you were never no locomotive

Thanks to inteleks66  for the questions. Leave me a comment and I will ask you some! If you have more for me, leave them and I will answer them!

1. If you could change one thing that you've done, what would it be?
When I was visiting universities during my senior year, I made the acquaintance of one of my future professors, who later sent me an e-mail about Italy and linguistics. I was too timid to reply and I wish I had. This is one example of my extreme reluctance to network, which is now coming back to haunt me as, much like an unfortunate in a Jane Austen novel, I have no connections to introduce me into the academic circles in which I hope eventually to run. I wish I'd learned to be better at that while it was still easy. That professor retired and I now have no idea how to reach him.

2. What is the one thing you love about yourself that you think people underappreciate?
I am a lot more responsible than most of my family and friends realize. I know I project the happy-go-lucky, creative, scatterbrained side of my personality more often, and I get the feeling that most people think I can't handle details. I don't like to handle them, that's certainly true, but when I have to I am more than capable.

3. If you thought you had only one week left to live,what would you do with it if you had limitless resources?
I would kidnap all my loved ones and a jet and travel to someplace beautiful and exotic. I want to see everything, or as much of everything as I can.

4. If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?
I would probably choose something like Stravinsky's Rites of Spring; something beautiful and complex enough that I can find something new in it every time I listen.

5. If you had no fear of reprisal, what is the one crime you would commit?
I am not particularly materialistic, and I have no qualms about being mostly poor. (Hell, I majored in Linguistics, which isn't exactly the field to go into if you want to roll about with hookers and diamonds and diamond-studded hookers.) That said, though, I have many friends who need medical and psychiatric attention, and many friends who are acutely upset at their lack of finances. Also, I like eating and traveling and such. Therefore, I would go on a bank-robbing spree and steal enough for all of us to be comfortable.

... part-time, as an activity leader for an after-school childcare program.

I will either love or hate my life this year. Also, I'm a little confused by the willingness of not one, but two school districts to entrust to me the care of Little Childrens. Don't they know any better?

I'm still hoping that I'll be staying on as a TA at the high school, too. They don't want to lose me, and they're leaning on the budget committee, but so far the final word has yet to come. I may have another interview, too, for a part-time office assistant position for an organic farm. Whee!

Other things continue with the same amount of irritation and worry that has characterized the summer. My poor little kitty-cat is having her age catch up to her with a vengeance. She's skin and bones, with eyes that run and weird lumpy bits popping up all over, and she won't eat or drink anything. Our parking lot is having pipe laid and being resurfaced, so no word when I can park there again. The weather is grotesquely warm and humid. Someone stole my bike yesterday.

BUT-- I have a job. And pretty soon, I will have myself some celebratory frozen yogurt. Ups and downs, strikes and gutters, as the Dude says.

I had a long entry written, detailing what exactly it is I'm doing with my life right now, but LJ ate it, and I'm not about to try to recreate the damn thing. Suffice to say my school job is over, I'm still waiting for the budget to come through so I know if they're hiring me back, I hate being unemployed and I'm looking for jobs, and things with Andy are going well. His business is finally taking off, which is grand. All of you close by in LJ-land should sit down with him for about half an hour and learn what he does for people-- he helps families out of some dire financial straits, and the company passes my Skeptic-O-Meter (which is permanently set on Tinfoil Hat) with flying colors.

Also, I just had a dream about an enduring romance between a modern-day Marcel Proust and a redheaded ten-year-old girl in a baseball cap. This was after the one in which I was staging some ancient religous ritual for which I needed to knit my own ziggurat.

My subconscious is weird.

Such as...

Long-Term Planning: I am in desperate need of a proper planner. The kind with tabs and insertable whatsits that one carries everywhere. This is because I fail at scheduling, due to what I will call a "future-perception deficiency." I hate being late to things, and I hate missing appointments, to the point where I'll have anxiety dreams nearly every night about sleeping through work. About a week and a half into the future, though, this perception deficiency thing kicks in. Anything coming up more than two weeks in advance registers in my brain as occurring in some diaphanous World Of Tomorrow. I'll have a dim idea that it's coming up, but not in any time frame that would make it immediately relevant. Events which occupy this slot also include my impending meeting with the Flex Plan representative at work, the Rapture, tax day, and my own eventual death. Month changeovers do this too-- even if it's the last week of March, I'll dismiss an event on April First as being "not for a while-- it's in April sometime."

