Life whinging and a meme
Jan. 26th, 2012 05:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lunasarielThis has been kind of a crappy day so far. Maybe it's because it's That Time of the Month, with all its attendant mood swings and cramps (especially the cramps), and maybe it's because it's gray and humid and ugh today, while it was sunny and breezy and beautiful yesterday, but I've just been in kind of a rotten mood all day. It started when I was woken up from an interesting dream about the zombie apocalypse by The Roomie's phone, which she uses as an alarm clock. Obviously, she can't turn the sound on for the alarm and mute everything else, so for some reason it started playing the first 20 seconds or so of "Teenage Dream" exactly every four minutes, starting sometime around 7:30. I seriously considered waking up Roomie, who is an extremely heavy sleeper, to turn it off, but she usually stays up until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, so I'd feel like an ogre for waking her up.
This meant that I dozed kind of unsatisfactorily until it was time for me to get up (Roomie was up and gone by this point), which left me feeling muzzy and slow. I forgot to brush my teeth, which I only realized on my way to get breakfast. On my way there, I ran into EF, who falls somewhere between a friend and aquaintance. We know each other well enough that we'd be obligated to sit together, but I can be kind of slow to start, so I like to eat alone, so I said I had an early class and got my breakfast to go, although they were out of takeaway bowls, so I didn't get any oatmeal. The one good thing about today came when I actually ate my breakfast at the on-campus coffee place, Tully's, the honest-to-god banner of which is a series of red and black wavy stripes.
So after fortifying myself with the little dab of nerdishness of reading Yendi (the second book in that Dragaera anthology that I'm borrowing) in my very own corner of the Riverlands (only with less fish and Cleganes; both definite improvements), class happened. My schedule is now arranged that I have Irish Literature 1800-Present, and then have to dash off to History of the Novel immediately afterward. My Irish Lit professor has a tendancy to ramble, which a few of the students feed into, which means that I was aaaaalmost late for History of the Novel. It's still in that weird trapezoidal room, so I had to squeeze past quite a few people who had already sat down, almost entirely succeeding in not hitting anybody with my bag or stepping on anybody's feet, on the way to my seat.
After class, I had to run a few errands around town. I've been experimenting with the jeans-tucked-into-boots look for the past few days, but called it off today on occasion of ow. As a result of this, I have a lot of band-aid-ed cuts, blisters, and general painful spots on my feet, which didn't make walking all over campus any more fun. Our Celtic Romanticism professor didn't finalize the syllabus until the first class meeting, and didn't order our textbooks from the bookstore, so I've been trying to hunt them down on my own. I finally found them both over teh Interwebz, although they won't arrive for a few days, so I had to get a copy of the most urgently-needed one out of the library. All the copies at the main library were checked out (probably by other Celtic Romanticism students with the same idea), so I had to head over to the Anthropology library to get their last copy. The Anthro library has been at the center of a comparatively small controversy here, as their hours have been drastically reduced this semester, and a study-in is planned for next week. I might actually participate in this, as I really like the Anthro library, as it turns out. There's good plop-down-and-read big comfy chairs, as well as good, well-lit study space. The stacks themselves are close, musty-smelling, and full of hidden nooks, the way old libraries should be. So best of luck to you, Anthro library!
After running sundry other errands, I finally got back home. It's been, as I mentioned, gray and humid and ugh today, so I ended up feeling uncomfortably sticky, sweaty, and all-around scuzzy, despite the still chilly air. Right now, I'm waiting for my laundry to finish so that I can take a lovely long shower to get rid of the scuzziness.
