We're leaving tomorrow morning to go home to Florida for Christmas. It's possible I'll get a chance to blog before we return at the end of the month, but it's pretty unlikely. As this is effectively the end of my daily December updates, I feel I should give some sort of reflection on the experience, a sort of What I Learned From All This entry, but actually I think that would be better contemplated after I return. I'll know more about how the writing fit into my physical and emotional routine after it's forcibly removed.
Realized this evening that I was dreading going home and watching my family fight with each other, to the point where I did practically everything in my power to avoid packing. Got overwhelmed, freaked out, and cried until I couldn't breathe. Dunked my face and hands in freezing cold water until I was calm enough to get on with it. I now feel weirdly calm and apathetic, as well as dead tired.
I've got to go to bed. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it, and good wishes to everybody else.
I had many constructive plans for this evening, such as wrapping presents, cleaning the bathroom, folding laundry, and possibly even packing for our trip home to Florida, but instead I spent some quality time with a glass of Coke and my computer, frying my brain on "Skinned." Man, that's one mind-bending story. All the argueing...yow. I'm not convinced I buy the Clark characterization--his confidence level is frankly astounding for a 15-year-old--but it doesn't really matter.
Now, of course, I'm ready to drop in my tracks, but there's still laundry to be folded and the bathroom floor still looks like someone molted in there. My time management skills aren't quite "the wages of sin is death" material, but bad enough.
The Hubster's playing some godforsaken computer game with doom and gloom music and babelicious Nazis with machine guns. "I don't know which I like better," he says, "killing hot Nazi babes or having them kill me." Me either, dude.
I'm so tired my head is starting to play movies without my conscious intent; dreamy little fic snippets or snatches of vividly illustrated dialogue, memory movies of things I've read and seen. Lex, from something of CM Baker's: "I actually had a beautiful singing voice as a child. Every Christmas, I'd be standing next to the piano, my long, girly red hair framing my face, singing, 'O holy night....'" Why that pleases me as much as it does, I have no idea.
There's been a flurry of talk recently--coincidental, but I think unrelated--about the varying purposes of journals vs. LiveJournals vs. blogs. People have been going on about getting back to the original purpose of their online journal/blog/whatever, about the differences between various forums, about what constitutes a proper entry, and about other meta-type topics that provoke a vague sense of guilt in me. I dunno. It's possible I need to analyze my motivations a little more stringently, but I don't feel the need for a mission statement here. I enjoy the faint sense of community (or "common interest," if that other word leaves a bad taste in your mouth) that I get from posting, but I don't care for the pressure I sometimes place on myself to have a fannish tie-in in each entry in case fandom people read it. I don't usually give in to that pressure, but it bothers me that I feel it in the first place. Personal forum first and foremost, you know?
Huh. I guess I just wrote my mission statement after all.
This entry is my Christmas present to AV. She comes to see me on Tuesdays and Thursdays; the second of the four V kids, all of whom are served by our facility. Through some genetic and environmental fluke, all four have moderate to severe language disorders, the result of what is essentially subtractive bilingualism. Mom speaks only Spanish, dad speaks Spanish and English, and somehow the kids don't really speak either. They're all English-dominant, but with terribly poor language skills. The three oldest are currently seen by the rehab team--I see one or the other every day of the week--while the baby is followed by our early childhood team. I'm sure I'll get him eventually, though. They're all precious to me, with their eyes and their smirks and their squabbling over attention. They all smell the same, like Goodwill.
AV is 6 and a half, and she breaks my heart. She's tall, willowy, and achingly beautiful, with huge dark eyes and dark hair to her waist. A beautiful little girl, and practically silent until you win her over, because her speech is so impaired she's almost impossible to understand out of context. Her mouth is a mess. Her musculature is weak, her speech movements are slow, labored, and imprecise...just a mess. She still drools sometimes. She's got other motor problems too, although I don't know enough to classify them. She tripped once coming out of the speech room with me; I turned around and she was face down, flat on the floor. She hadn't even been able to extend her arms to shield her body, one of the basic protective reflexes.
She's a mess. She needs intensive, quality services and she's not getting them. Her older brother says she cries at school, but he can't tell me why. I don't know if she has friends; her speech is so incredibly hard to understand and kids aren't patient. She breaks my heart.
