bironic

Crossposts: http://bironic.livejournal.com/378528.html

I

Commuting by public transit often means watching harried and/or bitter parents square off against whining and/or hyperactive children. There's this one man, though, who appears on the bus from time to time and restores my faith in humanity and parenting. He's a good-looking guy, black, tied-back dreadlocks, trimmed beard, jeans and blazer chic. The kind of long fingers fandom loves to write about. He holds his blonde, pint-sized daughter in his lap and talks quietly to her while she babbles about her day and asks questions about what's on and outside the bus. He hugs her and lets her squirm and poke his face while being sure not to disturb the neighbors.

Today, she exclaimed about some cranes at a construction site and he introduced her to the concept of an excavator. Later, she asked, "Who's that?" about some stranger on the sidewalk. Instead of sighing and saying, "I don't know," like the weary mother on last week's ride who gave up on her son's constant "Why?"s, he said, "That's a man with a cane." Then he added, "His name is Harold." And, when she asked about someone else nearby, "That girl went skiing and she fell down. She hurt her foot. That's why she has crutches. It's been a few weeks, though, so she's going to get better soon."

I wanted to turn to him and tell him how much I enjoy seeing them on the bus, but chickened out, in part because he had responded to her sudden restlessness with another bear hug that made her laugh, and my eyes stung with tears.

II

Inspired in part by a recent conversation with childhood friend

disgruntledowl, I wrote to two favorite English teachers from high school this afternoon about maybe getting a drink in our hometown over Thanksgiving. Despite our not having communicated in about 10 years except for one email exchange when I lived in Maryland, one of them, P., whom some of you may remember from reminiscences during the Memoryfest days?, responded within two hours. ♥

(Pleased to discover from a Google search that he's still a hottie. :) That's him holding the plaque.)

III

A lecturer at work today spoke about, basically, performative positivity on Facebook and how comparing yourself to others' carefully curated online lives can damage your mental and physical health. Nothing new, but it's got me thinking about the potential effects of my own recent attempts to focus on the happier aspects of my life in this journal. I hope that hasn't contributed to any of your discontents. Let it be known that my life beyond these posts is not all unicorns and rainbows, heh. ("Heh.") Focusing on positives here has been helping me counterbalance troubles at work and some unhealthy thought patterns.

Crossposts: http://bironic.livejournal.com/360682.html

Starships! is going to be in a museum exhibit next month!

The Vancouver Art Gallery is doing a four-floor exhibition on the recent history of mashups, and Starships! will be one of seven vids by six vidders included in a section on vidding curated by Francesca Coppa.

It's been in the works for a while, but it finally feels real now that the gallery has put up its web page for the exhibit. It's hard to convey how excited I am to think of a screen playing Starships! hanging on a gallery wall. And to have created something that someone thought worth including in this collection. And for the vid to be considered on a level with works by Kandy Fong and obsessive24 and here's luck and Lim and Shadow Songs. And, OMG, to see my screen name and theirs listed among global big-name artists, architects, musicians, choreographers—I'm dying a little inside with joy and disbelief. (Check it out at the bottom of the page at the link above, then do a tiny happy dance with me!)

*

I thought that would be that, but a happy confluence of finances means I will be able to go see the exhibit in person when it opens in mid-February. Hopefully others I know will too. (???)

I didn't have a chance to see Cut Up when it showed at the Museum of the Moving Image a few years ago (the only other mashup- and remix-related exhibit I've heard of that includes vids), so this will be doubly pleasurable. Besides the personal connection, the collection and the story it promises to tell look fascinating.

None of you live in Vancouver, do you? For hangout purposes while I'm in town.

ETA Feb.: Write-up after visiting the exhibit

Crossposts: http://bironic.livejournal.com/351470.html

In some ways it was a rough week. My friend A. came to visit for two days, and it took another two to recover. My mom was hospitalized for a day. (She's okay now.) Negative self-talk has been rearing its head again. Current events are, as too usual, terrible.

