Halloween like a Champ

I'm sure most of you are pretty familiar with the fact that I have a tendency to boycott holidays. It's not that I'm bothered by all the cheer, it just takes so much effort - especially for all those holidays that don't actually mean anything...like maybe Halloween.

After getting my 'tude all year last year, my roommates decided it was time to take revenge. Enter the month long Halloween celebrations.

I'm not sure how I agreed to all these, but we ended up having a pre-pre Halloween get together, a pre-Halloween shindig and then an actual Halloween party.

The results:

At the first party, I was a film star from the 20's - hence being in b&w. That's my roommate Lissa as a doodle bear on the left:



At the pre Halloween bash, I was Joanne McLeod from Body Break. I have no idea what's wrong with my face:



By the time real Halloween rolled around, I had a job, internship and 5 classes, so I was obviously exhausted. This led to me being one of the three little pigs - I just wore jeans and a flannel shirt, stuck some sticks in my shirt pocket and turned an egg carton into ears and a nose.

Well, the nose stopped sticking and fell off after taking about 5 steps into the party. Then I kept jabbing myself in the cheek with the sticks every time I turned my head. Plus the headband was giving me a headache. So I took it all off and just called myself a lumberjack. In this one, my friend Steph is a jedi:



Yep. That is just me in normal clothes.

Needless to say, after all this celebrating, I'll probably be holidayed out for a year. Happy Halloween everyone!

Brandon's New Favourite Film

The big update on my life is that I now have a job, internship and I'm taking 20 credits. I basically have no time.

A lot of you have been asking what I do for my internship - here's the trailer for the film the production company I'm interning at has in release:



It's actually really really inspiring, even though Brandon has deemed it hippie. You guys should definitely check it out.

Then I'm working at a rabbit shelter (ha) and going to school. Can't wait for Thanksgiving with Scondy!

Kiva

So back in January, Scott and Cindy gave me a really cool birthday gift - a gift certificate to a website called Kiva (www.kiva.org).

On Kiva, you lend an amount of money to entrepreneurs in 3rd world nations so they can build their business. Usually it's things like buying another cow for a dairy or selling fruit in markets and things like that. Well, after finally finding time and recovering my gift certificate code (ha), I was able to lend to a woman in Liberia! It's really cool, here's the entrepreneur I lent to (click to be able to read it):



So then after the person you lend to buys whatever they need to to help their business grow, they start paying the loan back to Kiva and you get your money back. You can either reinvest it in another entrepreneur, or withdraw the money. I hope everyone can take a few minutes and check out the site, it's really cool!

Welcome to October.

Ah, the simple things in life.
And by this, I mean we FINALLY have internet in our apartment. So here's a quick little update for all my baited breathed fam and friends.

I live off a street very much like this one:



I still don't have a camera (hi Santa!), so that's actually a googled image. That's pretty close though.

Here are my roommates, because I know you're all curious:


That was honestly the most normal one we had.
Off to homework!

PS, by roommate request:

Le Lovely Canada

All my friends are tired of it, but I must say, missing my homeland has slowly begun.

My mum and I are in the middle of a very lovely road trip. I may have stayed out all night the day we left, which resulted in a particularly loud rendition of God Save the Queen after crossing the border into the US. Mum loved it.

First we went to Colorado to visit my sister and her husband.

The highlight of the trip might be the first morning: after sleeping in the family room, Parker came in at 6:30 to wake me up.

"Deesha, wake up...."

Then I'd hear a 'buhbuhbuhbuhbuh' of Parker running back into his and Landons room.

Then:

Landon: "No, Parker, wake up Leesha."

Then, buhbuhbuhbuhbuh.

"Deesha, wake up...."

In and out, over and over for a good five minutes. Who knows how long it went on before then. It was so adorable. Of course I woke up and got them cereal.

The other highlight has to be the bite marks on my collarbone from Parker trying out his career as a cannibal.

Then it was on to Wyoming.

Not a highlight.

