So, you will have noticed that there was none of the planned posting this week.

This is (in large part, though not entirely) due to the fact that I have spent much of the past week watching my grandfather dying. It's not really unexpected - he is very old and has well outlived his own expectations; and he's been losing functionality at an increasing rate for the past year. He's been ready to go, and while I don't think anyone can ever be ready for a loved one to go, we've all known it was coming, sooner rather than later. But it is still far from easy to watch it happen, and watch what it's doing to everyone else in the family, and if I am being even flakier than usual for awhile, this is probably why. (And yes, it did take me most of a week to get to the point where I could say, yes, this is actually a real reason to be getting less done, it is not just that I fail as a person.)

It seems like half my reading list is going through something similar at the moment. It is hard, and I have been sending good thoughts your way even when I haven't been writing any; I am no better at dealing with the expected courtesies and emotions and sympathies when it's me who's grieved than when it's someone else, so I would just as soon take good wishes as read, and move on.


I'm leaving comments open, though, because there are a couple related things I wanted to say, since I seem to have a little bit of an audience here, I might as well use it. One of them is, thank God for advance directives (also known as living wills.) Pop-pop having one is the difference between him living on for maybe futile years while under, basically, torture, and him dying comfortably and naturally the way he wanted to.

So, PSA: Look up your goverment's rules on Advance Directives, and get one for yourself, and talk to your loved ones about getting them, too. Even if you don't have the resources to do the legal paperwork, figure out who your next-of-kin/power-of-attorney would be in that situation, and at least talk to them informally about what you would want if you could no longer make your own end-of-life medical decisions, or put a letter in with your other important paperwork. Just knowing whether or not something is wanted can make so much difference.

(And on a related note, thank God for socialized medicine, even the stunted and handcuffed system we have in the US. If we didn't have the assurance that Medicare/Medicaid would cover everything? If we'd been jumping through hoops for a private insurance plan that many of the providers weren't familiar with? If we hadn't been able to put him in a wonderful and well-funded hospice without worrying about where the money was coming from? if we hadn't already jumped through all the stupid hoops to make sure medicare *would* pay when my grandmother was dying - it would all suck so much more. )

I have been told I need to update already so that people know I am still here.

Let's see: what have I been doing since my last update?

Messing around on the internet; fighting off huge internet-induced bouts of self-loathing; watching old episodes of Top Gear; applying for jobs; fighting off job-search-induced bouts of self-loathing; reading Top Gear fanfic; watching the news and falling into bouts of loathing the entire world; working on interrobang studios stuff with RL friends; horrifing RL friends by telling them that Top Gear fandom is awesome because instead of genderswap slashfic where somebody is turned into a girl because it's okay to have sex with girls, it has turned-into-a-car slashfic because it's totally okay to have sex with cars, obv.; playing the terribly addictive flash game that RL friends introduced me to in order to distract me from talking about having sex with cars; helping Mom with her volunteer & church work; helping former roommates move & attempting to deal with post-move out issues; falling into massive bouts of self-loathing RE:inability to actually be a grown-up; listening to NPR because if I can't be watching Top Gear or HIGNFY I can at least be listening to Car Talk & This Just In; continuing to go through my massive collection of STUFF in an attempt to manage it; fighting off lack-of-money induced fits of self-loathing; and writing Top Gear/Doctor Who crossover fanfic.

Mostly, I haven't been posting because things I did in one of the last massive anti-oppression discussions have left me unable to say *anything* fandom-related without becoming despairingly convinced that what I am saying is full of fail and privilege and will hurt people. (This is my problem, not anyone else's, but just fyi I am probably going to have to work through a lot of crap on my own part for awhile before I feel comfortable speaking in *any* kind of meta discussion whatsoever, which, frankly, sucks, because I love meta. Also, it isn't helping that the fandom I kind of became obsessed with in the meantime is basically the story of three middle-aged rich white men being as rich, white and male as possible on camera.) (Edited to removed language-of-privilege, WHY IS THIS SO HARD.)

ANYWAY.

I have been around, although reading & commenting a lot more sporadically than I had been, in an attempt to manage the self-loathing.

