17 August 2010

T-Minus 19 Days

Today I reorganized and sorted through my clothes, including all jewelry, and cleaned out Drawer 1 of 5. (20% of quest completed.) Also awaiting purging are The Cupboards and the dreaded Back of Closet. (No, that wasn't what I did today. The clothes are in the other side of the closet.) A cursory count of all the books in my room comes out at roughly 100; I suspect this will need to be whittled down to a select few that I will use while at university. I don't anticipate having much space to store them.

I've seen a few checklists for university dorm rooms, and been skeptical of all of them. I need a handheld vacuum cleaner? Really? I'm not going to try and anticipate too much. Calgary has stores too; I'll buy whatever I need that I don't already have once I've actually seen my living space.

Other accomplishments in the university-prep vein: Bedding!


The duvet cover and one pillowcase (left) are dark, almost charcoal grey, from IKEA. My mom and I were browsing the bedding department and I kept saying, "This one feels really nice," and she kept saying, "Well, I think they're all the same material," and then we discovered that some had higher thread counts. So I got one of those. In contrast, my sheet set from HomeSense (right), containing one flat sheet, one fitted sheet, and a pillowcase, is patterned in black and white and pink and orange. We plan to find a throw blanket and throw pillows in bright pink and orange.

Also from Homesense:
Left, a bedside caddy, pictured here in use on my bed. It has Useful Pockets, many, and in addition, cost $2. (Though mommy bought it for me so I didn't even pay that.) Right, a laptop sleeve that made it through an eternity of humming and hawing by me, but ended up coming home. It is a tiny bit big, but I decided $20 for a slightly-too-large one was better than $45 or $50 for a precisely fitted Apple one. (I got so absorbed in the process of choosing one that I put down the IKEA duvet cover we'd brought for color matching and forgot it. Mom had to go back and retrieve it from HomeSense this morning.)

Stay tuned for tales of my university-prep purchases and navigations between Stuff I Need and Stuff I Don't.

[EDIT: ...Blogger's Preview page lied to me and the picture placement is a little messed up. Now I know how Robin McKinley frequently feels.]

16 August 2010

potr, bday, TOMS, and other abbreviations

This morning I told Jamie (aka potr) goodbye in the Edmonton airport. Her visit had been one of the events I counted down to this year, and even though it was a week long--the longest we've ever spent together--it went by with the deceptive speed that disguises itself as time passing normally but isn't. Our mothers think we need to relocate closer to each other; we haven't yet managed to say goodbye without tears, but the distance isn't as bad as it could be. Webcam and Skype and MSN manage to tide us over, despite our favorite comparison that going back to instant messaging after being together is like returning to instant coffee after getting a taste of espresso. We hope to be together again in the first week of January 2011.

And thus on August 13 I passed my first adult year. Bye, 18. You saw me meet an online friend for the first time, be legally allowed to drink alcohol but never try it, get a job, quit a job, and be accepted into university. You weren't very good at making me feel like an adult, but it's okay, 19 isn't much use for that either. I think I need a dragon before I'll feel REALLY grown up. And perhaps I could save the world.

TOMS Shoes, short for Shoes for Tomorrow, is a company founded by Blake Mycoskie that gives a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair of shoes bought from them. Blake spoke at a leadership conference I attended in the first week of August, and I admired that he runs an organization that is both charitable and self-sustaining. Also they make cute shoes. So I bought a pair from the website, and they arrived today (just as potr was leaving. It lifted my mood a little) in the mail. They look like standard canvas shoes, but there is a little more arch support than I've found in Vans or Keds and they are quite comfortable (barring that they pinch my heels, but I suspect that will cease once they're broken in). Everyone go buy a pair!

In three weeks less a day I move into residence at Ambrose University College. Happily, until then, I have three weeks less a day to kill by finally having the summer holiday I envied of everyone else. I have no plans. That's the idea.

Coming soon: Mexico Day 7. I WILL have these all posted by the end of the summer.

07 August 2010

Interlude: All done at MLW

I've never left a job before; when I moved from Student Page to Adult Page I stayed at the same place with the same people, only my duties changed. My last day had an air of what-are-they-going-to-do-fire-me? to it, which meant that I totally skipped out of work to eat cake in the middle of my shift and hung around talking to people and had a way better time at work than I was used to having. I was even a little bit emotional when I made the rounds for hugs.

I vividly remember the mid-July (2009) morning I showed up for work and my assistant manager said, "Good morning, Amy! Are you ready for your interview?" and I blinked like I was shell-shocked and tried to find something intelligent to say and came out with, "...what interview?"

Turned out she'd forgotten to tell me I was being interviewed for a Circulation Assistant position I'd applied for, since my tenure as a Student Page was ending. I still think this is the optimal way to do job interviews. No stress, just a moment of slight panic. Far preferable.

Speaking of slight panic, just a month or so after I started as a Student, I was shelving graphic novels and heard behind me, a little ways away at the computers, "You're under arrest for trespassing."

And there was a cop standing there with about four teenage guys, and one of them said, "What happens if we run?"

At that point I turned around and kept shelving and was really glad when I looked again and they weren't there any more.

Mill Woods is a very tiny, very busy branch--we serve the same number of people as the nearly-biggest branch, Whitemud Crossing. I laughed when people asked if it was nice and quiet working in the library. Are you kidding me? If the kids' section is remotely loud the ENTIRE library is loud. Once my manager said it was, "literally bursting at the seams." REALLY? LITERALLY? Can I SEE?

I was always the slightly weird kid, too. A little while after I started I squeed to a fellow Student that I was so excited to be working in the library and she was utterly bemused by this. (It did wear off. Still cool, though.) I also loved the jobs other people hated, like shelf-reading and weeding from a list and boxing books and pulling holds. And emptying the sorting machine, which was always my favorite thing to do.

I discovered things about myself, working, and one of them is that I'm highly intimidated by authority. I couldn't relax around my managers even when I was sitting in the staff room on lunch break with them, and for a long time my MO at lunch was to sit on the couch with my iPod in and be antisocial. That changed this summer, and today I went and sat on the Starbucks patio with some of my coworkers. It seems a little ironic that I'm leaving just as I had started to feel like a valuable member of my workplace.

This was always an in-between job. It's never been something I wanted to do for the long run, and it was never very intellectually stimulating or challenging, but every so often I'd be shelving books and kind of stop and realize, "Dude, I work in a library. For the rest of my life, people are going to ask what my first job is and I'm going to say, 'I worked in a library'." And it's going to be cool.

I didn't cry when I left, but I think I might miss it. A little.