For one week, recommend/share:

Day one: a song
Day two: a picture
Day three: a book/ebook/fanfic
Day four: a site
Day five: a youtube clip
Day six: a quote
Day seven: whatever tickles your fancy

Driving home from my aunt's house, I decided: fuck this shit, let's have some fun.

So, have Well, Did you Evah? from High Society, as sung by Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.

And you might as well have Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, from Spamalot, too.

And here, possibly the most random picspam ever in the history of random picspams:

( right here under this cut )

And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes this meme.

I talked to four people on the phone today. No, wait, five. I never talk to that many people on the phone. Granted, they were all friends & family, but I actually called three of them, of my own volition, and that almost never happens. Of course, the last conversation lasted exactly one minute and thirteen seconds and the majority of it consisted of

Me: *picking up phone* Yeeees?
J: Playtpuses!
Me: Playtpi?
J: Think of something else!
Me: Uh...
J: Platypee?
Me: Mooshee mooshee?

I have no idea what I'm going to do at work tomorrow. NONE. I have a single task that will probably last me at most ten minutes. Perhaps I shall wander outside and pick the wild flowers. Speaking of wild flowers

( Read more... )

Oh gods, it's true, it's all true, you can't change your patterns. I went to a thing after work that the division director was holding at her house, a TGIF little get-together for staff, and I know for a fact I was the youngest person there because the third project archivist on our grant didn't show. So I sat down in one of the dining room chairs with my Fat Tire beer, and then I noticed that some of my co-workers were sitting down on the carpet, including a couple very definitely at least twenty years older than me, and I felt horrifically guilty. So then when one of my co-workers was saying she needed more crackers to go with her leftover cheese, and another one asked for more chips to go with her salsa, I sprang up to fetch it for them. Because that's what I *always* do at family get-togethers because I'm always Young Legs (as my dear Aunt June used to call me).

Actually, the thing I finally realized a couple weeks ago when I held the Family Extravaganza, and maybe it's something I would not have been old enough to realize or appreciate any earlier than now--I come from a family of know-it-alls. This explains a lot. Including why I feel like I'll never catch up.

***

I don't remember Hyvee being a particularly high-end or classy grocery store, but the one here in town--well, I think this one's run and staffed by pod people. Seriously, they're all constantly bright and cheery and enthusiastically helpful. I was wandering past the deli looking for veggie dip when I heard the man behind the counter pontificating, "If you're looking for something low in salt, than you should try this." I was in the health food section picking up veggie burgers when I found somebody restocking and talking to another customer. "We just ran a promotional thing to find out what people really wanted, so we'll be making some changes here shortly." It was unnatural. And yet, I can't stop going, it's all so shiny.

***

Pushing Daisies is over. :( I finally got around to watching the last episode last night, not really having had time before now. It was such an awesome, awesome show. I want my characters back.

My aunt's 75th birthday is coming up in, oh, a week and a half. My mom and I are organizing a sort-of party for her, only neither of us do parties, so it's been an...interesting experience.

Anyway, one of my *other* aunts (I have...six now. Yes, six, only one of them I haven't seen since I was eight) is also having her birthday a couple days later, and she'll still be in town that day. So I ran to Barnes & Noble to find her a card and possibly a small gift. And I picked up one of those tiny little kit things--you know, there's the zen garden, and the slinky, and the tarot, and all those. So I picked up the four-leaf clover kit. (I know, I'm random. I'm thinking I'll look for something at work in the gift shop tomorrow. At least then it will be historic'n'shit.)

So. Two cards (I also got one for my dad for Father's Day, since I was there), this little kit, it should be about $8-10 altogether. The dude rings up my purchases, I use my aunt's B&N member discount, and the total he gives me is about $5. Okay, I think, really good discount.

No. I looked at the receipt when I got home, and he gave me the kit for free. He must have done it deliberately; I mean, how could you not notice? Maybe he was like "She's so lame she's going to give this to somebody, isn't she. It's not even worth paying for."