She's also snarky and loud and capable of pushing boundaries once she's comfortable with you. She feels my hands carefully before I can touch her face for stretching exercises, and pushes them back at me if they're too cold. She squirms up against me when we sit together on the benches in the kitchen to work. She has the most gorgeous smile, and a charming deep laugh. A few sessions ago I realized she was teasing me, completing a task and then singsonging, "Awesome!" in a mocking imitation of my cheerful therapist manner. Today she offered me M&Ms from her half-eaten pack, and carefully counted five into my palm when I accepted. She's making progress, but it's painfully slow.
My Christmas gift to her is how very much I love her, and how much I will for her to improve. I want things to be better for her. I'm looking for a miracle, damn it.
First I will do the Twitchy Dance of Supplication to blogger, in the hopes that I will not lose this entry.
...pivot left, take two sips of water, shuffle post-it notes on desk, cough once, press mouse button just so...
Any fool can condition a pigeon to dance in circles. Apparently I'm no better than the pigeon. Let this be a lesson to you.
Been thinking about werewolves these past couple of days. I rented Ginger Snaps, which is supposed to be some sort of feminist commentary on werewolf legend, but so far I've been too scared to actually watch it. Instead, I read a little Buffy fic and thought about Oz. Not much, really, because I don't watch Buffy, but just sort of trying on the idea of him in my head. Mostly I wondered if there was a contract somewhere that Ozfic writers had to sign promising to use the word "laconic" in every damn Oz story on the planet. Yes, it's a cool word. Yes, I'm sure it's a perfect description. It still reminds me of Scully and the strawberry shampoo.
Pardon me while I gag.
Tomorrow I have to have a feedback conference with a parent. I expect it will not go terribly well, because the parent is not at all ready to hear what my data is going to be telling him: "I'm sorry, Mr. Smart Engineer Man, but I think your son is more than a little delayed. Perhaps we could start the acceptance process now, so you won't splinter into a thousand pieces when your kid hits school age and the difference becomes even more obvious." I personally will be much more tactful and caring, because I'm very fond of this parent and son, but that's what's going to be between the lines.
Heads: My department boss got my paperwork approved and it should go into effect Monday, which means I will be on salary and therefore get paid over Christmas break. Also, I will accrue time off and sick leave and get insurance coverage and all that good stuff.
Tails: I can't quite trust that it's actually happening until I get confirmation on Monday.
Heads: I was calm and rational and well-spoken in our department meeting today.
Tails: My calm, rational, and intelligent arguments were brusquely shot down by the department boss, and our team was essentially forced into agreeing to try evening and possibly weekend hours. Despite the fact that changing the hours won't make one fucking bit of difference unless we increase our marketing and target populations who would likely fill our empty slots. As I calmly and rationally pointed out.
Heads: I no longer feel nauseous and weird.
Tails: My cold is nasty, and my voice sounds like it's being filtered through a layer of gravel.
Heads: I am going to lie around and rest tomorrow.
Tails: I'm going to skip my planned 15 mile run, and I don't know when I'll have another good opportunity to do it, as the Hubster and I are going out of town next weekend.
Heads: We went out for dinner with friends and ate a ton of fabulous Indian food.
Tails: I forgot to bring home the leftovers. Also, I feel like an anaconda that has just consumed an entire wild boar.
Heads: I can sleep in tomorrow, which means I can stay up a little later that usual tonight! Ah ha ha!
Tails: Too bad it's 11:15 and I'm ready to collapse right this second.
I'm on my second mug of cocoa for the day, if that's any indication of my current mood. Stayed home from work and lay semi-comatose in my desk chair all day, as sometime after I went to bed last night my illness morphed from "mild cold" to "mild cold combined with weird nauseated and exhausted feeling." Again, the overall effect was just unpleasant enough to keep me home, but not so bad that I could avoid the guilt over staying home. If the whole previous paragraph gives you people a creeping sense of deja vu, well, that's because it's been approximately two weeks since the last time I caught a head cold. What the hell happened to my immune system, I ask you?
