Stuff!

So I have been meaning to update for days! As is my usual. Accordingly, here is a list of the stuff I have been meaning to write about.

( assorted stuff both online and not! )

Just call them Steve McQueen

This morning, at the charming hour of 6 a.m., my housemate wickedtrue rushed into my room. "Gen!" she said. "Where are the cats?!"

"Uh?" I mumbled, intelligently, from my comfortable nest of blankets.

"Your screen's popped out! The cats are gone!"

And then I was abruptly very awake.

Yes, everything's fine. We found the cats -- Portia right away, because she stuck close to the house like the sheltered little purebred she is, and came running towards the door as soon as she saw us. We're not sure she's ever been outside in her life before, and I expect the wider world was a pretty intimidating place. Eva Luna, our grumpy little ex-stray, led us a merry (and constantly meowing) chase through a couple of neighbor's backyards, then went to ground under a hedge before we managed to collar her.

Meanwhile Portia had peed somewhere she Ought Not To Have, and so we got to clean that up. At 6:30. It was a very exciting morning!

There is now a new rule that we do not open windows when a human being is not home. *facepalming* Until we get something worked out so the screens are more secure, anyhow.

On the other hand, a very cool guy who used to work in the building (and is now retired, but stops by every so often to visit) proved his coolness by not only knowing that this weekend was AnimeBoston, but telling us about his grandson who lives down on the Cape and was visiting for the weekend and the con, and would be trotting out to the bus every day in costume. "I'll have to ask who he's dressed as," he said thoughtfully. I hope he does, and remembers; I'm curious!

One of these years I'll get to AnimeBoston, really. Not this year, though. This year, I'm off tomorrow morning for a mini-road-trip to Montréal! There will be pancakes and schoolgirl French and dorkery; I am anticipating it immensely.

And now I have a salad. So the morning's not a total loss. But aiya. Dear cats: you're lucky I love your fuzzy little heads.

Things I have done recently:

( Star Trek and reading and gardens, oh my )

There's a meme going around, which goes as follows: Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given. I've been really enjoying everybody else's answers; it's fun to read what your friends ramble about!

( My associations from Gramarye; long-windedness ahead! )

*flops*

Several days belatedly: we're moved in!

Well, more or less. ( But all of these are details. )

(And speaking of superstars: all you guys who came to help us move have my eternal love and gratitude. Seriously. I cannot imagine how we'd have done it without you. jothra and wyrmofbooks are the extra-special winners, for trekking down from Maine and staying till the last midnight car-trip back to the old place, respectively, but all of you are my SAVIORS and my FAVORITES. (Along with Random Brazilian Guy who jump-started my car when it refused to start at 10 a.m. on moving day. The battery turned out to need replacing, which has since been accomplished. But he is second tier to you!))

I will be online again eventually, I promise you guys. At the moment, as I say, we have internet in theory but not really in practice; even if it were working right, though, I don't have anywhere to set up my computer quite yet. (This would be yet more impetus to get a laptop soon, if I had any intention of moving again before I've thoroughly forgotten what a pain in the neck it is.) At any rate, soon! For now, I post this sneakily from work to let you know I'm alive, and otherwise will sneak online on borrowed laptops with stolen wireless, and soon, my pretties, we will be all settled in and life will be back to normal except with bonus awesomeness.

LA LA LA PACKING. Oh my god, you guys, there is so much to do.

We're actually in pretty good shape, really, but it doesn't entirely feel like it. Tomorrow will be a marathon day. But Heather is up here and the three of us will put in a packing marathon tomorrow, and then Sunday we will move! And then we'll be DONE (um, except for unpacking everything again) and settled in at our new awesome place.

Speaking of: if any of you live in the Boston area and want to help us move this Sunday afternoon, you are still TOTALLY welcome to do so! We will love you forever for the help, and also feed you with beer and pizza and geeky conversation! Drop a comment or email or whatever and I will happily pass on all necessary info.

And now, back to packing!

I have committed fic again.

This is for bookelfe, because it's all her fault.