And yet. In the style of

kass's gratitudes:

Received a small end-of-year bonus
Favorite editor gave my work a great compliment
~~I'm going to finish~~ I FINISHED writing this fic tonight, hallelujah
Discovered a good shawarma place that delivers
Almost finished reading Inkdeath, which, after two so-so predecessors, is full of wonderful little Dustfinger and Dustfinger/everyone-else moments
Had a lovely evening full of conversation with stultiloquentia yesterday
Tweeted with Linda Holmes (host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour) about the Jurassic World raptor-training meme - first time I've interacted with a Name over there
Boston-area fan picnic tomorrow—not too late to join, by the way!—likely followed by Inside Out with thedeadparrot
Found out three (I think) of my vids showed at Vidukon; and have many Vidukon vids to look forward to watching

Things I am especially grateful for tonight:

- Working heat, and a hot meal
- Still having my mom (and dad) around
- Friends who remain so over long distances
- How this move worked out so well, physically and professionally
- Being accepted in and engaged by this community even when I've only been participating sporadically of late

.

Most recent instance of things going click: Discovering that the gorgeous voice in the pop/dance song Wake Me Up (acoustic version) belongs to the same man who sings the song Ticking Bomb that I bookmarked last week after hearing it in a video game commercial: Aloe Blacc. He does a mean, bluesy rendition of California Dreamin', even if he doesn't quite hit all the notes live (in the second half, anyway).

Hi. I'm alive. I am feeling alive. All this change really has been reinvigorating.

I've been trying to ride out the high of moving by doing lots of activities.

( lectures, art, books, exercise, Judaism, pig in the park )

Then I got to hang with

therienne,

mollyamory,

arduinna and

katie_m for tacos and an Iron Man 3 rewatch. Super enjoyable.

Other fangirl encounters to follow. I look forward to creating and deepening those relationships; many of the above activities would have been better with company.

.

Ten days in, the job remains as great as it seemed. There are more evening commitments than anticipated, but given other flexibilities and the fact that everything so far is interesting, I don't much mind. The people are smart and pleasantly weird and morale is good, the last of which makes for a wonderful change.

Although there are few direct ways to get to it, the apartment is also good. Today I'm learning how the washer-dryer works. Three weeks without doing laundry was enough to overcome the fear of what people say is more of a sauna than a dry cycle.

.

It's strange, being back in Boston. In a good way. Just, I am encountering layers of memories when I go certain places. Some from freshman year of college 13 years ago, some from senior year, some from grad school, some from grad school remembering college, some from visits in the intervening years, etc. Little flashes when I turn a long-unvisited corner or smell a certain something in the air. An arc across time. To get to work I take a bus that passes through both campuses. Eight years in fifteen minutes.

My geography expands each time I live here, seemingly at a greater rate. First it was a walkable radius around school, then it was a few stops along the Red Line in Cambridge, now it is several of the Boston cluster cities plus what I can reach by car. It's like I'm all grown up or something.

.

festivids disputes period = time to contemplate what to offer and what to request! It will be nice to do fannish things again. Maybe I will even be able to do the vid I want to do for Halloween.

.

Miss you guys. I'm reading LJ & DW every day, just haven't been saying much. Will try to do better. Come winter, I'll bet computer time will soar.

Life takes a turn for the exciting, on both RL and fannish fronts.

RL news - Moving to Boston!

You guys, I applied for what is basically the 9-to-5 of my dreams, and (several interviews and tests and negotiations later) they gave it to me. Then I went up to apartment hunt in the best/worst real estate season of the year there. I was so stressed out I got off the plane shaking, yet somehow I was incredibly lucky and landed my first choice. I am thrilled, even though it, like everything else in the city, is $.

Which means in less than a month I will be living in a beautiful 1 BR instead of a studio, giving the work I have been wanting to do for years a try, at a Prestigious University that I didn't expect to have a chance to be affiliated with.

Is this my life? I'm not sure this is my life. Something is bound to go wrong. Right?

(The downsides: becoming yet another person leaving my office, leaving some coworkers I like and sticking them with a lot of work; and, more important, leaving friends behind.

deelaundry,

cincodemaygirl,

alpheratz,

ellen_fremedon,

recrudescence and

v_greyson whom I've hardly been able to see, etc. etc., and of course

synn, although we have already weathered three or four interstate separations. :( :( :(

It will be nice, though, in exchange, to see more of the Boston-area fanpeople - Ny and parrot and thirdmouse and kass, maybe get in touch with

bathsweaver if she's still there, whom I barely got to know before I moved away last time - plus some grad school classmates who stuck around and also my college friend S., the fellow Trekkie I've mentioned here a few times over the years.

Whom else do I know or should I meet up there??)

Fannish news - Starships remix is live!

