katallison

So -- not too long ago, laurashapiro had a cool idea, as she is wont to do, being Large of Brain.

When she was out here for a visit, she brought it up to me, and I said, "Dang, that's a cool idea, and sign me up!"

prillilar and ladyjax joined in as co-mods. Proposals were written up, edited, sent around. An exploratory post was made, followed by a poll.

And now -- fenopause is live. As Laura describes it, "your community for discussions of aging, fandom, and the ways they intersect," and I couldn't say it better myself.

Check it out!

What I loved about Obama's speech was that, while eloquent, it didn't seem to me to be beautiful speechifying for its own sake, or overly fascinated by its own rhetorical flourishes, or trying to blow sunshine up our collective asses, but was rather on the bleak and harsh side, speaking plainly about hard work and responsibility, buckling down and getting real, setting aside childish things and growing up. I've seen it described by others as "wintery" and "muscular", and yeah, I'd agree with that. More to the point, though, I was struck by the fact that ... well --

"What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task."

...by the fact that Benton Fraser would have found this speech entirely admirable. Yup.

(And, on an entirely different and far lower note, the crowd singing the "Na na na na, hey heeeyyyy, goodbye" song to Bush's departing helicopter cracked me the fuck up. Because I am not Benton Fraser, yo.)

It's been raining hard and steady here for, oh, two days or so, which means that, on top of the remnants of Snowmageddon!, we are now having --

"...a memorable flood event," according to some guy from the National Weather Service who apparently thinks flood event somehow captures the ongoing emergency-disaster-AOOOOGAH-RED ALERT! vibe more eloquently than, y'know, flood. Because this is an EVENT we're having here.

Flood events are a time when it is good to be living on a hilltop (as distinct from Snowmageddon! events, or ice storms, when hilltops are not so great).

I-5 appears to be closed both north and south of here; my co-worker K. may be flooded out of her house tonight (poor woman, she just moved here from the high deserts of Nevada and I think is already regretting the change); and I am sending worried thoughts of love and concern out to arallara, whose house is right next to a river in a seriously-flooded city.

(ETA: "Record historic flooding" happening in eight or nine rivers in the area, according to latest news. God, this is painful--last winter's flooding, miserable and destructive as it was, is apparently now being surpassed.)

I am hunkered down, watching SGA reruns, drinking white wine, eating rye crackers, lighting candles, and listening to the wind lash the rain against the windows. If I make it through the next two days, I will have survived yet another First Week of the Quarter (and man, that gets harder every year, as I get older and more tired and jaded and fed up with tearful student freak-outs in my office).

And (I say this tentatively, with some fear) this weekend I may open up a piece of writing that's been in abeyance for a couple of years, and start typing words in. Because last night, after a couple of years of near-silence, the voices in my head started murmuring quietly again, and -- yeah, OK, maybe something will come of it, maybe not.

NWS: "A MAJOR WINTER STORM IS ON TAP THIS WEEKEND... "

Wunderground: "Heaviest snow will occur on the Kitsap peninsula along Hood Canal... Other locations within this area should get 5 to 12 inches of snow. ... If more precipitation occurs in the form of freezing rain than snow... then an ice storm would be possible with ice accumulations in excess of one-quarter inch. ... Ice storms are capable of causing power lines and large tree branches to snap and cause major travel disruptions."

NOAA: "Ongoing threat of sustained winds 50 to 60 mph with gusts to 75 mph or greater ... Structural damage, road closures, downed trees, and power lines ... "

Brad Colman, chief meteorologist for the Weather Service in Seattle: "This has the potential to be a notable and historical storm for some areas. ... This will be a major winter storm that will be life-threatening and disruptive to transportation and power for significant parts of Western Washington."

Oh, brother.

I started a post of Epic Whine last night, and ended up deciding to only post the condensed version, as follows:

Setting the Scene: Around five inches of snow fell here yesterday, which would be a yawn-inducingly normal occurrence back in Minnesota, but is DEFCON TWO RED ALERT PANIC NOW levels of unheard-of in the green and mild little city on the Puget Sound where I now reside.

Of The Good: My college decided to close around 3 so we could all get home before dark.

