lunasariel | Looooong weekend, tolerably busy week, and a meme

Sorry about being incommunicado for so long, chaps and chapesses! It's been a wee bit of a crazy weekend (and, well, a crazy week, but that's nothing unusual). As I may have mentioned in my last post, the plan was to take a quick trip down to see the family in LA for the long weekend and remind everybody what I look like, since I'll be visiting JC (who is at UCLA, true, but UCLA is on the southern end of the enormous morass that is Los Angeles, and Woodland Hills, where my family lives, is at the northern tip) for T-Day itself (acronyms FTW!), but that didn't quite go through. My mom had kind of a craptacular week, and so wanted to go down with just herself and RG, so I ended up house-sitting (and A-sitting, although she insists that she doesn't need sitting anymore), which worked out rather well, as it turns out.

RG came to pick me up after class on Friday, and the drive back up to Sebastopol was kind of, to borrow

hamsterwoman's phrase, fraught. His mom just died of throat cancer about two or three weeks ago, and right now he's just kind of in a daze. From what I've been able to gather, his relationship with his parents, especially his father, is kinda tense, but when we swung by their place in Santa Barbara last summer, he seemed to get along with his mother pretty well. I recently read a quote (I forget where) that ran something like "It doesn't matter how old we are when we lose our parents, there is always a sense of being orphaned," and I saw a lot of that with him. He's not the most emotionally self-aware guy around, so I don't think he really knows what to do with himself in a situation like this; I'm glad he's got my mom, as always, for support, because otherwise, I have a feeling that things might get pretty bad. But we talked about the cats (I think that, aside from my mom, he's closer to Apollo than any living thing) and movies (he recc'd both Skyfall and Cloud Atlas, the former of which I don't think I'll have time to see and the latter of which is already out of theaters here in Berkeley, and I didn't have time to see it in Sebastopol. AAAAUUUUURRRRGGGGHHH!), and only got mildly lost, so once I got over the initial awkwardness of "what does one *say* to a person one has known for one's entire life but isn't particularly close to, and who has just lost a parent?", things went pretty well.

When we got back to Sebastopol, I hadn't even had time to unpack before my mom got back herself, and she and I went out to D's (somewhere between a burger joint and a diner) to catch up before she and RG left. It was really, really good to talk to her - I got all the news about the family, talked a little about my H concerns and ways to handle them, and just generally got some reassurance that I wasn't being whiny or weak by seeking psychological help. Oh, and I'll never turn down the chance for free burgers and onion rings, so there's that. ;) We didn't have an awful lot of time, though, because, while they did the smart thing and decided to not make the whole 7-hour drive in one go, the halfway point where we/they usually end up staying is still a good 4 or 5 hours away, and by that time it was 8:00 at night, and she'd been at work all day, so off they went. Once they left, H came over, and it was basically the same process, only the psychological issues we talked about were hers, and her pushiness/my passive-aggressiveness, of course, didn't come up. But it sounds like she and C are doing better, which is great - I really want both of them to be happy, because they deserve it like nobody else I know, but the deck is stacked against them in so many ways, so they've really had to work at it. But it sounds like everybody is doing what they need to be doing, medically speaking, C is still looking hard for work, and H is taking a quick course to be one of those people who draw your blood at the blood bank in order to earn some money.

