I have a long and highly personal relationship with Gravity. It mostly consists of Gravity throwing things at me and me telling it sweetly, "Fuck you, Gravity."

I just had a different sort of pear with my dinner tonight that I picked up at the store on a whim. It was the most boring fruit I have ever tasted. I didn't know fruit could taste boring. So it was disappointing on multiple levels.

This was also a very stupid day at work. Not finding the paperwork I needed; collections popping up in places they shouldn't or not being where they should; hauling boxes down from the fifth shelf and scraping my arms and fingers on the cardboard and the metal; the ladder catching on boxes as I shoved it down the too-narrow aisle; the stupid laptop running slowly or not at all; nothing new or unusual in all this but I just was not in the mood for it today. And then to top it all off I lost my key card. Which somebody promptly found and returned, thank goodness, but at that point I just sort of wanted to call it quits, go home, and crawl under the covers.

Actually, that still sounds like a good idea.

There was a time, back in my early teenage years, when I never left the house except to go to school. I didn't want to go out in the world because everyone was looking at me.

Tonight I'm going to a play, by myself, that is sold out, and I'm going to be one out of a couple hundred people there--it's a small theatre--and I'm looking forward to being that stranger that nobody cares about. Just another face in the crowd. I've learned to love the anonymity.

Hmmm.

*

The play I'm going to see, by the way, is Evil Dead: The Musical. And last night I saw Zombieland, which was really quite good and involved the classic Road Trip trope that I probably should have expected but didn't and hey, I can get behind most any road tripping.

I really, really like running away.

The Invisible Man comm hot_donuts is hosting a ficfest and is looking for prompts. You don't have to write in order to submit prompts. DOOOO IIIIIT!

(I should go submit some myself.)

Some of my best trip-planning happens almost entirely spontaneously. Just over a week ago a friend of mine said "We should do a road trip! STAT!" And instead of hemming and hawing as I normally would I said, "Tempt me some more!" And she said, "Long weekend!" And I said, "I could fly back instead of trying to drive back!" And now this weekend, I am going to Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana. I've never been to Arkansas! I was in Tennessee for approximately three hours once! I was only in NOLA for about five hours once! This is going to be awesome. And dizzyingly quick.

One of my co-workers found a manuscript of a spiritual written in 1832. "Second Great Awakening!" I cried in excitement. Apparently the son or grandson of the guy who wrote this spiritual was an atheist. "Because he grew up during the Second Great Awakening!" I cried in excitement, and our supervisor laughed. Some days, going to work really is worth it.

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 man, you guys. You guys. I totally want to dominate the world with y'all. (My evol plan, since I suppose I should mention it? Backrubs. I shall make everyone succumb to me, one by one. With backrubs. I once started an entire row of people sitting on the steps down the house in our mainstage, giving the person sitting in front of them a backrub. It was glorious.)

Also? I ATE A STRAWBERRY LAST NIGHT & HAVEN'T DIED YET. I've been allergic to strawberries for about twenty years. If I'm still not dead, I consider this a minor victory. I don't think I'll eat more than one strawberry at a time though. Color me paranoid. Or just hive-y. (I was a bit itchy last night. But I think it was bug bites, not hives. I hope.)

Mmm. Strawberries.

So, speaking of things that I love, and gakking from loads of people on my flist--

I love

giving backrubs. Blueberries. Cheesecake. Pineapple pizza from Papa John's. Plosives and clickatives. Alliteration. Weskits. Rolled-up shirtsleeves. Acoustic guitars. Harmonies. Green trees and blue skies and horizons stretching out as far as the eye can see while driving on the interstate. The breeze. Fireflies. The changing of the seasons. Baking with my mom. Walking arm-in-arm with my friends. Visiting with old friends. Snuggling. Illya Kuryakin doing gymnastics. The cast of Barney Miller. Big Finish audios. Parker and Hardison. Builds and undercuts. People who know their shit. Water. Underwater archaeology. The 1830s. Words. Sunlight. Going underground by myself in a hoist in solid dark while singing Sinead O'Conner songs. Simon and Garfunkel lyrics, and Dean Martin's voice, and the Smother Brothers singing "Chocolate," and the intense comfort of happy memories. My nephew. My new car. My old car. Roses. Puppies. Cats. Making babies giggle. Making other people giggle. Giggling. Connections. The network of people that I know across this small world. The Indiana Dunes. Gage Park. Forest Park. Lake Storey. Fireworks. County roads. New experiences.

