I don't actually have the faintest idea how serious Hurricane Irene is going to be, but I haven't been able to work up all that much concern about it. I feel pretty confident Ellie and I won't starve or be flooded out or blown away. I am expecting the power to go out for at least an hour or two; we've had more power outages per year in JP than anywhere else.

On the other hand, we are taking semi-serious hurricane protections at work. A portion of the library basement has flooded before, as a result of prolonged rain of moderate heaviness (and a clogged storm drain somewhere nearby - mostly the storm drain). So we're doing what we can to stop it happening again.

Classes at Simmons start on the 1st but mine are actually spread out over more than a week. I suppose it's nice to ease into the new academic year?

I wouldn't say Doctor Who is my new fandom, exactly, because I'm not feeling an overwhelming desire to read fic. But I am enjoying it and I do plan to keep watching. Not only have I got the new episode marked on my mental calendar, I'm using Ellie's Netflix account to catch up on Nine and Ten, and I'm ahem-ing as much Old Who as I can get my hands on.

... or so sayeth the boyfriend, about my saving of correspondence.

Today I decided to configure Mail to serve as a local backup for my Google-Apps-For-Your-Domain account (I think it's working? yay). Backing up that inbox will also back up all my other GAFYD accounts, my undergraduate and graduate school email, and my old Gmail accounts,* so I really hope it works. (And then Time Machine will back up my backup. Whee.)

( because nobody but me cares about my email from 2003 )

Link is unrelated to the above blathering.

laughingrat: We're not all liberals

Cataloging as a tool for social (in)justice: In EBSCO's Academic Search Complete, articles discussing women's anger at men for actual, real-life, systemic violence and discrimination towards women are given the "MISANDRY" subject label, implying that calling out oppressive behaviors is "man-hating" and unreasonable. Articles about these actual, real-life, systemic crimes--rape, spouse abuse, incest, sexual harassment, etc.--are not, however, given the subject heading "MISOGYNY," despite research on an ongoing basis demonstrating that violence against marginalized persons is absolutely a systemic, not an individual, issue.

I move through the world with two basic philosophies: a dim view of human nature and a belief that the universe loves me and wants me to be happy.

Infotrope: I’ve been suspended from Google+

So today, I got off a plane this afternoon to find a pile of tweets, emails, and blog comments asking whether it was true that my Google+ account had been suspended. When I managed to get some wifi and check, it turned out that it had been.

I know there’s a lot of people wondering what happens when you get suspended, so here is my experience so far.

I came down with a cold on Thursday, and the worst of it has cleared out - just in time for the uterine gremlins to awaken. On the bright side, my period should be over before my sex life picks up again. (The cramps seem to be less severe in terms of actual muscle pain, but they're sharper and more symmetrical and more clearly focused on my uterus.)

A few weeks ago, we installed some new shelves in my room (there will be so. many. holes to patch when we move out, but it is worth it in the meantime), and as a result, I rearranged all the books - well, all my books and the shared-custody books; I do not mess with the order of the engineering/woodworking/etc things because they are definitely Not Mine. And I discovered that I had space for MOAR BOOKS!!!!11!1! even with some of the shelf space being reserved for display of tchotchkes. This is very exciting and I am using it as an excuse to buy things off my wishlist. (But I have to save space for books that are still in New Orleans. I only plan to retrieve a fraction of them, the rest being novels I don't want to read again and things left over from my Stereotypical Teenage Wiccan Phase, but a fraction of 400 is still a significant number.)

Two links that both come with trigger warnings (and lengthy blockquotes):
( Read more... )

Notes

My parents have been here for the past two weeks, and then my internet connection spent a couple of days being pissy, and then I had other shit to do. But I'm back!

Parents

It was a good visit! We did many fun things, such as go to museums (Museum of Science with Ellie's kinda-sorta-girlfriend-I-think,* two three year olds, and the dad of the of the other three year old! MFA, wherein I learned exactly how intensely my dad does museums), elbow our way through the North End (I have been to concerts that were less crowded than those sidewalks, sheesh, also who the fuck drives in the North End are you fucking kidding me), etc.

* Yeah, I'm not sure what's up with that relationship thing, so I do not have a single-word term for it. It is very functional and they seem happy! It's also kind of hilarious (but possibly only to me, because of the sheer amount of TMI I have on Ellie's life and personal identity).

Thanks to a trip to Ikea and two carloads off to Goodwill, my room is in pretty good order! This is kind of miraculous. I still have too much stuff, but A) some kind of shift has occurred that unblocked my ability to get rid of things I don't need and B) I have improved my storage capabilities.

An important note: if you are planning to rearrange some furniture, and are drawing something out on paper, make sure your measurements are correct. We were off by two feet.

Grad School

I am not sure why advising needed to be an all-day process, but it was. There was assorted fuckery related to my being listed with the wrong concentration and assigned to the wrong advisor, but I did have the proper advising experience I was supposed to. Then there was the unrelated fuckery of not enough seats in classes, the end results of which are that I'm taking core library classes in a slightly different but still completely reasonable order than I'd originally thought, and I am still waiting to hear which history class I've been placed in (they needed volunteers to take Methods some time other than first semester, and one of the alternatives was a women's and gender history course, so I volunteered, but we're being manually registered and I haven't received an email about it yet).