I have also done the last four Spink comics *all by myself* while the main studio had no internet, about which I am quite proud! And I did the Friday's Trigger Star strip all by myself! And posted about the first quarter of this years's book reviews on librarything, though I still have a bunch of read-this-year books waiting to be reviewed.

And I had signed up to do a fanmix for polybigbang, and ended up claiming the very first fic on the claims list, tania_sings's amazing, epic, gloriously kinky story in which Ariel the Sprite sleeps with basically every other character in Shakespeare, Perfection, which was just an utter delight to mix for & illustrate. I did get the mix & art done & submitted in time, & my author loved the mix about as much as I loved her story, despite me being so flaky to workwith lately! So yay! The mix, which contains only songs that are vaguely, by some definition, in-period for Shakespeare, by which I mean lots of bawdy ballads via dreamsquirrel and niquerio, is at Ariel Sings Stormy Weather (.zip file) and here is the Ariel cover art. I was playing with using vectors/paths for the cover art, which I haven't done seriously in about ten years, and was impressed with how well it came out. (And listened to about thirty times as much new music as I actually put on the mix, which means I actually have a hope of being able to navigate my current mp3 collection now, yay!)

What I did *not* do, see re:self-loathing above, is finish the second disc of the mix and make a proper mix post with tracklistings & explanatory notes like I said I would, because the notes started growing in length exponentially as I started looking for actual attested dates for the period music. I am still hoping to finish that post very soon, but I have realized that if I wait to post until I've finished that, it would be quite easy to keep not posting for a very long time.

Reading polybigbang and rpf_big_bang have been great fun, too, (and partly responsible for my giving in and reading Top Gear slash, because I think there is more un-flocked Top Gear stuff there than anywhere else on the net up until now) and I am full of general reccingness for them.

I am probably not doing nano this year - I know, first year since way back before I was even in fandom, but it's beginning to seem a bit silly to keep signing up and writing less than 12,000 words - unless of course the Top Gear/Doctor Who crossover of doom keeps writing itself as fast as it has been. <_< I am doing yuletide, though. There's only been one year in history where the self-loathing was strong enough to keep me away from yuletide.

These people? My people.

Also my people!

I missed the debate tonight because I was at a rehearsal for our local faith-based social justice umbrella group's annual October summit meeting. (Their website is still of teh suck, alas.) So have my biennial "Pay attention to politics" post: Time to check to see what's on your ballot that isn't a national race, and decide which ones you care about, and where you stand. Just 'cause the presidential and senate races are big, doesn't mean local candidates and ballot items aren't important! They may be *more* important, in terms of directly impacting your quality of life.

There is even a Wiki for checking your local ballot measures now. So no excuses, my fellow Americans! If it has a wiki, it must be important, right? :D

Maryland has two constitutional amendments up for popular vote this year, but they're both big ones: slot machines (on which there seem to be only two possible positions: a) I think it will make me, directly, richer! and b) God no. On the upside, it's totally not split along party lines) and early voting, about which I have yet to decide, but it is also a big issue this election cycle.

...Anyway, tomorrow being currently open, I plan to make it my Day Of Getting Things Done That I Have Been Putting Off, to wit: gardening, clean bathroom, post one of the ficlets I owe, officially re-open lj, post book giveaway lists, work on art, catch up on reviews, post a fanmix, update resume, turn the compost, do Sarah's mending.

We shall see.

I'm a grown-up and I pay for my own groceries, and that means that if I want to mix up a bowl of powdered sugar and peanut butter 'till it's the consistency of mud brick, and then eat it with a spoon, I can, right?

(..hey, there's *no* candy in this house, and my roommates won't let me bake. Except what I just mixed up. Granted I could have walked down the street and bought some candy, but a) broke and b) I went from Cake Wrecks to mazapan the other day, and it that time of month, so I'm allowed to cave to random cravings.)

----

Anyway, if someone was, completely hypothetically, thinking about finally installing an IM program, what program would you hypothetically suggest? Bearing in mind that this hypothetical person last tried to install Trillian, and gave up due to FAIL, and that the last time she bothered with IM, she hypothetically had AIM, ICQ, and Y!M accounts, because this was way back when you needed different accounts and programs and they wouldn't talk to each other.