Frittered away the morning by taking the Culture-Fair IQ Test, and it turns out I'm fucking brilliant. Since I'm sick and in need of comfort, I've decided to accept these results as 100% accurate. It was kind of a fun test, actually--all visuospatial relations and puzzles. I'm going to try to get the Hubster to take it, as his results would give me a better idea of how valid the test is. The Hubster really is fucking brilliant. I say that not just as a proud wife, but as the person who's had the opportunity to feel around the edges of his intelligence almost daily for ten years: he's an exceptionally smart man. Sweet, too--last night around 2:30am when I was dragging my bleary-eyed, nauseous self downstairs to thrash around on the futon, he woke up enough to ask if I was okay. On hearing my complaints, he suggested Coke to settle my stomach, then said, "Yeah, go downstairs and try to sleep. Or you could watch Smallville; that would make you feel better, right?"
I knew I got lucky with him, but once in a while I remember just how lucky.
I have got to put receipts into Quicken, as I have no idea what my acount balances are. That's bad, especially around Christmastime.
Feeling craptacular this evening--sick, tired, and pissed off. Spent way too much time discussing work problems with the Hubster, then stayed up too late reading Smallville mush in order to decompress.
My job hacks me off in so many ways. I'm scared I'm going to feel that I have to quit after I get certified in the spring. I don't want to quit my job, because it would mean losing my kids, but...GAH. They lost the paperwork I turned in to apply for the full-time position. It's been found, yes, but with no acknowledgement whatsoever of how poorly this reflects on the people involved. I can't even get a good head of steam worked up about it, because this kind of fiasco is typical. And my boss said that in Friday's meeting we have to have a serious discussion about expanding our hours to include evenings and weekends. And it's hard to tell, because she can't finish a sentence or maintain a topic to save her life, but she made it sound like my getting put on salary is somehow dependent on the team agreeing to work said shitty hours. No, I don't know how that leap of logic got made either. Fuck. I just want to know if I'm getting paid over Christmas, or if I need to be prepared to take two weeks without pay.
Lex gives him fireworks? Does the text get any less sub?
Nice work by Michael Rosenbaum there with the ending scene. His expression as he stares at Clark from within the confines of Lionel's PR hug is almost a glower, although on only one viewing I can't say for sure if I think the effect was enhanced or distorted by the lighting in the scene. I expect we were supposed to see jealousy and yearning in that stare, and I did, but I also got an interesting shade of menace toward the Kents. Need to go back and check out the episode again to see if that holds true.
I also need to fortify myself for tomorrow, when I will try to get through an entire day of watercooler discussion of Smallville without squealing and fainting over Lex's pistol whipping.
My throat still hurts, but the running was okay. Good news, good news.
Whew. For a minute there I couldn't get into the blogger site, and my eyelids were starting to twitch.
I don't have it in me to write much tonight. I'm cranky and badly in need of sleep, and my fucking throat is sore again. I will not get sick for the third time in two and a half months. Just...no way.
I'm a little worried about running tomorrow. I felt decent while resting today and Sunday, but I do have more sore muscles than I'd hoped for, probably because I slacked on my training the week before the 13.5. Mostly it's my hip flexors and the adducting muscles on my inner thighs, whatever they're called. Other minor gripes include the horizontal strip of chafe marks across my chest where the bottom edge of my sports bra rubbed, and my left pinky toe, which continues to be gross. One could go so far as to use the phrase "giant mass of blister" without overstatement. Nothing actively hurts, but I do feel a little worn around the edges.
Caught about thirty minutes of a documentary on the Franklin expedition on the History Channel. I am nostalgic again, thinking of cold and Alaska and due South. Which reminds me: go to Kit's page and read, and then write your representatives. It doesn't take long.
I didn't think Sweet November was that bad. Stupid and unoriginal and emotionally stunted, and occasionally cringe-worthy because man, Keanu Reeves is a bad actor, but not outright unwatchable. It worked pretty well as background noise while I cleaned and did inumerable loads of laundry. But you know, for all my talk about MR in drag, it was really the cowboy hat that got me. Lord. I live in Texas, and let me tell you that not every man can pull off a cowboy hat. When they can--that's a thing to be savored, that is.