There were two really bright spots in my day: I think I met a friend of a former schoolmate (one year ahead of me, so we weren't really friends), and one of the professors pinged my "you are from the internet" radar. Also there was ice cream and I got to go to work for a little while afterwards.

Work

Boss is departing; she'll still be available to advise us but today was her last real workday. This makes me the second most senior employee in the archives. I am deeply unsettled by that.

I am processing a new collection... three new collections... six collections? There are three organizations who donated their records, so there will be three collections. There are six accessions right now, because sometimes they gave us stuff in multiple batches. Some stuff will need to be moved between accessions because it belongs to one of the other organizations. Sorting that out will be the easy part.

The third organization was created by the merger of the other two, which helps to explain the cross-pollination of materials and also makes it a little harder to deal with it. Furthermore, each of those orgs is the result of mergers and renamings of even older organizations, such that the final conglomerate can say it dates back to the 1800s. (The bulk of the collections is more modern, but there are items from the predecessor orgs and these are the oldest papers I have processed.) I am going to need a nice detailed organizational chart to make sure everything is housed where is belongs, is referenced where relevant, and is laid out sensibly and accurately in the finding aid. Fortunately for me, someone wrote a history of one of the orgs and all those materials are in the collection; a thank-you card to that person may be in order when I'm finally done.

(JP)

(That's supposed to represent those oval bumper stickers that usually have two-letter country abbreviations. Someone makes such a sticker for Jamaica Plain. I keep threatening to buy one for Ellie, to upgrade her Subaru wagon [Level One JP Vehicle] that now has a carseat for a small child [Level 2 JP Vehicle; can also qualify with one of those fences to keep your dog in the back] to a Level 3 JP Vehicle.)

Boomerangs has been holding a massive sale to empty the store ahead of planned renovations. I've paid them a visit every day since Tuesday; retail therapy works for me and thrift stores reduce the financial burden and potential for guilt. (I mostly look for things with violets on them. It's kind of a theme.) I also finally made it to one of our local botanicas, which I have been meaning to do for over three years (ever since we were apartment-hunting and I saw it out of the realtor's car window); unfortunately I think I kind of interrupted the owner's lunch. The botanica has a shop cat, whom I briefly petted when I walked in; I spent the rest of my time there being insistently headbutted in the ankles. Secretly I was delighted, because I almost always love cats more than they love me.

I also keep returning to City Feed for lunch. It is very pleasant to eat a ham and cheese sandwich and watch people walking by.

helens78: I didn't really want to post this, but, well. I think I have to.

"PROMPT REQUESTS SWEET FRIENDSHIP OR G-RATED ROMANCE; FILL IS SET IN BDSM CLUB."

I get the whole "want one thing from a prompt, get something radically different" thing, and I understand that FYFF macros are frequently sarcastic or ironic. In this case, though, it's by no means the joke premise that I'm objecting to. It's the wording of the joke itself.

It's a joke, but it's one that, intentionally or no, highlights and reinforces a lot of stereotypes about BDSM -- none of them good. It's kink-shaming, and it's full of negative ideas I can't just let stand without saying something.

thingswithwings: some thoughts on manpain. um. many thoughts on manpain, actually.

I started writing some vidder's notes for that vid about manpain that I made, and they just got longer and longer, and more and more speculative and meta-y, and eventually I had to give up on making them notes and make them into their own separate post about manpain. So, for those who are interested in my opinion on manpain, here it is! For those who just want to watch the vid, I have neatly cordoned this meta off from the vid so that you don't have to care about it. It's almost unforgivably long, so do feel free to skip.

kythryne: internet powers, activate!

Okay, people. I need you to take this viral, and fast.

We know someone in upstate New York who needs a good custody lawyer ASAP. I'm not at liberty to go into details publicly, but this woman is very afraid that her abusive boyfriend is going to get sole custody of her young child. She's presently being represented by a public defender who doesn't seem to care about the case, and she has very few resources left at this point. Her next hearing is on Thursday.

If you know a good lawyer in New York State who might be willing to take this case for a low fee or pro bono, or at least offer her advice or support, please let me know. If you don't know anyone, please repost this far and wide. As a mother and an abuse survivor, it makes me absolutely sick to my stomach to contemplate a child being left in the hands of an abuser.

I can be reached at kythryne@gmail.com if you have any leads or want to help.

The internet can work miracles. Let's go.

Recently

Went to a few yard sales (and the Kinky Tea and Tag Sale yesterday, where I spent most of my time socializing, and Boomerangs today, where I found a fantastic knife block for $2, which has made Ellie pretty happy). It turns out that yard sales make an effective carrot for getting me up relatively early on the weekends, and also getting me out of the house. Unfortunately, I walked 3.7 miles yesterday and 1.9 miles today, wearing flip flops for the first time since last year. Oops.

Links

( science, kink and fanfic, Dreamwidth stuff, mental illness )

The Boston Area Rape Crisis Center is holding a training session on June 4th for its Survivor Speakers Bureau.

I should apply; I want to do that. I am afraid to apply; what if I can't?