistakes and one sentence that needs to be reworded, that I'm aware of, at least.)
I have to draw this parallel because it's gotten to the point where I absent-mindedly correct leaflets left on restaurant tables, and most press releases I have on my desk have some kind of copy editing marks on them.
I think there's a lot to be said for being a good editor. But I also have to be able to sleep at night.
(By the way, if anyone has a recording from the 2007 Calgary Stampede Fanfare or 2007 MACBDA, I would love to have the audio for Bishop Grandin's Angels field show — I don't think there was a Music in Motion that year, and if there was, Grandin wasn't a part of it.)
Anyways, when I'm listening to the field show music, all I can hear is the tenor sax part. (Note: I was a tenor sax player.) Of course I still "hear" all the other parts, but I hear them in terms of how they interact with the tenor part, not how the four pieces are supposed to sound overall.
It's what happens when a) you live, breathe and sleep the music for pretty much June and July each year during the full-blown show season, and b) you memorize the freakin sheet music for nearly 10 months of the year.
Shifting gears, there's a parallel to journalism here.
Quite honestly, I hated learning CP Style (the grammar and style bible for most journalists in Canada; the U.S. uses Associated Press — AP — Style) in school. We were assigned a section each week and expected to regurgitate it the following week on a quiz. So I did. Then I went to my first internship and had 40 pages of copy land on my desk that needed to be copy edited each week. I learned a lot of CP Style that summer.
Then I went back to school for my third and fourth years and served in three different editor positions for two different newspapers. I learned even more CP Style.
I like editing. It eats at your soul sometimes, especially when you're editing work from someone you've edited before and they keep making the same mistake and they refuse to change, but I like editing.
I can also be a little touchy about editing. It's one thing for someone, anyone, not to know the difference between "there," "their" and "they're," or "it's" and "its." What scares me is when I see it in newspaper copy — I kind of hope journalists, of all people, would know better. OK, that's why there's editors. But I can still hope, right? (There was also a lot of "Clagary" when I was editing copy for "Calgary" newspapers.)
The parallel I want to draw is that if someone else listened to my show music, I think they would hear completely different music than I do — assuming they're not a tenor sax player. The same thing goes for copy. I think someone reading the newspaper is going to notice a spelling mistake. But if I didn't point it out, are they going to notice that I was accidentally inconsistent with my use of "yoghurt" and "yogurt"? (CP Style prefers no h, in case you need to know that in order to be able to sleep tonight.) Or are they going to be able to find the two mistakes, one grammatical and one CP, that I made in this column? (Two mistakes and one sentence that needs to be reworded, that I'm aware of, at least.)
I have to draw this parallel because it's gotten to the point where I absent-mindedly correct leaflets left on restaurant tables, and most press releases I have on my desk have some kind of copy editing marks on them.
I think there's a lot to be said for being a good editor. But I also have to be able to sleep at night.
Thursday, 22 September 2011
This is the wrong highway — Life is a highway, part 2
When I got my license, I still wasn't driving right away. And when I got a car, two months later, I promptly moved to Edmonton. So even though I was born and raised in Calgary, the street system in Edmonton makes a lot more sense to me. P.S. – I lived in Garneau, near the university hospital and Whyte Avenue, which is land of the one-way streets. So I think that's saying something.
However, despite my mastery of the one-way streets near the university and my kick-ass parallel park skills, I still get lost — a lot, and in any town I'm ever in. I'm OK in Edmonton most of the time, I panic occasionally in Calgary because I can't picture the street that connects to the street I need to be on from where I'm going, and Lloyd has the odd curveball. I know it's not exactly something to be proud of, but I think at this point, I've just come to terms with it. And the good news is, once I've been somewhere once, I can get there again no problem, no matter how long it took me to find it the first time.
Those were some of the thoughts going through my head this afternoon as I drove into the outlying area in Saskatchewan around Lloyd; the directions the guy had given me on the phone were, and I kid you not, "Turn south at the red building at (town), go south until you hit the arena and turn east, if you hit the railroad tracks you've gone too far. We have all the hay bales in front."
Oh Lord.
