picked a handful of violets in my name

Community archives thing at the Anarchist Bookfair went reasonably well although none of us had the faintest idea what we were doing. We're going to keep doing it though! Improvement through repetition etc.

Bonus of attending Anarchist Bookfair: bumped into my friend Jeremy and got to catch up with him a bit. I hadn't seen him in ages, which I suppose it what happens when I am friends with people who live in Somerville.

I am now the happy owner of several secondhand cashmere sweaters in good condition. I shall be toasty all winter. :)

I was invited to spend Thanksgiving with Cory and his family but, due to the cost of travel for said holiday and the fact that I will continue to be Overwhelmed By School until this damned semester is over, I have decided to zip down there some time between the end of classes and my parents' arrival in Boston for Christmas.

rydra_wong is hosting another Giant Community Rec-O-Matic!

Dreamwidth account creation is open through the end of 2011 - no code or payment required.

I've been in New Orleans since Sunday. We arrived an hour late because our plane took its sweet time showing up at Logan. Not sure why. But we had a reasonably nice flight and arrived in time for dinner.

Apparently when I'm in New Orleans I wake up by 8:00. IDEK. Probably has to do with going to bed fairly early, since my parents (especially Mom) tend to go to bed (or doze off on the couch) by 22:00.

On Monday, Mom took Ellie and I to Magazine Street and bought me some new clothes, including a nice cardigan and some black jeans. Yesterday, we got groceries. Today is Mom's last day of work before Christmas (so it's my last day of having to kill time in the mornings by watching HGTV); I've re-purpled my hair yet again and am now waiting for her to get home so we can figure out our afternoon plans.

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.

Recently

Garage sales didn't happen because I was up too late last night to get out of bed this morning. Cleaned my room some (needs to be DONE by the time my parents come to visit, since I currently have the futon boxed in and they need to sleep on it).

I also went to Goodwill and Boomerangs to get myself out of the house. I got:

Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor, which I will probably give to Dad

a summer weight black skirt of sufficient length

a strawberry-print shirt

a very gay umbrella ($6 is about what I'm willing to pay for a folding umbrella, because of how quickly I ruin them, and we can use this as a parasol at Pride!)

a magnet-backed weekly schedule whiteboard

All Out Of Munchies notepad (because Ellie and I grocery-shop like stoners even though we're not)

a chips-and-dip plate

a purple and grey plaid skirt

21 Days of Dreamwidth

20. Yes, but what are your thoughts on yaoi?

I was pretty into yaoi for a while - there was a big comm on LJ where I could get scans. But then that comm tightened its age restrictions/enforcement quite a bit and I went back to getting my unrealistic guy-on-guy porn fix exclusively from fic.

Links

rivkat: Media piracy in emerging economies

An extremely interesting study of piracy, defined as large-scale unauthorized reproduction both for profit and via free downloads, around the world. The authors conclude that piracy is largely a problem of a globalized Euro-American entertainment/industrial complex that has successfully generated demand for its products but unsuccessfully served that demand at prices people in other countries can pay, largely from refusal to price copies so they’d take roughly the same amount of purchasing power in poor nations. One example: converting prices as a percentage of per capita income, a Dark Knight DVD sold in India would cost $663 in the US; A Beautiful Mind would cost $421.

Plans

MIT Flea, Mob meeting/demo, JP picnic munch.

A good time was had with the family; I'm sorry I didn't make it outside that bubble to hang out with friends.

Made it out of The Bead Shop for under $100 for the first time since discovering it. Mom was shocked. We also managed to get elliesaur some new clothes, which is actually a pretty major accomplishment. (Also, flannel shirts: why so hard to find?)

Celebration in the Oaks was nice, even if they do need to improve their event management. (The usual parking lot was closed, the new parking lot was a zoo, and the line was less organized and self-aware than any concert line I've stood in.) After stopping for dinner and spending forever looking for parking, we actually walked away the first night - we looked at the length of the line we were standing in and decided there was no way we would get inside City Park and get to do anything before they shut down for the night. We tried again the next night with pre-purchased tickets and showing up before they even opened, which worked perfectly. One train ride, one roller coaster ride, a walk through the botanical gardens, and then we got dinner.

The weather was great. I can't believe I used to complain about how cold I was during the winter. (Although I guess New Orleans was the coldest weather I'd ever known...)

Notes

Not dead! Back in Boston since Saturday, and already caught up on things!

Recently

Just finished eating half the curry I made tonight; the other half is in the fridge. I am going to bring it to work tomorrow. Leftovers for lunch - it's almost like I'm a real grown-up!

Ellie and I went to the mall yesterday. We were supposed to get clothes for her. Instead, we got clothes for me. /o\ On the other hand, Hello Kitty rain boots in grown-up sizes, fuck yes.

