sofiaviolet: somehow that sounded better in my head (things generally do)
2010-05-12 09:02 pm

Dress Your Best: work-to-evening outfit

So apparently I lied about only making one post for Dress Your Best. That's just how the picture-taking shook out.

Today's outfit was originally put together as an example of "casual night out" - dinner at a restaurant and/or one of the less-glittery local theater/dance/etc. things I go to. Unlike my fancier (by which I mean sparklier) stuff, I can wear something like this all day.

Today's photos also highlight one of my favorite "oh shit it's cold" coping strategies for Boston's sudden weather changes: Add A Hoodie.

four photos )

As you can see, I didn't really accessorize today - baby steps, people! - but I have plenty of red jewelry (the shirt does lend itself to one of the larger pendants from Wyrding Studios) and at least three purses that could work (the devil Hello Kitty bag if I need to carry a lot of stuff, a shiny red purse, or a faux leather black one). And it could probably do with a belt, but belts are tricky.

ETA: *facepalm* It helps if you upload the pictures before you post the entry. And also if you type the correct URLs. [No one saw that.]
sofiaviolet: candy hearts from a prescription bottle (and the blue ones help me fall)
2010-05-11 09:23 pm

cheer up, self

Daily Song makeups (right-click):
Veruca Salt - Seether (May 8th)
The Pipettes - One Night Stand (May 9th)
Goldfrapp - Slippage (May 10th)

Daily Song (right-click): The Dollyrots - Because I'm Awesome

[personal profile] synecdochic: the ghost in the room, or, why modesty is a dirty fucking word

There are a lot of things I am good at, and a lot of things I do that are awesome. I feel no particular need to list them, and at least a few come up in general blah-blah-this-is-my-life (I am good at my job, for example, and the stuff I do generally isn't done by people with my level of education - there's a reason I call myself an apprentice archivist). I write well. I'm making an effort to contribute to my online community (having - I think - accustomed myself to frequent and at least moderately meaty posts, and having always been pretty zealous about replying to comments, I'm now pushing myself to comment more on other people's stuff).

As far as I can tell, the main limit right now on my level of kickass-doing-of-things is... depression and the learned procrastination, apathy, and lack of action that go along with a lifetime case of dysthymia.

blah blah depression not-so-yay )

Basically, nobody worry! I'm just feeling less happy/content than I think I should be - for no apparent reason, which means it is cyclical brain chemical shenanigans.
sofiaviolet: boots with someone's feet in them (boots)
2010-05-10 10:49 pm

Dressing my best!

So, here's the thing. I'm going to put together five outfits (for Dress Your Best Week), plus an extra outfit or two to account for Boston's fickle weather.

But I can't work the timer on my camera to save my life (well, I can work the timer, but I can't get decent photos with it), so the next time that A) I'm awake, B) Ellie is home, and C) it's sunny outside, I'll get her to take pictures of all the outfits.

And I'll stick all the photos and all the fashion meta in one post, so that nobody will hate me for spamming them. :D?

In the meantime, the prep! My list of five body parts, and the types of outfits I want to construct... )
sofiaviolet: photo of a bird (birds for brains)
2010-05-10 05:32 pm

the promised photos

17 photos of Northampton )

At this point, my camera died. Stupid thing consumes batteries at a rapid pace. So all of the following photos were taken by Ellie.

12 more )

and two pictures of me, taken by Ellie )
sofiaviolet: Dreamwidth logo and Paul Gross arms (dreamwidth \o/)
2010-05-10 05:28 am

I warned you that this would be long.

skip=400

Since Saturday morning. (I mean, I do use Dreamwidth as my feed reader, but that's still a lot of posts.)

26 links )
sofiaviolet: awesome (awesome)
2010-05-10 01:38 am

wheeeeee

Northampton was a nifty place, even if it did rain on us twice. We will have to go back. Pictures tomorrow, since some of the ones I want to post are on Ellie's camera (mine being a rapid consumer of batteries that died very early on), but the summary:

Northampton )

Upcoming: long-ass link roundup, as soon as I actually backread all of my dreamroll! Skip=300 and I am on yesterday!
sofiaviolet: two purple flowers on a single stem (two little flowers)
2010-05-08 07:56 am

Blergh, not enough sleep.

New layout on [personal profile] sofiaviolet. I took the Light on Dark theme for Funky Circles and made it really fucking purple.