So last weekend, since our mother wants to be able to acually use her basement, stellar_dust and I cleared out the collection of Star Wars Crap (yes, that is the official name of the collection.)

( Before and after shots )

There was also a clearing-out of her Rainbow Brite crap.

On the off chance that anybody who reads this and not her journal is interested:

We are offering to send the cleared-out stuff to internet friends for the shipping costs. If you want to see the picture-posts of stuff that's going, let me know and I'll get you on the filter before her lj people claim it all :D

(At some point, once I am done dithering over it, there will be a similar post RE: approximately 1000 books, but that is still preliminary.)

Just came back from a couple hours' shoe shopping. And oh my god.

I just want a pair of shoes that:
a) give ankle support
b) are waterproof
c) do not hurt when I put them on my feet.

Secondary, it would be nice if:
d) they had reasonably plain leather uppers
e) they were neither white nor black
f) they did not have "special moisture-wicking" aka "get soggy fast" powers
g) they do not involve Velcro
h) they have at least a little insulation
i) they cost less than a month's electric bill

These seem like perfectly reasonable things to expect from shoes, yeah? At this point I'd be willing to go for any shoes that give me at least a), one of b) or c), and at least one of the others. I've lucked out the last few times finding waterproof hiking boots that fit on clearance. Not so lucky this time, and I've been looking since June.

Tonight, the only pair of high-tops in womens' sizes in the whole store were Converse. So, what I have learned today is that the reason the Doctor wears Converse is that Converse are not designed for human feet.

Also, according to the little metal foot-measuring things, my feet are around a size six and a half, which explains why shoes that fit my feet are generally somewhere between a seven and a half and a nine and a half wide.

(I could also use some new sandals and some new work-or-interview type shoes, but neither me nor roomate found any of those in whole store that were even halfway to tolerable.

...Women are supposed to like shoe shopping. Huh.)

I walked down to the drawbridge tonight to watch the Wednesday sailboat races come in at sunset, and oh my god, you guys, it is *so* pretty here. With the perfect weather we've been having I've actually been getting out and about like I've claimed I wanted to, and it is so pretty, and there's so many places I can walk to, and yes.

I realized today that if you told my ten-years-ago self that ten years from then I would be living in Annapolis, a ten-minute walk from the Bay, in a tidy little 80-year-old-cottage with morning glory and wild roses, without a car because I don't need one, rooming with four excellent cats, more books than I could read in a lifetime, and two dear, geeky friends who I work on a webcomic with, ten-years-ago me would say "Wait, you mean I get *exactly* the life I want? How'd I manage that?"

(Ten-years-ago-me would be equally unconcerned about the lack of any visible means of support. Perhaps that is something the two of us should work on together.)

stellar_dust made me TIEMCAEK! Because she knows I want it.
(He's off by a month and a half as well as several years, mind you, but I suppose that's to be expected.)

So this was the first time in *years* - possibly since I started my LJ - that we've had a proper old-fashioned Pop-pop's house Thanksgiving instead of just going out. Featuring Pop-pop, me, mom, sister, uncle, aunt, aunt's brother, Pop-pop's sister, and Dog. And everyone Pop-pop knows in town calling him at some point. :D (Pop-pop's kitchen has been a local social centre basically since my dad was in high school. I know this because we got him to haul out Mom-mom's first family album, featuring the pre-war photos, for the first time in years.)