I'll be heading back up to Sebastopol this weekend. The original plan was to continue our D&D game, but H is going in for surgery today, another crappy thing, so I'm going to go see her instead. H has been in and out of the hospital for most of her life. She has a variety of medical conditions, including a form of early-onset arthritis and some pretty intense ovarian cysts. It was the cysts that kept her from going to the launch party for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (although, oddly enough, one of my favorite memories from high school is me, C, and J leaving the launch party right after we'd picked up our books and hers, and bringing hers to her in the hospital, and we all sat there and read the first few chapters together), and it's the cysts that are acting up againg now. They've been growing, and there's a chance that they'll cut off blood flow and she'll lose an ovary, so they're operating to get rid of them, hopefully once and for all. Her doctor says that it's a "minor" surgery, but it's still her first time, and she's understandably nervous. She'll be out for most of today, but her doctor says that, barring complications (which I've always thought to be kind of an ominous phrase), she can go home tonight or tomorrow. I have class tomorrow morning, but after that I'll be heading up to see her.
In other news, I seem to have become (re-)addicted to memes. I haven't had much time this week (as it turns out, 18 units is kind of a lot to be taking all at once, although another crappy thing is that this load means that I won't be able to take that History of Middle-Earth class this semester), so it's been nice to take five or ten minutes at a time to unwind by answering a meme question or two.
First up is sort of a general life meme, adapted from one that I saw on Tumblr. As usual, 'pologies for the formatting. Ever since the latest round of updates, LJ has been foxing up in a variety of annoying-but-not-catastrophic little ways, and wonky formatting when I copy-and-paste from Word is one of them.
1) Tell us a little bit about one of your closest friends.
That’d be H, I guess. We were introduced by a mutual friend in the 3rd grade, and were kind of regular friends for a year or so, but then became BFFs somewhere around 4th or 5th grade. We drifted apart a bit during middle school, when she transferred to a Waldorf school and I stayed in the public school, but we really reconnected in high school. The funny thing is, when I think of how to describe her, she sounds like the complete opposite of me: she’s outgoing, she’s flirty, she’s aggressive, she’s physical, and if anything, she suffers from an excess of self-confidence, rather than a lack thereof. But somehow, our personalities compliment each other perfectly. She drags me, kicking and screaming, out of my Fortress of Solitude into the real world, and I can calm her down when her temper flares up. This is incredibly geeky, but the best way I can think of to describe our relationship in brief is via the characters we played in a D&D campaign a little ways back. She was a Goliath Avenger (read: shaman made out of rocks with a big spiky hammer), and I was a human cleric (read: tiny mousy squishy healer). Whenever we got into a scrape, she would basically form a big, mobile shield so that I wouldn’t get immediately killed, while I constantly healed the wounds she accrued by charging into battle on my behalf. It was a good system.
2) Who is someone you are glad to have met, and why?
Probably Ms. Fadave, my 6th and 8th grade English teacher, who, as I mentioned recently, had us do the Mapping Middle-Earth project that resulted in my model Minas Tirith. Whenever I’m tempted to just kind of shrug helplessly and put in the minimum of effort into a paper and blow the rest of it off in favor of watching old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, her voice always pops up in my head, barking at me that I can do better, I know I can do better, and anything less than the best I can do doesn’t deserve an A. and then I work on the paper some more, and do, indeed, get an A (usually, at least).
3) Your favorite childhood toy?
My Beanie Babies, I think. My brother and I both had huge collections, which we constantly added to. Mine would probably be worth a pretty penny today, except that A) I cut off the tags and wrote their names in masking tape, which I then stuck to their stomachs, and B) I dragged them everywhere, especially to my dad’s house up in the mountains near the Sierras, so they have some miles on them by now. I wish I had written down some of the stories I had them act out, because I remember them being pretty epic. For example, I lost one of them, mounted a search-and-rescue mission that literally lasted for weeks, and, when he didn't turn up, held an in absentia funeral, complete with his "widow." I actually found him about a year later, after his "widow" became bitter and emotionally scarred, and they lived apart for a while before they got re-married.
4) Your favorite kind of pet?
