Ketchup

Aug. 17th, 2024 01:39 pm
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
Hello! I’ve been here, keeping up with people’s posts; I just haven’t been posting myself. Let’s fix that.

Travels

I went on vacation last month for the first time in 5 years, to visit my friend A. and her husband V. and two kids for a few days in Finland, where they’re from, and another few days in Stockholm, where they live now, finished off with a few days on my own on the Swedish island of Gotland. I’d never been to either country, and it was so nice to see new landscapes and architecture and wildlife and try new foods. The weather offered welcome relief: around 21C/70F and breezy compared to this summer’s record-breaking number of humid 90F+ days at home. Two weeks after midsummer, it never got fully dark.

deets )

Next time maybe there will be a chance to visit [personal profile] isagel and/or [personal profile] naye. I’d also love to see Lapland in wintertime and the northern lights.

COVID

I’d put off traveling anywhere besides visiting family since 2020 because I knew as well as anyone that it raises risk of contracting COVID, and I’d avoided COVID so far. But fumbled policies have left us with COVID being basically endemic, and I wanted to go abroad, so I took extra precautions before and during, bought travel insurance, and crossed my fingers.

Friends, I came down with COVID less than 24 hours into the trip. Which, if the CDC’s statistics on incubation period remain reliable, means I 100% caught it before departing. Sigh. One of many no-longer-"novid" victims of the summer surge. deets )

I got home and slept a lot for a couple of weeks. Would say it took one month from first to last symptoms. TBD on any lingering effects.

Health

Like, for example, how my current period has lasted three weeks and counting? More likely it’s perimenopause and/or the fibroids or endometrial hyperplasia an ultrasound found last week, after more than a year of increasingly disagreeable symptoms. The medical investigation is only just getting underway. "Hooray."

Family

My little sister is getting married this fall! Guess it’s time to accept that she’s 40 and not 12. Her boyf is a good guy. Our parents are over the moon that one of their offspring has at last found a life partner, even if there are no grandchildren on the horizon. Insert complicated feelings here about suspecting I am ace and aro + wanting parents to feel like the family line isn’t dying out + general mortality anxiety. The wedding will be fun and the right amount of quirky. It’s at the science museum on the grounds of the 1964 World’s Fair, where our families used to visit when we were kids and my dad took slides and reel-to-reel tape when he was young. I’m dress shopping. Some relatives I haven’t seen in a while will be there.

My grandfather turned 103 in June. He’s as cognitively sharp as you could hope. A lady with a therapy cat comes to visit him in the assisted living facility every other weekend. Amazing. I wish I could look forward to same, but since he’s my dad’s stepfather, the genes don’t belong to us. Best hope comes from my grandma (dad’s mom), who made it to a week short of 99. The rest died young or youngish, alas.

Pets

Pepper is still here, still cute, still feisty. She’s my condo companion and stress reliever and provider of amusement and affection. If rescue records are to be believed, she turns 5 this month. The average guinea pig lifespan is 6, but there’s a pretty big spread around that number. We’ll see. My sister’s guinea pig—adopted to be a friend for Pepper but whom Pepper categorically rejected—lived until almost 5. If memory serves, our childhood guinea pig made it to something like 8.

View from above of a gray and white guinea pig with making a puppy-dog-eyes expression Guinea pig looks up from drinking while a hand pets her Guinea pig lying on her side inside a white quilted pillowcase, leg out, with one poop visible A guinea pig sits in the arched doorway of a small wooden house, paws in front, looking into the distance

Work

I accepted another promotion. Been having mixed feelings about it. Good: money, learning useful new skills, a change after 10 years in the same office. Ambivalent: little time for creative work. What does it mean to focus on management and strategy after 25 years of identifying as a writer and video editor? Am I drifting further away from the ideal artist life I dreamed of, or making a smart/pragmatic decision since various factors have made writing harder as the years pass? Am I gravitating toward something I’m actually better at? What’s the plan? What’s the meaning of life?

THE END

Hello to you all. Please don’t feel like you need to respond to everything if there is one part you’d like to engage with. <3
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
Two months since last update, oops.

For a while there, writing in any form felt onerous. It took longer than expected to recover from the summer. I kept thinking the move shouldn't have rattled me as much as it did, but emotions are emotions, and life needed time to return to normal, aided by a meds switch. And then things got busy. And now it is now.

Let's catch up in increments.

Thanksgiving

For the first time in my nearly 40 years, I did not spend the holiday with family. I was worried I'd regret it, but forgoing travel proved the correct choice. I was able to visit friends for the holiday proper, host friends the day after and see my dad and stepmom this past weekend instead; soon I'll be spending winter break with my mom and her bf.

Our first snow came early and deep this year, starting at the tail end of Thanksgiving weekend. I used the quiet time to cook ahead, read a book and experiment with making caramels. The first batch of Smitten Kitchen's apple cider ones came out all right, so I tried the more time-consuming recipe from King Arthur Flour, which proved outstanding. I am so pleased. Making both of those taught me enough to do a better job when I made the second batch of the ciders. Now the fridge is packed with almost 400 caramels wrapped in cute polka-dot waxed paper and ready to be gifted.

New York

Two days after the storm, I drove to NY. I helped my dad around the house, including shoring up his ridiculous chipmunk-proof PVC pipe and chicken wire garden enclosure for the winter with a series of two-by-fours. He helped me with a couple of tricky tasks for my apartment: building aluminum air vent deflectors to stop the heat from blowing directly on the bed and living room chair, and cobbling together a weatherstripping getup to prevent said heat from being sucked straight out the gaps between the front door and the door jamb/door stop, since those gaps have been making an impressive vacuum sound as they pull my utility bill payments into the stairwell. I also cleaned out a bunch of books and paperwork that still remained in my old room. Best find: late '80s/early '90s sticker collection. Fuzzies! Oilies! Holograms! Neons! No scratch-and-sniffs, alas.

The highlight, though, was meeting my college friend S. in the city to see the Philip Glass opera Akhnaten at the Met, about the mysterious-bodied ancient Egyptian pharaoh, husband of Nefertiti and father of Tutankhamun, who upheaved hundreds—thousands?—of years of artistic and religious tradition only to have his changes and his legacy buried along with him. I like a subset of Philip Glass, and I'd loved learning about Akhenaten in school and on those early Discovery/History Channel shows because he was so distinctive, so I was really looking forward to this production.

It was as weird and beautiful as hoped! I loved it! Spectacle, gender ambiguity, Victorian necromancers, juggling. )

To top it all off, Philip Glass appeared onstage at curtain call. He looked frail but happy as he gazed out at the standing ovation for the penultimate performance of the sold-out run.

R.I.P. Odo

That night I was sad to hear of Rene Auberjonois' death. He was such a sweet guy to his fans. I still belong(ed) to his official fan club. It's been both wonderful and difficult to read all the tributes from other Trek actors. When I got home, I watched a bunch of Odo episodes in memoriam.

This is why it takes me forever to post. More to come.
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
Spring green

I don't really go to Starbucks except during a fun period of springtime when pollen and/or antihistamines give me a sore throat in the morning, which iced milky tea relieves on my way to the office. But that gets expensive fast, so this week I bought a gallon of milk and a 14-oz bag of matcha powder from the corner Korean-Japanese market for about the cost of a week of Starbucks. It is delicious and effective, and it will last … a very long time. 14 ounces turns out to be a lot of matcha when you use about one teaspoon per tall glass of latte. If I were a chinchilla, I could take a dust bath in all this matcha. It may be time to unearth some matcha baking recipes.