I have been remiss in not pointing you to

jetpack_monkey's remix of Starships, along with a source list and a side-by-side comparison that will knock your astrosocks off. He used all black and white footage, all pre-moon landing air dates, aglow with hope and joy and silliness and the sort of string-and-matchsticks special effects that hold a special place in so many of our hearts.

As if the effort he put into securing and cleaning up the footage over the better part of a year weren't enough -- seriously, be sure to read the vid notes -- he scoured it all thoroughly enough and worked the speeds well enough to achieve pretty much a shot for shot homage to Starships. Cigarette smoking, salutes, bubble helmets, launches and crashes, little flying pellets, you name it. Chess for poker. Astro Boy for WALL-E, holding up the sky. The Lost in Space robot for Data the android, embodying the way technology and the sources themselves have evolved over the decades. A flying submarine for the flying Winnebago, because ridiculousness endures though it may change shapes. Billy Mumy for Nog, the boy wonders. And the TARDIS, stretching across eras. So many brilliant choices. So many I have yet to fully appreciate because I don't know all the source material.

It's an absolute thrill to see

jetpack_monkey's vid come to fruition and receive the accolades he and it deserve. It's a humbling tribute to what I rushed to put together last year, and it absolutely stands on its own as a love letter to the sci fi shows and movies of yore.

What are you waiting for? Go watch it. (Or, you know, go watch it again.)

(I've been able to watch some other Vividcon vids and need to do a recs list. One of these days, in between packing boxes and getting paperwork settled.)

One excellent weekend at Vividcon, another out on the Delmarva peninsula with my visiting mom (hadn't seen her in 13 months, whoops), and now it's back to work work work.

+ Thanks to

rubynye for the heads up—Teresa Nielsen Hayden recced Thirteen Ways of Looking at Rodney (AO3 version) alongside many other interesting-looking literary and/or crossover-type fics in a blog post over at Making Light. !! So cool. A couple of commenters also mentioned that Starships! is linked over there; I finally found it on the sidebar under the "Jim's Diffraction" links. Alexis Lothian did a whole awesome post on the vid, too. Basically: Eeeeee!

+/- I do feel like I should add a note over in the vid intro about how it wasn't intended to represent a history of spaceship media or anything, being entirely English-language and Western-centric, no anime, etc. No one has called me out on it but a few people have made celebratory remarks about how "everything" is in there and, you know, really it isn't at all. That's the major thing I'd have fixed if I'd had more time.

+ Despite lingering Vividcon-acquired germs and about 450 miles of driving, we quite enjoyed our three(ish) days out on the shore, browsing in non-chain stores in various coastal towns such as St. Michaels and Lewes, waving to the wild ponies in Chincoteague/Assateague, taking pictures of ourselves in cardboard-cutout space suits at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility visitor center, eating lots of seafood and other delicious fresh foodstuffs, playing Skeeball and dropping into ridiculous tourist shops on the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk, and even making it to the beach a couple of times between drizzles. The hotel we stayed in the second night had a glowing sink and ice bucket.

+ In one store, we found and acquired a Star Trek-themed crossword puzzle book. It's hard even for we two Trekkies and crossword aficionados (Puzzle 1, clue 1 across: "I.K.S ___-H'a, Klingon ship in 'The Chase' [TNG]"), but it's great fun nonetheless.

+/- Looked like I was going to have three weeks of evenings and weekends in which to do whatever I wanted, but then I went and acquired a volunteer job putting together a fast-turnaround newsletter. Sigh. (Those of you who knew me in grad school might remember a particular research foundation I worked with; it's for them, because I want to maintain the relationship.) So that'll be the next little while. It's cool, though. I like being "in the know" on breaking news. :)

+ Wrote 1,900 words of Mary Sue fic yesterday (the beginning of the Karin/Makor saga). *coughatwork* It's been a while.

Happy weekend to you all.

Watched the House finale last night. Was not thrilled. Am trying to pull my thoughts together for a proper post about the final arc and the retrospective, and about looking back at how my online life has changed since I started watching the show and participating in that fandom.

Until then, some things that are of the good:

Vids. Found out this afternoon that Soccer Practice will be showing at

con_txt in June! This will be the first time that vid shows at a con and the first time I'll be present at a con where a vid of mine is showing. Quite excited for that.