Any kind of mammal, I guess. Arachnids and insects freak me out, and while reptiles, amphibians, and fish are cool, one can’t really cuddle with them the way I like to do with pets. I used to have a guinea pig, who was very cute, and I’ve always kind of wanted a rat, as I’ve heard they’re very smart and trainable, so I like rodents. I’m both a dog person and a cat person, so neither of those really surpasses the other. And for some reason, I’ve always really wanted an unusual pet of some kind, like a ferret. Having a ferret would be cool.
5) Who is someone you miss dearly?
Nobody, actually. I’m very, very lucky in that the only people I know who have died I wasn’t as close to as I might have been. Should have been, in fact.
6) An invention you wish existed?
Some sort of dream-recording device would be really cool. I always have these fantastic dreams, but, like with pretty much everyone else, they start to fade away the moment I wake up, and by the time I try to tell anyone, it sounds like random nonsense. But something to turn our dreams into movies would be awesome!
7) Something you've always wanted to do since you were little?
Hmm…actually, I can’t remember any ambitions I had when I was little. Have pets, I guess, since both my brother and my dad are allergic to cats, the dog we had for about six weeks bit my brother, and our fish kept dying (except for the strangely-named Mr. Santa Claus, an alge-sucker with poisonous spines who survived generations of weaker fish). Of course, I have pets now; they’re just back at home. If I don’t live in the dorms or my grandparents’ nearby house if/when I go to UCLA for grad school, I’m really looking forward to having an apartment that lets me keep a cat or something.
8) A fact about yourself that would surprise other people?
I can’t ride a bike, nor can I roll my r’s. I don’t know why for either, I just can’t.
9) Something you're the best at?
Um…literary analysis? I seem to be pretty good at that. Aside from that, there’s a lot of stuff I’m *good* at, but nothing really comes to mind that I’m the *best* at.
10) Tell us something funny.
Dr. Seuss was a political cartoonist during WWII (seeing Hitler drawn Seuss-style is weird), and possibly coined, but certainly was the first person to print, the word “nerd,” which first appeared in If I Ran the Zoo (1950).
11) What are your worst fears?
Big social gatherings, especially with people I don’t know and/or just to “hang out” with no specified purpose. Zombies (yes, I have read The Zombie Survival Guide and the accompanying graphic novel, and yes, I was even scared by Shaun of the Dead). Failure (in Prisoner of Azkaban, I lol’d when Hermione’s boggart was failing her classes because that was basically me).
12) What do you plan on naming your children?
My thoughts on boys’ names tend to fluctuate (I like longer, kinda formal names that can be truncated into shorter, more serviceable names like Christopher, Gabriel, William, etc.), but if I ever have a child, and if that child turns out to be a girl, her name will be either Violet or Elizabeth. Basically, whether boy or girl, I want a name that can be modified to suit the kid’s personality and/or stage of life. Basically, I don’t want him/her to have to learn to spell “Ebenezer” or “Gertrude” for their nametags in kindergarten, but I don’t want them to have to put “Dr. Scooter La Follette” or “Senator Maddi La Follette” on their business cards, either.
13) What is it you always seem to forget?
People’s names, and their faces. Seriously, at one point, after watching a documentary on different brain defects, I was convinced that I had the one where you can’t recognize people. I’m not as bad as the guy in the documentary, as I can recognize my family and stuff, but if I don’t see someone frequently, I’ll just flat-out forget what they look like. It also doesn’t help that a memory device I use is trying to remember people’s names by linking it to hair color/style…but people get haircuts, or wear hats, or get a dye job, and then I’m all “…And you are?” This has actually happened to me! Once, I met a girl who looked really, nigglingly, “you-should-know-this” familiar while hanging out with some friends. Someone addressed her by name, and I realized that it was H. Yup, my best friend of eight years (at that point), and I didn’t recognize her after she dyed and cut her hair. XD
14) What are you craving right at this moment?
Little teeny-tiny chocolate chip cookies. Not the good ones, the ones you get for $2.99 a head-sized bag at Safeway, from the same company that makes those little mutated animal cookies covered with radioactive pink frosting that taste like chemicals and deliciousness.