For posterity, menu:
Turkey breast (nobody ever eats much of this, honestly. They just cook it, so we have a lump of hot, juicy, nearly-tasteless chemically grown white meat. yay.)
Home-made gravy (YAY!)
Mom's stuffing (YAY!!!)
Great-Aunt's macaroni and cheese bake (best macaroni and cheese bake ever. mmmm. She unexpectedly didn't bring it to the reunion this year so now she's been told she has to bring it to every family gathering for the next three. Just to make sure we all get some.)
Real mashed potatoes (the instant stuff is better aktully. Or if you do it by hand instead of a processer. Blending it just makes glue.)
Family recipe candied yams (I have reached the point where I will eat sweet potatoes sometimes. Just not these ones. They just sort of sit there in chunks and sulk in this thin brown liquid. These ones are possibly *why* I only eat sweet potatoes under very special circumstances. Other people seem to like them though.)
Cold mashed turnips. (Pop-pop makes these just to see Mom make yucky faces at them. I try a spoonful - they aren't gag-inducing like the sweet potatoes, but they taste like soap. Very strongly flavored soap. yum.)
Lima beans. (Um.)
Green beans (Aunt made these. She's one of those people who actually *uses* the recipes out of lifestyle magazines, so they always have like almonds and orange juice or something instead of good proper Campbell's mushroom soup and fried onions. Still, yum.)
Cranberry jelly out of cans (best part of Thanksgiving dinner!)
Home-made cranberry salad (...not as good as the canned stuff)
Dinner rolls (these horrible storebought pallid ones that Pop-pop loves)
Pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, pear-mince pie (one by each aunt. Too bad I was too full to try them all! Great-aunt's sweet potato pie is better than Mom's, even though Mom uses great-mom-mom's recipe. don't tell.)
And two bottles cheap wine. (yay!)

Also, I managed to not have to help cook *or* wash dishes. So over all, an excellent thanksgiving! (Also, the only thing me & my republican uncle can agree on about politics is that slot machines in Maryland = dumbest idea ever. In fact, pretty much every Marylander seems to think that - until they get elected to the state government. Dear state government: shut up about slots already.)

My sister stellar_dust has been finally posting the pictures from our big road trip in July, and I've been letting her, because I didn't really get pictures of anything she didn't cover. Except now she's gotten up to the day we were at Salem, and all the pictures of the Beer of Evil are on my camera. Well, I can't expect people to get by without seeing *those*.

( Let me tell you about the Beer of Evil (six photos under cut) )

For the rest of our Salem adventure, read stellar_dust's post here, with all the good pictures.

So, since my last entry, I have:
given my big end-of-semester presentation;
gone to speakerender's suprise birthday party;
gone to our friend's wedding reception;
watched Free Enterprise with xerahanadu and enemy_anime;
had the annual July family barbecue;
Written a bunch more verses of the CitH/XF crossover story.

Oh, and today, Mr. Dan and Linda took Mom and me out to lunch for her birthday and out to see that movie with the pirates in it.

It was a very good movie; far better than I'd been expecting - *pretty*, and some wonderful character moments, and great new characters, and just like the first one, great fight scenes. It was essentially the fanfic I've been wishing for two years that somebody would write, and better than most of the fic, so it had that going for it. It suffered from two problems, though: Too many characters, none of whom ever managed to stay sympathetic for more than about three minutes at a time; and a plot which depended on characters being repeatedly stupid. Especially the fact that apparently everybody in the entire movie (including Will) forgot that ( Not technically a spoiler, since they didn't actually mention this once in the whole film. )

Anway, I would go into more detail, but now I only have about two hours left to not do the stuff that I'd normally spend all weekend not doing.

Got back from my sister's apartment to find the rain gauge in our back yard *completely* full. However, it looks like the creek never actually quite overflowed, so we've had worse here. And on the upside, the tomato plants are about twice the height they were on Wednesday! A couple of them even have cute little tiny baby tomatoes on them now. I am dreaming of a summer spent having whole fresh tomatoes for lunch.

The raspberries also started to come ripe while we were gone. Of course, the birds got them all. When I was very little, and our house still had forest on two sides, the vacant lot on the corner had been co-opted by my father and the husband of the family living downstairs as a big vegetable garden. There's a house there now, and a sterile monoculture lawn, but at the time the entire border on it was all berry brambles, and it used to be so much fun to go picking and then, if you were really lucky, have home-made ice cream with fresh berries over it! Mom's let raspberry bramble grow for the last few seasons by the back fence, using the "laziness is good!" method of gardening. There's finally berries on it this year! Not a whole lot, but it's early yet.There's also a few very tall wands growing among it that I suspect of being blackberries, rather, though they haven't even bloomed yet. And Pop-pop called to say he'd fixed the ice-cream freezer for us, so I'll have to make ice cream some time this summer. With berries. (Or possibly tomatoes. If they all come ripe at once, five tomato plants is going to be rather a lot.) Jewelweed's gotten tall too! And the poke is just *scary*.