Writing. Wrote 1,400 words of fic today! That's 1,400 more than I've written in the past few months. Never mind that when I appended the new text to the file it belonged to, I discovered that it should have been in past tense instead of present.

Friends. Visited

synn over the weekend in beautiful weather, with two new cats, lots of movies, a little work, and an Amish farm store. Mm, strawberries and sugar snap peas. Surprising, quirky delights in the form of The Host (Gwoemul) (is it horror? comedy? drama? social commentary? spoof? answer: all of the above) and Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (what the hell age group was that intended for? also: one million famous people, including Ken Wantanabe with a giant head). Then got to stop by

deelaundry's on the way home and enjoyed conversation along with playground swings and barbecue.

Radio. Good podcasts during the road trip: Radiolab episodes "Guts!" (fun times; I especially liked the story about the fistulated man) and "Help!" (what to do when you are your own worst enemy, with examples such as quitting smoking and overcoming writer's block; discussion of the Ulysses bargain, where you enlist others to help you resist future weakness/temptation as he did with the Sirens, and the …Xenophon? X-somebody-Greek scenario, when you back yourself up to a cliff and have no choice but to do what the rational part of your brain wants you to).

Summer. With luck, this summer will see me take a proper vacation for the first time since I quit my last job to go to grad school. With extra luck, that'll involve Iceland and Finland with friend A. and husband. Also looking likely that my mom will come down for a long weekend on the Eastern shore of Maryland/Virginia, where I am told there are beaches and wild ponies. And, eep, I'll be turning 30; I'd better start thinking about something special to do, if it's not one of the above.

Clean things! Impromptu emptying and wipe-down of the refrigerator yesterday; laundry's running right now.

The week ahead. Happy hour on Friday. Yann Tiersen in concert on Saturday. Dee & family. Sister in town on tour one evening next week.

And then last night happened. First there was the screening of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the classic there's-a-mole-among-the-spies thriller (says she who only knew of it because of a Garak reference in DS9) which in this incarnation focuses on character relationships over action, and then there was the Q&A with Gary Oldman and director Tomas Alfredson, who'd previously done the beautiful Let the Right One In.

After walking halfway to the Metro with my coworker afterwards, I… may have turned around, gone back into the theater, and waited in line for an autograph and photo. Because—Gary Oldman! Light of my film-crushes life! One of the first actors whose oeuvre I plowed through as a teenager, overcome with adoration.

More on that in a second. First: It was an overall enjoyable movie.

The short pitch:

( Character spoilers! )

The longer pitch: Excellent performances from an all-star cast. I expect fandom will have a small seizure when it's released more widely. I mean, look who's in it:

Gary Oldman
Colin Firth
Tom Hardy from Inception
Benedict Cumberbatch from the Sherlock TV show
Mark Strong from the recent Sherlock Holmes movie
John Hurt

Also half a dozen other biggies, including the guy who played Barty Crouch, Sr., and Ciaran Hinds, whose name I finally realized I recognized because he was in that play The Seafarer with David "Tritter" Morse a few years back and played the devil. Here, he didn't get to do much but look vaguely evil.

( More about the movie and post-movie discussion: strong homosexual undertones, themes of loneliness and (broken) romance. ~1,000 words. I've tried to keep the spoilers vague. )

So, that was interesting, and worth seeing a second time to pick up on more details and examine the writing and some of what came up during that discussion. (Gary Oldman also talked about how the hardest part for him is doing these tours and having to analyze what comes intuitively. What was he thinking in that last scene, someone once wanted to know; he said he told them he was thinking about walking into the frame at the right moment, looking at a table of people who weren't there, and where the camera was. He said he and Alfredson often worked by telepathy during shoots, where Alfredson would say, "That needs to be more…" and rub two fingers together, and Oldman would say, "I know exactly what you mean," and do it a different way, and Alfredson would say, "That was… yes!" and neither of them could articulate what it had been.) Despite its rocky start, the movie has had my coworker and me thinking about the characters all day, and that's definitely in its favor.

And now: Pictures!

( It's craaaaaaaaaaazy Gary Oldman! )

Happy pre-Thanksgiving to all you celebrants. I'll be attempting travel tomorrow; fingers crossed that the predicted heavy rain won't be too much of a problem.