Adulthood is fun

I had a dream that I was among a handful of people who landed a job/internship at some biotech company in Kendall Square, after arguing a dude into believing that the hiring manager had not in fact dropped me from the candidate pool. The dream included details about productivity expectations, managerial oversight and salary negotiation. This followed a dream the night before that someone at work helped me out with that RL project that got cancelled.

What the heck, brain? You used to dream about vampires and Star Trek and stuff. At least earlier this week there were dreams about Zahn McClarnon (good) and someone who was either Ben Affleck or Paul Rudd's character from Mute (not good).

In other news, in the past 24 hours I successfully coordinated flight plans with a friend to go to [community profile] fanworks, booked two hotels for the vacation portion of my upcoming business trip to Switzerland (!), and did the math on the 6 short train rides I expect to take throughout said trip. Whew.

Spoiled for choice

Too many options for only one day left in the weekend. Work on the Fanworks vid whose June 4 deadline snuck up? Work on a non-deadline-driven vid? Play with a fic or original story? Sort through extraneous belongings in case I decide to move? Research local brokers? Cook and clean? Combine any of these with friend hangout? Or the likeliest option: Stew in indecision.
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
DOING

Better. Taking a three-day weekend helped, and I'm trying to learn how not to be upset by work-related things that I don't think I should care about so much. That said, even during what felt like a good weekend, my brain delivered five stress dreams in two nights.

A few friends came over for the first night of Passover; we had good conversation and lots of food and drink. It would be nice to figure out a better furniture arrangement in this small space to accommodate more than four diners for occasions such as these; some people were left out, and that's not a good feeling. Recipe-wise, would rec these almond flour jam thumbprint cookies and a chremsele/pancake batter made of matzo meal (1/4 c), eggs (4) and cottage cheese (1 cup).

The monthly local fangirl Bad Movie Night had more attendees than usual, which made for a lively viewing experience of The Fate of the Furious. It struck me as the Batman vs. Superman of the Fast & Furious franchise, in that the basis of the conflict made no sense, a lot of it dragged on and there was gratuitous urban destruction. But a few of the action sequences made up for the rest. And as others pointed out, it had more colors than the DCU, which is to say, it had colors.

Last weekend a clutch of us saw a burlesque performance of Dracula by a group called The Slaughterhouse Society that had the highest production values, most consistent talent, and most coherent storyline of any burlesque I've seen, the runner-up being the Slutcracker, the annual local burlesque Nutcracker that as a result of its source material suffers from a comparative lack of sexy biting. Details )

READING

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie. TBD whether this falls on the side of Ancillary Justice, which you ~may recall~ I adored, or Provenance, which I thought was fine with occasional delights. So far, about 150 pages in, it's like the premise of American Gods got tossed in a blender with the "I" and "you" structure of The Broken Earth trilogy, which I'm not sure is a winning combination for me, although it's spiked with Leckie's talent for humorous linguistic play and her interests in intercultural politics and the power of language, which may explain why a couple of people who blurbed it compared it to Ursula Le Guin. Recent chapters did introduce themes about the meaning of life and the tug of war between wanting to be connected to others versus wanting to be, literally, a rock, i.e. an eerie echo of stuff my therapist kept bringing up before we ended our sessions, so there's that.

(We had our last appointment last week. Here's hoping for improvement through other avenues.)

VIDDING

I woke up Saturday, fixed a couple of things that had been bothering me about my [community profile] equinox_exchange assignment, and then… made a second vid? In about three hours, juuuust squeaking in under the deadline? (I backdated it on the AO3, so this isn't giving anything away.) So that happened. I'm not saying it's a great work of art, but a [redacted] vid now exists where none existed before, and that is pleasing.

Anyway, the exchange went live, and someone [personal profile] cosmic_llin made me a Julian Bashir character study vid, yay: I Won't Back Down (DS9). Llin covered the spectrum of ways Bashir learned to be brave, plus she featured lots of clips of him looking sexily mussed, dirty, or roughed up, so either we like similar things or she knows my heart. :)

Other than that, my favorite in the collection is Stars (Romeo+Juliet), a haunting Mercutio vid by [personal profile] sweetestdrain for absternr.

Other favorites:
- Sound of Her Wings (The Sandman comics) by [personal profile] absternr for mithborien
- Like, Wannabe (Clueless) by [profile] cherryice for bessyboo
- Ice ice baby (Demolition Man) by [personal profile] condnsdmlk for theletterelle
- Juke Joint Jezebel (The Matrix) by [personal profile] theletterelle for AudreyV
- Take Over (The Craft) by [personal profile] winterevanesce for GhostTownExit

And more. Overall a pretty solid collection. As with Festivids, I like the inclusion of more YouTube-style vids and still-source vids. It'll do the community good to continue evolving.
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
Well, autumn was as much of a sh@#%*show as predicted, but the two big work projects have been turned in, and with luck, December will bring some relaxation.

Things wot have been up:

Reading

The local friend group's inaugural fall reading challenge comes to a close today. I blacked out my bingo card, which was all I wanted in the world. Not sure what will fill the void now that it's over.

The challenge definitely motivated me to choose reading over other activities, to plan ahead so there was always a book or five waiting next and to finish books that I might otherwise have set aside or let drag on. Whereas the last few years I averaged a book a week, during the challenge I averaged a book almost every two days; instead of 50-55 books total, 2018 is on track to top 75. Snow days, long flights and library due dates also helped.

Favorite reads:
  • Strange Practice: A Dr. Greta Helsing novel by Vivian Shaw (thanks, [personal profile] rachelmanija)
  • Two Mates for the Dragon by Zoe Chant et al, esp. the one by Juno Blake (thanks, [personal profile] rachelmanija & [personal profile] sholio)
  • The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
  • The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
  • Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
  • My Teacher Is an Alien series by Bruce Coville (reread)
  • The Vampire Diaries series by L.J. Smith (reread)
The bingo card also pushed me to finally crack open 6 of the unread books I've owned for many years, which was nice.

Readings

I went to several book readings in September/October. Fully intended to write them up, then did not. For the record:

Dessa @ Brattle Theater
DeRay Mckesson with Ayanna Pressley @ Old South Church
Heid Erdrich, Tacey Atsitty & Eric Gansworth @ Harvard Peabody Museum (related post)
George Saunders @ Boston University

All excellent, with the possible exception of Mckesson/Pressley—the acoustics were so awful where we sat that we couldn't make out half of what they said; we gave up when they started the Q&A. Reading DeRay's book afterwards helped clarify what we'd semi-heard.

Vidding

No matter how many vids you make, there will always be new technical challenges. I can't even talk about this one because it's for a treat I want to make for Festivids. Suffice it to say that solution #1 involved math; the math that should have worked did not work because reasons; so I devised solution #2 over the weekend. Now for the "easy" part of, you know, making the vid and seeing if it turns out well enough to submit.

Meanwhile, I have no idea what to do for my actual assignment. That will sound funny later when you find out what the source is. So far, I've come up with a concept that would take too long to make, a song that wasn't about what I thought it was about, and a spoof where a spoof wouldn't be appreciated. Now that life is quieting, I'll sit down and figure it out. Because otherwise I'm looking at defaulting and making only the treat, which would be weird in addition to breaking my streak of making at least two Festivids each year.