15) If you could have a superpower, what would it be?
Telepathy, as long as I could turn it on and off at will. I sometimes have trouble giving the appropriate reactions, at the appropriate times (read: I stuff my foot in my mouth a lot), so having Professor X-like powers to know what people expect me to say and do, or even to “freeze time” for a short while, would be useful. Also, one of my pet peeves is being lied to/patronized, so sometimes being able to tell what people actually think would also come in handy.
16) If you were invisible, what would you do?
Probably get bumped into a lot. XD
17) Something you've always wanted to win?
I have notoriously bad luck when it comes to contests and drawings, but if a scholarship or two would definitely come in handy.
18) Your favorite thing to cook?
I don’t know if this technically counts as cooking, but I make a mean chocolate pie, if I do say so myself. It’s always a crowd-pleaser, and it’s quick and easy to make, so it’s always good to bring to potlucks and the like. Of course, sometimes I just want chocolate pie (especially in the summer, when something sweet and cold is most appreciated). Also, it’s just fun to make, especially because I whip the cream myself, and it's good for keeping A distracted when bored.
19) A food you are terrible at making?
One of the reasons I know my dad loves me is that he eats all the weird stuff I make. The apple pie where I only peeled half the apples? He ate it. The Belgian waffles that could be better classified as briquettes? He at them. The Viking fish-head stew I read about and then absolutely had to make, that even I didn’t want to try once I saw (or rather, smelled) the result? He ate it. So, yeah, there are a lot of foods that I don’t excel at making.
20) Do you have a collection? If so, what do you collect?
Assuming this means aside from books and random neat little things that strike me as pretty, I collect pins. My bag has probably about 15 or 20 on it now, and I’m always looking to add more. Basically, whenever I go anywhere, do anything important, or an important life event happens, I get a pin to commemorate it. At the moment, I’m sadly lacking in Tolkien and Doctor Who pinnage (one of my main goals for this year’s Comic-Con is to find a small metal TARDIS pin), and I’m waiting on the HBO shop to come out with a House Stark, Baratheon, or Tyrell pin. I wouldn’t say no to a nice cameo, either. I’m also looking for a good lilac pin (this one, for example), and hope to have one in time for the Glorious 25th of May.
21) What does your dream house look like, and where would you live?
Either an interestingly clutter-filled apartment in London, or an old, old farmhouse up in the oaks and redwoods of northern California.
22) Write a quick message telling someone how much you love/appreciate them.
Please don’t fade away and die. Obviously, you’re going to have to die sometime, and there’s no getting around that, but I hate to see you looking so sad. You’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and I’ve always loved just talking with you. I hope, when I’m your age, that I can stay as strong, and as sharp, and as beautiful, as you. You’re much, much more interesting than you give yourself credit for. People listen when you talk, and they want to know about your life. To you, it may be just “On Tuesday, I went to the store and then picked the kids up from school,” but to us, you lived through history, and we want to know about that.
23) If you had a chance to speak another language perfectly, what would it be?
Well, Elvish, of course, because if I could speak it perfectly, then I could finish what Tolkien started and lay the rest of it down for other fans, who have mostly had to deduce bits and pieces of grammar and syntax on their own. Latin would also be useful, since not only would I be able to read a lot of the Classics in the original, but I’d also be able to get along well enough in all the Romance languages, which takes care of most of Europe. But out of the real and modern languages, I’d probably go with German. My dad grew up speaking German, so it sounds nice to me. Also, several of my favorite books were originally in German, and it would be interesting to read them firsthand, since I’ve never really trusted the translations I have.
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Date: 2012-01-27 04:35 am (UTC)I had no idea about Dr. Seuss!
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Date: 2012-01-27 06:54 am (UTC)On the other hand, yay, new chapter! ^.^
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Date: 2012-01-27 05:09 am (UTC)Eager to hear your thoughts on Jhereg when you have the chance now that you're done with it! (Yendi... I think I had to read it three times before I was able to follow what was really going on, so if you find it confusing, don't despair. That's all part of the plan, because that's hwo Yendi are. Also, Brust has said it is his least favorite of the Vlad books, though I don't think it's bad or anything.)