Ventured to Adams Morgan this morning with a coworker to browse the Crafty Bastards arts fair in the chilly rain. (It's fall! Hurrah!) Despite the weather, it was a good time. I even purchased some non-necessary items, such as a tiny crocheted jellyfish from needlenoodles (and now I know what amigurumi is, having wondered after this), a bit of wooden art featuring two jellyfish/octopi things reaching for each other, and "brain wash" soap for decoration. I also won a pickle on a stick at a Potbelly booth, and out of the blue met Jay McCarroll from season one of Project Runway! It is debatable which of the above made me happiest.

This week also included some much-needed clothes shopping, as I have about three long-sleeved shirts I can wear to work and no boots. So as of yesterday there are boots, and as of Thursday there is a sweater and a sweater dress. Maybe I can take care of the rest in one more trip (Columbus Day sales?) and be done for the winter. I do really like the dress and the boots, though. They're, like, almost fashionable?

If the new year is supposed to set the tone for the months ahead, I guess my theme is… commercialism? Or, to frame it more constructively, an attempt to present myself better through clothing and actually decorate my apartment after two years.

And now I will do some more freelance work to bump that disposable income back up.

.

Reason #8 I'm proud to be a (nonfictional) MIT alum: the Cornell-MIT Fictional Alumni Face-off. Round One: Lex Luthor vs. Ling Woo. (You can guess who won by a landslide.) Hoping David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day) shows up on the ballot! Other expected contestants include Tony Stark. Cornell doesn't stand a chance, mwahaha. Maybe another face-off will follow with a fairer match pitting MIT against Harvard. Or Oxford or Cambridge.

My favorite exchange from the comments section:

Doug Hough says: Lex Luthor is what all MIT students would like to be, if they had the personality.
Kestrell says: Actually, there are a few of us who would like to be Richard Feynman, if only we had the personality.

.

L'shana tova, everyone who is celebrating. ♥

Life

Feeling nostalgic for last September. Autumn is a nostalgic season anyway, and a year ago this month

roga was visiting; we listened to the beautiful songs of Rosh Hashanah like R'tzei and Sim Shalom and had apples and honey; I wrote the Inception/SGA crossover; and I tried out a new dance school after taking several years off. This year I do not have a

roga and will probably not be going to high holy day services, although those recordings are still online to listen to.

But life is not at all bad. The weather is cooling off. My freelance job from June finally paid me. I went back to dance class last night for the start of the new semester, and it went well, despite a gap of five months and my concerns about being in a too-advanced class. Hard shoes make me happy. Happy enough to keep going to class when it doesn't end until 10 p.m., which is when I'm normally winding down for bed. Tuesdays will now = zzzzz.

Vidding/Ficcing

festivids is gearing back up, hooray! I am working on internalizing the fact that there is little chance of matching last year's experience, i.e. 1 bazillion comments and 5 con showings. It should still be more than enjoyable, though. Am finalizing my film/TV nominations list and starting to brainstorm ideas. If only my music repertoire were larger...

Have been a bit blocked on this SGA vid—the last one I need to finish my Kink Bingo line by the end-of-month deadline—and hope to break through it forthwith. It's a structure thing. Namely, there isn't much, and it's leaving me at a loss as to how to fill a bunch of gaps. Ugh ugh.

The stories I've tried to write lately have felt flat and old/repetitive. :/ That will surely come back with time and rest, too.

In the meantime, media consumption:

TV: True Blood had a pretty good season for a cracktastic show but ended with increasingly irritating misogyny and a teeeeease for what could be a (dys)functional threesome,

deelaundry has almost caught me up on House, and I've really been enjoying this season's Project Runway. …That's it, unless you count occasional Ace of Cakes, Monk and Iron Chef reruns.

Books: Best American Sports Writing 2008, another excellent Borders find. (Wah, Borders is gone!)

Movies:

Tambien la lluvia (Even the Rain), a well-made and very pretty movie (Gael Garcia Bernal, Luis Tosar and Juan Carlos Aduviri, for example) with the unfortunate framing of having a couple of privileged guys on a film crew learn about The Struggles of the Poor in Another Nation and Come to One's Rescue;

Empire of the Sun, a Westerner-in-Eastern-land movie with a Hollywood story structure and music, but some interesting facets, like how the main character's love of planes and flying transcended national identity even in the midst of war, and in which I shockingly did not hate John Malkovich or baby Christian Bale, who both actually emoted;

In Tranzit (ugh), in which Malkovich was his more typical monotone, bland self, and the talents of Vera Farmiga, Thomas Kretschmann and Daniel Bruhl were all somehow completely wasted;

Stranded (I've come from a plane that crashed on the mountains), a patient, respectful and sometimes creepy documentary/reenactment of the 1972 Andean plane crash where the survivors had to resort to cannibalism and most managed to last 70+ days before securing rescue. The interviews with several survivors in 2006 when they brought their children—now the same age as they were when they crashed—to the mountain were particularly moving.