This is also SPOILER-TASTIC for the ending of Princess Tutu; seriously, do not read this unless you've seen the whole thing. (If you haven't seen any Princess Tutu at all, I'm afraid it'll make no sense whatsoever. Also you should totally remedy that ASAP, as it's a fabulous anime.)

( From The Ashes )

I don't normally post about politics. When I do, it's generally behind an lj-cut, so people can skip it if they want. This is short, and you can still skim right past it, and feel entirely free to do so if you like, but just this once I'm saying it right out front:

Yes.

YES.

Oh my country, thank you.

I don't usually say I'm proud to be an American. That's not from any lack of patriotism; I love my country, and I'm glad to be an American, and I'm grateful I am. Even if I emigrated and lived the rest of my life in another country, and came to love it equally (as I'm sure I could), I would still be an American on some fundamental level. This is where my roots are, and this is what I am. But proud? I was born here -- that's chance, and no accomplishment of mine. It seems as fundamentally wrong to me to say I'm proud of that as to ask God to bless America, as if other countries' peoples are less worthy of equal blessings and joy and peace.

But tonight? Tonight I am so proud to be part of this. So proud, and so glad.

I'm still wearing my little I VOTED sticker, and I'll be sad to take it off. This, tonight -- this is my America. (And if you voted otherwise -- it's your America too. Just as much. And that's why I have hope, because tonight, it feels like this country belongs to all of us, and we're reaching out hands to all the rest of you who aren't Americans, because we're all in this together. This is our world, and I'm so glad to be in it.)

We've got a long road ahead of us. Of course we do. And not every step's going to be smooth, and not everything's going to turn out right, and not every problem's going to be solved well. But today -- today, I'm just going to sit here looking at the news and political websites, and I'm going to keep on beaming.

This is mostly directed at shoroko and rabswom, but hey, if anyone else has input please do chime in!

My aunt is going to Cairo this winter, for a couple of weeks. My uncle is going for work, and they're taking the time to get in some vacation and sightseeing as well; he's been to Egypt before, but she hasn't. They'll be staying in central Cairo, at a hotel near the Egyptian Museum, Midan el-Tahrir, etc. I don't know exactly which one. They have guidebooks and all the usual stuff.

( The main question here is that my aunt is highly gluten-intolerant. )

I have actual things to write about one of these days, but I choose memery instead.

Every time someone on my friendslist does a big icon revamp, it makes me want to do the same. Except I don't want to get rid of most of my existing ones! WHAT IF I WANT TO USE JUST THAT ONE AND I DON'T HAVE IT. And yet I don't want to just keep adding, in hypothetical defiance of all LJ userpic limits, because then I'll forget half the cool ones I already have. Such a dilemma!

Uh, yeah. My life is hard.

Anyway, as a reminder to myself that I really should do at least a minor revamp one of these days -- there are some I never use, and some icon fandoms or categories I've been meaning to acquire for ages -- I am stealing a meme from fahye.

Ask me about my icons! Pick a handful and I'll tell you about the characters, the keywords, why I chose to upload them, anything.

Then repost the meme, because I am endlessly nosy about everyone else's icons.

Three things

1) Today and yesterday have felt like fall -- real, proper New England autumn. There's a crispness to the air; I can almost smell apples and hear leaves crunching underfoot, even though the trees are all still green. I'm wearing long sleeves and jeans, and jackets in the evening. The highs are in the 60s, and the lows are in the 40s; soon I'll have to give into inevitability and close my windows, but not yet. Not yet, oh no. For now I'll huddle in a blanket at night but beam at the cool air and the chill of my fingers. For now I'll sit out on the porch after work, curled up in the beat-up free-from-the-curbside armchair I keep out there, and read with a cup of tea at my elbow until the light fades too much.

This is my favorite season, and I intend to revel in it.

