*falls over*

[sofiaviolet]

damned_colonial suggests implementing a Follow Friday meme on Dreamwidth. I think I will rec one journal, one comm, and one feed every week, unless someone has a better idea.

In my recent past:

Thursday, Ellie and I went shoe shopping. She didn't find anything and I really don't need any more shoes, so we just headed home again. I called solarcat from the train and she met me at Forest Hills, and we drove back to her apartment to watch Life on the Murder Scene. (You guys. Their faces, okay, their fucking faces. I do not know what it would take to pry me from this fandom.)

By the time I got home, it was midnight, and I still had to pack for my trip.

So Ellie and five of her friends and I went to Vermont over the weekend for a conference on trans issues.

I left work* at two on Friday, and spent about an hour or more camped out at Oak Grove, listening to my ipod. We were originally supposed to leave at three, in Mark's car, but Ellie was 45 minutes late.

We got on the road, and I spent a chunk of Massachusetts and New Hampshire trying to sleep in the back seat, due to a headache that never quite went away all weekend. In spite of the headache, I had a good time, though, which tells you how awesome everything was.

We found the hotel without incident, but apparently there are two hotels with the same name in Burlington, and Gillis had driven the other group to the wrong hotel. (Additionally, our hotel had had to send most conference attendees to another place because one of the buildings had lost heat and hot water, but we got to stay in the functioning building because Jordan booked two rooms. IDK.) When they arrived, I got to meet Jamie and Kellan. (Kellan reminds me so much of thelemic. Bwee!)

Our room had a broken bed. One corner of the mattress was significantly lower than the other three. After some investigation, we discovered that the leg had collapsed, as in bent metal and doom. Whatever.

We hung out in Jordan and Jamie and Gillis and Kellan's room and ate dinner - well, we ate dinner after we secured a mini-fridge and microwave from the guy at the front desk, and after Ellie and Mark made a run to KMart for plates and forks and shit. Lots of shenanigans, including fake southern Russian accents (don't ask) and lots of innuendo. I laughed myself straight into a series of asthma attacks - by the way, I seem to be allergic to Vermont; I couldn't breathe properly all weekend.

In the morning, Jordan brought over a GPS before the other room left for the conference. It was not a particularly good GPS, for the record, but we did find the university, and then the building, and finally a place to park (after a whole lot of driving around in circles, curse UVM's lack of visitor parking).

Inside, Mark was finally able to get some coffee, and after a bit of hanging around, everyone went up to the fourth floor for the first session.

For me and Gillis, that was the one on intersectionality. There were a lot of lulls in the discussion, perhaps because it was early. I probably could have piped up, but I had already made the decision to be in Listen and Learn mode and I can't just override that shit in thirty seconds. We did a little activity in which everyone wrote down their identity/ies in certain categories (gender, sex, race, ethnicity, class, etc.) and then discussed in pairs which elements of our identities we are most and least conscious of.

The second track: I was torn between a session on oral history and one on becoming a better ally. While intrigued by oral history (and feeling like I ought to go, for work-related purposes), I decided that improving my ability to not be an asshat was more important and more in line with what I wanted to devote myself to at the conference. So Gillis and I went to that. I'm glad I did, even if most of what was covered was stuff I already knew, at least in theory. Apparently, everything I know about being an ally, I learned from the internet. I should put that on a shirt, y/n?

Lunch! Oh god lunch. I needed food so bad by then, you guys. And then everyone I knew hung out in the lobby.

Third track: Passing. Kellan and I went to this - well, he went and I tagged along, since I was beginning to run out of social cope. The discussion was kind of uneven - a few people tended to dominate and there was a definite old-school versus new-school tension I hadn't seen around anywhere before. But it was good to hear people talking about all of it.

Fourth track: for parents of trans kids. The audience was actually a lot more varied - some parents, some kids (me and Ellie, for example), some sets of parents and kids, some educators and healthcare workers, et cetera. The organizers related their story and then there was a whole bunch of back and forth sharing. I didn't get quite what I hoped from it (namely, a list of helpful hints for Mom and Dad), but I did enjoy the little community we built and shared in. I wish Mom and Dad could have actually attended, though.

After the last track, we went back to the hotel for disco naps (getting some rest before the dance party). Mark knit, and we chatted about fandom for a bit. I sort of napped.

We all drove to a Chinese takeout place for dinner, and brought the food back to the hotel. Once again, the GPS was not as useful as it could have been. For one thing, it thought we could drive straight through a building. :\

We ate in Jordan and Jamie and Gillis and Kellan's room again, and watched Animal Planet. Then people put on makeup - Jordan did mine, because I suck at makeup and nobody told me to bring any. I sneaked off into a corner to change my top (I love my boobs, you guys, I can wear tiny satin camisoles if I want).

We were at the dance party for about an hour, but that was long enough for everyone to have fun, for Jordan to seduce a mom, and for the other room/car to amaze me with their moves.

In the morning, we woke up pretty early, nabbed some food from Dunkin Donuts, and got on the road. Ellie apparently slept through most of New Hampshire or something. At any rate, we were home around lunchtime, and I spent all of Sunday afternoon catching up on the internet.

I of course got absolutely 0 words written over the weekend, and there was no free wifi to be had. Next year I am not bringing my Macbook, am bringing my makeup, and am packing sooner than the night before.

* By the way, how much do I love my coworkers? They figured out that I used to talk about a brother but now talk about a sister, and last week when someone finally asked what was up with my sibling situation, their reaction was pretty much "oh. So how is her cold? Better? Worse? Go home and take care of her."