(Well, there's this other treat idea...)

Traveling

Having given up on postponing travel for work reasons because work never lets up these days, I went to Tucson to visit childhood friend A. More strip malls than expected in the city itself, but gorgeous desert and mountains close by, and the low humidity means you don't turn into a sweaty mess while hiking. For Thanksgiving I spent ~36 hours in NY seeing family and then ~48 hours at home alternating social time with domesticity, a hybrid experiment that turned out pretty well.

In a couple of weeks I will visit [personal profile] synn, yay, and over winter break I will meet the new house my mom and her boyfriend acquired in rural Tennessee to retire to. Re: the above, I'll have to decide whether it's ridiculous to drag down my desktop computer for vidding or simply bring a book—Moby Dick's time may have arrived at last—and some writing materials. Still have those three unfinished Zahn-related fics.

Cooking

Since there were no Thanksgiving leftovers on account of we didn't host, yesterday I made turkey meatballs, green beans and stuffing for this week's lunches, topped with slices of that classic cranberry sauce that comes out of the can with a slurp in a single jiggly cylinder. While I was at it, I rescued a few pounds of apples we picked 6 weeks ago by turning them into applesauce with cinnamon and a pinch of brown sugar. Mm. That will accompany the week's dinners of sautéed kale, gigante beans and sausage. It felt good to put in the time in the kitchen; I hadn't cooked properly in a while.

Chilling

Only in the literal sense: Our boiler broke. It's being fixed. Meanwhile, space heaters.

...Which may or may not explain why there's a tickle in my throat today. Sigh.
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
I.

I could swear I wrote one line of a super-rarepair fic many years ago. Last night I looked for it and couldn't find it; only the prompt turned up, in a document of many prompts. :/ It's possible I deleted the file, "knowing" I'd never flesh it out and/or letting fear of censure win because the source was, shall we say, problematic. If so, past!me has made present!me sad. Hoping I can find a My Documents backup of the right age to contain this file, if I'm not imagining its existence. The line probably isn't even that spectacular, but not being able to read it bothers me.

(It was John Dunbar/Wind In His Hair from Dances with Wolves. The line was written as part of an entry in Dunbar's diary. I know, I know.)

II.

People who've written a lot of fic, or who've been writing for a long time, or who, heh, maybe don't invest as much of their self-worth in their fic, talk about going back through their AO3 catalog or whatnot and discovering stories they'd forgotten. This was an alien concept to me as someone who obsessively rereads most of what I write and who has posted a small enough fic collection to be able to list a good portion of it from memory.

I say "was" because while combing through my fic subfolder called "abandoned" last night, which goes back about 12 years, I discovered unfinished Slashfest/Kink Bingo/Porn Battle/SGA kink meme prompt fills and other snippets that I had either forgotten about until reintroduced or had no recollection of writing. I hardly ever browse that folder, so frequency of contact must be a factor. Maybe length or idea development, too, but there are old, sketchy drafts of just a few lines in the regular "fic" folder that I haven't forgotten because I see the file names all the time. Fascinating!

III.

Having started learning to cook only in my twenties, having grown up in a recipe-following household, and not keeping the most well-stocked of pantries, I am happy whenever I throw together something spur-of-the-moment and it turns out tasty. Today it was a package of sausage and a bag of Brussels sprouts from the freezer, three overripe apples and a can of white beans. Autumn in a pot.

IV.

Hey, so that New Poets of Native Nations book I mentioned the other week? Heid Erdrich, the editor, is in town and giving a talk about it tomorrow! She's bringing two of the featured poets as well, Tacey Atsitty and Eric Gansworth. They weren't my favorites, but whatever, maybe their readings will change that. Excited to hear the presentations and to get the book signed.

V.

I donated three boxes of books to the library today. Small repayment for all the materials they have lent this resident over the past 5 years. Also, closet space reclaimed. One of those boxes has been hanging around since high school. (!)
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
Doing

I spent May working 24/7 on the vid; did little but watch TV in June; then spent three-quarters of July working 24/7 on an article for my job. Now it's back to chillin' out, by which I mean doing the minimum at work while visiting friends and family, consuming media, daydreaming and going for the occasional swim. Things will achieve balance again at some point.

Oh, and my birthday happened last week. 'Twas a pleasant one. Some friends made me dinner ♥, and some other friends and I went for fancy Italian over the weekend. [personal profile] marginaliana made a beautiful Star Trek and blood moon-themed card and [personal profile] thingswithwings wrote an Odo/Quark flashfic. Other surprise gifts included a quart of farm-fresh blueberries, a book on Hollywood Gothic and a Ravenclaw button. Happy double chai to me. The Hebrew kind, not the tea.

Going

I popped down to NYC for 24 hours to catch my beloved friend A., her husband V. and their five-year-old while they swept through three states on a business trip from Munich. The timing was terrible, but it was a joy to see them; I hadn't seen A. in three years. That kid was born a few months before we all left DC. Time flies.

My mom came to MA for a class mid-month, so I hung out with her for a few days. That was nice, although it would've been nicer if I hadn't had to work. We played mini golf, went to an art museum, walked around a lake and watched bits of the Harry Potter marathon on TV. Food highlights: lamb burger with goat cheese, sunflower seed risotto, cocktail made with local blueberries.

Next weekend is [community profile] vividcon, the last before it metamorphoses into [community profile] fanworkscon in 2019. It already sounds like people's emotions will be running high. I'm aiming to remain calm, set simple goals—i.e. "meet [personal profile] sol_se"—and not have too-high expectations for hanging out with people who will all be trying to do and feel A Lot. My perspective: It is just another Vividcon, this is not the last opportunity to see vidders, not everything has to be 'a moment.' It helps that I'm not showing any new vids amidst the glut of premieres. So far the worst I have to deal with is performance anxiety over co-modding a panel. (If you have requests for multifandom vidding topics, drop a line here!)

Watching

The movie adaptation of a play I'd wanted to see but missed, Marjorie Prime, which, like Robot and Frank, and like Westworld only less irritating, uses AI as a lens to explore age-related memory loss, how memories help construct a person, how they can be manipulated, and what happens to memories themselves and echoes of people as time passes and stories get conveyed second- and third-hand. The movie dipped in the… third quarter? But the beginning and end were wonderful.

Other than that, a string of movies and shows featuring Zahn McClarnon.

I watched six seasons of Longmire in about a month, whoops. It's a present-day sheriffing show set in rural Wyoming. Came for Zahn as the police chief of the neighboring Cheyenne reservation; stayed for him and Lou Diamond Phillips, Katee Sackhoff and some heartfelt seeking of justice. Post pending when writing about it feels less intimidating.

Writing

Fic!! Although I've been playing with Mary Sues on my hard drive here and there, it's been two years since I posted a story to the AO3 (Here rest, interred without a stone) and three years since an actor or source inspired a cluster of fics (the Inkheart trio, plus two WsIP I swear I'll finish one day). In the last month, I've started no fewer than three stories, thanks to Zahn McClarnon characters.

So far:

- 1,400 words of an indulgent Mathias/OFC dubcon aphrodisiacs story for Longmire

- 670 words of the vampire threesome flashbacks no one else has written despite the clear subtext in this one episode of Midnight, Texas

- 2,000 words of noncon inspired by a scene in the premiere of The Red Road that I watched on Sunday. I should have known noncon would overcome the writer’s block.