So, that was random.

...My mom and I are both freaking out about this party. We are ridiculous.

The past couple weeks have been...strange. And tomorrow I'm still going to be running around not so much like a headless chicken as like one with her head effing screwed on, but tonight? Tonight I can make my chicken fajitas and peel my orange and drink my amaretto sour and listen to my Ben Harper station on Pandora and write fic and watch telly and enjoy myself. Slowly. Quietly. It's nice.

I glanced out the window a half-hour ago, and the grass was the lush green you get after a lot of rain, and there was a red car parked on the street outside my apartment building, and a red car parked in the driveway of the duplex across the street, both that candy-apple-fire-engine red at right angles to each other, and there was a purple-blossom tree across the street in the duplex's yard, and the sky was the slate-grey-blue color you sometimes get at dusk/twilight, and everything looked so solid, grounded, real that attempting to describe it or take a picture doesn't nearly do it justice.

I love spring.

Sometimes I stand very still in the middle of my kitchen, outside on the sidewalk, upstairs in my bedroom, and think I am here. And it's a little bit amazing.

I've been meaning to post this for, um, a while now, but I am slow and get distracted easily. I don't know why I would care if newspapers as a physical thing disappeared--I rarely read them, they're a pain to preserve long term due to the high acid content of newsprint, most places I've worked have had conflicted relationships with the press, blah blah blah--but that cartoon still made me sad. I should probably just be glad my dad's retired and not still working at the paper back home if even the RMN can't keep the presses going.

ETA: My mother refuses to be a Red Hat lady. My mother's a little bit wonderful.

So many choices! I could go with Barney Miller, he'd be very understanding and compassionate. Dalziel & Pascoe would be alternately witty and crass but they'd have my back (if they thought I deserved it, anyway). Emerson and Ned and Chuck would sort it all out, and I'd probably get pie. But I think I want to go with Albert Campion. After all, he's a universal uncle. I've always liked uncles.

*

I was just reading Dr. Seuss poetry. Which may or may not explain why I wrote the above paragraph the way I did. (At least it involved no rhymes?)

*

I spent today up to my eyeballs in microfilm. My eyeballs hurt.

I'm still getting used to the cubicle thing. I see out of the corner of my eye people walking past and get easily distracted. One of my co-workers sort of glides exactly the way a character from an animated Monty Python sketch would. (As if my headspace weren't surreal enough.)

*

I like to use my bookstore receipts for bookmarks. They're a handy way to remember where I was when I got a book, a way to ground me--Ohio when I found that Doctor Who novel, Colorado when I picked up that book on architecture with a gift card. My mom uses anything she has at hand and leaves it in the book for the next person to stumble across--I've found appointment reminder cards from the dentist or eye doctor, a note from my brother, a hall pass I had my senior year of high school because I was in NHS, even a picture of me from a play in high school. (I swiped that one; it's hanging on my wall now.) It's a bit like finding signatures or notes from people when browsing at used bookstores, glimpses of whole other lives that have been lived.

*

April may or may not kill me. It's my fault for scheduling so many things, but April may very well kill me. And if it doesn't, May and June come close behind...

So there I am yesterday, quietly going about my work, minding my own business, when all of a sudden LOLcats attacked my brain.

IM IN UR ACCESSIONING DATABASE
LOOKIN AT UR DONORS

So, so not cool, brain. Never do that to me again.

Um, hi. I'm still alive. I went home for the holidays, and my mother refuses to get anything other than dial-up. And the past couple days I've been dealing with being gone for a few days. And now I'm going to continue catching up with "Sarah Jane Adventures" (I have far more interest in seeing a favorite old character on that than I do the Doctor Who Christmas special which, no, I still haven't seen either).

( And speaking of Doctor Who, in relation to Leverage )

And my big plans for New Year's involve getting buzzed and possibly watching Withnail and I. Wow, I lead an exciting life, huh.