Despite my worst suspicions, I actually found the place fine.
On a semi-related note, last summer, I found the house I want "when I grow up." It's in Edmonton's river valley, which means it probably costs a fortune and a half, just off of Saskatchewan Drive once you pass over Gateway Boulevard. The family that lives there doesn't know I'm going to live there one day. :)
Today, when I went out to do this story that I was sure I was going to get lost en route to, I discovered what I want the layout of my house to look like. I'm assuming the place used to be a farm house, but it must be added on to now. It's huge and spacious, and I love it. Especially the wrought iron spiral staircase that starts in the floor in the corner of the kitchen and goes down to the basement (I'm assuming, I was just in the kitchen).
Considering the rest of my day, I guess the fact that I didn't get lost (actually, there was one other highlight too when I got back to town :) balances out all the frustrating stuff that happened today. :)
However, despite my mastery of the one-way streets near the university and my kick-ass parallel park skills, I still get lost — a lot, and in any town I'm ever in. I'm OK in Edmonton most of the time, I panic occasionally in Calgary because I can't picture the street that connects to the street I need to be on from where I'm going, and Lloyd has the odd curveball. I know it's not exactly something to be proud of, but I think at this point, I've just come to terms with it. And the good news is, once I've been somewhere once, I can get there again no problem, no matter how long it took me to find it the first time.
Those were some of the thoughts going through my head this afternoon as I drove into the outlying area in Saskatchewan around Lloyd; the directions the guy had given me on the phone were, and I kid you not, "Turn south at the red building at (town), go south until you hit the arena and turn east, if you hit the railroad tracks you've gone too far. We have all the hay bales in front."
Oh Lord.
Despite my worst suspicions, I actually found the place fine.
On a semi-related note, last summer, I found the house I want "when I grow up." It's in Edmonton's river valley, which means it probably costs a fortune and a half, just off of Saskatchewan Drive once you pass over Gateway Boulevard. The family that lives there doesn't know I'm going to live there one day. :)
Today, when I went out to do this story that I was sure I was going to get lost en route to, I discovered what I want the layout of my house to look like. I'm assuming the place used to be a farm house, but it must be added on to now. It's huge and spacious, and I love it. Especially the wrought iron spiral staircase that starts in the floor in the corner of the kitchen and goes down to the basement (I'm assuming, I was just in the kitchen).
Considering the rest of my day, I guess the fact that I didn't get lost (actually, there was one other highlight too when I got back to town :) balances out all the frustrating stuff that happened today. :)
Tuesday, 20 September 2011
Life is a highway
One of the last stories I did for my internship in St. Albert was about a local playwright and the Christmas play that they would be performing again, which I guess is kind of a tradition in the city.
We made some chitchat before actually starting the interview, and it turned out that she's a graduate of the same high school as me (we figured out this by talking about marching band, of course :). Somehow, that turned into a conversation about driving from Calgary to Edmonton or vice versa, and she made a comment about how she gets a lot of thinking done on that long, boring highway.
I agree, the QEII is pretty boring. Maybe it's because I've driven it a lot more than I've driven Highway 16, but I much prefer to drive 16 than the 2. The interesting thing is, that while Highway 2 goes up and down, Highway 16 tends to wind more side to side, though there are a couple good hills on it too.
That was my first summer that I did a lot of highway driving (OK, it was also my first summer driving) but since then, I've realized that you can get a lot of thinking down during highway drives.
I've done a lot of highway driving this year – in the past nine months, I've put over 10,000 kilometres on my car, and that's just trips to Edmonton, to Calgary via Edmonton, to Bonnyville, or, today, to Wainwright.
There's arguments for and against going home so much, although I would like to point out some of those trips were for must-not-miss events, and others were just because. Most of my friends are fairly amazed I don't mind doing the drive, and my mom too doesn't understand how I don't "mind" getting in a car for six hours and driving.
I just don't. I get to think, I get to sing along with my iPod (except when I'm coming up on the south Anthony Henday exit. Singing to Janis Joplin's Another Piece of my Heart – well, really any song – is a guarantee that I'll miss that stupid exit and have to go in on the Yellowhead, which, even if I'm stopping in Edmonton, is never convenient), and yes, I even talk to myself a bit.