Today's Groupon for Boston applies to classes at Bead + Fiber in the South End. Since there's totally stuff I haven't been able to figure out on my own at all.

As Ellie and I are leaving for Northampton in less than an hour (we hope), I will catch up on the interwebs later. I may or may not spend the day spamming the crap out of Twitter, and there may or may not be pictures when I get home.
sofiaviolet: girl in purple dress carrying suitcase and walking down railroad tracks (travel)
2010-05-07 11:29 pm

(no subject)

Ellie and I are going to Northampton tomorrow! I should go to sleep as soon as I post this.

Daily Song (right-click): Morningwood - New York Girls

linkety link )
sofiaviolet: think happy thoughts (think happy thoughts)
2010-05-06 11:00 pm

(no subject)

Today's Daily Song is not a single song! I have zipped eight songs from the supplementary playlist for And In Darkness, Light, the name I use for stories about Marcus (currently in progress: a trilogy plus some other stuff).

And In Darkness, Light (Supplementary Soundtrack) 47.2mb

tracklisting )

how the music for AIDL works )

If I post about the actual content of AIDL, in terms of themes and plot and everything, that'll probably go in [community profile] auriel, but I'll link to it the next time I update my journal.

links )
sofiaviolet: *sigh* (sigh)
2010-05-06 01:06 am

(no subject)

Today's post is slightly late. I went to work and was super-productive! And then I did stuff other than read my dreamroll when I got home, and then Ellie and I went to get groceries. And then we didn't finish dinner until half past ten. /o\

Daily Song (right-click): Taking Back Sunday - Sink Into Me

I wore a skirt today!* I also made a very poor decision with regards to shoes. I've worn this pair before, but I guess never without socks or tights or something. I could feel that they were rubbing on my heels, but I didn't pay much attention until I was already at work and had a bunch of boxes out, since it didn't hurt that much. And then I happened to actually look at my feet, and there was kind of a lot of blood going on. I had to use four bandaids from the archives supply (normally reserved for treating paper cuts, methinks), and shall be wearing sandals for several days, until the wounds heal.

*Skirts are a big deal for me, since they take more effort than pants. I find them harder to coordinate with tops, and I tend to get nasty razor burn when I shave my legs, and I have to figure out shoes (since socks look dumb, and I don't own many pairs of stockings/pantyhose, and *points up* going without is not always feasible), and they're harder to wear in cold weather. So my skirt collection is sadly underutilized.

three weeks for dreamwidth links, part whatever )
sofiaviolet: a pair of sexy red heels on a hardwood floor (red shoes)
2010-05-04 11:20 pm

(no subject)

Daily Song (right-click): Escape the Fate - Cellar Door
This may have to go on certain of my writing playlists. (Not playlists I listen to while I write, mind you. More like fanmixes I make for myself.)

Academichic: Dress Your Best Week
I'd like to participate in that, but IDK whether I'll have the spoons.* I could try picking out my clothes ahead of time and writing the entry in advance, I guess. I've been meaning to assemble fabulous outfits more often (inspired partly by one of my coworkers and partly by the underutilized parts of my closet), but, ugh, effort. This kind of thing is usually the first to get pushed aside.

When it comes to picking out clothes in advance, there's also the problem of Boston's highly fickle weather. I can't just glance at a forecast and create five outfits for a work-and/or-class-week! I have to have backup outfits: what if it rains, what it it's suddenly and briefly hot or cold, etc?

* I'm still trying to figure out the extent to which I'm comfortable with conceptualizing my depression as a disability. I often feel like I am too functional to really count. :\

dreamwidth linkery )
sofiaviolet: Auriel: illustration of sun and stars (Auriel)
2010-05-04 04:23 am

Unreliable narrators

requested by [personal profile] blnchflr

Unreliable Narration in Auriel, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Protagonists' Issues

Background: When I refer to Auriel as a body of work, I refer to a group of unfinished (and, in some cases, unstarted) novels and stories about several characters, tied together in some cases by relationships between characters and in other cases simply by all happening in the same city around the same time.

Onward! )

So, in short, I love the idea of characters who pass incomplete, flawed, delusional, or false information to the reader, and I love writing them.
sofiaviolet: road signs in Boston: Storrow Dr., Callahan Tunnel, surface artery, detour (Boston)
2010-05-02 05:41 pm

(no subject)

Yesterday's concert was great (even though I had the nagging remains of a headache), and Thursday played some of my favorite songs, including the one I uploaded yesterday.