It was a lovely, lovely day after all the rain earlier in the week, so of course I stayed in and messed with the computer all week. But I did manage to find shelf space for all the books I bought! Which was a minor miracle, honestly. Let's see. frey_at_last posted a What's In Your Backpack meme. And since I still have to unpack from the weekend anyway, ( here goes: )
( And while I'm all meme-y and listy, 50 years of Hugo winners. )

1.) Go to the massive Loudoun County Used Book Sale, this weekend only. Done. Twice. *facepalm* Why do I do this to myself? I will only say that I stuck to the same spending limit as Friday. And the books averaged out to well under $.50 each.
2.) Go on a day hike along the C&O canal trail, just to test conditions (and conditioning), while Mom isn't here to be a wet blanket. Cancelled due to rain. I did drive down to the Smithsonian Naturalist Center, but it was not at all what I expected (being stuck in the middle of an utterly depressing business park, and nowhere near any nature at all) and also it was closed on Sundays. I may still try to find the Audobon Society one tomorrow, depending on how early I wake up.
3.) Vid something. - Not done, but I did pick a song, make a preliminary plan, read all the beginner vidding meta I could find, and watch five episodes of SGA. So progress is being made!
4.) Update the X-Files newbieguide. Done!
5.) Write fic. Get ahead on schoolwork. Apply for internship. Fix lj layout. Finish sewing project. Update fic archives. - um. the first of these got done? A little?
6.) --? I know there was something else, but I can't for the life of me remember what. Oh well, I'm sure it'll come to me.

I also went to the grocery store and bought milk this afternoon, because I drank the last of it Saturday morning, and I can't go that long without milk!1!! I'm already over halfway through drinking it ...

Also, I have this sudden urge to write fanfic with sockpuppets. It would fit in with so many of our canons! BtVS and HL already have canonical sockpuppets. SG1 has canon Mary-Sues, that's close. I want a story where Sheppard is really just a sockpuppet for the Ancients! -- oh wait, that's been done already. How about Peter Pettigrew was originally James' sockpuppet, but his account spell got hacked by the nannyVoldemort! - or no, what we really need is an explanation of why HP canon is so obsessed with socks, in which half the characters are actually illusions created by Dumbledore to make himself look good, and when the scheme starts collapsing he stages this dramatic pseudocide; but in book 7, Hermione, with the help of Dobby, manages to trace a common origin address for all of Dumbledore's socks! And Harry denies to everyone that Dobby had sent him the same explanation years ago and it got lost in his inboxlaundry basket! Yes!

Or perhaps I should go to bed and sleep.

(See my icon? This was my first ever Harry Potter icon. It is a portrait of my first ever fanfic OC - Dilly, who works in the Hogwarts kitchens. She is a very special brownie. I am feeling very reminiscent about Dilly, all of a sudden.)

In the parking lot at the train station today there was a very dead, flat, dry frog. It was the largest frog I have ever seen in the flesh - nearly a foot long, counting its legs splayed out behind it. I prodded it over onto its stomach with one foot and it was still wet underneath. Wet and *wriggling*. I'd read the description many times in books, but never have I seen before a dead thing that was so full of maggots that it seemed still alive - more than alive, bursting and crawling with it, writhing under the flesh, little white curls of it squirting out and rippling over the concrete below.

It was cool.

Oh, and speaking of death and writhing masses, as a reward for not committing jigai at my stat exam this afternoon, I bought myself a con.txt membership. So, I guess I'm going to con.txt. Happy birthday me!

Actually, now that I can look farther into the future than monday. 1:30. doom. again, I should probably figure out my schedule for the summer. Let's see:

( This is as good as I can do with that 'planning ahead' stuff. )

And there should probably be something about getting a job and stuff in there too, but, ehh, why worry?

Also, I'm now one of the top 50 taggers on LibraryThing!

I have way too much homework that I absolutely *have* to have done by tomorrow - so of course, it's time for a ( meme! )

Yay spring!