There's been three times this summer where I've just gotten in my car and put it in drive. The first time, I went up to Frog Lake and area, the second time I made it down to Ribstone Creek area, which kind of reminds me of Drumheller with the hills and colours, and I went to Wainwright today.
Because when you're driving, you have to think about driving. When I'm at home trying to sort through my thoughts, it's too easy to check Twitter, pick up a book or watch a movie.
Considering there isn't much option for shopping as therapy here, I consider driving through the prairies a pretty good alternative.
Today though, I'm a little disappointed. It feels like it didn't work — that, or else I just didn't need it enough.
We made some chitchat before actually starting the interview, and it turned out that she's a graduate of the same high school as me (we figured out this by talking about marching band, of course :). Somehow, that turned into a conversation about driving from Calgary to Edmonton or vice versa, and she made a comment about how she gets a lot of thinking done on that long, boring highway.
I agree, the QEII is pretty boring. Maybe it's because I've driven it a lot more than I've driven Highway 16, but I much prefer to drive 16 than the 2. The interesting thing is, that while Highway 2 goes up and down, Highway 16 tends to wind more side to side, though there are a couple good hills on it too.
That was my first summer that I did a lot of highway driving (OK, it was also my first summer driving) but since then, I've realized that you can get a lot of thinking down during highway drives.
I've done a lot of highway driving this year – in the past nine months, I've put over 10,000 kilometres on my car, and that's just trips to Edmonton, to Calgary via Edmonton, to Bonnyville, or, today, to Wainwright.
There's arguments for and against going home so much, although I would like to point out some of those trips were for must-not-miss events, and others were just because. Most of my friends are fairly amazed I don't mind doing the drive, and my mom too doesn't understand how I don't "mind" getting in a car for six hours and driving.
I just don't. I get to think, I get to sing along with my iPod (except when I'm coming up on the south Anthony Henday exit. Singing to Janis Joplin's Another Piece of my Heart – well, really any song – is a guarantee that I'll miss that stupid exit and have to go in on the Yellowhead, which, even if I'm stopping in Edmonton, is never convenient), and yes, I even talk to myself a bit.
There's been three times this summer where I've just gotten in my car and put it in drive. The first time, I went up to Frog Lake and area, the second time I made it down to Ribstone Creek area, which kind of reminds me of Drumheller with the hills and colours, and I went to Wainwright today.
Because when you're driving, you have to think about driving. When I'm at home trying to sort through my thoughts, it's too easy to check Twitter, pick up a book or watch a movie.
Considering there isn't much option for shopping as therapy here, I consider driving through the prairies a pretty good alternative.
Today though, I'm a little disappointed. It feels like it didn't work — that, or else I just didn't need it enough.
Tuesday, 13 September 2011
Give a girl a staple gun (and a screwdriver)...
I've been tweeting pictures of this project as I put it together, but I'm pretty happy with the way it's turned out, and it's the first big project like this I've done, so I thought I'd put the sequence up here to share.
Every August, St. Walburg (about an hour northeast of Lloydminster) has their Blueberry Festival. Since the town is only about 800 people, it's a good time for garage sales too. I was up there to shoot photos for the paper, but I also wandered around some garage sales, and found these chairs.
I'd seen a magazine article at my parents' house that had taken vintage chairs and redone them in different colours — I can't remember what the back looked like, but the seat bottoms were orange, purple and green. They looked awesome.
When I moved out, my parents gave me a bunch of things — their old kitchen table and chairs, for example (which I'm pretty sure are older than me) with the reasoning that as I settled, I could start collecting my own stuff, replacing the handmedowns if I didn't like the style. Quite honestly, I think that's only going to happen with the kitchen table and chairs, because I love my couch, dishware and entertainment unit...the bed might go. Oh, and the desk is definitely going (it's a the size of a teacher's desk, and it's all metal and weighs about a million pounds. The next time I move that thing is not coming with me).
