The Garret

Hello my darlings, I did not mean to be so long away. I have been having ADVENTURES and also being busy. Which is better than being not-busy. I have read several terrible books and a few good books and binge-watched a lot of television (a4yroldfaerie, when you told me of Young Americans the first time why did you not tell me that Bella was AWESOME?).

For Valentine's Day I winged out my eyeliner and dressed in fuschia and Swarovski and went to hear Dvorak's Symphony from the New World. The performance was excellent and the program notes were snarky.

In early March, I went to KPOPCON to hear Javabeans and Girlfriday talking about idols in dramas.

For St Patrick's Day, I finally bestirred myself to go see Frozen, and you know what, I have A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT IT. Despite its massive narrative problems, I spent most of the screening with tears of joy running down my face. I am not exaggerating even a little bit. There were actual tears. ON MY FACE.

Finally, I convinced some friends to see the Veronica Mars movie with me last night. IT TURNS OUT I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT THIS ALSO. I came home and lay on the floor with the expectation that the feelings would recede to a manageable level. They did not. The ONE THING that would have made it possible for SPOILER and SPOILER to finally SPOILER ACTUALLY HAPPENED ;ALSDJFLASKF;ALSKJFAL;KJDFAL;DKJA;DJKSF I cannot deal. I feel kind of like snowqueenofhoth after seeing Revenge of the Sith, only less SPOILER and more SPOILER.

It didn't work the first time, but I am so overwhelmed with feels that I think I will try this floor thing again. Dvorak is not helping either, because as it turns out, I have feelings about that too.

I don’t understand how the year can have got to the end of June without my noticing, but I blame it on my housemate’s cat, Copernicus. He is an enormous ginger tabby, and most distracting, though a good companion. He likes to listen to me fiddling and serenading the neighbors with increasingly bizarre versions of Bach minuets on the fancy electronic keyboard. (This is not all that impressive, since two and a half Bach minuets and a very short Mozart thingy are all I actually know how to play.) He also likes to chase (but not eat) hair ties, and to crouch in his crinkly tunnel, only to spring out at a bit of plumy feather at the end of a string tied to a stick. He stomps across the floor if he thinks you’re not paying him enough attention.

In other news, I’ve been settling into my new home, figuring out my commute to work, watching Supernatural (it’s so bad, and yet so amazing), being polite to people with bizarre book requests, running events, filling in for our children’s buyer, reading ARCs at top speed, and totally failing to work on any of my own writing. Though I did rescue the new Penguin Classics De Profundis and Other Prison Writings by Oscar Wilde from the give-away shelf, and have started reading it. (It’s not directly relevant to my work, but it does have to do with applying Greek philosophical writings to Victorian life, so.)

Berkeley is so weird. It’s a lot like Cambridge, only more so. And I keep finding that people are very, very invested in promoting and maintaining a binary gender dichotomy. Is it because mostly I interact with fairly affluent parents while at work? And yet other people, who I might expect to be less invested, are equally so. Do they not realize they live in Berkeley? Does "Berkeley" not mean what I thought it means? I have to say, this is not what I thought the biggest cultural difference from the East Coast would entail. (Well, this and food service.) I didn’t think people would be surprised whenever I go around muttering “Gender is a social construct!” under my breath.

I miss you all so. I woke up this morning fiercely homesick for Wellesley. I’ve been thinking a lot about its rhetoric lately, I suppose; though what I miss is not the rhetoric but my people, both those I met there and later, elsewhere.

Also chai. I’ve found two good places near work, but so far everything in North Berkeley is complete swill, or worse. (Seriously. Last week I had a very nice cup of spiced hot water and mint that tasted like it had never seen tea. I could do better myself with a Lipton bag and no cinnamon.) Happily, the muffins remain excellent. As Oscar Wilde no doubt knew, it is important not to underestimate the importance of a good muffin.

I have been a total failure at posting this month, mostly out of sheer laziness and also from feeling like a cat being cuddled and then squeezed too tight. But! Happy Thanksgiving (or Colonial Oppression Day with Food, as we say in my parents’ household). I am so very thankful for my family and my friends, those whom I see often and not-so-often and never, and for the opportunity to travel and see new places, and for music, and books, and chai, and all the wonderful things that I have and have the chance to do.

My friends have been on my mind a lot lately. The beginning of the month was full of travel and madness, first to Atlanta for a wedding and thence to the wilds of North Carolina for hangout times. I got to experience four new airports (apparently I collect them now?) and see a lot of people I haven’t seen in a long time.

( The details, oh so many of them )

Phew. I’m exhausted just from cobbling all that together out of my exhausted-and-chai-high notes. Celebratory pie is in order. Yes. I hope you are all safe and warm and fed, my friends. There are more travels ahead, and I’m looking forward to seeing some of you in a few weeks!

LJ! ♥ I did not abandon you. I was promoted. With great responsibility comes great stress and great distraction and great lack of time for orderly thoughts.

Also a bunch of new keys. I now walk about jingling like a whole sleigh ride.

But I've somehow found time to finish season 1 of Slings & Arrows, and to corrupt co-workers with kdramas. Well, okay, one. I am a bad influence, it is true. Look, it's not my fault everybody loves cross-dressing, plucky heroines, and sageuk fashion.

...

