ceteranna

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 06:10:46 GMT

Danielle left a few hours ago to go home for Christmas.

I am not a clingy person. In fact I am usually anti-cling. Honestly, you could bottle me and sell me as a spray for misbehaving pantyhose, I would sell brilliantly.

But I admit, I clung just a bit.

I blame the dry weather we've had recently for this mysterious bout of emotional static. There's no other explanation. Dry weather, or possibly the fact that we haven't actually been apart for a full 24 hours since we first hooked up. Pheromonal attachment set in around the 6 week mark, I think, so after 3+ months I have already become embarrassingly domesticated.

At least she kindly left me a smelly sweater of hers to wear. That was very thoughtful of her. I think I'll go put that on now and curl up with one of her stuffed tigers and feel pleasantly sorry for myself. Because it's actually nice, in a sad sort of way, having someone to miss who you know will miss you too.

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:02:00 GMT

"[Charles Scott] Sherrington's first laboratory at Liverpool was nothing to brag about; it was housed in a small dialpidated building. Fortunately a new home for physiology and pathology was completed in 1898. To Sherrington's delight, one of the attractive female figures gracing the emblem of the new building was none other than Ethel [Sherrrington]. His wife's image symbolized Physiologia, whereas another professor's wife served as the model for Pathologia."

- Minds Behind the Brain: A HIstory of the Pioneers and their Discoveries, Stanely Finger, p. 226

Ahahahahahaha. I want to know what the other wife looked like.

.... Geez, I hope this amuses someone besides me...

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:53:15 GMT

This is belated, but.... thanks to everyone who commented on the post requesting happy anecdotes, stupid jokes, and fuzzy animals. The mere fact that my post generated 22 comments in only a few hours was cheering by itself, but my heart was also very much warmed by the anecdotes. It's definitely easier to look on the bright side of things when nice stuff happens to people I like.

I must also admit to being rendered retrospectively happy and proud [in a very ashamed sort of way] by the fact that absolutely every single video link to fuzzy animals sneezing and falling and being surprised was something I had actually already seen before. Because I may be a lazy ungrateful hypocritical procrastinating self-aggrandizing out-of-shape pimple-ridden loser, but dammit I KNOW MY FUZZY ANIMALS. So if I never accomplish anything else in my life, at least I can be proud of the fact that I saw the Surprised Kitten and the Sneezing Baby Panda videos LONG before they were featured on youtube or cuteoverload or whatever.

*awards self a Comprehensive Cuteness Cognescenti medal*

HAH.

... Now I must go and find something useful to do. Quickly.

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 23:14:28 GMT

Been in one of the moods again for the past couple of days (positive blog review of my cake notwithstanding). Low ebb of self-esteem has proved resistant to usual cures-via-distraction, including but not limited to tea, sex, hugs, Scrabble, good books, Takarazuka, chocolate, naps, dancing, hot baths, and a veritable arsenal of youtube clips of puppies chewing each others' ears and pandas falling over etc.

Supplies are running low. Please tell me something happy in your life and/or provide reinforcement pics of cute animals? All assistance is much appreciated.

(Don't tell me nice things about myself, though, please. That will actually make it worse. Just the fuzzy animals/happy anecdotes, if you don't mind.)

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:53:55 GMT

One of my cakes got written up on The Heavy Table!

He calls Fireroast "one of the best (if least recognized) bakeries in the Twin Cities", and as specific examples of its bestness mentions MY linzer cookies, MY lemon sponge cake, and MY oatmeal-fudge bars (actually not my recipe, and not a recipe I'm a huge fan of either, but I did happen to make the batch that he sampled, I'm pretty sure). WELL SHUCKS, DUDE, THANKS. ♥

The cake actually looked much prettier whole than the slice he photographed, FYI. The morning I made it was the first snowfall of winter (the travesty of seasonage that took place in October having been stricken from my own personal record), and the combination of yellow morning sunlight and the light dusting of snowflakes that I could see outside the window where I bake made me think of powdered sugar on lemon curd. This was what the cake looked like before I put it out on a pretty plate to sell:

It's so nice to feel good at my job.

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:22:32 GMT

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYBODY

Oh god, and what a Thanksgiving it's turning out to be here at Laurel House. We have a full house. No joke. Laney's best friends from highschool, Sarah and Maggie, are here, and Maggie brought her friend Caitlyn, who also comes with an adorable seeing-eye golden retriever named Glory. My contributions to the festivities are Stephan and Ryan (sanura, likely to chronicle the events of the next couple of days much better than I), and their former housemates Bryan and Ben. Bryan's friend Mollie is staying elsewhere, but she's around, as is Evan (prof_vencire) who is supposed to be spending Thanksgiving with his family but is ducking out of some of it to spend time at Club Laurel where clearly ALL THE FUN IS HAPPENING HELLO.

At Ben's suggestion, I drew a little diagram on the scroll of paper we keep tacked up in the kitchen to write notes to each other. It has the names of all official members of Laurel House, the names of their guests, arrows between people indicating how everyone knows each other, a few physical descriptors, and a chart of people's relative heights which Ben added on the side. It's already proved very useful; for a while there was a rumor going around that Francesca was my cat (?), and I keep forgetting Caitlyn's name and wanting to call her Catherine or Crystal. Whenever there's doubt or confusion, we can refer to the little chart!