Actually, what was brought to my attention today, which wasn't nearly as relevant in winter, when I generally wear several petticoats, bloomers, and/or stockings under a heavy skirt, and a long coat over it - is that the airflow patterns in and around train stations leave me feeling an awful lot like Marilyn Monroe. Especially, for some reason, the New Carrollton subway station - coming up the stairs it generally looks like I'm wearing a hoop skirt.

I would have gone with not wearing any shoes, either, if the sun had contrived to stay out long enough to warm the sidewalks. Is it normal for going barefoot outside for the first time in spring to feel *that good*? (I'd say 'better than sex', but I have no real basis for comparison. Although the moany noises I was making while wiggling my toes in the grass this afternoon might have led someone to come to a different conclusion.)

And since it's barefoot/sandals time again, time to paint my toenails! I was going to do it during Bones, but alas no Bones. I hates reality shows, yes I does, precious. So I did it during this immensely stupid documentary about the Ten Commandments, instead. They're alternating brown-and-pink on one side, and all pink on the other, for that fetching assymetrical look! With gold glitter on top. And I have new sandals that are exactly like my old ones, and a double-breasted plum-colored suit that Mom bought at Goodwill that matches my plaid fedora.

And speaking of toenail polish - last night's House. I scanned a few community's flists after the episode (as you do) and I'm puzzled by the reaction to the toenail polish. That is, everybody seems to think that he's wearing it *voluntarily*. For eris' sake, this is a guy who's rooming with House! I'd say there's a 50% chance he lost a bet, a 30% chance House did it to him in his sleep, and a 20% chance he got talked into agreeing to it without realizing what was going on, with an accompanying 15% chance that House is currently wearing a complimentary shade. Plus, I totally came out of that ep squealing "House/Cuddy/Wilson" OT3, which also seems to be a unique reaction. House fandom is not nearly cracked enough, considering the canon.

... on that note, the I-can't-believe-it's-not-mpreg House/SG crossover finally hit the length limit for Notepad. Yay! (Not that that's ... very long at all, but for me it is.)

And while I'm doing a very boring entry, might as well go for meme thingy: Stuff that happened on my birthday: Root beer was invented. Star Wars Episode II came out. Star Wars Episode III came out. Liberace was born. David Boreanaz was born. Elliot Ness died. The Feast Day of St. Brendan the Navigator.

*yawn*

I taped Ring of the Niebelungs lst night nd the frcking verticl hold is ll screwy.

Verticl hold! Verticl hold isnt suupposed to go wrong these dys My little TV doesnt even hve verticl hold djustment. Oh well, the sound is perfectly oky, nd I only tped it becuse it was written by my favoritest author ever, so who needs the picture, right? I set it to get the second part tonight anyway. The episodes of House and Boston Legal that I taped during Gme Night seem to be oky, thank the snark.

Also, this keyboard's entire first two columns nd lst two columns of keys - that being !1'"aA;: and a bunch of function keys, including bckspce nd right rrow, unfortuntely, keep malfunctioning spordiclly. It is more inconvenient thn you might think. I need to get off my ss nd fix the nternet on the other lptop lredy. Oh, nd figure out where I left my debit crd so I cn renew my LJ ccount. (I ws trying to see how long I could go with free ccount. It turns out tht wht I miss isnt icons or polls or friendsfriends, its scrpbook. I thought the point of scrpbook ws tht the pictures you post to your lj would never dispper, so I ssumed tht scrpbook would just freeze, like my extry icons, but no, it's just gone. I hope the pictures will come back wheN i renew, becuse I'm not sure they were ll bcked up.)

In conclusion, integration by parts ownz my soul, jo.

ETA: Oh, also, the original intent of this entry (before I got distracted) was to wonder whether there's any system by which cards from different CCGs can be played in the same game. Some GURPS-ish thing that lets you mix the rules and convert the card values in different games to something compatible. Because I was sitting at Game Night and had this sudden vision of playing a Psyduck against a Serra Angel. And then you could shuffle in YuGiOh and NeoPets and P:tBH and Gloom and media tie-in games and it would be *awesome* and *chaotic*. Surely *somebody* has done this, right?