This causes me problems mostly because an infinite number of things can slide into this category in my mental organization without seeming like potential conflicts. The first weekend in April is both LAFLX (Lafayette Lindy Exchange) and a gaming weekend, and objectively I knew both of these things, but since they were both in the World of Tomorrow I never realized them at the same time. Now I have rescheduling to do.

My hope is that if I have a planner, I will have a visual representation of the next couple of months, which is easier for me to remember. My other hope is that I haven't inadvertently offended anyone too much.

Denny's Commercials: I don't watch TV. My television isn't even hooked up for basic channels. Most television-based culture leaves me completely oblivious. However, I saw the Nannerpus commercial in the waiting room at the plasma donation center and the goddamn thing has been stuck in my head FOR DAYS.

That said, I know the Nannerpus was meant as an object of ridicule, a breakfast you would never want, but if I go to Denny's the first thing I am ordering is a Nannerpus. Because it actually looked kind of awesome.

Plasma Donation: I am now subsidized by vampires! They pay me to bleed! This is great!

Peanut Butter & Jelly: I have hated PBJs since I was a child. The combination of peanut butter and jelly always seemed utterly absurd to me. Being adventurous, I tried them again every few years to see if I'd changed my mind, and I always found them just as repulsive as ever...

...until now.

Weird.

The first thing I thought upon getting my results was "Oh God, how clumsy do I have to be to have a dex of 9 as an elf? Even with the +2 racial modifier I'm still at a -1."


The second thing I thought was some reflection on how much of a nerd I am.


( I cast Magic Missile on the darkness! )

What is this world coming to?

Today is the one-year anniversary of my father's death. I had prepared for the possibility of being a wreck (I've got the day off because it's Presidents' Day, so I didn't have to worry about work, at least.) There is still a lot of day left, so I can't rule it out, but so far I'm not a wreck at all, nor do I anticipate being one.

It does feel odd to acknowledge that a whole year of my life has gone by for which my father was not present-- a fairly eventful year, at that. I'm living in a town that my father never visited, in an apartment he never saw, working at a job I wasn't even considering when last I asked him for advice. My mom has completely redone their house in preparation for selling it, and she's engaged(-ish) to someone my dad never met-- someone who, as far as I can tell, is not a whole lot like him. I never imagined my life could change so much in such a short time. I like to think he'd be proud of the way I'm handling it all.

( Behind the cut, various going-on about my family. )

That got rather off my original topic, which was this: My dad has been dead for exactly a year, and I'm doing okay. Which is what he would want. I have quoted this particular saying of my dad's several times, but it really summed up the last five years-- "I could be sick and miserable, I could be sick and bitter, or I could be sick and happy. I choose to be happy." I, also, am getting better at just choosing to be happy. Which is good. Yay!

( Year in Review, 2008 Edition )
So, in other news, I guess my mother's getting married again.

Yeah, I know, right? You'd better believe there'll be more on this one later.

People keep asking why I never blog anymore, and I suppose I don't have a good reason other than laziness. So here I am, blogging. I'm on my lunch break, so this is a brief overview of the general situation.

There really isn't much to say about my life. It feels good to be sneaking up on competence in so many arenas; for instance, I love my job and I'm good at it.  I'm co-teaching an AP French class in what is probably a dubiously allowable maneuver on the administration's part, but I don't mind because I'm delighted to speak French every day and plan conversations and contemporary vocabulary lessons. I dance several times a week and I'm good at that too. I'm financially independent and relatively stable, I read lots, I make tasty and adventurous food every so often. Living with Andy has for the most part gone better and more smoothly than I could have imagined, and I think we might really have something here. In short, I'm passing for a capable adult in most arenas of my life.

That said, I don't sleep very well (for reasons unknown), my usual neuroses are still largely in place, and, as the terse tone of this entry may hint, I'm currently in the grip of a day or two of seething rage (also for reasons unknown.) Due to said seething rage, my tolerance for sarcasm, patronizing, and bullshit is at a particular low today, and the next person to give me sass or one of those metaphorical condescending pats on the head is going to get it good and hard in the teeth. I am praying that this person is not a student, because I would like to keep my job.

On the whole, though, life is good. Life is very good.

Tonight, for the first time in the past eight years, I am proud of my country.

That is all.

You know those radio call-in specials that nobody ever seriously wins? Like, they read the number to call and you call and it's always busy and then they air the clip of some excited lady winning whatever it is and you swear they just made that up and there never was a prize?

Andy called the number on the radio on a whim and actually won. So guess who's going to Death Cab for Cutie on Sunday?