2) Anyone in the Boston area (or beyond, I suppose) want to come to the New Hampshire Highland Games this weekend? They're up at Loon Mountain, by Lincoln, NH, which is about a two-hour drive from where I live, and tickets are... actually I'm having trouble finding how much tickets cost at the gate, but it's something like $20-30 for the day. (Steep, I know, which is one reason why I'm debating going.) There are performers (fiddlers, harpers, pipers, dancers, mostly free though there are a couple of special concerts that require further tickets) and competitions, and vendors, and the usual games like caber tossing, and sheepdog trials. At least some of it is audience participation; not sure how much, and a lot of it isn't, but I do know there'll be Scottish country dancing, because my parents are running it for part of the day. I'd go Saturday if any day, because I already have Sunday plans.

I'm undecided on whether to go. It's fun, and Loon Mountain is gorgeous, but I'm not particularly enthused about going by myself. So if anyone else wants to go, your enthusiasm may sway me! And we can make a day of it! Otherwise, I'll debate up until the last minute, maybe go but probably give it a miss, and consider it again next year.

3) Another event thing: anyone Bostonian want to come to a panel discussion next Thursday evening, featuring Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan, Rabbi Irwin Kula, and the Sakyong, Jamgön Miphon Rinpoche? (All have short bios on that link there.) The subject is Compassionate Leadership, and tickets are free but need to be reserved ahead of time. I for one am highly intrigued. This one I do plan to go to alone if no one else wants to -- it's free and it's right nearby and everything, so why on earth would I not? -- but I thought I'd toss it out there for you guys.

And now, I go to make myself a cup of tea and read Diana Wynne Jones on the porch some more. (Later: dinner, and some more of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.) May you all have equally lovely evenings!

Fic! Gundam Wing fic, in fact.

So I wrote this fic ages ago, in an attempt to figure out how a certain piece of canonical backstory could happen, and have just had it kicking around waiting to be posted properly. Which I am finally getting around to doing.

Title: Names
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Length: 1800ish words
Rating: gen, PGish
Spoilers: Spoilers for backstory revealed in the manga and movie, I guess, if anyone cares. None for the plot of the show.

( Summary: What's your name, kid? )

Back from Dragon*Con! I had a FANTASTIC time. Pictures forthcoming, as soon as other people upload them for me -- I had no camera except my cell phone's, so I spent a lot of the weekend either borrowing wanderluslover's or asking people to take pictures of things for me pretty please.

I really do think Dragon*Con is probably my favorite of all the cons I've been to. I love it so, and the costumes are fabulous; I adore wandering through the streets or hotel lobby and seeing Jokers and Inuyashas and stormtroopers and flying spaghetti monsters and human-sized walking Jayne hats all around me. (And participating, too.) And seeing so many friends! I miss you all already, but it was great to see people.

The downside to all this fun, of course, is that I did not exactly get a ton of sleep this weekend, and I was up at 8:30 this morning to catch my plane ride back, and so I am going to go flop now. If there's something I really should know about that's happened since Wednesday afternoon or so, please let me know; otherwise, I will be working back slowly through my friendslist when I can, and I'll talk to you guys later. :)

Yes, it's a meme

Meme ganked from all over my friendslist. I like it mostly for the chance to add commentary, and read other people's. I've added, uh, a lot, because I'm rambly.

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:
( The List )

Tonight has been an Adventure.

( The kind with emergency plumbing calls! This is really long. )
 
Current Mood: laughing helplessly at life

This weekend was full of clothes-and-fabric shopping. I'm doing two costumes for Dragon*Con -- Ty Lee (of Avatar: The Last Airbender), which is really the one I mostly have to work on, and Moiraine Sedai (of The Wheel of Time) for which I really only have to tinker with the shawl and find shoes and a keseira. I put fringe on the shawl already, which is all it strictly needs, though I'll do more fiddling anyhow. Expect a longer entry full of babble! I'm finding this immensely satisfying. It's been a while since I had a big craft project, especially one that challenged me but still felt manageable.

One extra-nice thing is that Sandry's working on a Mai costume to go with my Ty Lee one, so we've been shopping together and consulting on the logistics. It's like a miniature sewing bee right in my house, and it makes it so much more fun! And makes me much more motivated to actually get things done, too. Plus I get to feel like an expert every time I manage to put something together decently, and then call up my mother for consultation when any real expertise is needed.