So I bought the chairs — there's only three, so if someone has a similar one kicking around, I'd love to have it, but they were $1 each. Even if they weren't salvageable, $3 for chairs is hardly a loss. My mom's friend, E., does a lot of recovering furniture, so I brought home one of the chairs the last time I went to Calgary, and she showed me how to take it apart and put it back together.
This photo is from when I started working on them by myself at home, but you get the idea. The one on the right is the original, the one in the middle is just the padding once I'd stripped off the two layers of vinyl on the seat bottom and three layers of vinyl on the back, and the one on the left is the finished one.
You'll see later that the back of the chair has a different pattern on the front and back, but it's from the same sheet of vinyl, it's just the way I cut it. The fabric on the seat bottom is actually a curtain panel. It would have been nice to do them in all different colours (there was a gorgeous blue and a very nice purple) but the panels were each $42 (but half-price if you have a Fabricland membership, which E. does), and big enough for four or five seats, so I just did them all in green.
Ignore me looking horrible in the background, but this is Katie, one of E.'s dogs. I was trying to take out the seam on the curtain, just so that the fabric wasn't bulkier in any one part, and so that we got an extra half-inch out of the fabric (not that we needed it, like I said, the panel was huge). Katie likes to be wherever you are, and in this case, she wanted to be right on the fabric. Even when we accidentally mis-cut a piece and laid it out for her to sit on, she still wanted to be right in the middle of things.
The after and before product. Fabricland prices actually become halfway reasonable if you have a membership, so I spent about $30 on fabric and $10 on upholstery tacks and feet covers (from Rona), and since every chair was $1, it works out to $13 per chair — all things considered, I think that's pretty good!
The first chair took us about five hours, but that includes shopping for fabric. I did the other two chairs over the course of yesterday and today — I did the seat bottoms and the back of one yesterday, and the back of the other one today. I was worried my hands were really going to hurt from the staple gun — I have joint, tendon, ligament and muscle damage along with mild carpal tunnel in one wrist (it's what happens when you carry a 16-pound tenor sax in a marching band on a sprained wrist for over a year and don't let it heal), and mild carpal tunnel in the other — but other than a little bit of twinging in my wrist and fingers, it isn't too bad at all. My palm does feel a little bruised from the staple gun since I don't have enough strength in one hand to use it, I had to use two hands. At least I wasn't going to staple my fingers accidentally to something like that.
This is the backs of the chairs. Like I said, the pattern is different, but it's from the same sheet as the front, with the black, green and white pattern. We only forgot to mark the holes for the screws once, on the first chair. I nearly forgot a couple times on the other two chairs, but remembered just in time.
I don't know yet what my next project is going to be, like I said, this one didn't take me as long as I thought it would, although there were times yesterday and today when I would glance at the clock, and then look at it hours later, even though it didn't feel like much later. I'm thinking I want a circular table, especially if I can't find a fourth chair and if I do only ever have three, but I am eyeing a green-topped table at Ikea....
Every August, St. Walburg (about an hour northeast of Lloydminster) has their Blueberry Festival. Since the town is only about 800 people, it's a good time for garage sales too. I was up there to shoot photos for the paper, but I also wandered around some garage sales, and found these chairs.
When I moved out, my parents gave me a bunch of things — their old kitchen table and chairs, for example (which I'm pretty sure are older than me) with the reasoning that as I settled, I could start collecting my own stuff, replacing the handmedowns if I didn't like the style. Quite honestly, I think that's only going to happen with the kitchen table and chairs, because I love my couch, dishware and entertainment unit...the bed might go. Oh, and the desk is definitely going (it's a the size of a teacher's desk, and it's all metal and weighs about a million pounds. The next time I move that thing is not coming with me).
So I bought the chairs — there's only three, so if someone has a similar one kicking around, I'd love to have it, but they were $1 each. Even if they weren't salvageable, $3 for chairs is hardly a loss. My mom's friend, E., does a lot of recovering furniture, so I brought home one of the chairs the last time I went to Calgary, and she showed me how to take it apart and put it back together.
