bironic

I know it would be healthier to reduce my need for external validation, but today a professor who's famous in his field gave my work an extended compliment, and I hadn't realized how much I needed that.

The Vampire Lestat graphic novel adaptation from 1991 has a lot of well-muscled bare male butts. Like, a lot. It is quite funny at this ~halfway point how often they appear on page. I am glad the illustrator got to linger on what he enjoyed. (I can only assume.)

The anticipated post-travel, post-move mood crash has arrived. I have been feeling sad a lot, and flat a lot, and for most of the last month I've woken up after a full night's sleep feeling like I haven't rested. Plus side: I've been churning through books and listening to music, and I watched a couple of TV seasons. Minus side: That's because the day-to-day often feels empty and my compulsive tendencies are kicking up -- I play the songs on repeat, and the books are driven by a perhaps unhealthy need to fill out my Bingo card for the local friend group's fall reading challenge. And I may be overcompensating at social gatherings by talking too much? Filters lowered? Not sure.

Could be a simple hormone/meds thing. TBD at a doctor's appointment tomorrow.

Season 3 of True Detective was good. Maybe not as smart as it tried to be with its braided-timeline format and memory theme, but still good. I haven't seen the earlier seasons despite high praise for season 1, but Michael Greyeyes had a small role in this one and it looked like each season stands alone, so I started here. Mahershala Ali's performance was as great as people said. Co-star Stephen Dorff alternated between looking like Dennis Quaid, Jack Nicholson and someone else I've already forgotten. Christian Slater, maybe.

Is dipping back in to the old Vampire Chronicles love to blame for how, in the middle of the meeting with that professor today, I took in his shorter-cut salt-and-pepper hair and new beard and tried to articulate what it evoked in me and realized the word I sought was "sexy"? These are moments that make me think "gray ace" is more like "het in hibernation." Except it isn't like I would act on it, even if he weren't unavailable. So back to wondering.

At fanworks last month, bethofalltrades gifted me one of her Space Ace pins. She remembered the last time I posted a glancing reference to the question. That meant a lot. Also: space.

I watched the Deep Space Nine documentary on DVD. I'd expected it to elicit deep feelings about the show and what it was like to watch it for the first time. Instead, I mostly felt distaste at listening to and learning more about the bunch of dislikeable straight white dudes who ran the show. It hadn't sunk in until then just how straight-white-dude the whole thing was. They did so much I loved loved loved, yet it also explains many of the show's shortcomings. They don't seem to have internalized any lessons about the value of diversity in the intervening years, given, for example, the proportion of dude fans they gave screen time to, most of the women fans having been relegated to the section about being grateful for Kira and Dax. The writers' brainstorm about a season eight plot managed to make me glad they never produced one. They also didn't spend enough time on most topics, even though the whole thing ran almost two hours. Too broad a scope for that, I suppose. But it was nice to see the cast, filmed not long after ignazwisdom and I saw them at the NYC con; Armin Shimerman remains a class act; Alexander Siddig remains unfairly handsome; Andy Robinson is obviously glad to be able to declare the carnal nature of Garak's interest in Bashir to all who will listen; and it provided some amusing anecdotes, such as how Avery Brooks socked Marc Alaimo while they were filming their fire cave fight and Alaimo had to go to the hospital in full Dukat makeup.

We got a new director at work this month, out of the blue. Within a few hours, boss's boss gone, new temporary person in place. It remains unclear whether boss's boss got promoted or put out to pasture in her new role until retirement. Either way, we all know the temporary person and she is great. Already, things are improving. It's amazing what good management looks like after six years of... not that.

My favorite poem so far from this collection of Joy Harjo's poetry -- How We Became Human, 1975-2002 -- is called "Grace." I am forever a sucker for prose poems that sound like sestinas. Here is the text, and here is Harjo performing it.

This is a weird post. Hm.

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 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 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 sweetestdrain for absternr.

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

Reading

More than advisable, this past week. I didn't expect to feel so competitive about our friend group's fall reading challenge—not even against other participants so much as there's a motivating factor in having a Bingo card I can fill out. Must! Get! Squares! Tweak and lengthen library queue for strategic sheep purposes! After I found myself rushing the end of a book on Wednesday, I dialed back.

Writing

I did not sign up for trickortreatex in the end, but I did start a treat yesterday. Hoping to finish it. It's not long, I just don't have faith yet in my staying power since the return of the fic-writing urge is still so new.