The Hubster and I bought and decorated a little Christmas tree this evening. I set up my plastic Playmobile nativity set underneath it, along with the six out of seven Disney dwarves that the Hubster got from the hotel in China. Apparently one would appear each night on his pillow, like a surreal version of the hotel mint. The overall Christmas tree effect is pretty cute--I find I don't care so much what the tree looks like, just that there is a tree. Something about the smell and the presence of the outdoors--Christmas trees always help me remember to reflect on the season.
Ow. Goddamn. Did 13.5 miles today, and I'm still not entirely sure I'm not going to puke. I mean, 90% sure I'll be fine, but that 10% is enough to make me feel kind of iffy.
The run wasn't quite as bad as it probably sounds here. I actually think my oogy feeling has more to do with the vast quantity of GU energy supplement I consumed than the running itself--I think I took four packets total, and my stomach is blorping around in there like perhaps next time I should think about adding some solid food. But I did get through the run. I had to go in the early afternoon, as LG's graduation was this morning, and I was a little apprehensive about trying to motivate myself to complete the whole distance. Had a total hand-of-God experience, though, when I pulled up at the trail parking lot and about 30 seconds later this girl S who I occasionally eat breakfast with after the group runs showed up too. She was also getting ready to do the 13.5, so we ran together and kept each other going. Damn good thing, too--I did pretty well until about 11.5, and then I thought I might possibly die. We did sets of 8-to-1 running and walking, and the last 8 minutes were brutal. Everything from the waist down was killing me. When we finally crossed our impromptu finish line, the adrenaline overload in my system pushed me perilously close to tears, although mood-wise I felt great. I'm pretty whipped now, though. I think the legs will be okay, but my feet are just thrashed: big squishy blister on my left pinky toe, and less disgusting but still uncomfortable blister on the right side.
Got to drag myself up in about 15 minutes and go to the Salt Lick, as a bunch of us are celebrating our half-marathon mark with beer and barbeque. LH, honey, eat your heart out.
A half-marathon. Damn.
Had weird due South dreams last night with smoldering flirty Fraser, and Ray Vecchio blushing and yelling and getting tossed around like a sack of potatoes. I don't feel like recounting them here, more out of fatigue than because they were particularly raunchy. I have to conserve my energy for getting downstairs and out to my car.
Damn it. Am I going to have to rent Sweet November just because Michael Rosenbaum is in it? I dislike both Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron. Angsty doomed romances (other than Smallville and Fraser/Vecchio, of course) make me sick. Terminal disease as a plot device makes me want to puke. Even the title gives me the willies.
But.
Michael Rosenbaum. In drag. With, you know, the smirk and the walk and the forearms.
Pardon me while my endocrine system flash floods.
Maybe debchan's screencaps can get me through this moment of weakness. If not, I'll let you know how the movie turns out.
I had a moment of intense, inappropriate, irrational jealousy today regarding my supervisor JD. Our facility is doing this big "Children's Art Week" as a fundraiser, with a professional artist coming in to work with the kids during their therapy times and help them create two pieces of art: one to go home and one to be auctioned off at a formal event next spring. I think it's a cute idea, and the kids I've seen participate so far have really enjoyed themselves. The staff has spent a lot of time over the past few days squealing and saying stuff like, "Oh my God, did you see so-and-so's art project?! It's so great!"