You'll see later that the back of the chair has a different pattern on the front and back, but it's from the same sheet of vinyl, it's just the way I cut it. The fabric on the seat bottom is actually a curtain panel. It would have been nice to do them in all different colours (there was a gorgeous blue and a very nice purple) but the panels were each $42 (but half-price if you have a Fabricland membership, which E. does), and big enough for four or five seats, so I just did them all in green.
The first chair took us about five hours, but that includes shopping for fabric. I did the other two chairs over the course of yesterday and today — I did the seat bottoms and the back of one yesterday, and the back of the other one today. I was worried my hands were really going to hurt from the staple gun — I have joint, tendon, ligament and muscle damage along with mild carpal tunnel in one wrist (it's what happens when you carry a 16-pound tenor sax in a marching band on a sprained wrist for over a year and don't let it heal), and mild carpal tunnel in the other — but other than a little bit of twinging in my wrist and fingers, it isn't too bad at all. My palm does feel a little bruised from the staple gun since I don't have enough strength in one hand to use it, I had to use two hands. At least I wasn't going to staple my fingers accidentally to something like that.
I don't know yet what my next project is going to be, like I said, this one didn't take me as long as I thought it would, although there were times yesterday and today when I would glance at the clock, and then look at it hours later, even though it didn't feel like much later. I'm thinking I want a circular table, especially if I can't find a fourth chair and if I do only ever have three, but I am eyeing a green-topped table at Ikea....
Monday, 12 September 2011
Ripple effect
I had intentions to write about something other than Sept. 11 for this blog post. I kid you not, I spent nearly my entire Thursday trying to write a column about it (it's on page 17, since with the web version we can't link to individual pages), which involved essentially writing a little bit, reading some related links, deleting what I had written and trying again, reading some more links, deleting what I had written…
First of all, I can't believe how much is out there. Yes, I know it's the 10th anniversary, and one of the pieces that finally got me to focus wasn't a specific Sept. 11 piece, but rather about the love-hate relationship that journalists have with anniversaries.
This anniversary is a little bit different though, because unlike Elvis dying or JFK being shot (other events where everyone remembers where they were at that moment) it seriously affected the function of the day-to-day world, and its security.
So despite the sheer quantity of anniversary pieces that are out there, it's pretty interesting to read them all, because they all manage to tell a different story. (Though I must admit, at this point, when I see another one come across my Twitter feed, I first think, "Another one?" before I click on it to read.)
As a journalist, I'm interested to see the way that other journalists have put together multimedia packages. (I also think not only was Portraits of Grief a huge undertaking by the New York Times — you can read the back story here — but that they went back and did Portraits Redrawn — I guess that's why they're the New York Times.)
But I also think I keep clicking on links because I can understand a lot more now — I was 12 when it happened.
(Tangent: I was having a conversation with a friend, and when I mentioned this, he looks at me and goes, 'What?' He remembered crowding around the portable TVs in MacEwan Hall at the University of Calgary, and I guess the whole irony of this is that because of this conversation, we all — members of the editorial board we worked on together — realized that while I may have been the boss of the editorial board last year, I was the third youngest on the board; there were about 14 of us.)
I had seen the TV images before I went to school that morning, but the family I was supposed to be carpooling with was late and I was panicked about being late. (Remember, I'm 12.) I heard people talking about it in the halls while I was trying to get to class, but I still wasn't thinking much about it. Then, in fourth period, the principal came on the intercom. Up to this point, I don't think we had talked about it much in class, I didn't know anything else had happened other than the first images I had seen on the TV with my mom that morning.
I don't remember exactly what the principal said, but I remember what she prefaced it with, and that's when I understood that what had happened was big. I went to a French immersion school, and as a late French immersion, we were just starting to learn the language, but that was just more of an excuse to always speak in French, not less reason to. So all the intercom announcements, lessons, everything, were in French, never English.
What the principal said at first?
"I'm going to say this in English, so that everyone understands."
Like I said, 10 years later, it's interesting to see exactly how much I understand. Todd Babiak from the Edmonton Journal wrote a long piece on it, and I didn't read all of it (I've read a lot. Do you blame me for skimming?) but the line that stuck out to me was when he wrote, "In 2001, there was no Facebook, no Twitter, no iPhones. Most of what we read was printed on paper."