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.

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.

1. I have now joined the ranks of individuals who have changed their clothes in the car. Including my bra, and holy Hannah, that was awful. (I wouldn't have done it if I could have worn the other bra with this shirt, but no, the straps would have shown.) I can now check undressing-and-dressing-in-a-car off my list. My unexpected and unknown list, on which items only seem to get added after I've already done them.

2. This week has been, to put it mildly, insane. I haven't had this insane of a week since, er, beginning of last year, I think. At least this week is officially over and I made it out relatively intact. (Note to self: things really do usually work out. So don't freak out so much next time.)

3. I also managed, in the midst of the insanity, to watch the first episode of The Unusuals. It sort of felt like Life on Mars doing "Barney Miller." Complete with the 'taches.

4. I went to Phantom of the Opera tonight--first time I've ever seen it live--and it has been so long since I've been to a theatre big enough and expensive enough that I was practically in the nosebleeds. I would have enjoyed it more I'm sure if my HEAD HADN'T BEEN KILLING ME--dehydration, lack of sleep, and a week's worth of major stress FTW!--but I managed to enjoy it quite a lot anyway. Aaaaand it felt like it was 1990 all over again, particularly with the crashing chords we all know and love at the beginning. (My sister's high school graduation! She got them to use it for the slideshow. Oh gods, it is 1990 all over again!)

5. The three rules of the road that Cam teaches Teal'c in their Epic Bromance Road Trip (it's a thing, don't ask): a) Nebraska sucks, b) there's always visitor centers at state lines except when you really need them (hence CHANGING IN THE CAR, but Cam doesn't know about that bit) and c) singing, no matter how shit your voice is, is perfectly acceptable on a road trip. Even with the windows rolled down.

6. I'm in a directing class at the local civic theatre. I haven't done any sort of stage work in, like, five years, and I have never directed before in my life. But those of us in the class were being actors last week so one of us could take a stab at directing, and then *I* was the one doing the directing, and holy crap, it's both the same and completely different from acting. Actually, it's kinda like writing. You are my puppets! Let me pull on your strings and make you dance to my mad tune! Muahahahahaha. Etc.

7. It's a good thing my vices are multitudinous, or I would be so screwed.

8. I have not seen the new Doctor Who yet, I'm saving it for tomorrow. That said, happy birthday to me. Boo-yah. (ETA: okay, it's a day or two early, but since my birthday is on a Monday this year, I appear to have made it a birthday weekend. Why not, huh?)

9. I really ought to go to bed now. Before my head falls off.

10. There is no ten, but nine felt lonely.

Shredded zucchini looks like an exploded tentacle monster. Honest. Sadly I forgot to take pictures before I mixed everything else into the bowl to make zucchini bread, but I had an exploded tentacle monster on my counter for a little bit there. Oh yes. And all it took was the grater!

I was tagged. I can’t stop myself!

Meme: Firstly: People who have been tagged must write their answers on their blog and replace any question that they dislike with a new, original question. Secondly: Tag eight people. Don't refuse to do that. Don't tag who tagged you.

( Read more... )

I broke my back at work yesterday (okay, really, I broke it 3.5 years ago in a previous life as a box monkey, but yesterday still had my back going, "OW NO DON'T DO THAT AGAIN") and I had to get up stupidly early this morning in order to drop my car off to get it fixed. I backed into a pillar (it was holding up a hotel) a couple days after Thanksgiving and cracked the panel over the front driver's side tire. GOOD TIMES.

(Oh, OH. And last night, stretching out my back, I rolled over and whacked my hip on the bed frame. Grace, baby, grace. Crawling into bed basically consisted of me whining "owwwwwww" a lot.)

I've never directly had to deal with the insurance company before; last time I had an accident I was still under my parents' coverage. The claims adjuster gave me a check for everything but the deductible the day he looked at my car for an estimate. Is that normal?

Aaaand it went from the mid-40s yesterday to a dusting of snow today. Thank you, midwestern weather; you never, ever bore me.

TV I've been catching of late, which are signs that I am not coping particularly well right now:

1. "Whose Line is it Anyway?"
2. "M*A*S*H"
3. Various Star Treks (mostly Voyager & DS9)
4. "Hogan's Heroes"
5. "Murder She Wrote"

It's the comfort food of the mind, really; all shows I pretty much grew up with, and it doesn't matter how ridiculous they might be, they make me smile. I'm not really watching any of them, per se, but if I see they're on I turn to them, at least for a couple minutes. Hey, at least I don't constantly have to have some kind of background noise playing. Yet.