H spent the night in P's room, because the next day was going to be Thanksgiving: Practice Round. Because none of us have made a full Thanksgiving dinner on our own before, we decided to make this weekend our trial round, so that we could get any n00b mistakes out of the way ahead of time. This turned out to be a good idea, as, contrary to the instructions I got from my dad, it turns out that a roast takes more than 40 minutes to cook. We eschewed the traditional turkey, mashed potatoes, etc. (which I'm half glad about [I hate yams/sweet potatoes, pecans, pumpkin, and most things that involve cranberries], and half sad about [I do love me some turkey and mashed taters]) in favor of a Yorkshire pudding and accompanying roast. H concocted a very tasty rub for the roast - white pepper, garlic salt, and some rosemary from our garden. IMO, there was a little too much pepper, but then again, I'm the card-carrying World's Biggest Spice Wimp. The pudding was just fun to make, though; I have a feeling that we checked on it way more than necessary just to see it puff up to seven times its initial height (we measured) before deflating back to about twice its initial height. We entertained the idea of cooking something out of A Feast of Ice and Fire, which they gave me for my birthday last summer, and while we ended up not making any of the main dishes (I nixed most of the Dornish food on suspicion of spiciness, and we didn't know where to get quail or snake), we did make that iced milk with honey and cinnamon thing that Ned and Grand Maester Pycelle drink in AGoT, which was delicious - I thought it would be too cold, since it was, like, 50º outside, but it got unexpectedly toasty after cooking most of the day. A even consented to try some, and even came back for seconds, so I call this an unmitigated success. We also bought the ingredients for iced berries in sweet cream, but we ran out of time for them.

The reason we ran out of time was that my dad was hosting his usual Sunday dinner on Saturday instead, so C, H, AD (H's sister, the astute reader may remember, with whom H is very close), A, and I all trooped over there. I was initially afraid we would all start out on the wrong foot like last time, but Stepmom didn't call H a "hellion," so at least there's that. Actually, dinner preparation went very well - Dad had barbecued, C and I mixed up some lemonade, and H and AD got an impromptu lecture in Emily Post table settings (about which my dad has always been strangely insistent - the fork is on the left on top of the napkin, the knife [bow *in*, not *out*] and spoon whether or not the meal actually requires spoons in that order on the right, water glass above the fork, wine glass above the knife and spoon). Dinner itself was delicious, as always, and flowed fairly smoothly. Stepmom's mom had just flown up from Florida that day, and luckily ended up next to C, who speaks the best Spanish out of any of us, so she was able to talk to him, and apparently show him her poetry, and she said later that he was charming. But my dad was already about halfway asleep (everybody keeps telling him that now he has ~~neophytes~~ interns to do all the stuff that requires getting up at quarter to four in the morning requires, but I guess he still likes doing it all himself) and I think Stepmom had drunk a little too much, because she ended up saying, not meaning to be offensive that, given C's and H's combined list of medical issues, they shouldn't have children. I don't think she knew that H's #1 goal is to be a mommy, but that really cheesed her off. And then A felt slighted and had one of her (increasingly rare, it must be noted) tantrums and stomped off in a huff, but at least Dad got to have a nice long talk with her about it. So, overall, about 50/50.

Team C/H/AD went home shortly after we got back to my mom's place, after noodling around online for a bit and showing each other things like Epic Rap Battles of History (largely hilarious, especially Columbus vs. Captain Kirk and Einstein vs. Stephen Hawking) and the new trailer for World War Z (I'm not holding my breath). H and I had planned to go to Plato's Closet, a neat secondhand place she and AD have been frequenting of late, but she evidently got engrossed in something or other and didn't text me back all day, so that fell through. Which, TBH, was probably a good thing; I brought the usual crazy amount of course reading with me, and actually managed to get through a good chunk of it after doing literally nothing but read all day. Wooooo! But my big worry that weekend was a paper I had due on Tuesday, which I had a really hard time getting started with - it required a bunch of secondary sources and extra resources, so I only had my thesis half-formulated by Monday. My dad drove me back Monday evening, and seemed really down - apparently LR and MH, two of my stepsiblings, are giving him trouble, and HR, who is only about six months younger than me (her and I being friends is actually how he and Stepmom met) is pregnant, which I didn't even ask him about, because I imagine he hit the freakin' wall when he found out about *that* one. I ended up having to stay up most of Monday night/Tuesday morning in order to get that paper done on time.