Of The Bad: We were the only educational institution of any sort, K-12 or postsecondary, private or public, in the entire county that was silly enough to even open yesterday.

Of The Good: They do, apparently, have actual snowplows here in my city. (The local paper alleges five, but I think that is a gross exaggeration.)

Of The Bad: The people running roads maintenance don't quite grasp that while plowing a snow-covered road is a good first step, you need to follow that up with sand and salt, or what you have is a clean-scraped, tightly-packed, highly-polished surface of glaze ice.

( (The story continues within...) )

In conclusion: This is the kind of nonsense I moved here to get AWAY from, dammit. But at least I have heat, and power, and internet, and am (so far) unsmushed. Avaunt!

Item #1,342,654 on the list of Reasons Why I Love the Internet:

Cute Things Falling Asleep.

I tell you what, if somehow these could be concatenated into a continuous video loop that could be projected onto my bedroom ceiling, I would never suffer from insomnia again. Also, my mental health would probably take a sharp and enduring upturn.

And this one is for brooklinegirl. Just because.

I tell you what, for sheer unadulterated Good Times, there's little to match having the heat in one's apartment go out at the start of what's being billed as the coldest week in 20 years hereabouts.

(Not that it ever actually gets COLD here in the Pacific NW -- I have not yet gotten soft enough to think the 20s above zero are COLD, nosiree -- except that in an apartment which is [a] not really "insulated" in any meaningful sense of the word, and also [b] currently unheated, it does get a bit -- chilly. Yeah.)

So, while Richard the Somewhat Competent Maintenance Guy fiddles with my heater (and with the dryer and stove, which have also stopped working in some sort of appliance sympathy strike) (which, yeah, I know, means the problem is in the wiring/electrical service, and hence will be longer and more complicated to fix, damn it), I thought I'd post that meme -- you know, the one that's been going around. Not that I do such things usually, but the incomparable kormantic tagged me, and so, ( self-indulgent natterings ho! )

Update: Heat! We have heat! At last!
Plus, for a bonus: It's snowing like a SUMBITCH out there!
I think I'm just going to wrap up in a blanket, and watch Slings and Arrows...

Of the various things that have been absorbing me during my LJ hiatus, the most completely absorbing is now, officially, finally, Ready For Her Closeup.

Everyone -- meet my newest family member.



( Much much dog babble within )

( Here, have some more pictures! )

( Also! A very important poll! )

And, oh my GOD. I CAN HAZ DOG. My life is never going to be the same.

Updates to follow . . .

otw_onlinecon is hosting a series of challenges, today's being "Blast from Your Fannish Past," in which participants are encouraged to "Write/vid/create art for your first ever fandom"--or, alternatively, "Crossover your First Fandom with your Current Fandom."

This started me thinking nostalgically about Twin Peaks, which I could make the case for being my first fandom--at least, the first show about which I was obsessional--and then about due South (in the "current" category, for lo, I am a stick-in-the-mud). I started thinking, "Hmmmm -- somebody really needs to write that story where Agent Cooper, in following up his investigations of One Eyed Jacks, runs into one Constable Benton Fraser, who is also investigating related evil weirdness, and stuff ensues."

And then I thought, "But you know -- aren't Cooper and Fraser really kind of the same person, sort of, in some respects?"

And then I thought, "No, here's the deal, Cooper is what you'd get if you smooshed Fraser and Mulder together in some kind of unholy brain-meld. Kind of, sort of. Yeah."

Yeah. The thought pleases me, anyway. Just as it pleases me to be posting, even if briefly and inanely, on matters fannish and entirely unrelated to moving, unpacking, household chaos, and other tediosities.

Here's the thing: If I tell myself I can't post again until I make *some* attempt to reply to the backlog of comments, I will--uh--probably never post again. /o\ So I'm just (for the time being, at least) going to grovel and plead for a general amnesty in that direction, so that I may use my thimbleful of time and energy to WAVE MY ARMS AND RANT about the OMG state of MASSIVE CHAOS that prevails in my apartment at this point.

To recap: everything was moved in last Thursday, where "moved" = "guys hauled it in and dumped it." Last Friday was my first day at the new job, and crazy-busy, but I intended to spend the weekend unpacking, organizing, and getting everything generally set up.