I haven't been this reflective about my life and what I'm trying to do with it since, uh, grad school, I swear. Or maybe when dealing with that flood a couple years ago, which was practically still grad school anyway.

( History museums, objects, and you. Well, me first. )

Mmmm, professional wankery, it's been a while.

( book meme, gakked from roseveare )

My family are all leaving town tomorrow. THANK THE GODS. I love my family, I really do but I need to write fic and, I dunno, play Tetris or something.

So while I technically work for the non-for-profit support organization side of things, I still get state holidays off. (BUT if I worked for a university I would get WHOLE WEEKS off. To go traveling. Need to work on that. If that's really what I want to do. Oh, existential life crises, how I love you so much.) This meant I could get lots of shopping done today, but I couldn't go to the bank and open a new savings account. Sigh. And I still haven't finished shopping. Maybe the grocery store will have somebody with poppies.

I was going to take my aunt to visit dead ancestors today (okay, my dead ancestors, her siblings and parents and grandparents), but we did that on Saturday when another aunt was in town. And maybe we should have waited till today anyway because Saturday was ICY COLD and windy and today is not so much. But we went to the cemeteries and said hello, and it was close enough.

I'm doing two holiday ficathons this year. Why do I feel like this was a really bad idea? Especially when I appear to be hosting a mini-Thanksgiving at my apartment? EEEEEEK.

I was at home this weekend. With my parents. During the weekend, I ran updates on my dad's computer, downloaded new spyware software for my dad, connected a printer to my mom's computer, updated Spybot on her computer, added phone numbers to my dad's car's computer, showed my mom how to burn pictures onto CD, and both my mom and I got new cell phones. I programmed the voicemail for her phone and recorded a message for her, and I showed her how to text message. (I'VE CREATED A MONSTER. Again. This might be worse than when I showed her Amazon.)

And today, she writes me an email asking me how to use the printer. I swear she's had a printer before. I SWEAR. But it's been a couple years. Maybe more. And WHY AM I MY PARENTS' IT HELP DESK PERSON.

When you see this post, quote from Doctor Who on your LJ.

"You mean you're deliberately choosing to go on the run from your own people? In a rackety old TARDIS?"
"Why not? After all, that's how it all started."

(Okay, that was far more difficult to choose than it should have been. And now, yes, sorry, must dash.)

Since Symantec tends to make me want to start stabbing eyes out with sporks, what antivirus software do y'all use, out of curiosity?

I have entire carloads of family descending soon, starting with my mother at the end of this week and practically the rest of her generation next Tuesday. This meant frantic cleaning tonight, and tomorrow I'll have to do some more tidying up, but it also meant hiding most of the alcohol in the fridge. Oh, family. I don't want to destroy all your illusions about me.

Is it just me, or are all the Doctor/Rose vids exploding out of the ether now that "Smith and Jones" has been shown? Maybe I'm just noticing them now...

My dad shows his love through spending money, and my dad is happiest when getting to spend money on technology. (His true joy is spending money on cars, but I don't need a car this year, dammit, and when I get my next car I think I'd like to be able to buy it myself. I am having a strongly independent urge right now.) In any case, he bought me a new LCD flat panel TV and a DVD player. I got myself the stereo. (The only reason I wanted the LCD TV instead of a regular one? Lighter. Therefore more portable. I am all about the ease-of-moving stuff still. Having furniture kinda sucks.) We are both considering these things birthday presents (though really what I want for my birthday is flowers. I never get flowers).

Um, barkley? Parentheses abuse? Yeah.

I am spending this week avoiding the internet, mainlining the first season of Simon and Simon and reveling in my 1980s childhood, helping my mother cook yummy food, and sleeping until after nine every morning.

And having just emailed some people I have known online for probably almost six years (yeah, so I kinda suck at avoiding the internet, but that is rather the point of an addiction, isn't it?), I am wallowing in a golden glow of love for all the froody people in the world. So, my dear flist, I hope you are having a very, very merry holiday season, and I send you virtual hugs and dark chocolate.