I continue to experiment with purple hair. Attempt 3 (dark purple over failed single-process bleach-and-purple) is the best yet but still not quite right.

Grand Forks

( Spent nearly every waking moment with C., got to see my family, consumed much media. Was not really online. )

Relationship Stuff

( :D! )

We're planning more visits, and I convinced C. to install Skype. But I think my journal will stop being All About My Boyfriend now; he'll show up from time to time along with other important people in my life.

Memery

From Ask Me Anything:

Looking back, are you comfortable with the way you reacted when your sister came out to you?

Not really. :( I could have done more. I am especially disappointed with how little help I was to her in 2006/2007, her last year of high school, while she was trying to figure things out. True, I didn't have nearly as much knowledge of gender and trans* issues then, but I probably still could have been more supportive than I actually was.

But as far as her actual coming-out? I think I did okay then, although I didn't adjust to name-and-pronouns as fast as I would have liked, even if there is a specific reason for it (trying not to out her to Mom and Dad before she had the chance to tell them herself).

Links

( 10 links )

Plans

Figure out Netflix. Buy more $5 vermouth for cooking.

No pictures today; my outfit was kind of boring. Pinstripe pants and a Threadless shirt. (I will try to get up a picture of my jacket, though, because it's fucking cool. Black, with larger versions of these clasps.)

The good news is that the next few days may be warm enough for me to wear some of the cute stuff I picked out. And I have actual reasons for leaving the house, which forces me to put clothes on. \o/

Plans! I am having a busy weekend, it looks like. Friday night is Slutbutter, because Cameryn Moore (most of my weekend is because Cameryn Moore). Saturday, I want to go to Sowa Open Market, and then Ellie and I are heading out to Wilmington again for roller derby. Sunday is the Flea at MIT again (note to self: visit ATM beforehand), and then Phone Whore, and then Fuckbucket.

My Monday is currently 100% empty, and I am going to nap hard, motherfuckers. I will have earned it.

Daily Song (right-click): Cobra Starship - Move Like You Gonna Die

1. history: Another book, and a consideration of a historiographical problem

2. jjhunter: dreamsheep poem

3. trascendenza: On Cantonese tones.

And since it's now technically Friday... boston (which I co-mod, as of recently). And unfunnybusiness_dw exists. I love reading steampunk_nusantara.

I'm actually pondering pruning my dreamroll... so I suppose this would be a good time to declare amnesty: if you're tired of my face or my links or my frequency of posting or my whatever, you can unsubscribe!

( Let me talk about clothes for a minute! )

Daily Song (right-click): Mindless Self Indulgence - Shut Me Up
Okay, at this point, it's looking like Daily Song will be a tour of my 25 most-played songs. So here's number three. I listened to this whole album a lot during my first year of college. (Relevant icon is relevant.)

And here are the links I had kicking around my Dreamwidth section of TooManyTabs (actual, organized link roundup soon, I hope):

charmian: recent LJ controversies, Three Weeks for DW and Active comms? And, is growth a problem? (maybe not)

holyschist: A totally non-scientific poll about blogging focus and Dreamwidth

heartequals: "How does one go about changing their internet name? People's internet names are so fascinating to me."

Ellie is watching Top Gear and laughing so hard it sounds like she's weeping in agony over her linear systems final.

Went to the mall yesterday, wheee. I felt the need to get out of the house, and Mom had sent me some money for Easter.

Acquired:
* belts! I want my pants to stay up.
* socks! Because I like them to match my shirt.
* comfy office-casual and office-super-casual tops!
* sequin-covered mini dress! Because I felt horrifically under-dressed at the Slutcracker cast party and foresee other events like it in my future.

Today, I have been cleaning out my closet. Sofia's rules of closet-cleaning:
1. If it doesn't fit, it goes. You have not changed sizes for several years now, and no matter how many mozzarella sticks you eat, you will probably not gain weight. Likewise, if it didn't fit over your hipbones when it showed up in the mail, it will not magically do so in the future.
2. If you have a lot of the same type of thing, you should pare down the collection. No one needs that many jackets.
3. If you try it on and then lol at yourself in the mirror, it needs to go.

Results: one-quarter of closet and some random stuff hanging around = one hamper's worth of discards. \o/

( blah blah ipod problems )

I suspect this ipod is in its death throes. :\


Got another series of calls from last week's unidentifiable number - finally picked up on their third attempt and confirmed that it was a wrong number. Hopefully the guy figures out what number he really needs to call, and stops waking me up.

Ellie and I went shopping today. I got a bunch of candles at Target. Also a purple plaid cape. We got groceries and then came home and ate the entire box of frozen mozzarella sticks.


Dreamwidth code push soon (8pm Pacific)! I will try to answer comments first - ikea hacker accidentally my weekend.