Anyway, today was the day when my 9-year-old autistic client DS was signed up to work with the artist. I was actually the one who got him signed up, as I'd called his mother a couple of weeks ago to ask if she wanted him to participate. I feel...very strongly about DS. He's one of the first kids I got when I started working for this organization; previous semi-evil supervisor L passed him along to me, probably because she didn't really want to put in the energy required to handle him. DS is a beautiful, happy hulk of a boy, with dark, dark skin and eyes and a shockingly bright grin. He's nonverbal, but affectionate and relatively tuned in to social interaction for an autistic kid. Immensely energetic, he grounds himself through vestibular and tactile input, meaning he likes nothing better than for you to tackle him into the crash pillows and hug the daylights out of him while he shrieks with laughter. His heart belongs to our amazing therapy tech, DH, but he usually digs me too. I am crazy about him. Crazy and protective and defensive, as I discovered today, to the point of irrationality. The deal was, I see him with GG, the physical therapy assistant, for our session and then after us he goes for his occupational therapy session. OT is really better geared toward doing art projects, so he was signed up for the art thing during his OT session. However, the OT that usually sees him is at a conference until next Monday. Her backup is DH, the therapy tech, but DH is seven months pregnant and today she was feeling sick and had to leave early. So that meant that DS was set up to be alone in the art session with just the artist and our social worker, CMJ, neither of whom know much about autism in general or DS in particular. He's a sweet boy, but it took me a couple of months to get a handle on how to best interact with him, and I was only able to do that because DH had spent close to a year whipping him into shape. He's not, like, the beginner's model of the autistic kid. So we were all a little concerned about how this would work out. I desperately wanted to be in the session with him, but I had another client. Nobody else was available. People started to look a little panicked. I decided that I would take my next client into the art session, and we would work in the corner so I could be available in case DS needed more prompting than the artist or CMJ were prepared to handle. Then suddenly we realized that supervisor JD's client had cancelled, and she was available to supervise DS, and internally I freaked out. I was about two steps away from telling her no, because I was convinced that if she spent any time at all with DS she would fall in love with him and want to take him away from me. This is just ridiculous on so many levels--for one thing, JD has absolutely no reason to try to switch him over to her caseload. For another, she's not at all the kind of person who would even try to do something like that. Joke about it, yes, but not seriously consider it. And for yet another thing, what the hell kind of deranged individual am I that I would begrudge my autistic client the opportunity to make another social connection, especially with someone as wonderful as JD? Good God. It's just that I love him like crazy, you know?
So the end of the story was that JD supervised DS for his art project (which turned out so great, and he had a blast), and my other client and I ended up hanging out and doing an art project as well. And JD said, "Aw, Sara, D is such an awesome kid," and I said, "Yep," and hugged him really hard. And then he started trying to push my sleeves up for me because he hates long sleeves, and I said, "Cut it out, man," and things went back to normal.
Incredibly, it's Thursday already. Seems like the week's barely started, yet the weekend's already looming over me. I'm not really looking forward to much of this weekend. Saturday morning I have to get up early--probably even earlier than during the rest of the week--to go to my buddy LG's graduation ceremony. I say this like it's a big ordeal because it kind of is. LG is the friend with whom I'm starting to feel kind of perfunctory. Our relationship is now at that awkward stage where I know she likes me a lot more than I like her, but I still like her enough that I don't quite want to let her drift away...this graduation is an enormous accomplishment for her, and I should be going because I want to support her. But you know what? I'm going because dammit, I had to hear about every single obstacle she had on the path to this point, and I had to do my share of picking her up off the floor, and by golly part of that diploma is mine.
I'm feeling like a pretty lousy friend about now. Can I get points for following the letter of the law?
Supposed to do 13.5 miles Saturday. Because of the graduation I can't run with my group (another reason I'm bitter about it), and I'm worried about trying to do it on my own. I've been too tired to work out this week except in a totally half-assed manner, and I don't know if I'm going to make it through the run. Probably with a good night's sleep and a lot of water in me I'll do okay, but I'm gonna be stressed until it's over.
I'm discovering that people read this blog. Anna mentioned me again, and I'm seeing my site linked on the pages of people whose journals I frequent. And somebody who hasn't yet said how she got here (hi, Kathy!) wrote me to say that she recognized my description of Bush Baby, and it turns out we were both at the Marine Lab that summer. There's crazy shit going down around here, I tell you. It's new and different. Like, I got that the opperative portion of "online journal" was "online," but it's still a bit of a head adjustment. In a mostly positive way, but still an adjustment.
God, I'm tired. I'm starting to free associate. It's like last weekend when we saw this stupid anime film, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, at the Dobie with our friends C and S. The movie started about 9:45pm, which is late for me even when I haven't run ten miles earlier in the day, but it was pretty enough to keep me engaged for about an hour. But there came a point about halfway through when I abruptly snapped out of whatever trance state I'd been in to realize that not only was I not watching Vampire Hunter D, but I was actively engaged in the rerun of the Highlander episode "Comes a Horseman" that was playing in my head. Which was weird, because I think I've only seen that one twice and it was at least a year ago, but I'm almost certain I had the dialogue from the car scene right.