- Well, and 6 lines of Mathias/Cady (Longmire), but I'm not sure there's enough to hang a story on

It's both motivating and refreshingly low-pressure to observe how few AO3 fics there are for some of these characters. Quick examples: )

I need all the momentum I can get, being so rusty at this point and easily defeated by self-recrimination and any narrative problems that arise. [personal profile] disgruntled_owl and other local fic-writing friends have been great help on both fronts, offering solutions and encouragement.

Vidding

I've recovered enough from "The Greatest" to plan vids again. I'd like to make one for Longmire; given that I've been humming a particular song candidate for about six weeks, chances are it'll be set to that.

Also on the docket is the second [tumblr.com profile] FandomTrumpsHate vid, for [personal profile] deelaundry. We've narrowed it down to two options: either the opening credits to a TV show she has been imagining for a while or a remix of her "all you can kink" Tango & Cash vid.

Reading

Can wait for another post.
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
[livejournal.com profile] synn and I went to Montreal for a week!

Neither of us had ever visited. We ate all of the things.* We also walked around all day almost every day to explore neighborhoods, sites, and museums, despite the nippy winter-into-spring weather: at or just below freezing most days, blustery, flurries. It wasn't too bad for me because Boston has been having a late, cold spring, but poor synn flew up from balmy North Carolina. The first front blew in on the evening we arrived, knocking over the bajillion road construction signs and sandwich boards as we leaned into the snowy gusts and cried, "Pourquoi????"

We spent Friday at a Supernatural con: synn is a fan of the show and I have liked one of the con guests, Sebastian Roché—who played a recurring character named Balthazar for, IIRC what synn said, one season out of 13, but SPN fans never forget—for, yikes, 20 years now, and never had the chance to meet him. We went to his Q&A, we took a silly Official Photo where synn suffered me to ask him to pretend to be evil vampire Mikael from The Vampire Diaries/The Originals and we pretended to be scared, and thanks to synn's sneaky generosity, I was also treated to a seat at his meet and greet, where seven attendees and Sebastian chatted around a table for 45 minutes. It was super nice. I also enjoyed the Q&A with Lisa Berry (Billy) and Kim Rhodes (Jody). Much more sedate and heartfelt than Sebastian's, who spent most of his time jumping on chairs and singing a dumb (but I guess charming) song with and about the house band. He did speak a lot of French, though, while making fun of Quebecois vs. France-French accents and lingo, which made my teenage heart go pitter-patter. And he made no secret of his attraction to Misha Collins, including, while answering an audience question about which cast member he would choose to be his slave for the day, the title of my new favorite Dr. Seuss book: "Mish on a Leash."

On the weekend we met up with [twitter.com profile] xenophonique and were introduced to [twitter.com profile] lunarflares, both delightful. We snacked our way through a maple syrup festival*—it's the tail end of maple-tapping season there—before retiring to xen's beautiful apartment for afternoon tea and conversation. A wonderful oasis during our city visit.

We checked out the cemetery and chalet-slash-lookout point atop Mont Royal, accidentally/on purpose got lost in the Underground City, and remarked on how the architecture varied so widely from street to street. We managed three museums:
  • The modern art museum, where we inadvertently hit peak Montreal by wandering through their current exhibit on Leonard Cohen. The curators had built literal temples to this guy, from a small wooden cathedral, dark, hushed, in which microphones hung from the ceiling while a recorded chorus hummed "Hallelujah" in surround sound, to a Stonehenge-like ring of video screens of aging men trying to synchronize a recitation of his lyrics, to a "depression room"—"intended as a solo experience"—where, presumably, the people waiting in line would be able to commune with Cohen's spirit one on one.

  • The fine arts museum: enormous, impressive, comprehensive. My favorites were the Inuit art floor (and the integration of native and non-native painting and sculpture in other galleries), the contemporary furniture and industrial design collection, and a particular painting at the entrance to a gallery about Canada finding its identity during the initial era of Western "settlement," because this painting, both disturbing and hilarious, portrays the horrors of colonization and fur trapping from the point of view of the beavers. (Perhaps obviously: warning for animal harm.) It is by Kent Monkman, who is part Cree and part Irish and who, I have since learned, paints and sculpts all sorts of striking, subversive subjects, often focusing on mistreatment of native populations and playing with artistic traditions. A+, all beavers go to heaven.

  • The natural history museum at McGill, a nice collection of shells, fossils, rocks/minerals, cultural artifacts and taxidermied regional wildlife in an interior hall that reminded me of a couple of English museums of medical curiosities that I visited with [personal profile] deelaundry. [personal profile] xenakis probably knows what it's called, beyond the website's description of "an idiosyncratic expression of eclectic Victorian Classicism." I learned a lot about shrunken-head production.

Oh, plus the botanical gardens, or at least the greenhouse sections, since most of the outdoor beds contained bulb shoots juuust daring to poke through a dusting of snow. The niftiest room showcased fruit and spice plants, from banana and litchi trees to cinnamon and vanilla, star anise, annatto, peppercorns. We had not seen most of those edibles in their natural forms before. Super neat. We intended to visit the neighboring Insectarium but ran out of time, alas. There was a dead centipede waiting in my toothbrush holder when I got home so that probably counted as a consolation prize.

*Okay but seriously ALL THE FOOD: )

Now back to regular life: work and chores, reading, radical weather shifts, and hopefully soon, back to vidding.
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
This morning before I even got to the office, my bank reported a fraudulent credit card charge and my phone experienced its second bizarre battery drain in as many days. Then at work, I had just retrieved from the fridge the two mini-pies left over from an event yesterday—an event that I supplied the food for, because we do rotations—when a male colleague took one of them from me, opened it up and said he was going to eat it even though I had just told him I was taking it for my roommate. WTF. While still processing that, I tried to pre-order an e-book for my dad and had to resort to the customer service chat feature in order to find out that gift purchases aren’t available on pre-orders.

Grumpy #firstworld morning, is what I’m saying.

But. When I went to that colleague’s office afterwards to ask him what he’d been thinking, he explained that he’d misunderstood my intentions; apologized; and on his lunch break bought me a Starbucks gift card.

And the other stuff is being taken care of.

Focus on the positives:

- Another colleague brought in delicious homemade lime curd bars.
- Am going to a sushi-making class tonight, a Hanukkah gift from my mom.
- Watched Queen of Katwe last night and it was good.
- The foot and a half of snow that fell on Tuesday is melting, so if luck holds, I’ll be able to drive places this weekend without worrying too much about being able to park when I get back.
- Three weeks until Montreal trip with [livejournal.com profile] synn. Recommendations welcome.
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
I just spent eight straight days on a work project, and as of five o'clock it's turned in and now it's time to remember how to do things for fun.

Of late, I:

(+) Did not lose power in Friday's nor'easter.

(-) Dropped a gift pot of chrysanthemums on their heads in the wind, then spilled a vase of tulips all over my coffee table. By "vase" I mean "water bottle," because the bouquet flopped everywhere when I put it in a wider drinking glass, but of course plastic makes for a crappy anchor. Now the flowers are in a glass like they should have been, with a cut-up water bottle tube keeping them in shape. tl;dr yellow tulips make me happy.