…And that's quite long enough. Fic recs will keep for another little while.

I've had a handful of recurring dreams since high school: where the car brakes don't work, where I'm late for a school exam and I can't even remember having taken the class, where I'm being hunted by dinosaurs, and more recently, where the sea looms with huge, overwhelming waves. Last week I managed to have a dream where I was being hunted by dinosaurs while on a boat that was being flooded with huge, overwhelming waves. On the funnier side, the T. rexes at some point turned into sharks with possibly Australian accents like in Finding Nemo.

Despite the above implications, life has been pretty good lately. I am remembering how to be slothful without hating myself, and I met someone attractive at a party who seemed to enjoy talking with me. There was a birthday and a baseball game. I just got back from finally finding a passable bathing suit (shopping for a bathing suit in the summer is apparently unclassy; half the stores have already replaced their displays with fall and winter coats), and the store was near a kosher grocer that sold all sorts of goodies, like fresh seedless marble rye bread and stuffed cabbage. Score!

Starting Friday, this month there will be weekend trips to visit people I like but don't get to see very much. With my mom having been sick, I didn't take any proper time off this year; and in part because of my friend's wedding/prep, I didn't last year, either; and the year before that was grad school. With luck, next summer there will be an actual vacation to somewhere I haven't been before—plans are taking shape for Finland and possibly Sweden.

I hope to write some ficlets while sitting in the bunch of airports this month's travel requires. There are Kink Bingo ideas percolating. Maybe even a Porn Battle snippet? Or maybe I will fail at everything like usual and just read a book.

Well, I had a good weekend. Did you?

( recrudescence and the Japanese street festival )

( A recital and a good talk with friends; digital piano envy )

( A new book, among other things )

( Joe Flanigan's TV movie: Sheppard vs. dinosaurs )

The only thing missing from the weekend was having today off, too. We came close with the government shutdown fiasco, but as you know, everything remained open after all. A furlough would have been inconvenient, disruptive and/or disastrous for a lot of people and their projects. Still, on a purely personal level, I could have used the time to lounge around reading or playing with potential Kink Bingo stories or poking at a vid. I need to poke at a vid. Any vid. It's been more than three months now.

Happy Monday, with Mexican buffet and enough degrees Fahrenheit to warrant a sundress.

I have acquired a couch! With a foldout bed, no less. Also a low roll-y table, so if former coworker J. from NY ever comes over again, she won't have to repeat her declaration that it's weird to have the TV on the floor. This is all thanks to someone a few floors down from me whose flier for a moving sale I saw after work, who let me browse through the pickings, and who then offered to help me move these up here. Really nice guy. In our trips to and from the elevator, puffing and hefting the couch, I learned that he has lived in Boston and NYC too, and when he saw Star Wars on my DVD shelf he said that's the movie that made him go into filmmaking.

Man, I have lucked out in this building. The guy I sublet from last summer; the guy whose lease I took over; my former neighbor; my current neighbor; and now this guy -- all strangers -- all very sweet people. This despite the building managers continuing to act, to use the vernacular, like douchebags.

After I'd paid him (more than he'd asked, because seriously, he saved me a lot of work) and he'd gone, I sent a quick thank-you email. When he wrote back, he added, "I hope this isn't out of line, but I just wanted you to know I thought you were really cute. :)" Which, plus couch, made my evening. *happy smile*

I don't know if "cute" means "fun and likable in a romantic way" or "want to ruffle your hair because, like everyone else, I think you look and/or talk like you're high school-aged instead of almost thirty," but I'll take it. I have never been and never will be someone who gets called "hot."

( Cut because this is getting long. )

I've always been ahead of the curve intellectually and behind the curve socially. Once again, I find myself saying: Oh. So this is what it's like to be a grown-up.

Despite having not slept well and waking early and working a long day, today turned out great. In fact, I might say super great.