Instead of which, I spent the weekend making 39675 trips to Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Linens 'n' Things, buying stuff like lightbulbs and toilet paper and cutlery drawer-divider thingies, and above all, innumerable storage-y/shelf-y contraptions to put inside of kitchen cupboards so as to maximize the *incredibly* limited storage space. Which--wow, was I spoiled by my former abode. The kitchen footprint here is actually about the same size, but this one has maybe a fourth of the storage; it's not *bad*, mind you, nice and clean and with shiny new appliances, and would be a pefectly fine kitchen for someone who doesn't actually cook much.

So, anyway, I got little done all weekend in the way of actual unpacking, though I did finally get the kitchen set up enough to be useable; and this week has been a time of utter exhaustion and overwhelm, partly from starting the new job, partly because I am majorly sleep-deprived on account of the dickwad who lives in the apt below me running his GODDAMNED television in the bedroom RIGHT below me all FUCKING night long. (I finally bought a fan, and run it all night as a white-noise generator, which does work, but I still sort of want to kill Mr. Downstairs.) All of which meant that I did no unpacking whatsoever all week, instead staggering home from work and collapsing. I have not yet put the bed together, mostly because I can no longer remember how it GOES together, and instead have the mattress and box spring sitting squarely in the middle of the bedroom floor, surrounded on all four sides by heaps of t-shirts, underwear, socks, and sweaters that have been dumped and strewn. My dining table, too, remains disassembled, because the dining room is still too full of boxes to fit another thing in, and hence I have been eating my meals (such as they are, largely featuring chips, string cheese, and beer) off my little deskside table, with my laptop perched alongside.

(Oh, and thank god that someone close by is running an unsecured wireless connection, because I have been having merry hell with Comcast [which, on the scale of predictable phenomena, is like saying the sun comes up in the east and sets in the west].)

My hallway is largely obstructed by the goddamned piece-o-crap ironing board I bought from Target, which I opened up, experimentally, and have been unable to get closed again. I'd turned it upside down to try to fiddle with the mechanism (something's broken in there) and, in a fit of rage, just left it there, lying on its back with its legs in the air like some huge dead cockroach. (Christ only knows how I'm going to get that sucker *back* to Target, short of tying it to the roof of the car.) And I have not unpacked and shelved any of my boxes of books, because I've decided I need to shift the bookcases over to the other side of the room, and I'm not quite strong enough to move them myself over the carpeting, so I need to go to Home Depot at some point and buy a hand truck/dolly (which is, I am firmly convinced, something every single woman needs).

I keep opening boxes up and finding things like: my globe, which no longer fits in its spot on top of the bookshelf on account of how the ceilings are lower here; three dozen crappy old t-shirts which for some reason I was unable to make myself throw away when I moved; a little stuffed animal that my co-workers gave me when I left and which I was also unable to yadda; and the champagne bucket, and the martini shaker, and picnic cooler and galoshes and extension cords and the Roomba and the Cuisinart and decorative little bowls for strewing about with potpourri or some damn thing in them, and napkins and placemats and candleholders and seven different changes of bed linens and SWEET CHRIST WHERE THE HELL AM I GOING TO PUT ALL THIS STUFF??

It is boggling to me that this nice 885-square-foot two-bedroom apartment does not seem NEARLY big enough for all the crap I moved out here with me, and this is after I got RID of about two-thirds of my crap. Thank god I didn't bring my sofa, because the space where the sofa would fit is filled with boxes that are in turn filled with yet MORE stuff that I'm going to have to put someplace.

So -- this shall be my weekend. And it is supposed to be 90 degrees tomorrow, which is the kind of nonsense I moved here to get AWAY from. (*sigh*)

I should add that, despite all this ranting, I do really like the apartment, and I shall soon take and post some photos of the amazing views from here on my hilltop. And I want at some point to write up the post of Oh my god, my new job is so incredibly, marvellously wonderful that I hardly know how to talk about it. Basically, I am indeed the most ridiculously lucky and blessed person on the planet (a fact which I shall no doubt appreciate more fully when I can figure out which pile my clean underwear is in...)