(+) Watched season one of Killjoys. I'd only seen two episodes before. Overall enjoyable. Had a nice time with the main team being supportive of one another instead of fighting over developments that too often cause stupid rifts on other shows. Was, unfortunately, way less into the abusive mentor and conspiracy tropes. Laughed to myself at how everyone has to strike Sexy(TM) poses/make sexy faces/wear sexy clothes every so often, as if this were a CW series. Ditto the conspicuous use of pop songs. Then watched maybe half of season two but petered out.

(+) Went to a dinner party. Good food, good conversation, new set of friends willing to play Star Trek Settlers of Catan. Pictionary may be in our future, although that would be easier if I weren't a perennial third/fifth/seventh wheel who makes it hard to form even-numbered teams.

(+) Made for the first time a set of rice bowls for this week's lunches featuring frozen tuna that I seared in a frying pan, scallions, cucumber, roasted asparagus and eggplant, and a resurrected 1/4 bag of arborio rice -- I definitely bought it before I moved to Boston -- stirred into the leftover marinade of rice vinegar, sesame oil, soy sauce and brown sugar. Yum.

(+) Submitted a Google form to [community profile] wiscon_vidparty declaring my intention to finish this long-term multifandom auction vid in May. And if I miss that deadline, will shoot for Vividcon premieres in June. *determined face* Black Panther and A Wrinkle in Time stoked the fire again.
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
(That is a Muppets reference)

JAN
We have a [personal profile] toft in town! [personal profile] marginaliana and I enjoyed a leisurely brunch with her and her +1, J., before Thursday's snowstorm turned the region into barely navigable marshmallowland. We had only met once before, briefly, at Vividcon in 2010; it was a joy to expand on that.

OCT
While I was in San Francisco for a business trip, [personal profile] rhoboat came over to hang out for the day. We hadn't properly met until Vividcon two months earlier, and I am glad we finally did, because rho is whip-smart and funny and engaging, employed in a field adjacent to mine, and generally an enjoyable person to spend time with in museums and foodie neighborhoods.

We visited the de Young museum )

Afterwards, [personal profile] laurashapiro was able to join for a delicious sashimi dinner and "yup, we're in San Francisco"-style ice cream. (I went for carrot halwa flavor.) Too brief a catch-up, but precious for its scarcity.

DEC PT 1
[twitter.com profile] iggyw came to stay for a night during her own business trip! We secured takeout and chatted while Star Trek reruns played in the background. I continue to adore iggy and am glad when work or play takes one of us to the other's city.

DEC PT 2
When I lived in D.C., I used to visit [personal profile] deelaundry & family almost every Saturday, so it was nice to fall into old, comfortable patterns when I visited for ~5 days over winter break. Poor Dee caught a cold and I am a bad friend when people are sick because my instinctual reaction is GET AWAY FROM THE GERMS AAAAH but it appears we are still on good terms, heh, whew. Anyway, we started to put their house back together after a renovation, ate a lot of tasty food as Mr. [personal profile] deelaundry rejoiced in having a kitchen again, saw Star Wars: The Last Jedi and some Netflix movies, and played around with holiday gifts such as Paint by Sticker books.

Dee was scheduled to work the last two days so I hitched a ride into the city to see [personal profile] cinco and her +1, R. Because they got married after I'd moved away, I mostly know R. through what cinco posts about her. As above, it was great to spend a few hours getting to know her a little more, from culinary expertise to diatribes about education policy. And I always love the chance to have substantive conversations with cinco. We browsed a new-to-us wing of Kramerbooks before embarking on a Thai and chai tour of 17th Street. My only regret is I have but one life to-- missing [personal profile] alpheratz and the rest of the D.C. crew. Next time.

AUG
Okay, whatever, sometimes I think people are scary, and [personal profile] hollywoodgrrl and [personal profile] ohvienna are so cool that I had put them in the "too cool to hang out with" category at Vividcons past, but this time, this time I promised myself I would unload all of that onto them in a hopefully amusing way and then see if they wanted to have lunch. Which they did! The three of us and [personal profile] corbae went for ramen between panels/vidshows and talked about I don't even remember what, but it was fun. While they are still effortlessly cool, I am pleased to report they are not scary.


In conclusion: fan friends in other cities \o/

Also: fan friends in this city \o/
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
1. You know you've got the blues when you scoff at your own Mary Sue fantasy story from last year because there's no way those other characters would treat her as special.

2. The blues only present themselves sometimes, though. This weekend was generally lovely, including attending a Hanukkah party, heckling Fifty Shades Darker with [personal profile] thedeadparrot*, and allowing myself to buy a handful of treats from Cardullo's in Harvard Square, one of which I had been eyeing for years. Then I triumphed over past culinary disappointments by making a roast beef that wasn't overdone! Third time's the charm, I guess. That and cooking it at 275° F.

*2a. Still not as bad as the book, and I think better than the Rotten Tomatoes critics' score of 10% gives it credit for as a close adaptation -- there are several funny moments, most of them seemingly intentional! the character arcs are at least somewhat coherent! the, uh, color palettes are pretty! -- but still, yeah, this relationship makes no sense, the acting and/or direction to not-act is terrible, the main characters are allergic to substantive conversation, it's unfortunate to reinforce the idea that a woman can change a man's lifelong behaviors and deepest values by loving him, it's offensive to claim that enjoying BDSM is an easily corrected pathology driven by a bad childhood, and the pacing choices are odd. My genuinely favorite part was that this mainstream movie not only featured a spreader bar but also showed it being ratcheted open and used for pleasure rather than some villainous torture.

Reviews I liked:
  • New Republic - Sustained comparison to Working Girl; appreciation of Dakota Johnson's attempts to transcend the material. "Fifty Shades Darker, which fails so many tests of basic storytelling competence, is all the more stunning for its success at a task that most movies don't even bother attempting: depicting a woman's sexual pleasure."
     
  • MTV - Made me laugh out loud; similar appreciation of Johnson's acting abilities; agreement that director did indeed intend to be funny. "Dornan's handsome, even if his cold, accusing eyes make you think of a catfish slammed onto a pier."

3. "Feast or famine," the library clerk said as I picked up another armful of books that came in all at once after being on hold for weeks. Having just finished Unbeatable Squirrel Girl vols. 3-4 and Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection, I'm working my way through the 400-page My Favorite Thing is Monsters, while stacked up on the nightstand are Call Me By Your Name, The Book of Dust, Ms. Marvel vol. 1, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl vols. 5-6, Lumberjanes vols. 1-2, and if I can get to it before it's due back, Alif the Unseen. (I needed to read ~7 books this month if I was going to reach my arbitrary goal of a book a week on average for 2017, so I requested a bunch of graphic novels, heh, not realizing how intense Monsters is.)

4. Help can be hard to ask for, even for small, mundane things. I'm grateful to [twitter.com profile] serenadestrong, [profile] seascribe, [personal profile] mollyamory and Mr. [personal profile] disgruntled_owl for ferrying me around while my car is in the shop (yes, still) and now also to [personal profile] thedeadparrot for providing laundry access while our in-house washer/dryer is on the fritz. Between those, the autumn fire-alarm malfunction, the elusive kitchen mouse, and the humidifier and nighttime white-noise fan giving up the ghost this week, it feels like everything is breaking. Much like in the world.

I'm grateful to the wider fannish network for chiming in with guidance on yet more SF/F/horror sources for this auction vid, now that we are down to the TV shows that don't really appeal to me. I sent out the final (?!) batch of pleas last weekend and then had to go sit under a blanket because I hate asking people to do work for me. This is going to be the last multifandom vid I make for a while that involves sources I don't know.