I went to part of a conference between work tasks. Some of it was fascinating and some of it was so dull I started to write down the names of all the Harry Potter characters I could remember in the smallest block letters I could manage. (For God's sake, people, did you never learn not to cram your PowerPoint slides with text and then read them as your presentation?)

The important point here is that I made myself network. There were two people I'd spoken with for my thesis at school who were presenting, and at the lunch break, by which point I had gone back to my office, I made myself go back down to the cafeteria to see if these two were there, even though I was sure they'd be mobbed with people wanting to make conversation. Well, as it happened, one of them waved to me with a big smile and they invited me to sit with them, and no one else came up. So we had a lovely cozy half-hour together. It was a damn good thing I did that, too, because they had to rush off right after the meeting to catch a flight.

And after the last panel, I made myself go up and introduce myself to the conference organizer, because I'd been trying to reach him during the school year and never got through. He turned out to be a very nice guy, and when he said I should let him know if there was anything he could do for me and I half-jokingly said, well, if you're looking to hire someone..., he said, actually..., and made a face that suggested this was a timely point, and told me to send him my resume. So, hey. One more chance to land a job come September.

Also, randomly, I met someone from the Vasculitis Foundation today. I asked, and she said House has indeed done wonders for raising public awareness of the disease, although she could have done without the episode where someone killed a Wegener's patient, or a Wegener's patient killed someone else, to alleviate their suffering. I didn't quite follow and don't remember the plot she was talking about, but I can see how that would be a downer.

And then when I got home, there was an early birthday present from my mom and a set of class/faculty photos from my program coordinator that we took in May. They make me nostalgic.

But that's okay, because tomorrow I head off to Boston to meet up with some of the aforementioned classmates for what is going to be a glorious weekend in Maine at a faculty member's house. I've been anticipating this for months. It may rain a little on Saturday, but otherwise it looks sunny and mid-70s. \o/

ETA: And it seems I finally got paid today! Also \o/

Anyway, I won't be back online until late Monday. (If you're my Remixer and you're reading this after the archive goes live, I don't hate the story, I'm just not here!)

Food shopping day is my favorite day of the week. Afterwards, there's a surfeit of good things to eat.

( What I made for dinner tonight. With picture! )

Dinner-wise, I've been getting by on one to two dishes a week. Cooking for one is nice that way. For the latter half of this week, after the beef's gone, I'm planning to try a recipe from my long-neglected Star Trek Cookbook: Scotty's Lemon Chicken. (The book also offers such classics as Cellular Peptide Cake with Mint Frosting, Gagh with Yamok Sauce, Romulan Ale, and Leonard Nimoy's Kasha Varnishkas [from his grandmother's "village in the Ukraine, which is a small town in Western Vulcan"].) I'm pretty sure I made the chicken once in high school and that it was good.

Hmph. The only downside is that now I have to do all the dishes. *eyes full sink sadly*

I've taken a day off from work after losing Saturday to Remix and yesterday to a combination of having slept only half the hours I need to feel human, going to a (lovely!) fangirl housewarming party, and deciding to try the train instead of driving, which translated to almost four hours of travel instead of less than two (although I got some reading done). The thought of using every night this week just to catch up made me queasy, so I called in one of the "mental health days" my manager gave me after the marathon project in December.

In three hours, I've already done 10 things on my should-have-been-weekend list. What a relief. I've worked from home a few times since the new year, but I couldn't tell you the last time I took a day off when I wasn't sick.

.

In fannish news, "Substitute" was nominated for an SGA Kink Award (voting is here). I was completely surprised and thrilled by the news. I don't think the little guy has a shot at winning, but as everyone says, just the fact that it was nominated is great.

I've never had a fic nominated for an award before. House was the first fandom I contributed to online, and I can't recall any contests except for possibly a House/Cameron one. BtVS and HP had many, and SGA seems to have several as well. This particular set of awards is new for 2008. They've broken down the nominees into categories; "Substitute" is listed under "That's… Actually, I like that (Best 'I didn't think I'd like this Kink until your story...')" in the slash PWP section. You can vote for the fic you like best in that category or check out all the nominees at the main site.

( Some ambivalent thoughts on the process. )

Last night when I was feeling grumpy I considered talking about Remix and why I don't like when people log in with their sockpuppets and read stories ahead of time, since it keeps popping up on the f-list, but I couldn't figure out how to do it without making people angry, and anyway, enough griping for one day. The sun is out! There's fic to be written! There's soup to be made! Only two Mondays 'til House comes back!

