picked a handful of violets in my name

Lots of snow, but we didn't lose power. Ellie and I have spent most of the weekend cleaning the house. This included trying out our new Laundry Pod (which we got at a pretty steep discount from Fab.com for Christmas), for washing nice wool sweaters and delicates. It is pretty much a giant salad spinner with a drain hose, but it seems remarkably effective as long as you don't over-fill it with clothes. My bras and tights rejoice at the gentler handling.

I bought a lot of groceries a week ago and have been succeeding reasonably well at feeding myself. The only failures have been one under-flavored curry and a poor understanding of how fast the baby bok choy would go bad, meaning I didn't get to use it (and want to replace it before making my first attempt at at-home shabu shabu).

I have taken over the email newsletter for the local historical society.

Planning to do Mardi Gras nails for Tuesday. I have a decent collection of nail polish but I don't wear it very much. I am unskilled at painting my nails and, because I work with my hands a lot of the time, it chips quickly.

Signed up for SuperBetter. I think gamification will help me form better habits.

Hater-Free Wednesdays is a new tumblr aggregating reviews and stories about comic shops to help people find local shops that will not shit all over their gender/race/etc.

I bought a ticket for Fall Out Boy's Boston show in May! Very pleased to have them back. I'm not exactly in bandom any more - I am hardwired mono-fannish, and got into the Avengers thanks to the movie (and then I slid sideways into ALL THE MARVEL COMICS EVER, sort of, so that's a huge canon and fandom) - but I miss going to concerts.

stultiloquentia: Fictions and Elsewheres

Yesterday on the train I read Scientific American's special report on parallel universes. Briefly: they ain't science fiction. They're theoretical, of course, but at least some of the theories are at this point pretty darned solid and make sense of increasingly huge heaps of data.

...

Why should fandom care? Well, mostly because science is cool. But also? It means our stories are real. Quite literally. Every course of events and configuration of particles, every decision and every outcome you can possibly imagine is, in an infinite universe, occurring right now. Kurt and Blaine? Somewhere, incomprehensibly far off, they're as solid as you and I, and muddling through snowstorms and love. Somewhere slightly off to the left, they've already been married for eighty years. We'll never meet them, and nor will our descendants, because, among other problems, the multiverse is expanding faster than it's possible to travel though it. But they're out there.

They're making up stories about you.

I knew there was a reason I made an entire religion in Auriel whose cosmology says that everything is stories and god is a writer. (Well, a reason besides ego. Heh.)

I got my hair cut today. Still not sure what it'll look like after I wash it and don't volumize it with five different products, a round brush, and a hair dryer. (I lack the brush, the products, the skills, and the time and give-a-fuck to actually do it myself.) But right now it looks awesome, even after I went shopping all after noon and tried on a bunch of tops and dresses that went on over my head. (Still don't know what I'm wearing to the wedding this summer. Still don't know what I'm supposed to be wearing to the wedding this summer.)

My D&D group hasn't played in a couple of weeks. :( But Shadowrun is meeting regularly. We've switched to playing mostly at MIT instead of in JP. This past Thursday, we were wrapping up the run from the previous week, and we finished pretty early. Instead of starting something new or going home early, we played Cards Against Humanity. My Shadowrun group is the perfect group of people to play that with; we're all on the same wavelength so it's consistently funny-terrible and not awkward-terrible or rage-inducing-terrible.

I have decided I like red lipstick:

Its texture helps remind me not to bite my lips all the time (much like the slickness of nail polish helps remind me not to bite my nails).

Red lipstick + pale skin + dark hair = seems not inappropriate when my clothes required any degree of effort above "jeans and t-shirt." Not necessarily always the "right" choice, but probably not egregiously "wrong."

On the other hand, I'm not sure how well it goes with purple. (I am always purple, thanks to the hair. But so is a lot of my clothes, and most of the eye makeup I own.)

At any rate, the possibility that my mouth clashes with my hair shall not stop me from testing ALL THE RED LIPSTICKS at Sephora tomorrow before the munch.

My eye makeup skills are still subpar. I can kindasorta apply eyeliner now (I never thought I'd learn that skill! *excited*), but I still can't get it nice enough to wear in public. More practice needed. Eyeshadow... I can apply one color to my entire eyelid, that's about it.

Going to see Rasputina tonight with Cid and Daly, with possible trip to Good Vibes beforehand if the timing works out. :)

Right now, I am sitting at home with my hair under a plastic shower cap, slowly re-purpling. I'll wash it out soon and then probably hit the lunch buffet at Ghazal. I ♥ their lunch buffet so much: a nice big plate of chicken tikka masala and rice, a couple of pieces of bhatoora, and a whole basket of naan to myself. (I am by nature a grazer, but since I have trouble noticing I'm hungry and remembering to eat on a regular basis, the ability to eat large and less frequent meals is important.)

I'm pretty sure everyone reading this has already seen Hyperbole and a Half: Adventures in Depression, but I too must link it.

First round of bleach is done; it's been months since I redid my roots and I decided to move some of my purple around. So everything is hideous right now! I'll let it dry, run a comb through it, and see where needs more bleach. Then (depending on how late I want to stay up/how early I want to get up tomorrow) purple! And probably black to cover up a few sections of retired purple and any bleach oopsies.

Quizzical Pussy: Be little.