5. Speaking of which, I was invited to co-mod a panel next year at Vividcon on multifandom vids, and I said yes? I'm already nervous. I haven't moderated or presented at a con since 2006, and never at Vividcon. Good thing the other co-mods who've signed on so far are non-scary people. Need to ask [personal profile] jetpack_monkey his thoughts, since he modded a panel on the same topic just last year. Maybe take a longitudinal perspective on multifandom vids in general or lessons learned from each vidder's own experiences over time. Not that I know enough to talk about the former, but our possible VCR-vidder co-mod might.

But there is something fitting about finally doing something like this at the last Vividcon.
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
Hi, friends. Thanks for voting in the poll! Indecisiveness combined with a general suspicion that everything I say and write these days is stupid banal can lead to extra-long periods of not posting.

I have been all right. Going to the gym 4+ days a week is not my natural inclination, and I still hurt in many places, but it is clear the activity is keeping my mood afloat, helping me sleep better and, yes, building strength and stamina. I took tonight off to browse the local library book sale -- $2 for Neil Clarke's Best Science Fiction of the Year vol. 1 and Whale Rider on DVD, yay -- and write a post.

My sister came to visit over Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples Day weekend. (Wow, it looks even worse to put those side by side than to use one alone. Wish we could just say Indigenous Peoples Day now, but it hasn't permeated the culture yet.) We went to a book event featuring chef Jacques Pépin, daughter Claudine and granddaughter Shorey. Having grown up watching Pépin, Julia Child and the Frugal Gourmet on PBS, it was a real treat -- especially since he came out twenty minutes early, plastic cup of wine in hand, to do photo ops with anyone who wanted.

The discussion itself was quite funny. Claudine, the moderator, got teased by her dad, but she dished it right back. "Never work with family," she quipped at one point. They told stories about things like how PBS timed its filmings so if Claudine wasn't a fast enough learner at rolling out dough or whatever, Jacques would elbow her out of the way and do it himself. Whereas when he partnered with Julia Child, she just told the film crew, "We're going to make this dish and we'll tell you when we're done," meaning some poor editor had to trim 110 minutes down to 20-something. Nor did they work from recipes, so airings were delayed because the producers had to reverse engineer them.

We also went to the county fair in the rain, figuring the crowds would thin out. Incorrect! Nonetheless, we enjoyed many animals, vegetables and minerals crafts. A pair of goats tried to eat our plastic ponchos, and once again the rabbit and cavy tent drove me to look into how feasible it would be to get a couple of guinea pigs to cuddle at home. (Space, climate control and frequency of cage cleaning & feeding are the main concerns, i.e. I could not be away for more than about a day without arranging for care. And I don't know if I trust my ability to maintain the energy levels to do what's needed. This was easier growing up when we had four family members to share tasks.) LOOK AT ITS LITTLE TRIBBLE TUFTS.

Work has been work-y. We were urged to apply for some awards in our field, which took up most of the last three days. I've won a few in this job, so I'm a bit hopeful. Otherwise just trying to keep my head down and enjoy the aspects of this career that I enjoy while our office's overall stress rises and morale dips. Pretty sure [coworker] is about to quit.

Good news is we still get financial support for professional development. Next week I'm flying to San Francisco for a conference. If any of you have food recommendations in the Union Square/SoMa area, especially for breakfast and lunch, share away. I'm already set on returning to a couple of takeout places in Chinatown for tasty tasty dim sum. Still dreaming of the shrimp and leek dumplings from my first visit there a year and a half ago.
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
A year and a half ago, I fell for the villain in a music video on YouTube. Last night, I had a drink with him.

("Way to bury the lede," said [twitter.com profile] thisiskis when I told the story the long way around this morning. You get the highlights version.)

I took the bus to Manhattan for a 24-hour visit this weekend to see a fringe play imported from England because, as you may recall, this actor I liked, Jon Campling, was in it and it didn't sound like there would be another opportunity to see him in the U.S. in the foreseeable future.

The play itself, TRIPPIN, was better than expected. Quite funny and creative on a shoestring budget. I think the advertising doesn't do it justice. It's billed as "weekend warrior does a drug and meets some wacky characters," and it was that, with a side of privileged white male existential despair, but it was also a surprisingly cathartic journey into how a person can create or exacerbate their own deep unhappiness and try to self-medicate with substances or escapist media without getting at the root of the problem. Anxiety transforms into peace.

I'm so used to seeing embarrassing productions/TV/movies/performances for the sake of a particular actor or actress that this was a nice change of pace.

Afterwards [twitter.com profile] iggyw and I were hanging out in the empty lobby, where I was hoping for a photo op and autograph, when Jon's wife found us. We chatted until Jon appeared, and then, instead of a quick meet and greet, they totally invited us downstairs to the playhouse bar! I had been daydreaming about just such an outcome but wasn't sure I would be brave enough to ask for it. So I was on cloud nine for the next hour and a half as we talked about a bunch of different things and I got to look at his face some more. Much merriment and storytelling; I am once more thankful to extroverts for their seeming ease in keeping conversations lively among strangers. Iggy, who is less comfortable than I am about meeting performers, started out skeptical but ended up having a lovely time and agreeing that they were both super sweet.

And before we left, I did get that autograph and photo op. I had confessed my love for his villain roles starting with that abduction-themed Amber Run video, and he delighted me by feigning a kidnapping move while Iggy took our picture. <3

photographic evidence )

Totally worth the trip.

*

Thanks to [twitter.com profile] no_detective I also got to see a matinee of MENGELE, which I was more ambivalent about. It was neither as bad as it could have been nor as good. Lots of breathy, rapid-fire dialogue between "Mengele" and an avenging angel as they delved into his life and actions, with a few pauses to play video footage from the Holocaust and/or the Schindler's List movie. The performances were pretty strong, and I liked the attention paid to the conflicted attraction-repulsion some perpetrators felt for their victims, but there was nothing new or particularly insightful in its depiction of a war criminal justifying his behavior, and the structure of the play undercut any sort of catharsis.

Other weekend highlights included (1) being stopped by a fellow DS9 fan in a shop who liked my Terok Nor t-shirt and (2) food! Decent SoHo pizza with Iggy, a tea house on Bleecker I wish we could have spent more time lounging in before the play, an amazing kosher everything bagel with cream cheese around the corner from the hotel (Ess-a-Bagel, yummm), and brunch this morning with [twitter.com profile] thisiskis and [personal profile] coffeeandink. More wide-ranging fannish conversation, this time with scrambled eggs.

*

Back to work tomorrow. [livejournal.com profile] synn and I are, uh, supposed to fly to Orlando on Thursday to go to Harry Potter World. It still appears to be possible? We'll see.
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
Hwooof, that was a tough week, but this weekend was the best that's happened in a while, so all's well that ends well, I guess.

(It was just a trough of stress. Political stuff, work stuff, probably body chemistry stuff. I am finally getting started with seeing a therapist and then I missed an appointment because I was so discombobulated I thought it was the next day. I had never missed a doctor's appointment before. I felt so stupid until [personal profile] deelaundry said a kind thing that hadn't occurred to me: When I said, "I look like a flake," she countered with, "You look like someone who needs help." Self-compassion is a thing it would be nice to learn.)