A couple weeks ago I was poking around on the main blogger website, and a name I noticed on their "Blogs of Note" column struck me as oddly familiar. I kept rolling the name (JW) around in my head, trying to figure out where I thought I knew the guy from, and then after reading a blog entry of his that mentioned dance classes it hit me. Total blast from the past; it's a guy I went to camp with the summer between seventh and eighth grades. We did one of those fancy special programs that Duke University puts on for kids who score a certain amount on the SATs--they have a whole bunch, mostly college-level classes on various esoteric subjects--and spent three weeks together at the Duke Marine Lab on Pivers Island. I'm kind of conflicted about the whole Duke program now, more out of a sense of middle class guilt than any real objection, I think, but going to that camp was possibly the best thing that could have happened to me that summer.
There were two courses running on Pivers Island: some kind of advanced math course and the one JW and I took, which was a combined philosophy and marine biology section. (God! Utterly useless as far as my current life path goes! That's where the guilt comes in). We split our time between reading guys like Descartes and studying aquatic life forms, neither of which I remember being particularly passionate about. In fact, except for the rather memorable comparative philosophy paper that I wrote in rhyming couplets, I recall very little about the actual subject matter of the course. What stands out in my mind when I think of camp is the absolutely staggering sense of relief I felt in being surrounded by other smart kids. I made close friends at camp; real friends at a time when I was horribly awkward and uncouth and just barely beginning to gain control over my temper, and that was a life saver. I felt a change in my personality after, and looking back at my fiction from the time period, I almost wonder if camp wasn't a literal life saver. Everybody is depressed in middle school, and I don't remember the real gut-deep emotional experience enough to take this real seriously, but...my stories before camp were all suicide and death and loss. After camp, it's all screwball comedy. A certain amount of that's probably normal, but the difference is sudden and striking enough to make me wonder.
So, JW. He was one of a group of about four or five of us that hung out together, and one of the people I wrote back and forth with for several months following that summer. I remember him as a sweet little boy; delicate, short, and prepubescent, with enormous dark eyes. Beautiful eyes; we nicknamed him Bush Baby after those lemur-like tree-dwelling mammals. He was a dancer and apparently quite good, as he had already placed in some national tap competition. He was also good at platonic friendship, which was extremely valuable to me as a horny, unkempt 13-year-old. I liked him a lot. He made me one of those knotted string bracelets that were big back then; I wore it until it fell off.
So I saw his blog. I'm almost positive it's the same guy, because he talks about dancing. I sent him a very brief email asking if he was in fact the same JW, and just saying hi. He hasn't responded. My question is, do I write again? There could be any number of reasons why he hasn't written back--didn't get the email, didn't read it, computer lost it, ect. But I'm extremely leary of coming off as freaky and stalkerish, especially since it's also possible he doesn't remember me. I mean, we were buddies, but not exactly soul mates or anything. But I'd really like to talk to him...he seemed like the kind of guy who'd turn out cool.
This running business is doing quite the number on my metabolism. I woke up starving this morning--I felt like Kryptonite Milkshake Girl from the most recent Smallville episode, like I was one step away from snorking down deer fat with my giant gaping maw. Breakfast kept me away from the roadkill for a couple of hours, but lunchtime was kind of a debacle. I hadn't been up to packing a lunch the night before, so I'd planned to run out and pick something during my lunch break. Thought I'd go to this little Thai place near campus and get some moderately healthy tofu spring rolls, which I'd enjoyed in the past. Well, apparently the portion sizes have changed since last time I went there, because what was once a decent sized lunch of spring rolls is now a small handful of zucchini and rice noodles. About five minutes after I finished the rolls I realized that there was just no way they were going to carry me through the rest of the afternoon, so I ended up going through Taco Bell too. Mmm, Taco Bell...
Like Aral, I wasn't going to post my lists of four things, but then I read hers and I kind of had to.
4 Things I'd Eat on the Last Day of My Life: My mom's chocolate cheesecake
Spanakopita--the family recipe
McDonald's cheeseburgers
Garden tomatoes and onions with Italian dressing
4 CDs I Never Get Tired of: Northwest Passage--Stan Rogers
The Do It A Cappella tape I got off a PBS special when I was in seventh grade
Graceland--Paul Simon
My personalized mix tape, Mood Swings.
