you were never no locomotive

I don't do NaNoWriMo. I do need to write more, though, so this month's challenge is DaBloUpMo-- Daily Blog Updating Month.

Since  I plan to invite a bunch of people to read this blog, and since I don't necessarily want all of those people knowing everything I've written here since 2003, I have another blog for this purpose. Here it is. Hold me to daily updates, please, because my friend Jacob has promised to beat me with a tire-iron if I don't, and he's not one to go back on his word.

I Saw The Figure Five In Gold

Thank you.

First of all, Bertrand Goldgar, who was one of my very favorite professors, passed away this week. His Satire class was one of my fondest memories of college. Rest in peace, you wonderful cranky old bastard you.

Also, after viewing Grey Gardens for the first time I have come to the somewhat alarming realization that I had better get married, because if I don't I'm going to grow up to be Little Edie Beale.

That is all.

Acquired: One (1) cat named *drumroll* Ferdinand.

My reasons are threefold:
1) Like Ferdinand the Bull in the children's story, he's a lover, not a fighter, and he just likes to sit and smell the flowers.
2) Like Franz Ferdinand (the Archduke, not the band) he keeps company with a lady named Sophie
3) Like Ferdinand Magellan, he likes to explore.

Pictures soon!

I may be acquiring a cat in the next few weeks. I have a specific one in mind, but who knows if he'll still be at the Humane Society by the time I get my landlord's approval and get together supplies and adoption fees. (This is the cat in question.) If he's been taken away, I'll probably find another one.

Anyway! I need a name for this cat, and not just some cop-out cat name like Fluffy or Spot or Joe. I am limited to males over 1 year, if that makes any difference in naming.

What would you name a cat? Go!

I don't believe there is an accepted collective noun for robots. You know, something akin to a gaggle of geese or a pod of whales. Or, more picturesquely: A crash of rhinoceros, an exaltation of larks, a knot of toads, a sloth of bears, a charm of hummingbirds, a murder of crows, an implausibility of gnu, an ostentation of peacocks, or a flange of baboon. No, really.Poll #1430372 What should the collective noun for robots be?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 22

What should the collective noun for robots be?

Because, y'know, it'll be important once they band together to destroy all pitiful fleshy hu-mans.

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.)