Oh, and I got my dad to buy me cherry Pucker. Mwahahahaha.

Okay, going back to avoiding the internet for a while longer, and watching more Simon and Simon. I am pathetic. I realize this. If my mom had Jessica Fletcher on DVD, I'd probably be tempted to watch *those* too. Can I blame my parents for this? After all, they let me watch this stuff as a kid.

Oh, that was fun. My brain actually worked and stuff! Yaaaay!

( 5 times Fawkes will swear he never saw Bobby Hobbes crying. )


( Five things that happened in the lead-up to Fitz finally leaving the TARDIS for good. )


( 5 fun things Daniel and Jack finally made time to do together that went well. )


My mom is so groovy. She sent me a bunch of CDs, including Sinatra, Bobby Darrin, Chad & Jeremy, and Everly Brothers. Hot diggity damn. She also emailed me this picture of the cat Honey. Honeycat is infamous for attempting to murder the family out of love. The family in this case including the computer.
( See more... )

Okay, here's the thing: I still cannot, for the life of me, remember that Mitchell's name is Cameron Mitchell. I always want to call him some combination of John Crichton, or Ben. Vala? I have no problem with. And I don't think of John & Aeryn when those two actors are in a scene together in SG-1. Which may or may not say something about Cam's memorability as a character, I dunno.

And here's a different thing: when my dad was here, he wanted to see the new Doctor Who. So I showed him the first and the third episodes from Eccleston's series (because, dude, who doesn't love zombies?), and it'd been a while since I've seen either of these eps and I've been immersed in Tennant's series for the past couple months anyway. And Rose was wicked awesome, at least in the first episode when there was absolutely no hint of shipping and she was the new girl asking questions and living her life and, hey, kinda saving the world a bit there. I just thoroughly despise being whacked over the head repeatedly with the Very Important Relationship Sledgehammer, which is nice to confirm.

And here's an entirely unrelated thing: I don't have homework anymore. I mean, I kinda do, 'cos I'm reading up on the local history here so when people start dropping names and places at me I won't just stare at them blankly, but...grief. I, like, have time to myself now in which I don't feel guilty for goofing off. The hell?

Um, so I kinda graduated again today. (It sounds so accidental that way, doesn't it? "Ooops, fell into this black robe and silly hat, whoops, didn't mean to get into this procession, looks like I'm graduating.") Only I didn't really graduate today, because I still have to take my comps, and it's all a bit silly anyway since I've got a job.

Yeah, I've got a job now. I start--well, they want me ASAP, but I'm putting them off as long as I possibly can because I want to travel and, I dunno, rest for a while. Because I'm not ready to confront the real world and put to the real test the stuff I've been learning for the past few years, and I hate messing up. I really hate messing up. But I can do this, because I can flipping do anything.

And dad bought me a laptop and mom's probably buying me a trip to Canada and my aunt is seriously paying for next month's rent with the check she gave me and my brother and nephew got me books--the second Aubrey/Maturin book and Gaiman's Brief Lives--which I checked out of the school library last year, left in a hotel in Vancouver (and had nothing to read on the plane home, oh woe), bought a replacement copy for the library, and never picked up a copy for myself. And this is very possibly my favorite set of the lot in the Sandman series, at least of the ones I've read. So wooooo.

And I can't believe I'm finished with school, possibly permanently, and I'm frigging exhausted, like, in a permanent state of running exhaustion, but the family isn't all leaving until Sunday which means I have to keep running back & forth across town and being my nice, well-behaved self for another 36 hours and Sunday, oh Sunday, I'm sleeping and playing and not thinking any more than I can help it. For the first time in very possibly 24 years.

I think I'll be total crap at it and end up doing something productive anyway.

It's just--I feel like I've lived and experienced more in the past month to six weeks than in the near-two years previous and that is a very weird feeling and I don't think I know who I am anymore. So I need some time. To figure that out again. Or at least get a better approximation than I have right now.