Although, after what seemed like driving for a few years, we stopped in a small town to eat. Mum and I walked into the one restaurant in town and five or so of who I have to assume were the 'regulars' turned around to size us up. It was like walking into Dog River, so at least it made me laugh. (American friends unfamiliar with Dog River: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_River,_Saskatchewan#Dog_River)

Now we're in Utah. It's been so fun to hang out with Brandon and Tamsin - I don't get to see them nearly enough.

It was especially fun getting to go to Porter's Place - a restaurant named after a gun slinging famous wild west cowboy. Imagine an old west hotel where they don't tell you what's in any of the drinks. It was awesome.

And virgil. He's cute. (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_6JPvzEjBQ34/SdjK2vPo1GI/AAAAAAAAAwA/OR5jAc_Kdl8/s1600-h/IMG_3086.JPG)

Tomorrow morning it's off to California to find a place to live and start school. Crosslegged the whole way of course, because Stacey and I have enough stuff that the Scion's basically scraping the ground.

Haha this was easily the best idea ever.

Onward Mary Horowitz, onward!

West Ed.

Not to be out done by the likes of Bramsin, Mum, Bryson, his friend Jeff Kay and myself took a day trip to West Edmonton Mall on my one day off I had this week. For my American counterparts who may not be familiar with West Ed, it's supposed to be like the largest indoor mall in the western hemisphere or something like that.
Or it used to be.
Or maybe it's largest in the world.
I'm not sure, but the point is there is so much sweet crap to do, they had to chuck a hotel in there too so people had the time.

Unfortunately there was no time for Galaxyland (the amusement park in the mall) or the sea otter/lions/whatever shows (where they used to have the dolphin shows) this time around, but we did get to briefly hang in the 'Bourbon Street' section, 'Europa Blvd' and 'Chinatown'.

We shopped, then when Bryson and Jeff went off to the waterpark, I went to the aquarium while mum had her nails done.


Underneath the pirate ship is where the aquarium is.


Le piscine.


After that, we all went skating. Except for mum. She was under the impression that her toe nails needed to "dry".





Easily the best picture of the day.


It was great fun to get out and chill for the day, next time you'll have to come with.

i suppose, if i have a blog, i should blog.

maybe it was the solitary two weeks of non summer we had that have screwed me up, but summer is nearly over even though it feels like it's just begun.

for starters, i quit the hedonistic death pit of a job that was condillos and all of it's satanism. mostly i just wanted a real sleep schedule and for my face not to be covered in grease from potatoe chips. but leaving some of the psychotic coworkers was also a plus.
i guess years of working in a cement barracks and never seeing the sun will do that to you.

so now i'm a supervisor over at le pita pit (come visit me!!). my boss is awesome and a really sweet guy and i love pitas, so all's well.

after the work drama was sorted, i was able to head down for two days of the yearly epic that is the findlay reunion. well it ended up being more of a day because a refinery in edmonton busted and all of alberta from fort mcleod south had no gas.
so it was quarter to one am, and i pull into aetna, alberta with ABSOLUTELY no fuel.

what? you don't know where aetna is? that's ok - picture ten houses and fields - now you do.

i'm scanning the horizon, trying to pick out the light from campfires or anything (there was no sign for the campground) with zero luck. eventually my dad calls my cell phone to see if i made it. he doesn't know where the campground would be, so i have to turn back to cardston to my grandparents house (going 40 the whole way so i wouldn't run out of gas).

family members - picture granny's face at 1:30 when i woke her up to crash at their house haha.

anyways, brad and i coasted the car to extra foods the next day (the only place with gas) and then we were off. aetna was good, totally sketch, but good. we played a four hour+ game of risk that involved my blue troops retreating into the sea, then smores and cards and sleeping in cars.

not much else has happened, other than more rain. that and i'm scared brandons running really slow and just setting me and stacey up for an epic loss on nike+.


[EDIT: after a few comments (real life ones), i wanted to clear two things up. first, that description of my job was obviously meant as a sweeping hyperbole. i'm a poor college student, so even though condillos was a stressful job, i am glad i had it. my coworkers were mainly normal, in fact, loads of people would call me psychotic. second, when referring to the fam reunion as sketch, i meant we weren't in an actual campground. i had an amazing time and i'm really grateful to everyone who organised it. sorry if there was any offence - it wasn't intended that way!]