'Course, the big event Monday was Luna's First Livestream!

rikibeth very kindly hosted one of the 1993 The Three Musketeers when she found out that I hadn't seen it, and it was glorious. Five words: Tim Curry as Cardinal Richelieu! He was deliciously hammy, although (and I know this is hard to imagine) he was actually out-hammed by the captain of his guards, who literally had an eyepatch, black twirly mustache, and wore all black, even aside from the glorious camp of his performance. In fact, the whole thing was deliciously campy. (Oh, and five more words: Charlie Sheen as Aramis.) They pretty much threw historical accuracy (except for, apparently, a period-appropriate Baroque carriage) and the plot of the novel out the window (although, of course, the broad story remained more or less intact) and straight-up Errol Flynn'ed most of it, which is the path straight to my heart. I was raised on Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, and especially The Adventures of Robin Hood (we literally wore out two VHS tapes), so the hero and Dragon fencing their way across a crumbling wall? Sold. Messages of freedom delivered via crossbow? Solder. Swinging from banners/chains/chandeliers? Soldest. Oh, and the bromance was pretty weapons-grade. Athos' and D'Artagnan's interactions pretty much went like this:
D'Artagnan: GRR I HATEZ U >:O
Athos: *sigh* Shame that I have to kill you, pretty little thing that you are.
D'Artagnan: YAY ILU LET'S BE BFFS CAN I BE A MUSKETEER ALL FOR ONE AND ONE FOR ALL :D
Athos: ...um, okay?
*Adventures ensue*
D'Artagnan: *grumble* *strikes out with barmaid*
Athos: I am wounded and cynical, but secretly sensitive. Let me tell you about my failed marriage.
D'Artagnan: Wow, that sucks. ~~You have beautiful eyes.~~ So now are you done with girls, or what?
Athos: Yep, pretty much. Damn, you're pretty. *leans in*
D'Artagnan: I feel strangely connected to you, despite having known you for only, like, two days. *leans in*
Porthos: *CRASH*
Athos: GODDAMMIT, PORTHOS!
*fanfic ensues*
Athos: We must split up for safety's sake!
Other Musketeers: But what about safety in nu-
Athos: IgetD'Aartagnanseeyouguysinthreedaysbye!
D'Artagnan: :D
*fight ensues*
Athos: OK, there's like a million of these guys. Run while I hold them off!
D'Artagnan: NOOOOOOO!
Athos: Your life is more important than my own! Now go before I shoot you myself!
D'Artagnan: I love y- I mean, I'll never forget you! One more unnecessarily close embrace for the road?
Athos: G'wan then.
*seduction by vampy femme fatale ensues*
D'Artagnan: Sorry, lady, taken.
Athos: BITCH, YOU DID NOT JUST KIDNAP MY BOYFRIEND!
Athos: ...wait, that's my wife. Crap.
D'Artagnan: Awkward...

Chris O'Donnell's D'Artagnan is now my headcanon for Loras Tyrell (albeit with slightly darker hair and brown, not cornflower-blue eyes), cheeky little bastard that he is, and, as you can see he had some fairly ridiculously slashtastic moments with Athos, including a rather intimate little tête-a-tête (complete with invasions of personal space, some pretty intense gazing, and quite a bit of ambiguous comments re: Athos' failed marriage and D'Artagnan's feelings regarding it). But my favorite was the scene shortly after, where Athos practically drags D'Artagnan off when the Musketeers have to split up to avoid discovery, flips out when they're caught (it turns out Kiefer Sutherland has a rather impressive "YOU INTERRUPTED MY ~~HONEYMOON~~ DATE, DAMMIT!" death glare), and goes into Protective Mode, urging D'Artagnan to flee while he holds them off, which prompts yet another round of intense gazing and a rather vehement, even anguished, "I'll never forget you!" from D'Artagnan.

rikibeth, of course, wrote glorious fanfic of it. Ultimate verdict: not quite the slashtastic levels of Hornblower (in that Athos and D'Artagnan actually kept their hands on the outside of each other's clothes, unlike Certain Other People), but delightfully campy and fun; exactly what I needed after a day full of Faulkner. So that was the fun part of Monday.