I am rediscovering my love for sewing machines. Oh, they are so convenient.

And then last night we had about seventy zillion friends over for pasta and cake and hanging out and Rock Band. I was completely braindead by the time the last folk left, but it was tremendous fun.

Tonight: errands (more costume stuff!) and dance class (with a family friend guest-teaching!) and then probably catching up on all the Milliways stuff I'm overdue with.

It's International Blog Against Racism Week. I meant to mention that earlier, and have failed to; I have a post or two percolating, but since I haven't yet gotten the chance to sit down and hash them out, I wanted to mention it. I highly recommend checking out some of the posts linked from this explanation here. There's a lot of really hard, thought-provoking stuff there, and it's the kind of subject it's good (indeed, necessary, I think) to have your thoughts provoked on.

In much more self-centric news, yesterday I sat down in the evening to chat with people and play some at milliways_bar. Got a couple of threads lined up I was really excited about, too. And then -- wham. My internet continued to say it was connected, and chat worked fine, but no browser pages would load.

Tried restarting. Nada -- except that this time AIM wouldn't connect either.

Sandry and I tried powercycling everything we could, repairing the connection, rebooting a few more times... all to no avail. Finally she gave up and went to bed, and I called TL to chat/grumble for a while and refreshed a few more times with a feebly optimistic hope that the internet would've magically repaired itself. No dice.

This morning, I checked before work. And, of course, everything loaded just fine! It's nice, on the one hand, as it supports our working theory that it was a problem on RCN's end and nothing we could have fixed in any case, and now it's all working fine again with no more work needed from us. On the other hand, you know. ARGH.

(If anyone was wondering why I abruptly vanished last night... uh, that's why.)

Iiiiiiit's the laaaaaast midnight!

I am in NYC for the weekend! The bus ride contained finishing two books (Hat Full Of Sky by Terry Pratchett, which I somehow hadn't gotten around to yet and which was of course AWESOME, and Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon, which was a reread and remains not only delightful but the only sci-fi book I can think of with an 80-year-old working-class woman as the protagonist) and enough traffic to make us an hour late arriving. But there was pizza and bookelfe and shati at the end, so I count this a win all around despite the delay. And then there was baking and Special Cake Night, and my pink stuffed bunny (yes, of course I brought it along) approves.

However, the real reason that I'm borrowing Becca's laptop to post this is to link you all to the fruits of our intellectual labors! That is to say, as Becca put it, Being a Presentation by Heroes and Buffy the Vampire Slayer of: Into The Graveyard: Agony: Reprise!

Also known as yet more evidence that we should not all three be allowed to spend this much time in each other's company.

...You guys, I have the best housemate ever.

Why, you say? Well, many reasons, but the current one is that she got me a present. (A belated birthday present; the postal system was being difficult, and anyhow belated presents are kind of tradition in my family, so I am merely full of glee at the surprise.)

That present would be, well, three things.

1) The full series of Ouran High School Host Club in dvd format, instead of *cough* totally licit files.

2) An Ouran poster. (I feel the need to have it framed in sparkly pink and rose motifs. I will probably resist this urge, but.)

3) A PINK STUFFED BUNNY.

THIS PRECISE PINK STUFFED BUNNY, IN FACT.

This will make very little sense to those of you who don't know Ouran, but rest assured, I am cackling with glee, and I will probably be happily waving it at Sandry for weeks.

So as many of you know, I have a housemate Sandry. (She is not the person in the icon. But I have none that feature her.) She is nifty! And geeky and just as sane as the rest of us. And this housemate is planning to go to Dragon*Con!

But she does not yet have the whole hotel roommates thing lined up. I've sent out an email to a few folk I knew were looking for roommates also, but I'm sure there are more of you. So if anyone's interested in finding another person for a room, or acquiring a group of people and a room to house them in, wander over thisaway, do you please.

I too will be at Dragon*Con, but I already have a full room. But I will SEE ALL OF YOU THERE, MWAHAHAHA, where "all of you" means "all of you who are also going."