The good stuff:

Socializing: In support of this year's goal to get together more often with friends I like to talk to and/or want to get to know better, a few of us went to a play yesterday and had a satisfying coffee shop chat afterwards, and then I accepted an unexpected invitation to another blossoming friend's low-key Superbowl dinner. All good.

The play was called Trans Scripts, a synthesis/melding of interviews with trans women from the US/UK/Aus. It was elegant, illuminating and well acted -- two cast members were particularly strong -- although I thought it faltered in a few spots when it shifted from "showing" through anecdotes to plain proselytizing. [personal profile] marginaliana wrote up some of her thoughts.

A phone conversation the previous night:
95-year-old grandpa: Oh! I didn't expect you to be home on a Saturday night. I thought you'd be out with your friends.
Me: No, I'm boring. Well, I'm going to see a play tomorrow, but it's a matinee.
Grandpa: Oh, yeah? What is it about?
Me, bracing myself: It's based on interviews with transgender women about their lives.
Grandpa: Oh. You know, there's this woman I know from the temple, who lives with another woman, and it turns out they're--what do you call it--lesbians? Lesbians?
Me: Mm-hm!
Grandpa: So that's very interesting! I just knew them as women from the temple, you know.
#NotAllGrandpas

Doing: Had a computer-free day Saturday involving a mall run, errands and two movies. In addition to some necessaries for work and winter weather, I treated myself to a grommet-studded cut-out shirt that I probably won't wear anywhere but at home and Club Vivid (because I am me) but love anyway.

Reading: Was delighted by Unbeatable Squirrel Girl vols 1-2: plucky, witty, metatextual, intertextual, often involved the defusing of supervillainy through psychology/sympathy rather than fisticuffs. The '80s horror of Paper Girls turns out to be not as much my aesthetic, although the introduction of overlapping timestreams in vol. 2 is getting interesting.

Watching: Saw Moonlight and Lion. Loved the first and really liked the second; cried through them both; my heart aches for Chiron. Hope to see I Am Not Your Negro and Hidden Figures this week. Catching up on what I missed in Dec-Jan when too much else was going on.

Vidding: I remain in the planning stages of the two auction vids, and am figuring out if I can make the multifandom Club Vivid vid I've been preparing since the fall or if it'll need to wait another year. I watched all the [community profile] festivids -- slim masterlist this year, half the usual total -- but haven't commented on any or recced any here because I'm afraid the gaps would give away what I made, and the thought of doing fake comments/recs to throw off the scent makes me tired. I'll probably just post the rec list after reveals.

Cooking: A pleasurable week is in store of chicken breast and goat cheese sandwiches for lunch and stuffed cabbage for dinner. Also, the supermarket was selling chocolate-covered banana chips, which I didn't know was a thing but I am all over it, mm. Banana chips were such a treat when I was a kid.
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
First of all, thank you to everyone who posted photos or descriptions of your experiences at Saturday's marches.

After much angst, I chose to stay with my mom rather than to go the NYC rally. In the end, that turned out all right. The marches clearly had robust attendance, and while at home I was able to open my mom's eyes to the scale of the movement and the nature of the marchers' concerns—she hadn't known about the events at all and said she'd never seen anything like it, even given the Vietnam protests of the '60s—and spend more time debating her boyfriend, a staunch conservative who honest to goodness argued with TV coverage by shouting, "What about white people?" and "All lives matter!"

Not to mention that having all-day news and social media access gave us clearer access to speakers, performers and commentators and a broader perspective across the nation and the world than would have been possible while packed into a crowd.

Instead of berating myself for being on that day the sort of complicit bystander we decry in history classes, I try to remind myself that witnessing is also important.

.

Executive orders. Cabinet confirmations. Federal hiring freezes and gag rules.* Lies and distractions and tangled-up media relations. Standing Rock now, too, OMG. I only have so many dollars to donate, so one of the things I did today was ask the [tumblr.com profile] FandomTrumpsHate mods to extend an invitation to the runner-up in my vid auction in addition to the winner. We'll see if she's interested. If I can raise $210 for charity, that's another drop in the bucket of resistance. Or some metaphor that makes more sense.

I'll definitely be making a vid for the winner, though: [personal profile] deelaundry! We are discussing options.

*I worked at an HHS agency for several years; I'm very glad I'm not there right now, for both practical and ideological reasons. Friends who are Feds or contractors, I hope you know my thoughts are with you.

.

I've created a new DW/LJ tag, "politics," both for organization purposes and so those of you who want to can unsubscribe from it. That said, I still intend for this journal to remain primarily a fannish space.

.

And now for something a little lighter.

A few months back, Dee gave me a Liz Climo 2017 daily calendar. It is punching above its weight in emotional support. Today's cartoon is going to get tacked to the bulletin board:

image behind the cut )

Meanwhile, Mr. [personal profile] deelaundry gifted me a subscription to a monthly spice mix service. I had never belonged to one of those food-by-mail clubs before and wasn't sure what to expect, but the first trio of envelopes arrived yesterday and it’s a winner: four types of red chiles ground together, a cumin-oregano rub, and za'atar, with recipes curated by the head chef of the marvelous café at the National Museum of the American Indian. I have a baggie of sumac in the kitchen, but you can never have enough.

Tonight, hoping to finish the last Festivids treat. Golive on Saturday is a light at the end of the week.
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
[warning: stress dreams involving violence]

Awake brain: I know I have work and vidding deadlines, but I feel pretty good.

Unconscious brain: Ha ha ha! Have some dreams about bears, and a horse peeing on you, and performing as Captain Kirk in a Star Trek play but you forget all your lines and musical cues so everyone has to cover for you, and experiencing people's startled reactions to your face after you lose most of it in an accident, and forgetting to buy a dress and write a speech for your sister's (nonexistent) wedding, and missing your trains to get downtown!

...Yet I still feel pretty good? Well, less good now that the work deadline looms and the time I set aside to vid keeps getting diverted to procrastination activities ranging from cooking to watching long-ago completed vids. :/ I did finish the Elf one, as you may have seen, but that still leaves the four [community profile] festivids-in-progress.

Of the good: Made it unexpectedly to most of Boston Fannish Brunch today; there will be a [personal profile] roga in town for the beginning of Hanukkah; going to visit [personal profile] deelaundry and family for Xmas; going with [livejournal.com profile] disgruntledowl the next day to a National Theatre Live screening of Patrick Stewart & Ian McKellen's latest play, followed probably by New Year's Eve hangouts with old movies.

Ah, that's the oven timer. Round one was meat for the week, round two is veg, round three will be baked apples (with much less sugar). I've been peeling, coring, slicing and baking apples with a simple dusting of cinnamon afterwards, so am attracted to this recipe that involves only coring, even though baked apple skin looks to me like death.

(Dear brain: That is not an invitation for another stress dream.)

ETA: The apples are delicious, like an inside-out crumble, although I wouldn't say they're less work than what I was doing before; maybe because I don't have a melon baller or apple corer. I used about 1 tsp brown sugar and a generous shake of cinnamon along with the oats.
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
(Aside from current events like the DAPL breakthrough. \o/)

I’m not a good sleeper, but last night, with the help of a "non"-drowsy allergy pill, I went to bed at 9:30 and slept until 7:30 and woke in my little quilt cocoon to a dusting of snow outside, feeling like life is beautiful. Why can’t every night be like that?