Tuesday was my first counseling appointment, and it went...okay. The counselor dude seemed very fixated on whether or not I had friends, how much time I spent with them, whether or not they were my "support," etc. He didn't seem to like the fact that I find even my best friends wearing to spend time with, and I didn't even bring up the thing where, TBH, lately I've been deriving my greatest pleasure in social interaction from flailing at people over the Internet about people who don't exist. And, actually, I'm coming to think that's a huge part of it - as a pretty standard-model introvert, I love talking to people...on my own terms, when I can put off interacting when I don't feel like it, and knowing there's always someone there when I *do* feel like it, so there's none of the sense of intrusion and dragging obligation that can make IRL interactions so tiresome. But aside from that, he focused pretty much on the academic side of things, so the stiff-necked, prickly Stark-Gryffindor hybrid in me is worried that I'm being pigeonholed into the ol' "oh, another senior is taking too many units and is freaking out about it" standby. Of course, the Styffindor in me may have just been set off by the fact that he was using that soft, gentle voice that I'm sure counselors are trained to use to soothe people, but my one crazy-making, irrational (in that I see it waaaaay more than it actually happens) pet peeve is being condescended to/patronized, and it sounded rather like a talking-down-the-crazy-lady voice, which made me kinda >:(. But at least he took my more serious concerns, er, seriously, and seemed pleased that I wanted to avoid medication if possible. He had me schedule a doctor's appointment to rule out biological causes for my headaches (which was another thing he seemed a little too fixated on - he seems to think they're a major problem, and I had trouble communicating to him that they're infrequent, only rarely last longer than a day or so, and are mostly clearly study headaches), which, being the Responsible Adult™ I am, I have yet to schedule. Our next appointment isn't until the 27th, though, so it's not like I don't have time. XD

Tuesday was a big day - Paper of Doom due, Counseling Appointment Round One, and my last official HoME class! It was basically a wrap party - we covered a lot of little snippets that had fallen by the wayside: Hobbit evolution, 1,001 Reasons Why Galadriel Is Better Than You, and we even went through some LotR poetry to pick out the "cats of Queen Beruthiel"-style references, now that we can be relied upon to know what we're talking about. Every week, someone either submits a one-page reaction paper or brings some discussion questions into class, all to keep us honest, and this week was mine. I only had one page, but I spent the whole time blabbering about all the reasons Galadriel is awesome, which mostly ended up being how she fits into Tolkien's schema for antiheroes (or just general Silmarillion-era heroes) - the initial flaws later working out to a net benefit (that is, when they don't lead to self-destruction, a lá Fëanor or Gollum), the mixed parentage (when we were on the Eärendil chapter, Memo made the excellent point that Elrond and Elros were pretty much required to do something spectacular, since they had the blood of literally every single family of note, both Eldar and Edain, that had been mentioned), and the sort of quiet, melancholy that could be atonement, contemplation, or both. And I was sorely tempted to title my paper Galadriel Don't Need No Man, because Celeborn was just useless - he was racist (speciesist?) towards the dwarves when Galadriel wanted to make friends, listened to Saruman when Galadriel listened to Gandalf, and just generally wasn't an awful lot of help. There's technically going to be class next week, but we're just going to be watching the Bakshi The Hobbit (which I generally rather dislike, but I do remember thinking that the goblins' song when they're burning the tree the dwarves and Bilbo are trapped in was pretty neat). And then, the week after that is the HOBBIT PROMO PARTY!!! Turns out it'll be on the 27th, probably around 6ish (that's when our class usually is), and all comers are welcome. I'm still pretty much in a state of squee that this is actually happening - I'm not sure whether I'm going to dress up yet, but I'm actually considering going out, buying a flowy white dress/black wig/fake flowers/fake birds (if I can find any), sending for my cloak (and maybe my stuffed dog) from home, and going as Lúthien. On a related note, I also haven't bought my Hobbit ticket yet - it's at 12:00 AM Dec. 14, and my last final is at 8:00 AM, so I'm struggling with whether the guilt of losing all that study/sleep time will ruin my enjoyment of Mr. Baggins & Co. TBH, it probably will, so I'll most likely end up seeing it after I get out of my final. Which I know means I'll lose a little geek cred, but I do hate the feeling of being unprepared for tests, especially finals.

And that was pretty much the only interesting thing to happen to me all week.