Think you’re better than one fucking person on this planet? Feel innately more correct, important, or that you occupy a moral high ground over any one group of people based on sex, age, weight, race, religion or lack thereof, sexual identity, orientation, or, hell, political affiliation? Bless your heart, all toddlers think they’re the center of the universe! You’re just a tiny bit behind, darling. Once you grow up a little you’ll let go of that and be a normal, healthy person.

It’s not being condescending. It’s being optimistic.

Figleaf's Real Adult Sex: Logical But Not Necessarily Intuitive: Boundaries and Consent Go Both Ways

Bottom line: We don’t usually think of boundaries and consent as moving in the direction of the top, or in heterosexual relationships as working towards the man. But boundaries are boundaries and consent is consent and when they’re confronted it’s important that they be respected regardless of who’s boundaries they are or who’s consent is required.

Subject refers to icon.

Day of Epic Personal Responsibility! Got shit done at work. More importantly, wrote emails I'd been putting off to history advisor and my closest contact in the honors department. Haven't sent them yet; I am going to read over them one more time after dinner.

Tomorrow's Epic Personal Responsibility! Print off paperwork and spend part of lunch break chasing down people in order to declare my minor in women's studies. Because I took all the courses, dammit. (This may be a multi-day project...)

Other things I need to do: senior clearance, apply to graduate, register for classes (while I'm in North Dakota, hence the urgency of the emails: if something goes wrong, I don't want to be trying to fix it over email with no advance warning to whoever has to deal with it/me).

Senior pictures are next week, apparently. I feel kind of meh about it, but then I am pretty meh about most things like that. I mean, I tried to skip my high school graduation (and while I don't have any strong feelings now that it's over, I still think it was a waste of an afternoon). It's kind of telling that the main thing encouraging me to bother with it is the fact that my hair will be super-purple (since this weekend is my last chance to do that before I need to have very bright hair for Halloween). I might even be willing to order prints, for the sheer awesome of being able to give them to my stodgier relatives.

• Things I Don’t Have to Think About Today

  Today I don’t have to think about still not being equal.
  Today I don’t have to think about what it takes to keep going.
  Today I don’t have to think about how much I still have to hide.
  Today I don’t have to think about how much prejudice keeps hold.
  Today I don’t have to think about how I’m meant to be grateful that people tolerate my kind.
  
  Today I don’t have to think about all the things I don’t have to think about.
  But today I will.

• The Slutcracker
  Boston/Camberville-area people! We should make plans for this. I quite enjoyed it last year.


• NaNoCraftMo
  I don't think I'll be officially participating, but I could certainly do with some effort in the craft arena. (I'm still undecided about NaNoWriMo, too.)

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.

Notes

I have come up with this little posting template (okay, I looked at shadesong's journal and mostly borrowed her format) to help myself post more regularly. We'll see how it works...

Recently

Tired; I stayed up too late chatting with C. And then after work today, I went to the Dating While Feminist event for three hours, which was very social and, as a result, kind of exhausting.

Oh, and the hem fell out of the bottom of my right trouser leg this morning; I fixed it with safety pins. Anyone in Boston know a good tailor? Convenient to Orange Line a plus, convenient to Northeastern a doubleplus. Some of my pants need fixing; pretty much all of them need shortening. *is too short for regular women's inseams but too tall for petites*

Yay for contacts! Although the left one is not feeling very happy. I am kind of wondering if I have it in backwards - but I can still see just fine! IDK whether having the lens inside out would actually affect vision correction, or just comfort.

Furthermore, my contacts claim they can be worn continuously for a week or daily for two weeks (taking them out to sleep); I think I'm going to have to go for the continuous end of things, because augh plucking lenses out of my eyes! Much much harder than sticking them in.

( Dreamwidth )

Links!

• via rivenwanderer: Riot Nrrd Comics | riotnrrdcomics_feed
• damned_colonial: Stretching a metaphor til it breaks

  So I was just chatting on IM with epershand and I produced a whole theory about Perl and Python which I will now attempt to summarise for you.

Productive morning of research, despite my bout of Academic Impostor Syndrome (resulting partly from the fact that I don't have the college credit aspect of this paper nailed down very well). Then Mom and I grabbed lunch and I went to the dermatologist. I have had this little red dot on the tip of my nose for years, and today I got it fixed with some kind of electronic zap via needle.

More research tomorrow.

Dyed my hair - I had done it not that long ago but I somehow fucked up. I had a whole patch above/to the right of my left ear that just didn't get affected and was many many shades lighter. So now my hair is uniformly the darkest one can go besides black.

I'm still kind of sick. The only thing wrong with me is a sore throat and cough that feed each other. Reading stories of hacks and pranks out loud to my family probably didn't help.

I had to burn all those cds I made for my mom before I left Boston, because I apparently moved my laptop around too much while they were burning. They all skip all the fucking time. On the other hand, the albums that were supposed to be gapless actually are this time around.

It's now technically Christmas. My family will do the gift thing at some point within the next 23 hours. Mom is going to go to church - she kind of has to, I think, seeing as she teaches at a Catholic school. And I need some sleep. We're a lot more laid back about this than we were when I was a kid. No waking up at stupidly early hours. I don't even think anybody wrapped presents. We all know what we're getting because we were there when the gifter bought it, or in my case at least, bought it ourselves with the parental credit card.

So I already know what I'm getting and could do a gifty inventory now, but I'll wait until it properly passes into my possession.

Night night all. I'll see you around lunchtime, I suspect.

♥ you all.