Anthro library... remind me, which building is that in? I think I had to go there at some point for my Folklore class, and I have a visual of it, these longish pulpit-like things where I dragged my Aarne-Thompson index to browse, but can't remember where it is. Keller?
That lilac pin is really neat! I've wanted one for the Glorious 25th, too (plus, lilacs are some of my favorite flowers, independent of Pratchett), and that one looks really appealing.
Your Beanie Babies' lives sound fascinating! And I can't ride a bike either. Elizabeth is one of my favorite baby names precisely because it is so flexible. Also: nerdiest language answer. Kudos! :)
Good thoughts for your friend's surgery! Hope it goes smoothly and she recovers quickly.
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Date: 2012-01-27 07:02 am (UTC)I'll have to remember that! I had a decent mocha there once, but I'd like to branch out into some of their other stuff, which does look tasty.
Eager to hear your thoughts on Jhereg when you have the chance now that you're done with it!
I'm about halfway done with Yendi now (I think), so I'm saving up all my Dragaera-related ramblings for one big post when I finish that one. I'm definitely liking it a lot more now that I've gotten used to Brust's style, though, I can tell you that!
The Anthro library is in Kroeber, near the Hearst Gym. And yes, I do believe it does have the pulpit things! It has a very homey, old-school atmosphere that's very different from Gardner (the main stacks), and it looks like a nice place to just kick back and read for a while. (It's also right next door to Ramona's, a kickass cafe, but that's just a bonus.)
Also: nerdiest language answer. Kudos! :)
*linguistics fistbump*
Good thoughts for your friend's surgery! Hope it goes smoothly and she recovers quickly.
It's been pushed back to Wednesday, so the anticipation is just getting worse. :( Thanks for teh good thoughts, though, every little bit helps, and I'll be sure to pass them along!
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Date: 2012-01-27 06:10 pm (UTC)Oh good! His style definitely takes getting used to, but once I did, for me that was one of the best reasons to read the Vlad books.
Since you're getting close to Teckla (assuming you are planning to read on), I guess I should warn you about that book. It seems to be the least favorite of quite a lot of Dragaera fans; not because it's bad -- I actually think it's quite audacious -- but because it's darker and depressing after the fun initial capers. But I think those things are really well done; they just happen to not be fun things. It takes place right after Jhereg, but Taltos and Dragon precede it (and Jhereg) chronologically, so one could hold off on reading it until those two, if one wanted -- but it's also nice to have the very fun Taltos (my favorite) to look forward to after one is done with Teckla. The book that follows it chronologically, Phoenix, is definitely not as light and fun as Taltos. So, anyway, I have no idea whether any of what I just said made sense, but, uh, now you know. (And knowing is half the battle.)
The Anthro library is in Kroeber
Right! Kroeber! Kroeber is what I meant. Is there even a Keller? Anyway, sounds like we're talking about the same place, and I do remember thinking it was very cozy and old library-y. I know I must've gone to Ramona's, too, but I can't remember which one that is. The one with the dark wooden tables?
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Date: 2012-01-28 04:41 pm (UTC)Go GI Joe! XD I'm slowly getting a better handle on the chronology (the order of books in addition to the order of events in-universe), so every bit of info helps.
I know I must've gone to Ramona's, too, but I can't remember which one that is. The one with the dark wooden tables?
I don't think so. It's in Wurster, which is kitty-corner to Kroeber, and looks out on a little plaza/square that has a big old tree and a bench cut out of a log. They have a bunch of little metal chairs (some inside, some outside), and they make a mean teriyaki chicken bowl. Sound familiar?
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Date: 2012-01-28 08:36 pm (UTC)GI Joe was fun! I watched it before school as a kid -- it was a good show for waking one up :)