Also have been puttering around with the Red Road and Longmire fics. The Longmire one (Mathias/OFC) now has something like four potential beginnings and no endings. I hit a bump in the Red Road draft (two noncon pairings) when I discovered that I don't think Jason Momoa's character would do what I want him to do. Gotta either get over it or change the plan.

…When there's time and mental space for writing. Sigh.

Watching

A handful of movies. Season two of The Red Road to get the character voices back in my head. Too bad that's all they managed before cancellation. If they'd moved faster, they might have done more interesting things with the Lenape plotlines about (1) the time it takes to sue a company that dumped toxic waste on the reservation when people need money ASAP to treat the life-threatening illnesses it caused and (2) internal dissent, plus competing external pressures, over whether to build a casino after the tribe won federal recognition.

I'd intended to see Starman (1984) in 70 mm at the Somerville Theatre a few days ago, our family having watched it often enough growing up that we continue to quote it at each other, but when I arrived, the ticket counter staffer said FedEx had neglected to ship some of the film reels and therefore they needed to reschedule to this Thursday. So that was a wasted pre-movie dinner out. Hoping to make the rain date, although I've got stuff planned after work on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday and a social engagement on Saturday, which is already about three more evenings out than usual for this poor introvert.

Vidding

Not actively at the moment. festivids approaches, and my nominations list is in good shape. Doing beta work on a vid by deelaundry that should make House/Wilson fans happy.

Working

I put this last but I'm thinking about it the most. I'd been looking forward to a quiet autumn-into-winter in which I could read, write and vid more consistently by taking some of the vacation days that I'd been discouraged by my supervisor from taking in the spring, couldn't take in June/July and didn't plan well enough to take in August. Now our team is short-handed due to poor management and I'm being asked to handle two significant projects due before the end of the year. Combined with one Oct. houseguest and one Nov. trip, suddenly everything feels squished and stressful. :/

Time again to confront the limitations of spare time—and to experiment with new actions based on changing priorities, i.e. see what happens if I put my hobbies before my job for once and request those days off anyway. Ditto the possibility of staying home for Thanksgiving to do what I want instead of flying to NY. Selfish, or self care? Rhetorical question.

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 synn. Recommendations welcome.

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.

Writing feels onerous these days, even emails and comment replies, which is unsettling for someone who has considered herself a writer for 25 years. There has also been some of that periodic "What am I doing? What is this career? What are these hobbies?" mixed in.

I am thinking about small, non-intimidating items to post about.

1. You can take the girl out of school, but...

(Note: mentions [wanted] touch from a male authority figure)

Today I went to an awards ceremony honoring a professor I occasionally work with. When I said congratulations at the cocktail reception, he gave me a hug. This was unexpected but quite welcome, as I have a tiny work crush on him. It was a highlight of the day. It also got me thinking again about student/teacher dynamics and how I haven't yet grown out of wanting to please teachers and professors and be among their favorites. Not that I am a favorite of this particular guy, but it evoked the same rush of pleasure.

Plus, it once again highlighted how I need pleasant touch from fellow humans more often. (To be distinguished from things like the press of strangers' elbows and knees on the bus, which are to be avoided whenever possible.) Continuing on the office theme, one of my editors, a woman I like a lot, put her hand on my shoulder the other week for several seconds while maneuvering around some chairs, and it felt so nice. The last time I recall something similar was a couple of years ago, and I think it was actually the same professor as today. Sometimes when hugs from friends and visits from cuddle-able houseguests don't quite fill the quota, I think about getting a pet. There's a reason I wrote John Sheppard like that in Forty Years and Eight Pounds.

2. Nerds tour Cambridge

Some of you might remember my Finnish friend A. from when we both lived in DC, who now lives in Germany? On Friday her husband V. emailed to say he and two of his students were going to be in Boston the next day on their way to a meeting, and we ended up spending all of Saturday together. Being a bunch of fellow nerds, they wanted to see the Harvard and MIT campuses, so I showed them what I could between bouts of drizzle. The students -- one Spanish and one Italian -- delighted in the diner-style Veggie Galaxy, complete with milkshakes and plain red ketchup bottles. We talked politics and science and idioms and culture and personal stories, gazed at the beautiful old houses on brick-lined streets, paused at coffee shops and riverside benches and the Kendall rooftop garden, and to top off the evening, V. traumatized his students by holding up a pair of women's shorts and shaking his hips at the Gap. (We went to the mall. Apparently jeans are five times cheaper here.)

Anyway, it was a lot of fun, even though it made me miss A. and V. more keenly.