But I caught "Change of Command" tonight, the one where Potter joined the 4077th and I'd forgotten how much it hit on my kink about seeing our favorite characters from a newcomer's eyes, and Potter made a fabulous newcomer indeed, particularly when it came to meeting and starting to get to know Radar. And BJ was still all new and fresh out of training and saluting and stuff. It was cute.

I've actually been watching Horatio Hornblower movies lately (the library had copies; how could I resist?) and the second season of Man from UNCLE. And, oh, watching UNCLE in order, uncut, is much more fun than it probably has any right to be. Illya and Napoleon get to be completely bitchy at each other all the time, and Mr Waverly sends Illya with Napoleon on a mission almost entirely--apparently--because he's not certain the female innocent will like brunettes over blonds. It is far, far too much fun but, like I said, I'm in the mood for brain candy comfort food these days.

Okay, so I got home late last night after doing trivia at a local pub (and OMG our team were tragically, catastrophically terrible, coming in at last place after continually using the wrong person's answers and by the way, Wyoming really *is* the least populous state in the Union these days, not North Dakota), but I woke up on time this morning & got a shower and everything and was all set to leave the apartment on time, all proud of myself, only I had a slight wardrobe crisis in that I had to change my top, and then my bra, and then my top again, and then all my accessories, and let's not even talk about the minor lip gloss meltdown, before I could leave.

A million and one years ago when I was in college (okay, so probably closer to six years ago but hey, that's still about one-fifth of my entire life), my mom sent me a t-shirt. It was fluorescent pink and said in glittery neon blue letters

100% PERFECT
[NOT EXACTLY]

That t-shirt was either a self-fulfilling prophecy, or my mom just knows me really, really well.

So it was my birthday today. And my birthdays of late have tended to be random and/or surreal, but this one may be an even more unusual example of a birthday than is, um, usual. I mean, it starts with a rainstorm that turns into snow by the afternoon, and it continues with me feeling childish and miserable because nobody apparently remembered my birthday, and it tries to end on a high note with the front door of our museum no longer locking. But hey, I did get free Chinese food for lunch. And I got a tour group to sing "Happy Birthday" to me while I huddled in a golf cart out of sheer embarrassment while wearing my dirty work clothes, because actually my co-workers did remember.

I think it turned out okay in the end.

But all that said, I caught about five minutes of the Mythology of the Stargate show (I'm taping it, I'm taping it, I swear!). And I saw Michael Shanks in a pea coat, I think, and--is he trying to look like Jack Harkness?? Or Peter Newkirk?

Ohhhhh I am ill. Pathetically, disgustingly, utterly ill. My nose is a cherry tomato, my voice is a thousand frogs croaking a dirge, and my sinuses are very possibly going to explode out of my head. I have spent the past five days subsisting on tea, water, and soup; I may very possibly have gotten high off all the cough drops I was sucking (I cut myself off yesterday and seem to be in a much saner frame of mind today); and my entire apartment floor is going to be littered with used tissues before I am through this disgusting mess.

I have been doing this every year, at least once a year, for at least the past four or five years. (Back in junior high and high school, I think this thing only lasted a day. Not days and days and fricking weeks.) Is this normal? Do a significant majority of people get the Cold That Would Not Die Already, or do I need to stagger into the nearest doctor's office and demand that they take out my tonsils, sinuses, lungs, and any other part of my upper body that might be related to this?

And so I have spent the entire weekend on my ass, reading Erik Larson's Devil in the White City, Nick Wallace's Fear Itself, Kate Ross's The Devil in Music; and watching such shows as Sports Night, SG-1, and The Dresden Files. Oh, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang because there's nothing like a little black humor and loss of fingers to make one whimper through her laughter. Oh, and I listened to BF's No Man's Land today because, hey, Hex angst is so much better than personal illness. Being unfit for human company is a great excuse for a fannish smörgåsbord weekend.

Harry Dresden is the kind of protagonist who will get hurt--and it will hurt hurt, not just "oh, whoops, just got into a fistfight with a demon but all better now"--every single story. Poor luckless sod.

I hate my nose. I say this often, but it bears repeating. In fact, my body and I are not on good speaking terms at the moment. If this keeps up, I am going to demand a divorce. In the meantime I'm going to make more tea.

That just makes me laugh and laugh...