I have Facebook, Twitter, and an iPhone. Respectively, they were acquired four and a half years, eight months and nine months ago. And already they feel ubiquitous. But "most of what we read was printed on paper"? It's a true statement, but it feels so strange.
10 years later, I'm 10 years older and supposedly 10 years wiser. Crazy to see exactly how much I understand.
First of all, I can't believe how much is out there. Yes, I know it's the 10th anniversary, and one of the pieces that finally got me to focus wasn't a specific Sept. 11 piece, but rather about the love-hate relationship that journalists have with anniversaries.
This anniversary is a little bit different though, because unlike Elvis dying or JFK being shot (other events where everyone remembers where they were at that moment) it seriously affected the function of the day-to-day world, and its security.
So despite the sheer quantity of anniversary pieces that are out there, it's pretty interesting to read them all, because they all manage to tell a different story. (Though I must admit, at this point, when I see another one come across my Twitter feed, I first think, "Another one?" before I click on it to read.)
As a journalist, I'm interested to see the way that other journalists have put together multimedia packages. (I also think not only was Portraits of Grief a huge undertaking by the New York Times — you can read the back story here — but that they went back and did Portraits Redrawn — I guess that's why they're the New York Times.)
But I also think I keep clicking on links because I can understand a lot more now — I was 12 when it happened.
(Tangent: I was having a conversation with a friend, and when I mentioned this, he looks at me and goes, 'What?' He remembered crowding around the portable TVs in MacEwan Hall at the University of Calgary, and I guess the whole irony of this is that because of this conversation, we all — members of the editorial board we worked on together — realized that while I may have been the boss of the editorial board last year, I was the third youngest on the board; there were about 14 of us.)
I had seen the TV images before I went to school that morning, but the family I was supposed to be carpooling with was late and I was panicked about being late. (Remember, I'm 12.) I heard people talking about it in the halls while I was trying to get to class, but I still wasn't thinking much about it. Then, in fourth period, the principal came on the intercom. Up to this point, I don't think we had talked about it much in class, I didn't know anything else had happened other than the first images I had seen on the TV with my mom that morning.
I don't remember exactly what the principal said, but I remember what she prefaced it with, and that's when I understood that what had happened was big. I went to a French immersion school, and as a late French immersion, we were just starting to learn the language, but that was just more of an excuse to always speak in French, not less reason to. So all the intercom announcements, lessons, everything, were in French, never English.
What the principal said at first?
"I'm going to say this in English, so that everyone understands."
Like I said, 10 years later, it's interesting to see exactly how much I understand. Todd Babiak from the Edmonton Journal wrote a long piece on it, and I didn't read all of it (I've read a lot. Do you blame me for skimming?) but the line that stuck out to me was when he wrote, "In 2001, there was no Facebook, no Twitter, no iPhones. Most of what we read was printed on paper."
I have Facebook, Twitter, and an iPhone. Respectively, they were acquired four and a half years, eight months and nine months ago. And already they feel ubiquitous. But "most of what we read was printed on paper"? It's a true statement, but it feels so strange.
10 years later, I'm 10 years older and supposedly 10 years wiser. Crazy to see exactly how much I understand.
Tuesday, 6 September 2011
Slaying the dragon
At one point in my university career, one of my managers at my part-time job gave me a piece of advice that, at the time, I wanted to post in a location where I could see it, and be reminded of it, every day.
We had been discussing a situation that I was unhappy in, and S. offered this piece of advice.
"Just remember that those people are compensating for something."
It's a common enough thought, but it sounded so perfect coming from her.
I didn't work with the other manager, J., as long as I did with S., but J. was good at knowing what you sometimes needed to hear, and if he had something to say that you didn't want to hear, at least he could put it nicely.
When I quit because I was leaving Calgary, J. and I were talking about my new job and that despite the fact I was OK with living in a smaller town, no doubt there would be some adjustments.
He told me to consider it slaying the dragons — paying my dues.
I was thinking about that yesterday when I was sitting on the side of Highway 16, just outside of Edmonton.