I found some books for gifts and for me at the twice-yearly Harvard Book Store warehouse sale this weekend: some cookbooks, a slim volume about narrative craft by Ursula Le Guin (originally written in 1998 and updated last year) and four nonfiction books I’d been eyeing for a while. That’s part of the good thing. The other part is that work is going to cover most of those because they’re job-related. Hooray; that frees up this month’s book budget for other treats.

While exchanging a defective jacket, I found a cowl-neck "tunic sweater" that fits. It was on sale and it makes me happy. I have not been feeling good about myself body-wise for a while, and a well-fitting article of clothing helps. It’s long enough to be a short dress, but I wasn’t brave enough for that today, given the chill, and am wearing it with black pants.

Since it is the Month of Capitalism, I also browsed around for stovetop tea kettles, because I’ve finally grown embarrassed enough about boiling water for guests in a battered saucepan to search for an alternative. (It was more of a small-kitchen, don’t want specialized gadgets thing than an affordability thing.) Thus was I introduced to the modern world of programmable electric kettles, where you can set the shutoff at various temps below boiling for perfect tea steeping. I think this is where my Hanukkah gift card from the stepfamily will be going.

Culinary rescue! A pre-Thanksgiving cider-braised chicken recipe came out way too sweet and I ended up sticking most of the constituents in the freezer: leg meat, barley, onion, too-firm diced carrot and celery. Yesterday I tried reinventing it as a soup and am pleased to report that it came out great.

A roasted spaghetti squash, not so much. Overdone to mush. I would turn it into soup if there weren’t already soup this week. The internet says it can be puréed into a sort of mash, with butter/margarine, salt and pepper. Any other ideas?

Friends came over on Saturday to work on various laptop projects, "alone together"; I made some progress on the Elf vid, and we experienced the first two episodes of Yuri On Ice. Waiting for the second Grantchester S1 DVD to arrive; started watching S3 of The Fall on Netflix. Was pleased to learn that it began as a medical drama! With Richard Coyle from Coupling, no less.

<3 to all of you while this good mood lasts. Later in December will be much more stressful, on top of whatever fresh hell the news brings.
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
I don't even know what to say. You all see what's happening too.

How I've coped this week:

Reading, Watching, Sharing, Doing
I've been taking in as much news as I can handle, which varies by the evening. Since it's all too easy for me to think about things and stop there, I've also made efforts to transform that intake and mental processing into actions. Things like setting up monthly rather than annual charity donations, signing the subset of petitions that have a shot at going anywhere, and building a spreadsheet of local, state and federal representative contact information plus specific issues to thank them for supporting or urge them to oppose. I haven't psyched myself up yet to, uh, actually make the phone calls, but I'm working on it. Still unsure which outreach efforts are most effective when I live in a Democratic state with kickass reps who are already writing joint statements and introducing bills to prevent or reverse the most atrocious developments.

Working
Nobody at our office got anything done the day after the election, but by the next day I was ready to bury myself in work. My monthly productivity is now on track to be one and a half to two times normal.

Vidding
[personal profile] thedeadparrot, [personal profile] stultiloquentia and [livejournal.com profile] disgruntledowl came over at various times last weekend for communal laptopping and to talk or not-talk about our government-to-be. I made a [community profile] festivids treat draft in 24 hours and picked at a few others. Current plan: four Festivids and one Christmas vid. Ha. Ha ha ha.

Cooking
Vidding only worked as a distraction through Saturday. Sunday I tried to sit in the computer desk chair but kept drifting into the kitchen to start some other cooking or baking project. By the end of the day, there was curried pumpkin-apple soup, pumpkin bread, an onion and feta frittata, baked sweet potatoes, roasted vegetable lasagna and lemon-basil haddock with spaghetti squash. It's kept me in leftovers for the entire week, plus extras in the freezer, and one loaf of the pumpkin bread fed my coworkers.

Reading
Not much fiction. Finished the Young Miles compendium -- enjoyed the Dendarii parts, gradually lost patience with the rest -- and am wrapping up Vampire Romance 2. Starting to do proper research into the paranormal erotica short story market. I did go to book club last Thursday despite only having read a few chapters of the book months ago (The Goblin Emperor), and was glad to have done so, for the company.

Writing
Picked up a high school- into college-era (!) orig fic last night and added 1,200 words in 60 or 90 minutes, which, if you've been keeping track, is a lot for me these last few years. Want to try some more tonight and over the weekend. There is a sequence of scenes I daydreamed about back in the day that for some reason resurfaced, matured with time, a couple of nights ago, and I'm trying to get them down on the page. A sort of recovery story, years after the hurt I put the hero and heroine through: probably another form of self-comfort this month to go with the blankets and hoodies and warm drinks and toast.

Watching
Not much besides current events. [personal profile] thedeadparrot and I did go to see Arrival last Friday and it was great; haven't enjoyed a new SF movie that much since Interstellar. Oh, and Westworld. I'm still ambivalent about it but there's more to enjoy than it seemed at the beginning. This week's episode had one particularly delightful scenario and one great twist. Still, laughably Dark and frustratingly male-POV even when it's focusing on Strong Female Characters.

Dreaming
Starting last Tuesday, I went from having never dreamt about politics or politicians in my life to dreaming about them almost every night. Am ready for this phase to pass.

And so another week comes to a close. How are you all holding up?
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
1. Having [livejournal.com profile] synn for a friend. She waited in yet another line at the SPN con she's attending this weekend to get me Sebastian Roché's autograph on an 8x10 I mailed her with a homemade montage of his late '90s roles on Roar and Odyssey 5, and she took the time to email a description of how he reacted to it. ♥Longinus♥ ♥synn♥

2. Friends in general. This week included a Boston tourism day with [personal profile] alpheratz and [profile] seascribe, a small dinner party at a grad school classmate's house, the usual wonderful deep conversation with M. (hereafter [livejournal.com profile] disgruntledowl; she got an LJ for Yuletide!), and heckling the latest pair of Project Runway episodes with [personal profile] thedeadparrot.

Next weekend there will be a [personal profile] deelaundry; we're going to see Robert Sean Leonard in Connecticut in his latest play: Camelot.

[personal profile] alpheratz's visit reminded me to get out more to parts of the city I don't usually visit. The South End and the Back Bay segment of Comm Ave are so lovely this time of year.



3. Roasting trays of zucchini, eggplant, yam and cabbage for meal sides this week. ♥autumn♥

4. Playing with a few vids. One is an Elf vid for Xmas that I've been wanting to make for years. The others will be Festivids; TBD if assignments or treats. They are among the five-and-counting requests from people that I'd love to make, and there are still a couple of movies to watch before signups close in case they can be added to my offers. Much better than last year at this time.

5. Books to read. One enjoyable SF series: the Young Miles compendium by Bujold, beginning tomorrow, having finished Shards of Honor and Barrayar a week ago and NK Jemisin's The Obelisk Gate on Friday. One guilty pleasure: Vampire Romance 2 by assorted contributors, begun last night. (You may recall an anecdote about volume 1.) The first two stories weren't anything special, but since they were apparently publishable quality, they did make me think optimistic thoughts about generating simple beginning-middle-end ideas for marketable het paranormal romance or erotica short stories: a possible goal in the not-so-distant future. (Though it's mysterious why I think I can write a short story when I can't even finish a "one-shot" fic WIP... maybe because I wouldn't have such personal investment in the short story. TBD.)

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