Though my first name is actually scarily more common than I would have expected. (Not so surprisingly, people having my last name are a rarer breed in the States.) I'll just bet 90% of the people with my first name are over the age of 65 and leave it at that.

I just spent the majority of yesterday afternoon and evening LOST in Wichita. Wichita, you suck. Seriously, at one point? "That's the fucking interstate I want! How the fucking fuck do I get over there without crossing the fucking median?!"

And I am not allowed to buy anything more for myself or my apartment until after I have bloody well bought new tags for my car and insured it. I will not feel guilty over buying the skull-and-crossbone earrings for $6, though. Actually, I think I got 'em free 'cos of the other earrings I bought. So there. I might feel guilty for allowing myself to be suckered into buying that stupid hand-care kit, though. I work with old and dirty things! I'm never going to have nice hands! Screw it.

( SG-1, briefly )

So in the past couple days I helped my mom rediscover the Internet (she'd put the phone cord in the wrong jack in her computer) and I called the uni's financial services department and demanded to know when the hell I'd deserved a late charge. They took it back and now owe *me* money.

I shall revel in my cleverness until I do something stupid again.

Feeling hair fall past my shoulders is weird and I should wear it straight more often.

I'm working a few hours a week in the archives at the Denver Province of the Redemptorists, a Catholic organization. It's quite fun--I've dusted off seventeenth-century books and have permission to create a humidification chamber to flatten some letters and other papers from the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. And my boss, who is quite boyish and innocent-looking, is also quite startingly funny. We were both admiring the tankard down in the archives, celebrating the 50th anniversary of a community or church or something run by the Redemptorists somewhere in the States, and my boss said, "At least it's not a bong."

It never fails but that I'm going on some kind of road trip and I get sick either before or during (or possibly after, though I can't recall any such incidents) said trip. And what have I spent the past few days doing? (It amuses me how every time I get a sore throat my voice manages to drop about half an octave, and I thought I already spoke pretty low for a girl.) And am I going to be spending the next five days, almost, in a car? Ohhhhhh yeah.

It helps to be sick when sending out resumes, though. I don't care anymore, so I'm not obsessing and freaking out. Instead I'm running for the cough drops and tissues.

But never mind all that. I wanna talk about vidding. Not because I'm a conneisseur of vidding or anything--and I have never vidded in my life--but because it fascinates me. It's one of the most sophisticated fannish pursuits out there, and not just because you have to deal with the technology. Watching a vid occurs on so many levels. I mean, you're combining song and fannish source material and effectively creating an entirely new product. And the way people can manipulate the source material is sometimes astonishing.

Of course, the knowledge of that manipulation is all dependent upon how well your audience even knows the movie/tv series/etc. in the first place. There can be all kinds of in-jokes and/or dramatic moments that you, not knowing the original source, might vaguely think, "I wonder if that's important?" but it won't ping for you the way it might for someone who really, really, really knows the show. (Though that depends too--yay for subjectivity.) And if you *do* know the source, sometimes vids can make you go, "Woah, I never thought of it that way!" It changes the song, too. I mean, I can't think of "Kryptonite" anymore without associating it with Margie & Seah's I-Man vid. (Then again, I can't think of that song without thinking of I-Man, period, and I have a feeling many I-Man fans feel the same way). And the whole desire to talk about this was brought on by the fact that I heard a song in my car today that instantly reminded me of an Angel vid I saw based on the puppet episode. Woo.

So, yeah. Vidding is groovy. Boo-yah to everyone who does it. And if anybody knows of any Life on Mars vids out there, please tell me about them...

Over the course of the past forty-eight hours or so, I have gotten out of my pajamas for approximately four hours because I sang in a concert last night. Huzzah. I haven't been this lazy since elementary school.

And I decided I'd try out that whole "ten things you should already know about me" meme. I've added people to my flist recently (or relatively recently), so it seemed like a particularly good idea. *waves*

( We hold these suppositions and possible truths to be self-evident... )

So back in my first year of college, a guy told me that my voice would be the one he'd want to hear on the other end of the line if he ever had to call for an ambulance or something.

But then, he tended to say things like that. I mean, the dude wrote a song in which the lyrics largely consisted of "I like cheese."

Had choir concert tonight. It went much better than I expected, considering how disastrous all the dress rehearsals went. And this weekend I must do homework (since I didn't really last weekend) and clean like a fiend 'cos my dad's coming next weekend. Joy of joys.

Wearing makeup makes me feel unreal.