Fuckin' A.

:D!

I started my job as a cross-curricular teacher's assistant at Urbana High School two weeks ago, and so far I've been absolutely delighted with it. The students I assist are taking some really interesting classes (Earth & Space Science, African-American Studies, AP German, etc.) and so I'm learning a good deal. They're all great kids, too, and it's lots of fun to spend the day with them. It also gives me all those lovely grown-up things like health insurance and a retirement fund and a name badge that gives me some measure of authority in the eyes of high-school students.

Since I get out with the kids, it also gives me a lot of free afternoons and not much to do with them. I'm still lagging behind in the friend-making department (although I've been going to regular swing-dancing events and getting to know the people there) so I don't go out a lot. Beyond reading my way through the Urbana Free Library, knitting, and mucking about on the computer, I have discovered that I really like to cook. 

A report of my (well, our) culinary experiments to date includes:
-Scampi
-Zucchini-basil soup
-Lots of homemade pesto
-Vegan ratatouille with meatless Italian sausage
-Cheese-pepper soup
-Fried couscous
-Vegan chicken salad
-Summer vegetable frittata
-Potato-cheese soup with organic bacon
-Parsley & garlic-sauteed chicken
-Key lime pie
-Baba Ghannouj

And, of course, the usual, non-adventurous things like lemon chicken and beer bread and Caprese salad and corn on the cob and all that. As domestic and trite as it may seem, it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside to not only be providing for myself, but providing well and deliciously for myself. Hoorah!

P.S. And I just discovered that the UGL has video games. FF7 and Guitar Hero III, here I fucking come!!

I had been holding out for weeks without watching the last episode of Firefly, because I knew that once I got through "Objects in Space" I was going to be glum and cranky for a time. And then I did, and now I am.

GORRRRRAMIT I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS.

There's still Serenity to watch. I suppose it's too much to hope that all of the loose ends get neatly tied up and Mal and Inara just get right the hell on each other already?

Happy news first-- I got the job at Urbana High School, and I start as a teacher's aide as soon as I get the bloodborne pathogens workshop and the TB test out of the way. YAAAAAY!

Also. Today would have been my dad's 48th birthday, and had he been around I would have sung him all manner of vaguely depressing birthday songs. Instead, I wrote him a letter. I hope to do this every year-- I'll write him a letter and seal it, and then open last year's letter and read it and save it. I'm big on spur-of-the-moment ideas and not long on follow-through, so I'm telling all of you out there in internet-land about this so that it won't just fade into the Susan's Bright Ideas void.

And, because it's traditional, a depressing birthday song.

(Sung to the tune of the Volga Boatmen)
"Happy BIIIRTH-daaay (UGH!)
Happy BIIIIIRTH-daaay (UGH!)
Doom, destruction and despair
People dying everywhere
On your BIIIIIRTH-daaaay (UGH!)
Happy BIIIIIRTH-daaaaay (UGH)"

My grandfather handed that gem down to us. Happy cynical birthday, Dad. I love you.

I have become frighteningly, exhilaratingly adult in the past week:

-moved down to Urbana and now rent a charming multi-level place in tandem with The Boyfriend. It has built-in open shelves in the kitchen hallway, a balcony, a fireplace, a loft, and a spare bedroom for visiting people. You should all become visiting people, by the way.

-started work as front office coordinator for a staffing agency. Don't know if they're going to keep me on-- they want someone career-minded, and I let them know I'd probably be going to grad school in a year or so-- but they like me, and I'm fond of them, and unless the middle school across the street hires me as a teacher's aid, I'm staying there until they kick me out.

-found a yarn store with a knitting circle. Found a tango class through the park district. Found a park with a labyrinth to walk. Found a library that carries the William Shatner movie shot entirely in Esperanto. Found a bar with dueling pianos. Slowly, I am actually getting a life.

-browsed the farmer's market, gloried in locally grown organic produce, and began planning meals around the sudden availability of things like eggplant and zucchini and tomatoes and such. I am silly and naive and still kinda giddy over this domestic thing, so preparing meals in my own kitchen makes me go *squeeee.*

That said, a call to my friends list! What are your favorite cooking-for-two-on-a-budget recipes? I am adventurous, like almost everything, and am not afraid to get my hands dirty or my kitchen on fire. (So long as I can put it out again.)