Oh, and I am ridiculously pleased with the quote that is on this icon, if not with the icon itself. Um. Yes. Bed now.

For about the last seventy-five miles of eastern Colorado, into western Kansas, it was Tumbleweed Central last Friday. They were everywhere. Sometimes they came alone or in pairs, sometimes in small family groups, sometimes entire effing refugee communities were blown across by the fierce northern wind. And some of those 'weeds were big muthas. I felt like I was in the middle of that Doctor Who story with the tumbleweed-Brussel sprout hybrids that clustered around their prey and forced it into places of their choosing--was that "Creature from the Pit" or am I totally misremembering something I probably haven't seen in almost twenty years?

There was a billboard, somewhere in Kansas or Missouri, that said, "JESUS LOVES AND PROTECTS. Pornography destroys." About 500 yards behind the billboard was an ADULT BOOKSTORE.

And people gotta stop shit-talking Kansas. They've got hills there. (I love driving through eastern Kansas and seeing the hills--you can really tell where the glaciers were.) In fact, people have generally gotta stop shit-talking the Midwest. Why, I've heard they even have hills in southern Indiana! Only been to Terre Haute myself but a couple of times and I never set foot off the ISU campus but still! Hills! Not total flatlands here!

I love driving through Topeka. A majority of the streets are named after the Presidents, and they do it in order. So I'm driving along in North Topeka (because I kinda got lost trying to get to my aunt's house and had to call my mom to direct me) and I'm going, "Quincy. And here's Jackson! And Van Buren should be next! Oh, I *am* in the right place!" and mom's like, "Uh, no you're not." And they had a Clay street! That was so sweet of them. It was right between Tyler and--Polk or Buchanaan? Whoever came after Tyler. That amused me. And then I was thinking that Topeka *had* to be a Whig city because of the whole Lecompton/Lawrence/bleeding Kansas thing. But never mind. (Henry Clay is my hero, by the way. I love the eternal wannabe-Pres.)

I went on this massive trek for my friend's bridal shower. (I'm the maid of honor, I *have* to make a showing.) I finally met all the bridesmaids on Sunday--still haven't actually met the best man, with whom I will be walking down the aisle and all the rest next month, but I keep hearing stories about him and I'm not sure if I should be getting nervous or not. It was strange--the bridesmaids had Instant Wedding Party camaraderie. Also, my friend's family kinda seemed to adopt me for the weekend, so at least I felt right at home. (They've adopted me before, and many of their dynamics follow my family's dynamics, so I was more comfortable than I might have been otherwise.) And then the groom's grandmother showed up for the shower and told us about hookers wearing red. That was...interesting.

But I did my duty as maid of honor and got the only gag gift (it was a very sedate shower). And even my gag gift was pretty tame. And nobody told me I have to write a speech! They never show maids of honor giving speeches in the movies! It's always the best man! ACK!

And then driving back to CO through Topeka with another friend, we stopped at my aunt's house again and she put my friend to work. My friend is tall. The rest of us are not. It was kinda cute. At least she didn't mind.

And yes it's spring break and yes I only got back into town at seven o'clock last night but I have major amounts of homework to do--probably--and I really, really, really don't want to do any of it. I just want to keep goofing off for a while. Maybe if I read some records management stuff. It's short and doesn't involve me figuring out material culture for an exhibit brief.

So I'm back in my apartment after basically three weeks away, and it's good to have privacy and space again, but it's weird too. I dunno. Maybe I just need a day or two more to settle down again.

Think I'm going to OD on museum stuff this semester. But that's a good thing if I'm going into museum work. Right? Right? Bugger.

Saw my brother and nephew this past weekend, and I had fun playing with my nephew and he wanted me to read him a story (which was just totally awesome, y'know?). And tonight my brother called to say my nephew missed me, and put my nephew on the phone, and he said: "Hi," "I can't hear you," and "I love you." It's cliche, but it's scary how fast kids develop and change and grow when they're that young. But then, I only get to see him a couple days every few months or so.

Families are just weird.