I want it to be summer already.

Usually I love this time of year, but right now I can't remember the last time I was warm all the way through that didn't involve at least three blankets, and I'm really not looking forward to the train station at 7:00 tomorrow. I want to be hot. I want to strip down to one layer of clothing and still be too hot. I want to curl up under those three blankets with a half-dozen ice packs between the layers, like I did last summer. I want to move to Alexandria or Tel Aviv and feel sun-baked mud brick under my bare feet and feel the hot dry wind against my face while I drink sherbet and soak my head-scarf in cold water. (possibly I shouldn't have watched Digging for the Truth again.)

Come, spring, warm up!

Meanwhile I'm going to curl up under those three blankets and read Bible stories until my toes are warm and I can sleep.

I now own my very own copy of The Hoboken Chicken Emergency! I am so happy that I could ... well, do something appropriately Pinkwaterian, like spending the whole day wearing deelyboppers and then denying it if somebody asks why.

It's a lovely old yellowed Scholastic paperback, too. I am aware of the ugly omnibus reissues they've been putting out over the last few years - but Pinkwater books should not be bought in a Barnes&Noble; they should be found, after much effort, in a creepy, dusty, used bookstore, or a box in the attic, or the hidden back room of a thrift store; or perhaps picked out of a sale bin at an overly-bright discount store in a completely generic strip mall - the sort of places where Pinkwater characters hang out.

(Pinkwater is like the converse of the ideal Bobbsey Twins childhood - his world is screwed up, fundamentally idiotic, illogical, full of shades of gray, and occasionally just plain mean, but like his characters, you love it anyway because it's yours. It would slot right in with Gaiman's Neverwhere, or with The Cucumber King.)

I also bought a Coville novel that I read ages ago at the library but never owned, and The Space Eagle: Operation Doomsday, because it looked fun and the deal was 3/$1. It seems to be a tie-in novel to ... something, but neither Google nor I have any idea *what*. I suppose I should read it and find out. *g*

And speaking of loving a place because it's yours, I spent the morning at the Kuethe Library in Glen Burnie with the excuse that I was researching for a paper. They still use a card catalog! I fell in love the minute I saw the lovely old cabinet standing there, and that was *before* I got to spend three hours going through filing cabinets full of newspaper clipping. Ah, it was wonderful. Not a computer in the entire building, just shelves and shelves of books and drawers and drawers of paper. All you have to do is point me at a library and wind me up, and I keep going and going and going...

Of course, they didn't have a lot of what I was hoping they'd have, but that just gives me an excuse to get up and finally go explore all the other tiny local libraries and museums and historical societies, right? Not to mention pulling out everything that's stuffed up to the rafters in this house. (No, literally - the plat I need to find this evening is, I believe, stuffed up under a rafter in the attic. I wonder how you cite that in APA style? *g*) And the minute we get a nice Saturday, an excuse to go exploring through the woods with a notebook and a camera and an archealogical outlook. This should be *fun*. (Plus, once the paper's written, the people at the Kuethe Library want a copy for their files. The people at the Odenton Heritage society probably will too. wheee.)

It's so nice to finally have a paper topic that fills me with joy rather than 'eh, okay.' Even if I'm still procrastinating like mad on it whenever I get a chance.

Today was a very nice day outside, wasn't it? *ruffles today's hair affectionately*

Now, to pray that my dinner hasn't exploded, and yesterday's Boston Legal and today's Bones and some lj time.

ETA: Nope, it exploded. Curse you, Mr. Microwave! *shakes fist*

ETA2: Okay, so that 'last week on Boston Legal' montage - did that have *any* purpose except highlighting the Denny/Alan scene at the beginning of the new episode?

On the other hand, *'ships Alan/Shirley like mad* It's curious the way that male characters perving over older women seems to be a marker of a certain type of moral ambiguity (usually coupled, of course, with some sort of gender ambiguity) in today's media. Not sure where I'm going with that, except, hmm, interesting.

ETA3: Zack and Booth are so very cute with their manly bonding rituals. I think if I get my hair cut shorter (although I'm currently not planning to) I think I'll ask for it to look like Zack's.