When the new X-Files movie came out I went to see it...at midnight. Alone. In costume. With my fake FBI badge clipped to my lapel. I felt like the world's biggest nerd, and I loved every minute of it, even though the movie disappointed me. As I left the theater, I thought to myself, "Well, that's that, then." I allowed myself some nostalgia, and then figured it was probably for the best that I had left the days of crippling obsession with shows about aliens behind me.

Then my friend Ryan introduced me to Doctor Who.

Ryan, you bastard.

So, I'm in this a cappella group-- FourTune. We've entered this contest, wherein the best video cover of Ingrid Michaelson's "Take Me The Way I Am" wins a guitar. (Which, ironically, we don't use, because we're all a cappella, all the time.) This is the way it works: The videos play head to head in random matchups and you, America, pick which one you like better or if you like them both the same. I sincerely hope that the one you like better will be us! If you just want to cheat and give us a boost (and I thoroughly encourage this) vote everyone the same (this tips the balance in neither direction) except for us. When you come to us, go hog wild. :D

Our video can be found on tenor Alex's profile: http://musicnation.com/music/alexfayer . The voting link is here: http://musicnation.com/contest/thewayiam/matchup . You'll recognize our video in the matchup under "AlexFayer," with "FourTune" in the subject line.

Vote early, vote often, and thanks for playing! 

Kevin C, one of my SMUSH (St. Michael's Unnamed Senior High) youth group leaders and a family friend, passed away in the wee hours of this morning. He'd been battling cancer for about a year, and in the last couple of weeks he took the fastest turn his doctor had ever seen.

Just a few words about the kind of man Kevin was-- he treated all the SMUSHies like his own children. (He had two, Ryan, who's a year older than I am, and Keri, who used to babysit us.) He could pal around with us on mission trips without seeming like he was trying too hard to be youth-relevant, which a lot of youth leaders often do. He was a great listener and a great support, and he'd go to amazing lengths for his friends. Case in point: When my dad died, he had just begun chemotherapy, and he had to have been feeling pretty awful. Despite that, he was over at our house for all the work days he could manage, helping with the construction work and directing an army of SMUSHies to help make over our house. He was always delighted to see any of us, and he gave huge hugs.

I hadn't made it to visit him in hospice yet. I was going to go yesterday, but didn't, and planned to go today. I'm sorry, Kevin-- you deserved better than that.

Anyway. Just wanted to take a few minutes to remember a truly good man. All love to the Callahan family (which has lost four or five family members this year.)


(Jesus, what IS it about 2008?)

The day of my dad’s last surgery, I spent the morning in the hospital with my mother and sister, waiting. There was relatively little risk, but even so, you stick by your blood, and surgical recovery is something one ought not to go through alone.

When I saw him after the surgery, painkillers and low blood sugar had rendered him almost completely unresponsive. We tried everything—tickling him, turning his insulin pump off, talking to him, poking him—but the most we could get from him was a groan or a slight shift of position. I told him I was pregnant. Mom said they’d called a rematch of the Super Bowl. I even took a picture of him, threatening, I think, to mock him with it later. Nothing made any difference until I had to leave for work. I squeezed his arm and said “Bye, Dad. I love you,” and in a sleepy, submerged-sounding voice, he said “Love you.” We couldn’t get him to say or do anything else, but every time someone said “I love you,” he would immediately mumble it back.

That was the kind of guy my dad was. Even when he was most physically spent, his spirit was inexhaustible. It’s ironic that he died of heart failure, because my dad’s heart was the one thing that never failed him.

I still have that picture, the one I took in the hospital. It may be the last picture ever taken of him. In it, my mom is leaning over my tuned-out Dad, laughing at something. My dad looks… well… dead. Heh.

Going to Cleveland for a wedding tomorrow morning with Murphy. Six hours of funtime! At least he's good conversation and is fond of ska. I'm also taking my kitty to the vet today to get her checked out so she can come live with me in Urbana. T minus 36 days. I am anxious and squirmy!

You know you've been reading too much xkcd when you wake up in terror and hide under the covers for half an hour after having a nightmare about velociraptors.

I am seriously too old for this.

But it occurs to me that this might be useful information to some of you, as I'm sure I don't keep everyone informed of most things. I may, in fact, have a tendency to drop of the face of the earth completely. So here you go.

You know how sometimes people on your friend's list post about stuff going on in their life, and all of a sudden you think "Wait a minute? Since when are they working THERE? Since when are they dating HIM/HER? since when???" And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you *should* already know? It happens to all of us sometimes.

Please copy mine below, erase my answers putting yours in their place then post it in your journal! Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration! One-word answers seldom help anyone out :)

( And so, I do. )