Lately I've been having a giant '90s nostalgia blast. This mostly takes the form of late '90s-early-'00s music cravings (I spent the first half of the decade being under a virtual rock, and also in elementary school) gleaned from 10 Things I Hate about You and Clueless. I think I'm burned out on boybands (thanks Japan), but early Avril Lavigne, No Doubt, and Alanis Morrisette are on repeat at the moment. What's your favorite music from that era?

Maybe this is some kind of birthday-incipient crisis. Maybe it's the influence of watching Midnight in Paris twice.

Maybe I just want to actually recognize something next time I get dragged to live-band karaoke. XD

I've kind of been failing to update regularly, even with Ovid fixed and with his webcam mysteriously working again. You know how it is. You intend to write thoughtful, entertaining posts, and then you get distracted by your co-workers lending you Dr Who and gay romance novels about demons and cops who fight crime together (adorably) and the next thing you know, that Wizard Rock Smackdown was two weeks ago, wtf.

The Wizard Rock Smackdown was at night in Harvard Hogwarts Square. I went to see the final movie that afternoon to get in the proper mood, and sobbed through most of it (though what actually set me off was the trailer for War Horse. I started crying and kind of just... didn’t stop).

Ahem.

HARRY AND THE POTTERS! DRACO AND THE MALFOYS! Some guy calling himself MC KREACHER who rapped about cleanliness and intruders in the house. “DON’T TOUCH THAT!” XD I insisted on dragging one or two of my co-workers along. I bought a “Save Ginny” t-shirt, and the rain held off until the very end of the Harry and the Potters set (they were last). The stage was set up right on Brattle Street, and it was such fun being utter, utter dorks with everyone. I remember Harry and the Potters from The Witching Hour (how was that FIVE YEARS AGO?) but had never seen Draco and the Malfoys before, though I have one of their CDs. I was most pleased that they sang “99 Death Eaters”. The lead singer/guitarist was super into the whole rock thing... and the drummer was the cutest, flailiest little glasses-wearing dude you could wish for. XD And of course Harry and the Potters had everyone jumping around and singing along.

All in all it was a wonderful evening of unabashed dorkery. I promptly felt terribly nostalgic and consumed most of the third book while on reg the next evening (shhh don't tell!).

I also enjoyed horrifying my non-Potterhead co-workers with my new t-shirt the next day. XD

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Tonight at work (after all the customers had left) we played very loud, extremely rude Irish-themed songs. It was great.

This weekend I attended the final concert of BCMFest, which was lots of fun but involved far too many power chords. XD

***

Congratulations to all the YALSA winners! I woke up yesterday just in time to catch most of the live broadcast from ALA Midwinter in San Diego. I have actually read almost none of the award-winners, though many of the nominees have been on my radar for a while now.

This is because I have been busy reading other things: ( Adventure! Romance! Mad Science! )

Okay, so I'm not on my way out to a 2 am rock concert in JAPAN like I was at this time last year. But Drummer Dude across the alley is obviously still awake. Close enough! I could always add some rock violin of my own, I guess. XD

Happy New Year, all. ♥

It's my first Christmas all alone, and overall I feel pretty good about it, actually. ♥

Work has been insane and everybody’s been pretty stressed out, but I’ve actually been having the BEST TIME EVER. ( Read more... )

In other news, last weekend cadragongirl and I bused down to NY to see snowqueenofhoth and mousapelli. We had lunch, exchanged candy, took cell phone photos, then M went home and Rachel and Mousi and I wandered around Kinokuniya for a while and dropped out stuff off at the hotel (Rachel napped while Mousi and I got settled) and then went for karaoke. We had dinner at a tiny Chinese place on the way (it was foul--good thing M wasn’t there--but I took over tea-pouring duties so at least we had tea).

The next morning Mousi and I hit up the bagel place, scored a table, and succeeded in finding the open-air market this time (The Shops at St Bartholomew’s), where we impulsively bought glass pendants. Mine is shaped like a boot. Mousi’s is a blue pineapple. (There were far too many pineapple jokes, thanks to her NaNo this year. I had a stale leftover pineapple bun with me in case of emergencies, and every time I mentioned this fact Mousi insisted she only heard “I have a pineapple”. When I pointed out the blue glass pineapple, she had to have it.) We picked up Rachel and went for karaoke at the other karaoke place (they’d booked our reservation for 12:30 AM, not PM, and in fact didn’t open until 1, so we hung out at the same Starbucks as last August, sipping caramel apple cider and looking at pictures of my hair). Mousi presented me with a handmade scarf, and it's all pink and purple and fuzzy and really warm and I've been wearing it all week. ♥

And here's ( the part where I talk about my first solo Christmas and get sappy about friendship and Christmas and songs about friendship and Christmas )♥

Thank you to everybody who suggested holiday music last time! I've been having fun listening to all kinds of stuff, discovering some things, and rediscovering others. For example, I'd heard The Holly and the Ivy before, but the other day these lines floored me:

The rising of the sun
The running of the deer

I just.

;alksdjf;alskjdfal;skdjfa;lskdjfas;lkdjfas;ldkjfa;lskjdfa;

In Gainful Employment news, last Saturday was the most insane day I have ever seen. It’s like people decided Black Friday was for the mall, and then Saturday was STORM THE BOOK STORE DAY. ( It was also, apparently, Teh Day of Teh Gay )

( Strange Territories: Sharing the Joy of Sendak's Outside Over There )