Two things make a post. Let's pretend this didn't take an hour. One day soon maybe we can talk about Wonder Woman and Doctor Who (speaking of student/teacher tropes) and American Gods and fannish projects and the announcement that Vividcon is ending, and and and.

Doing

Working a lot at work. Consequently, doing not a lot at home. My proposed promotion is still moving forward, although not approved yet. But I'm sad about feeling vaguely unwell so often. (No advice needed; docs have been consulted.) On the tail end of one of these periodic weeks of poor sleep, I had a gross dream about a manager in the office and had trouble looking at him yesterday. Then today my laptop died! Only I looked up the "symptoms" on my phone and fixed it via a method that indicated it was only an issue of built-up static charge, whew. We had an Arctic front sweep through last night; the same dry air made my lip split when I went to the library this afternoon.

Last weekend featured Boston fan brunch, always good, followed by fangirl movie night at thedeadparrot's, in this case Dune, for which serenadestrong made a spectacular sand worm spice bread. On the downside, a friend moved away to NYC, and the whole weekend felt vaguely unreal because my ear was plugged for uninteresting reasons, so until these drops from CVS cleared it up I was half deaf and felt slightly feverish, maybe because I associate plugged-up ears with being sick.

...This is the kind of post people used to make fun of when they talked about the banality of blogging. I will stop complaining.


Vidding

No, wait, I will complain about one more thing, because it is upsetting me: Last Saturday YouTube blocked the Ancillary Justice trailer in the U.S. and Canada because of the DhakaBrakha audio snippets (although it's still up on Vimeo), and then last night Vimeo took down Starships! because of the Nicki Minaj song (although it's still up on YouTube) -- no warning, just down, with an email explanation of the copyright claim.

Things I have done:
- Emailed the OTW's legal team to see if they have experience helping vidders contest copyright claims for music rather than video clips
- Emailed the Vimeo support team to gripe about the sudden takedown and to request screen shots of the comments and last known view counts
- Asked vidding friends on Twitter for advice
- Added the YouTube link for Starships! to the biggest Tumblr post that's been circulating, although who knows if people will see it
- Begun preparing points to make in the appeals

I believe the book trailer has a better shot of being reinstated because it only uses a small portion of the full song and isn't competing with the original. Starships! I'm not super hopeful about, in the same way I haven't been hopeful about previous copyright matches for vids that got denied upon initial upload, and that sucks, because vids are clearly transformative works and I wish I could articulate how video clips transform the audio (rather than vice versa), or form a gestalt with it that the song wouldn't have done alone.

Meanwhile, I requested a song for Club Vivid and it got approved, although I'm not sure I can make it in time because of the scope of one of my Fandom Trumps Hate auction vids, which I am going to post about soon because I could use your help.


Reading

Those SF/F compendia. Also Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor. I liked Binti a lot and was pleased to learn of the sequel, which was also good, except for how it's a CLIFFHANGER, sigh.

Next up, The Dream-quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson, because the Nebula nominees were announced and some of the novellas looked interesting.


Watching

This week I got to see a performance of Tennessee Williams' Night of the Iguana featuring Amanda Plummer and James Earl Jones! More on that later, I think. We do not often get New York-caliber dramas in Boston, so that was a treat.

Also a bunch of random movies that I will not list exhaustively but that included 13th, just as powerful as advertised; some movies my sister and I used to watch all the time as kids but that I hadn't seen since then (Annie [1982] and The Neverending Story); Cloud Atlas, which was terrible in different ways from the book (the racebending makeup was creepy and wrongsighted); and Child 44, an action film that was utterly unremarkable except for its cast: Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Charles Dance, Noomi Rapace, Vincent Cassel and Fares Fares. It took place in Stalin-era Moscow and Volsk so of course they cast Brits, a Frenchman, a Swede and a Lebanese Swede and made them speak in "Russian" accents.

Want to see Get Out and Logan. My sister will be visiting next weekend and we plan to take care of at least one of those.


Listening

Stephen Thompson at NPR released this year's Austin 100, a batch of songs by artists he recommends ahead of SXSW. I usually find a handful of vid songs in these -- among the 2016 recs I found this year's Club Vivid song, the song I used for the Chris Hadfield vid, and the song I'm going to use for the Mary Sue vampire vid -- and am looking forward to this new collection.


Writing

Posts and emails, mostly. Did I mention that over Presidents' weekend I added some pages to some very old Mary Sue fics? It felt good to get words out and to extend those stories a little, even with the inevitable self-criticism over things like "Why did it take you all day to write two pages?" and "Why are you still thinking about teenage fantasies?"