In other news: dudes, I can haz makeup! I got some very good pointers from

ikel89,

brit_columbia, and AD, and although I don't think I'll ever be a pro, in my own humble opinion, I look AWESOME. I mostly stick with lip goop and mascara, usually some eyeliner, too; I've learned not to mess around with eyeshadow, since it doesn't like me and I don't like it right back. I maybe add some blush if I'm feeling adventurous, but I find that Edith makes me look nicely Romantic and mysterious without any, so blush is reserved largely for non-Edith days. And, of course, my mad spree of shopping has now ended, leaving me several nice shirts, a brace of skirts richer, three pairs of stockings and one of knee socks, Edith, a long knitted coat, and a lovely pair of boots richer, so that's nice, too. Re-girlfication: 100% complete! ...Normally this is where a long, self-indulgent set of photos of me smiling awkwardly and trying not to glare at the camera would be, but, as it turns out, the cable for my camera is still back in Sebastopol, and the ones from my cameraphone look like ass. Seriously, I look like one of the characters from that awful Jhereg graphic novel, all orange and lumpy and for some reason extremely angry. So this is basically a place-holder - I'm messing around with Instagram, which I've heard good things about, but until then, I feel pretty, oh so pretty, all shall love me and despair, if y'all were unwed you would take me in a manly fashion, etc.

In *other* other news, this has been picking me up during my down phases all week, so I thought I'd share it with you guys: pretty much the most perfect encapsulation of why Doctor Who is the perfect geek show, delivered by none other than Craig Ferguson himself! I dunno why this always makes me smile, but it's A) funny as hell, and B) the way I explain Doctor Who, in all its silly, campy, wibbly-wobbly-continuitied glory, to non-Whovians (and prospective Whovians), and most of them I've shown it to seem to like it.

For this week's meme: apparently ask-and-ye-shall-receive ones are In. So shoot me a character, and I'll tell you:
- Why I like them:
- Why I don’t:
- Favorite scene:
- Favorite line:
- Favorite outfit:
- OTP:
- BROTP:
- Headcanon:
- Unpopular opinion:
- A wish:
- An oh-god-please-don’t-ever-happen:
- 5 words to best describe them:
- My nickname for them:

Current Mood: thirsty
Current Location: The ubiquitous dorm
Current Music: "Live to Rise," Soundgarden

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

hamsterwoman

I hate yams/sweet potatoes, pecans, pumpkin, and most things that involve cranberries

Awww, that really would make traditional Thanksgiving not a lot of fun. (On the contrary, I don't care about Thankgsiving as a holiday, but I love sweet potatoes, pumpkin flavored things, pecans, and cranberries, so I still enjoy the foods :)

iced milk with honey and cinnamon

Ooh, that sounds good! Glad to hear it turned out well, too!

The Three Musketeers movie of my heart is the Soviet musical version (talk about campy!), and it is also the metric against each Athos, from the canonical Dumas one to Aerich, is measured (and falls short), but the 1993 movie sounds pretty fun, too, especially in your renditions. Maybe I ought to make a point of tracking it down...

I'm sorry to hear the counseling appointment was more annoying than useful. I hope they get more valuable from here on?

But: "Styffindor" is an awesome portmanteau!

1,001 Reasons Why Galadriel Is Better Than You,

LOL, that could be a semester class all on its own :P I hated Celeborn when I first read LotR, for all the reasons of bigotry and uselessness you mention, and he was actually one of the principal badguys in the self-insert fic my friend R and I made up as teens. But as we did that, I actually kind of got to liking Celeborn in all his uselessness -- it's just kind of hilarious to what extent Galadriel wears the pants in that relationship...

I was similarly amused by Bakshi's LotR. I do genuinely like the goblin song, but most of the rest of it is just kind of unintentionally hilarious.

I definitely think you'll enjoy the movie (and probably the final, too :P) more if you go see it after your final rather than the night before. I would think of it as a post-final treat!

Looking forward to the post-regirlification photos when you get a workable camera solution! Meanwhile, I will just enjoy all those geeky references in the placeholder :)

For the meme: hmm, how about Thomas Raith? (And if you want more, Loras Tyrell, Sam Vimes, and Vlad Taltos.)

From:

Looooong weekend, tolerably busy week, and a meme

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