My train back from Worcester got in a little past two in the morning, and Ellie still came and picked me up.

I slept really really really late, and then Ellie and I went to Fourburgers (as Cambridge seems to be the only nearby place not getting its water from the "no srsly boil this" backup reservoirs). We attempted to figure out what Ellie should do for a cheap vacation, since she has this week off before summer term. Finally decided that maybe a day trip to Northampton was in order.

Then we tried to go to a grocery store in Cambridge but got lost, considered going to the one in Dedham we usually go to and rejected that idea except in case of emergency, tried to get on Memorial Drive but wound up on Storrow instead, decided to try the grocery at Jackson Square, and then actually went to one near Fenway because we wound up driving right past it.

So we have a case of bottled water now, and Ellie wants to go out to some lumber yard out in the middle of nowhere tomorrow, so she can get more if we need it.

Daily Song (right-click): My Chemical Romance - The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You
Since that's what Ellie asked to listen to in the car today. (She only seems to request MCR when we're going to be driving for a while, so I just start with Bullets and keep going until we get home. This is as far as we got today.)

If you want to vote for ideas I've already had or make topic suggestions, I'm going to begin work on those entries ASAP, probably later this evening.
sofiaviolet: music is my boyfriend (music is my boyfriend)
2010-05-01 02:30 pm

(no subject)

Daily Song (right-click): Thursday - Resuscitation of a Dead Man
Since I'm heading off to Worcester to see them tonight, and all.

links )
sofiaviolet: animated icon of http://xkcd.com/442 (boom de yada)
2010-04-30 10:38 pm

(no subject)

Still sick, I guess. I came home from work and took a three-hour nap. Or it's like the summer after my freshman year, when I rolled off the airplane in New Orleans, ate dinner with my parents, and slept for eighteen hours.

Today is Dreamwidth's first birthday! A year ago, the service entered open beta; I was lucky enough to have received an invite code during closed beta. Denise and Mark have of course made posts for this momentous occasion.

Daily Song (right-click): Sleater-Kinney - Youth Decay
Always one of my first ideas when Ellie and I are going to be in the car for a while (my ipod freaks out periodically when its volume is up all the way, like when it's plugged into her stereo, so it's best just to pick an artist with enough songs to last the whole trip and then not touch the thing).

Follow Friday: [community profile] followfriday | Latest Things
I love [community profile] accessibility_fail and [community profile] beginningcocks (NSFW) and [community profile] dreamsheep and [community profile] fucking_meds and [community profile] shareandsharealike and [community profile] three_weeks_for_dw and [community profile] tickybox and [community profile] transfic.
I would love to see [community profile] bdsm and [community profile] boston and [community profile] camberville and [community profile] davis_square and [community profile] factfinding and [community profile] history and [community profile] leftoverresearchquarterly and [community profile] polyamory and [community profile] simmonscollege and [community profile] style_salon become more active.
And as for people: [personal profile] ajnabieh, [personal profile] anchises, [personal profile] azurelunatic, [personal profile] charmian, [personal profile] damned_colonial, [personal profile] dingsi, [personal profile] eruthros, [personal profile] eumelia, [personal profile] heartequals, [personal profile] impertinence, [personal profile] languisity, [personal profile] lauredhel, [personal profile] marina, [personal profile] niqaeli, [personal profile] oursin, [personal profile] rydra_wong, [personal profile] stepps, [personal profile] synecdochic, [personal profile] thingswithwings, [personal profile] toft, [personal profile] trascendenza, [personal profile] trouble, [personal profile] zorkian, [personal profile] yasaman, [personal profile] yvi.
sofiaviolet: xkcd: stick figure in front of computer and text: Late? It's barely 3am! (up late)
2010-04-29 09:52 pm

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I took some nyquil a few hours ago because I think I have a cold. It has helped with the epic sneezefest, but now I feel really fuzzy. Apparently, it takes a full dose of nyquil to make me feel like I do at three in the morning (see icon); if I take just one gelcap, I can pretty much function normally.

Daily Song (right-click): The Distillers - Drain the Blood
I have been listening to this a lot lately.

Here are the links I've collected so far. )

Now I sleep.