4 Celebrities I would have sex with: Okay, honestly? None. But it would really, really hurt me to turn down:
Paul Gross
Callum Keith Rennie
Angelina Jolie
Michael fucking Rosenbaum
4 Vacations I Have Taken: Alaska and the Yukon, on my honeymoon
Scotland and England, during grad school with my best friend
California wine country, during college with my family
Wells Beach, Maine, the summer between 4th and 5th grade with my family
4 Songs that Get Stuck in My Head Frequently: Needles and Pins--The Ramones
Hallelujah, I'm a Bum--The New Christy Minstrels
Sitting Pretty--Webb Wilder
That infernal Mazda jingle set to La Bamba--"...you could be driving a Mazda!"
4 Things I Want to Learn: How to beat the crap out of somebody
Dogsledding
How to be an electrician
Greenlandic
4 Beverages I Drink Frequently: Water
Coke
Watered down Gatorade
Chocolate Silk soymilk
4 TV Shows that Were on When I Was a Kid: G.I. Joe
Transformers
He-Man
Inspector Gadget
4 Things to Do When I'm Bored: Read fanfic
Clean
Drink vodka and Coke and buy CDs off Amazon.com
Take a drive and argue out loud with myself in the car
4 Things That Never Fail to Cheer Me Up: The Hubster pretending to be a badass ("Lex Luthor? I could break his pansy ass in half.")
Finishing a long run
New fanfic by an author I love
Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need
We got a few more of our Christmas vacation plans ironed out today, which is a relief. Not so much a relief for me--I was doing just fine with the uncertainty--but a relief that I can now call all the people who've been hassling me about our plans and give them the details, and then they can leave me alone for a couple of days. So that's the good news. The bad news is that I have yet to hear if the paperwork I turned in to get switched from an hourly to a permanent position has gone through. If I don't get switched over in time, I won't get paid for almost two full weeks out of this month. Our facility is closed the week between Christmas and New Year's, so it's not like I even have the option of working during that time period. It would really piss me off to miss two weeks of pay this month just in general, but since the department boss turned in my paperwork for the salaried position a month ago, I'm going to be mad if they're still dicking around with it come Christmas. I mean, give me a break. Either put me on salary or don't, but don't waste my time this way and then wonder why I'm not overflowing with loyalty to the organization. Plus my department boss has jury duty this week, so I can't bring this issue up with her in a timely manner, which pisses me off once again.
I have to say, Smallville fandom is teaching me some mildly disturbing things about my hot buttons. For instance, the whole "innocence vs. experience" theme? You know, with Clark as the underage virgin/whore and Lex as the temptor/serpent and all the apples and nature imagery? Good Lord, does that ever work for me. I had no idea my subconscious was so cliched. I've heard several people talk about how they can't quite get into the fandom because of the ages (15 and 21-ish) of the protagonists, and I'm finding I have quite the opposite response: that's a large part of what I like about the show. I mean, let's be honest here. I'm not quite 25, and I still glance around guiltily when I refer to myself as an adult. The more adult-oriented conflicts and themes are still occasionally difficult for me to relate to. It's no big stretch for me to remember being 21, or even 15, so the ideas of emerging knowledge and experience (primarily sexual) are still sparking off some highly visceral memories. Experiencing the show is like wallowing in one long first time story. Whoo!
Plus, I cannot possibly look at Tom Welling and believe him as a 15-year-old. Just...no way. So I picture this mid-twenties guy who's supposed to be having these teenage defining-identity moments, and somehow the conflict is just an added zing.
That makes practically no sense, but now I'm feeling kind of shallow. The kind of shallow where I want to go read "Boxed" again, to see if this time it will actually provoke heart failure.
Day Two of the daily December updates. Must figure out how to put in the linking graphic for the journal ring. I'm a touch concerned about this journal project, because today I found myself doing the avoidance dance with my blog: thinking about writing, looking forward to writing, yet putting it off. I'd really like for this to be something I do because I enjoy it, and not marred by some sense of homework assignment. But it is only day two. Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself.