Office holiday party today. This year, instead of renting out the back of a bar or catering in the office, our managers booked a private room at Dave & Buster's for all 40-odd of us. For me that translated to four games of pool with three different people, two rounds of bowling, shuffleboard, a bunch of skee ball, free food and drinks, and a healthy dose of mingling with people I don't always get to hang out with at work. Pool was the best; I hardly get to play these days, and beyond that, I'd forgotten what a thrill it is to hold my own in games with a bunch of guys.

And. When I cashed in my tickets from the skee ball, I found a pair of fuzzy reindeer antlers. They're exactly the pair I was imagining on Wilson but haven't been able to find a picture of online -- light brown padded headband without teeth to hurt the scalp, darker brown thin antlers, and little gold bundles of mistletoe at each base. I wore them the rest of the afternoon and am still wearing them. They make me happy.

In sum, five hours there after only half a day in the office, fun and games and a pair of fuzzy reindeer antlers, and I didn't have to spend a penny.

I feel good right now. It's been a while. It's nice.

ETA: And while we're on the subject of feeling good, big THANK YOUs to

elynittria-not-noydb for the dreidel and

fallen_arazil for the LJ gift certificate. They were such wonderful surprises.

slashfest entries are off to a good start: 1,600 words of Sirius/Remus in a Word document at home (kernel of the story complete), 250 of House/Wilson in an Outlook draft window at work (some key scenes begun), and a sheet and a half -- ETA, ~380 words -- of Spike story scribbled on the receptionist's kindly-provided printer paper while stuck in a waiting room this morning (the opening of the first scene; going to be done in chronological order for a change). Fiction-writing doth a happy

bironic make.

Plus, this week features back-to-back House reruns, more Odyssey 5 -- post on that forthcoming --, summer travel plan-finalizing, Alexi Murdoch's new album, burritos and a ballet. And there are new RSL photos and a fun little contacts-glasses-or-neither? post at

house_md. And people have been requesting my House/Wilson slash icon! *hugs life* It's enough to make me forget that airline prices are ridiculous and my car wouldn't start and two of my favorite co-workers have quit since Friday.

* * *

Today is June 6; go buy Alexi Murdoch's now-available CD, "Time Without Consequence." How long have we been waiting for it? When I saw him at the Paradise in Boston in 2004, he was taking a weekend break from the recording studio. Music critic Alan Light said on the radio this morning that Alexi remastered the album three dozen times, something he'd never heard of an artist doing, no matter how perfectionistic. Well, I think that's what he said; I only caught the last few seconds of his segment, and I was barely awake. Can't find a transcript of the report anywhere.

Regardless, the CD has finally arrived. Several songs on it were also on his EP ("Four Songs," his only previous release) and most if not all of the rest have been making the rounds on his MySpace site and the online archives of various indie radio stations like KCRW, but it's going to be grand to own a proper copy as soon as I can make it to the store. Like his EP, the new album is independently released, so going out and buying it actually means something.

Will you like Alexi Murdoch? To that I say, Do you like Nick Drake? If so, then yes. The resemblance is uncanny, especially since Alexi claimed in several interviews when the EP came out that he hadn't heard of Drake. If not, you might still like him. If you don't know who Nick Drake is, never mind; he's dead anyway. You can listen to a few of Alexi's songs in their entirety at his MySpace site. The first is kind of boring, but "Orange Sky" is a nice update of his big single -- you probably know it from Garden State or The O. C. or House -- and "Dream About Flying" is a beautiful, beautiful, sad song.

Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning
Actually it's more like most of the time
But every now and then when I am sleeping
I still have a dream that I'm flying
...And I wake up crying

His concert schedule's on MySpace too, if anyone's interested. He was just divine when I saw him live.

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Entries tagged with life is good

Good things

An exciting thing that is happening

Good Friday

Season of gratitude

The first fortnight

The news

The pendulum swings back

Whoops, it's been a while since the last post.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and celebrity encounters

Two kinds of crafty bastards

Fall 2011 season premiere of bironic

So, July happened.

Put your hands together if Pierre becomes smiley face (Let's see if LJ stays up long enough to post)

In which a post about a piece of furniture morphs into self-reflection.

Adieu, mes amis

GFP: Gratuitous food post?

A day to breathe

A surprisingly enjoyable holiday party

Strike while the plot-bunnies are hot, or something

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