I had a flat tire, and yes, everything turned out OK in the end, but it wasn't much fun during — first of all, once you get over the initial shock of 'Hm, I have a flat tire and no, I'm not going to get to go where I want to go when I want to go,' there's the big semis whipping by, the jerk contract mechanic that AMA sends out (for the record, the actual AMA guy on the phone was really nice), the stress of trying to find someone open on a holiday Monday to replace a tire, and then the added stress of trying to find a friend in Edmonton to pick up their phone so I could stay the night because no one is open on a holiday Monday to repair a tire.
Like I said, everything turned out OK. I mean, c'mon, it's a flat tire near Edmonton. It could have been a lot worse in so many ways. But at the time, it really did feel like a 25-foot (just a baby), firebreathing dragon.
We had been discussing a situation that I was unhappy in, and S. offered this piece of advice.
"Just remember that those people are compensating for something."
It's a common enough thought, but it sounded so perfect coming from her.
I didn't work with the other manager, J., as long as I did with S., but J. was good at knowing what you sometimes needed to hear, and if he had something to say that you didn't want to hear, at least he could put it nicely.
When I quit because I was leaving Calgary, J. and I were talking about my new job and that despite the fact I was OK with living in a smaller town, no doubt there would be some adjustments.
He told me to consider it slaying the dragons — paying my dues.
I was thinking about that yesterday when I was sitting on the side of Highway 16, just outside of Edmonton.
I had a flat tire, and yes, everything turned out OK in the end, but it wasn't much fun during — first of all, once you get over the initial shock of 'Hm, I have a flat tire and no, I'm not going to get to go where I want to go when I want to go,' there's the big semis whipping by, the jerk contract mechanic that AMA sends out (for the record, the actual AMA guy on the phone was really nice), the stress of trying to find someone open on a holiday Monday to replace a tire, and then the added stress of trying to find a friend in Edmonton to pick up their phone so I could stay the night because no one is open on a holiday Monday to repair a tire.
Like I said, everything turned out OK. I mean, c'mon, it's a flat tire near Edmonton. It could have been a lot worse in so many ways. But at the time, it really did feel like a 25-foot (just a baby), firebreathing dragon.
Saturday, 3 September 2011
BAM!!
I've hit the blogging wall.
Even writing this post has taken three tries, and it's certainly not my first attempt this weekend.
Other attempts include (and forgive me for some points being cryptic):
-A post on the grammar police - I found a couple interesting websites that I have an opinion about, and yet I can't voice it succinctly
-A post about losing my (writing) voice - in school, we weren't expected to write many columns or editorials. In fact, because we wrote just so many straight news stories, I've referred to it a couple times as having our voice beaten out of us. It never truly is - even straight news stories sound different written by different people - but it's still something I struggle with and am a little frustrated about; there's a lot of times I don't like my "voice."
-Missing someone - it may sound like an excuse, but I really don't know what I did that makes them act friendly towards me sometimes and as if I don't exist other times.
-What I want from life - very very very very very slowly I'm putting together a plan. On one hand, I need feedback. On the other hand, I don't think I'm quite at that stage yet.
A week ago, I tweeted about feeling restless and aimless and hating that feeling. I hate it when that sneaks up on you.
Even writing this post has taken three tries, and it's certainly not my first attempt this weekend.
Other attempts include (and forgive me for some points being cryptic):
-A post on the grammar police - I found a couple interesting websites that I have an opinion about, and yet I can't voice it succinctly
-A post about losing my (writing) voice - in school, we weren't expected to write many columns or editorials. In fact, because we wrote just so many straight news stories, I've referred to it a couple times as having our voice beaten out of us. It never truly is - even straight news stories sound different written by different people - but it's still something I struggle with and am a little frustrated about; there's a lot of times I don't like my "voice."
-Missing someone - it may sound like an excuse, but I really don't know what I did that makes them act friendly towards me sometimes and as if I don't exist other times.
-What I want from life - very very very very very slowly I'm putting together a plan. On one hand, I need feedback. On the other hand, I don't think I'm quite at that stage yet.
A week ago, I tweeted about feeling restless and aimless and hating that feeling. I hate it when that sneaks up on you.
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