Burrito West Blog

I switched over to my new role at work yesterday. It's weird going from a crazy-busy office environment with a crazy workload back to a normal day in a quiet office. I'm sure I'll adjust to the quiet soon enough, in any case. I'm no longer in the beautiful heritage building, I'm back in the falling-down industrial building with mismatched asbestos tiles in the hallway, but I do have an office with a window, so it all balances out. Also, I couldn't possibly be closer to my transit station unless I worked in the produce market downstairs. =)

Yesterday was Swap-o-rama-rama day in Vancouver!

I get to volunteer at this event every year and I just love it! It's a giant city-wide clothing swap and crafting session. Everyone pays an admission fee and brings their bags of clothes to swap, then they can rummage and take whatever they like from the huge piles of clothing. There are sewing stations and silk screening stations set up to repurpose/alter clothes. It's awesome. You bring in all the clothes languishing in your wardrobe, the unloved stuff that's taking up space, they find new homes with people that love them, and you go home with a new wardrobe of finds!

I work in the sorting room, which is where all the dropped off clothing gets, well, sorted into categories before being carried out to the tables. As I'm sorting, sometimes things catch my eye and I can put them aside to try on later - but usually we're just trying to keep up with the flow of stuff coming in. Still, I always leave the swap with some new articles that I love, usually stuff that is funkier than I'll buy.... because that's the beauty of the swap, you can take things that are a bit outrageous, and if you end up not liking them, you can take them back to the swap next year (or donate it to the thrift store). It's all risk-free. =)

Clothing swaps rock. Here are some of my scores for this year:
1. yellow sweater from Jacob,
2. grey sweater from H&M,
3. yellow/black top from someplace awesome,
4. red polka dot dress which I would never have picked up in a store but I LOVE.
5. mod print dress - not sure about this one,
6. green and purple top from H&M and pants from Jacob that fit perfectly! (I found those as we were bagging up the leftovers for charity),
7. and up top is my new sparkly party dress because you can never have too many sparkly party dresses.

The Pecha Kucha event I was involved with organizing at work happened last night. 2000 people came! The screen on stage was ENORMOUS and looked fabulous. The presenters were fantastic - colourful and funny and inspiring.

It was awesome to see so many people there, and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.

It was just a great, great night. And that was a relief!



Our website is launched and people are in the forum, giving us their ideas and comments. (www.talkgreentous.ca)

It's funny to have been planning something and working to pull pieces of it together on crazy a timeline and to see it all happening.

And to be leaving the project just as it's getting on its feet! But, I was only ever temporary and my time has come to an end as of tomorrow.

The Sustainability Group borrowed me from the Planning Department and it's time to go back.

The good news is, I go back as a Planner I - a real meal deal Planner finally! And I get to return to my old group, and work on a great project!


So I feel really lucky - I had this amazing experience in the Sustainability office, did crazy interesting work, met tons of awesome people, and now I get to return to my other awesome group as a full fledged Planner.

I feel like I should go knock on wood or something.

=)

Fresh local strawberries.... so good! Yay summer! Even if it's cold out as though it was fall, at least we have strawberries as proof of what season it is!

Peter's work is crazy, my work is crazy. We really just want to go on a road trip, but it looks like there won't be free time until July at the earliest.

On the upside, I had time on the weekend to make myself a shiny red case for my Kobo reader which I still adore, and I'm getting some weaving in here and there, and dance classes.... so it's not all work. It's just a lot of work.

I took today off and had a lovely day at home. I've been listening to the book Slumdog Millionaire was based on (audiobook) while I weave and cuddle cats. It's been fantastic. A perfect quiet day at home to recharge.

I've made some progress on the weaving and am quite pleased with the pattern. That's the thing about weaving - you never really know how it's going to look until you're right in the thick of it. I find that very challenging. It requires you to commit without really knowing if you'll like it! In this case, it all worked out okay, in other cases I've ended with products that I wasn't so excited about (but others loved, so they found happy homes). Weaving is about learning to move forward even in the face of uncertainty.... I skill I could use practice at for sure.

Here's hoping I have enough yarn on my spool to finish!

There is weaving in progress again, finally!

This is my first weaving project that actually takes advantage of all 4 shafts of my loom and had a complicated threading pattern. So far everything is going okay.... it's taking me a while to select a weft yarn that I like - I've decided to go monochrome and use the warp thread for the weft. I feel the diamond pattern is quite busy and having it in contrasting colours is too much for me.

Now that I've actually made that decision - this will probably go pretty fast!

Random things I love lately:

1. when a pedestrian/driver does something stupid and holds up everyone else.... and all the other drivers just wait for them to finish/fix the situation. Very rarely does anyone honk, even though honking would often be warranted. I love that people restrain from honking. Gives me hope - that maybe we do have some sympathy for others and the fact that sometimes mistakes happen.

2. fresh local strawberries from the farmers market! sometimes I forget that strawberries are actually red all the way through and juicy. so good. especially when eaten in the sunshine.

3. new co-workers who already know all your friends, share a love of Fluevogs, crafting, sustainability, and Joss Whedon shows. We're trying to figure out how we hadn't met before this!

4. having several bosses argue over who gets to have you on their project. this is actually quite awkward in person, but in retrospect is very flattering.

So I purchased myself a Kobo E-Reader as a bit of a celebration item for myself (also - Peter went on a big fancy trip somewhere tropical with the boys, so I figured I should get something fun too).

I feel like I'm living in the future with this thing.

Seriously, it's awesome. It's not for everyone, but it's pretty perfect for me. For a long time I have dreamed of the day when I could go out and carry my entire library with me. And this e-reader is so small and light and holds 1000 books... basically - it's a dream come true. The e-ink technology means the screen is not illuminated, so your eyes don't get tired reading it AND you can read it in direct sunlight just like paper. So you can sit in the sun in the park and read. Which is how reading should happen. Because the screen isn't illuminated, the battery lasts forever. I've had the reader on for a week solid now and it's just getting low.

The downsides - it's slow to switch between books and I've heard that reading different e-book formats can apparently be a pain (that's a digital-rights-management thing though).

Not to be an ad for Kobo - but seriously.... it's magical for me.... especially since it comes preloaded with 100 classics. So all my austen books are already on there. I think I'm in love. All future gifts to me can come in the form of gift certificates to the e-bookstore. =)

Hello blog!

Although at the City we don't work overtime (there's an overtime ban because of budget constraints).... I've been getting home from work late every day lately. There's just so much stuff to do, I can't bear to leave it all to pile up for the next day. Not that I get very far by staying an extra hour.... but it helps. Except that now I'm tired and feeling kind of worn out.

But, on the upside.... part of the reason things are so busy is because this idea I had a while ago has turned into a real thing! The idea being to have the City sponsor a cool event as a way to kick off our upcoming public consultation on how to make Vancouver the greenest city in the world by 2020.

And here it is (click to see bigger version):


If you're in Vancouver - get your tickets soon, we expect to sell out!

Pecha Kucha events happen all over the world - they're a very cool thing. A mix of show-and-tell, open mike night, lecture, and happy hour - it puts interesting presenters on stage with 20 slides x 20seconds per slide to tell their story/inspiration/idea. It's a very neat event.

The City of Vancouver and UBC are sponsoring this one with a theme of Walk the Talk, Green Your City to get people talking about how to green Vancouver.