I have a fancy new ergonomic keyboard and trackball, because I talked to JG, one of the OTs at work, and she confirmed that the burning, tingling pain radiating up the underside of my right forearm matches the symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome. I'm 95% sure that the symptoms are brought on by the horrid, awkward position I must twist myself into to use my mouse--sitting at an angle to the screen with my elbow propped on the chair armrest and my wrist cocked and unsupported--so I went ahead and coughed up the money. Or, (heh) the Hubster coughed up the money, since we happened to be shopping together. I've also attempted to change my chair position, so we'll see if the pain goes away.
Went to a play today. It was a play I'd seen previously; actually one with which I have a bit of a history. It's called The SantaLand Diaries, and it may be unique to my city, as I believe it was written by the main actor. I could be way off here, but I'm too lazy to go check right this minute. Anyway, it's obviously a seasonal thing, and it's run every December here for about the last three years. I tried to go see it the first year it opened, back when I was in grad school, but I got lost on the way to the theater and by the time I arrived it was sold out. I'd picked the last possible day before I flew home for Christmas to try to see the play, so it turned out I was out of luck for 1998. I saw it the next year with the Hubster-to-be, and loved it. Found it both hysterically funny and oddly touching, and left with an enormous, instantaneous crush on the actor. I didn't go see it last year, just noticed the review in the paper and sort of smiled benevolently in memory, like: aww, SantaLand Diaries. Then suddenly on Friday I was overcome with the need to re-experience the play. The Hubster wasn't interested, but I rounded up MV, an OT intern from work, and my buddy LG, and we went to the matinee today. It was...a little disappointing. I don't know. I think part of it was, paradoxically, that I'd seen the play already: I could anticipate the jokes, and I had trouble breaking through the anticipation enough to actually appreciate the play as it was happening. Plus, the actor seemed a little less shiny and enthusiastic than the first time I'd seen him. He's this short, wiry, active little guy, and he plays his part (narrative of a disgruntled Macy's elf) with an unbelievable manic energy. Literally bouncing off walls. Today he just seemed kinda tired. Messed up a couple of lines. He does some heckling of the audience as part of the show, but at one point today he ended up collapsed on the stairs leaning against this guy in the end seat of the row, and he looked up at him and heaved this big sigh and said, "You wanna do this for me?" Meaning, finish the play. I felt a little bad for him, because he really did look beat, but I also felt bad for me. I really liked that show, but a bit of the sheen came off today.
Anna mentioned my site in her blog, which made me squeal with glee. Anna's fanfic in general pleases me greatly, but oddly enough, when I think of her I always think of Soul Coughing. There's a tiny little line in "In a Dark Time: Sleepless" that mentions them, and I remember the little shock of pleasure and recognition that hit me the first time I read that story. And, mmm. Krycek.
Must email relatives and clean the house. And add more links, but that probably won't get done tonight.
In the process of redesigning the site. Or, really, designing the site, since it never looked like much in the first place. The impetus was that I joined this web ring of people updating their online journals daily for the month of December (link to follow when I figure out how the hell to put in the kind I want), and I finally felt shamed into digging out my ancient HTML notes. I used to have a bare bones kind of web design knowledge, but that was back in my second year of college, and it's since gone, gone, gone. Luckily my personal filing system extends back far enough that I still have a couple sheets of loose leaf notebook paper with scrawly little snippets of code and explanations; enough to work from, anyway.
I'm in the process of adding a bunch of links to fandom journals I frequent. Many of them are part of a loose collective of folks within the broader slash fandom. Some I've exchanged emails with, but many I've had no contact with. If you recognize yourself on this page and do not wish to be linked for whatever reason, email me and I'll remove you immediately.
The Webb Wilder CD doo dad has been on heavy rotation this past week, and people, I cannot imagine why this man isn't a star. Or, well. It's possible that he is and I'm just late to the party; my knowledge of countrified rock'n'roll being what it is. But based on the reactions of the people I've raved to about the CD, I'm pretty sure he's still obscure, and it's a crying shame. His sound has a depth and an edge to it that just hits me low in the belly and sparks. He's got this amazingly flexible voice that's growly and rough and yet fully in control, with a command over the lower register that's just...ooh. The effect for me is on a par with that of M. Doughty from Soul Coughing, although their styles are completely different. Plus smart lyrics, raw energy, and God, something about the chord structure...an estimated fifteen years of musical training and I'm reduced to blithering. It's a great CD, I tell you.