Off to disgruntledowl's for dinner/movie. I made brownies. Before that, I made some mashed cauliflower. The apartment smells very confused.

Hope you are having good weekends.

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
thedeadparrot, stultiloquentia and 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 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. 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?

Music: NPR/Stephen Thompson's Austin 100 lasted most of the drive to/from New York this weekend. It provided a dozen new-to-me songs I'm calling keepers, including four that sparked vid ideas. Two of the vids I'd definitely like to make at some point. One of those would be perfect for Club Vivid -- next year, that is -- once I figure out what fandom(s) slot(s) into the structure it presents.

Books: That thing where I said I was re-reading The Dispossessed because I'd made it almost to the end last time but petered out? I'm a little more than halfway through now and have no memory of anything beyond the middle of chapter two. It's a perfectly fine story of character, comparative politics and cross-cultural communication barriers. I'm beginning to suspect I didn't read much of it at all and have been confusing it with Stranger in a Strange Land, which I similarly didn't finish years ago.

Brain: Day four of four days off, and I'm feeling better than last week, although still not great. Took care of a lot of to-do's yesterday. Could use more days. Unfortunately, this is another week of Many Things To Do At Work + several evening engagements. Also feeling all a-roil regarding my career path after -- well, a lot of things, but most recently a grad school alumni party at our professor's house last night, at which many people shared the impressive things they are doing. I will continue to plug away at my tasks and do my PT exercises and see what happens.

Food: Taking care of myself by making sure meals are prepared for the week. Tried a couple of new recipes today that came out well. If you are interested: chicken and white bean chili (subbed a can of chicken near the end for raw breasts, and milk & yogurt for half-and-half & sour cream) for lunches; the simplest, silkiest cauliflower soup for afternoon snacks; and quick sautéed mushrooms with garlic, parsley and a mix of butter and olive oil to bring to a friend's tonight.

Now to figure out how to spend the 2 1/2 hours until the get-together.

Odd day.

Dozed after waking to footsteps upstairs, and had a dream about ( cut for Holocaust-like imagery. ) Jeez, it sounds horrific to write it up like that. At the time, it was just a thing that was happening. One girl hid in a room that was my childhood bedroom by lifting herself onto the top shelf of the closet by the lintel like a pull-up, realized that she could be easily seen, and hastily shoved a folded blanket between her body and the top of the door. I was the girl. Vin Diesel found her/me and said, reasonably enough for a prison guard, something about how the punishment would be eight somethings but he'd go halvsies with her and only do four if she'd just give in. She/I said, calmly, Okay. He seemed taken aback. That was that.

*shrug*

Today marked the end of my three-month probation period at work. I had a good review and was not fired. (I was not worried since my performance has been fine and people like me, but still. Not being on probation is a relief in the current financial climate. If anyone in the office had had to be cut to save money, it would have been me.) (Not to say that fear isn't still there; it's just harder to let someone go after they're off probation.)

.

Good, easy soup recipe, adapted from my new everything-chicken cookbook: Dice and sauté two small onions. When soft and beginning to brown, add a quart of chicken or vegetable broth. Grate a couple of zucchini or summer squash; add to the pot and boil for ~15 minutes. You can also add small pasta at the time you add the vegetables. At the end, drizzle in two eggs or egg whites and lemon juice to taste. Mm. Looks like it makes three bowls' worth.

.

Let's answer some vidding questions from alizarin_nyc: "What do you use for media when starting a vid? Do you rip DVDs, convert .avi files or what? What editing software do you use and why? What is the next thing you want to learn/try in writing or vidding?"

( I tend to rip DVDs )

( I use Adobe Premiere )

( I want to learn to do a thing with John Sheppard's face )

( But also how to better create clip pacing that is less a slave to the music )

...I don't know if I articulated that well at all.

4) That's a good question about what I might want to learn next in writing. Will have to get back to you on that. As compared to video editing, fiction writing is a thing that comes so unconsciously to me -- not always easily, just instinctively rather than as a series of technical steps -- that it's hard for me to approach and understand it as a craft. (I used to think that was something to brag about, but the more I press up against the boundaries of what doesn't come naturally to me and what I haven't been educated about, and the more I look back on many of the fics I've written and listen to others who do understand the technical elements of putting together effective stories and characters, like the more I appreciate that relying on instinct alone can also be a limitation.)