Last night I made a big pot of black bean soup and a couple of loaves of quick cheese bread, and later on a huge pan of brownies which vanished in less than half an hour. We all sat around drinking wine, beer, champagne, bottled mojitos, Bailey's, or hard cider (this house is so filled with alcohol right now it's absurd), getting tipsy and getting to know each other. Stephan and Evan and Ben got in arguments about their respective political ideologies and visions of utopia, which means they're all getting along famously. The females in the party all had fun looking at my copy of Lost Girls, a graphic novel which I bought recently thinking it was about fairy tales and discovered to my surprise but not exactly displeasure that it was mostly about sex (and fairy tales). Everyone flirted madly with everyone else. Half the group retired to bed around midnight, and the rest of us stayed up getting drunk(er) and playing Never Have I Ever, which is always a great way to get to know a group of strangers with whom you'll be living for a few days. Eheheh.

Now everyone's had breakfast and showers (except one of us who is rather hung over and is staying in bed, who shall remain nameless because she might kill me if I make fun of her for it), Stephan and Ben have gone to the airport to fetch Ryan, and in the kitchen .... the Grand Cooking Marathon is commencing!

I'm not in charge of much this year -- just an apple pie and a pumpkin flan and some caramelized sweet potatoes, and I might take over the salad and/or the green beans if Laney gets stressed out, we'll see. I'm a little disappointed not to be making the traditional Club Dahlia aerodynamic rolls, but that's not really an appropriate dish for an indoor Thanksgiving, I suppose...

Oh fuck it, I want aerodynamic rolls. It's not Thanksgiving without aerodynamic rolls.

Guess I better go get on that then, huh?

FUTHER UPDATES AS EVENTS WARRANT.

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:27:57 GMT

Does anyone else feel as though, when you don't participate in livejournalness for a month or so, it's very very hard to start posting/commenting again? My bloggozoid and commmentezius muscles just go all weak and squishy. Can't think of anything amusing or interesting to say for myself, and can't think of much to say to other people besides "yay you!" or "oh noooo" or "I like the blue fuzzy one better, myself, but you should just go with whichever's got the best personality and the nicest car" and other such mundanities.

Anyway. I know I'll look back and be irked with myself for not posting anything, so here are some small situps and crunches for my flabby bloggozoids, and maybe later I'll try to tighten up the commentezii.

Blues dance = officially my latest hobby and obsession. Almost exactly a year since that very first dance/workshop at Laurel House, and I've finally attended enough events and hung out with enough people that I'm beginning to feel like a part of this community, rather than merely a hanger-on. New friends(?) Nico and Erin have been doing a series of mini-workshops on occasional Saturdays, which I've attended a couple of. We've had... two? three? four? three-and-a-quarter? (depends on how you count it) blues dance events at Laurel this fall, and I get the feeling that Laurel House is going to be a small, perhaps temporary/transitional, but not wholely insignificant planetary body in the fledgling solar system of the Twin Cities blues scene. And, most thrillingly, the weekend of Halloween was the very first ever blues exchange weekend in the Twin Cities, and I was there for every night of it.

Exchange weekends are apparently a lynchpin of the American social dance scene (and maybe international, I dunno). Basically, the movers-and-shakers of a local dance community persuade a bunch of venues to host dance events every afternoon and evening for three or four days, import some hotshot teachers to give classes, round up a dozen or so good djs and a couple of really good bands, and then advertise like hell. A small horde of out-of-state people fly or drive in for the weekend and sleep on the couches and floors of the local dancers. And then you all dance until you drop. Dances can go for 12 hours. It's insane. And amazing. And addictive.

Until recently, the blues dance community of Minnesota was too small for an exchange weekend to be financially viable, but it's apparently grown a lot in the past couple of years, and there were a good 80 or so attendees. Three nights of dancing until 4 or 5 in the morning. Two amazing live bands. A big costume dance out in an unheated barn in the boondocks of Minnesota, where it was so cold that you HAD to dance just to keep warm. Piles of exhausted dancers on couches, sleepily laughing and flirting and cuddling and teasing each other even though two days ago they didn't know each others' names.

(Photo from the semifinals of the pair competition. I danced with Jon, the guy in this picture, several times. For one song, we had an exchange as follows. Jon: [leading me onto the floor] "I have a question for you." Me: "Shoot." Jon: "Do you have a boyfriend?" Me: "Well, I have a girlfriend, yeah. Why?" Jon: "Is she here tonight?" Me: "Nope." Jon: "Then I'm gonna dance this one real slow and dirty. Is that okay?" Me: ".... YES. " And he did. Or rather, we did. It was awesome.)

(Both of the dancers in the foreground above --Susan and Jamison -- are amazing. And I have danced with both of them! [Susan can lead, which makes me adore her even more.] But the blurry one in the back with the blue clipboard is Damon, my particular huge dance crush [and everyone's dance crush, really, because he's a professional blues dancer/historian and is both super-cool and deeply lovable]. I met him at this party at Laurel, and was so happy to see him again. I got to dance with him TWICE. Oh man. Oh man oh man oh man. I fangirl him so madly. And he likes me too, I made him laugh and he told me I was "kind of awesome" and friended me on facebook! Squeeeee! *passes out*)

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(Guy in the above photo is Jay, a DJ and ballroom dance instructor from Florida who was our houseguest for the weekend. Girl is Amanda, who is another one of my dancer crushes, the one I dubbed "Hot Hips II" at that same party. She is awesome and hilarious and has so much flair that I'm always faintly surprised that the whole dance floor doesn't go up in flames.)

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(Panda Hat = Nico. This was not his Halloween costume, he just wears fuzzy animal hats a lot. He's a dance instructor and a beginning-to-be-actual-friend of mine, and is one of the cutest people I have ever met. Also crazy fun to dance with.)

I made so many new friends! And danced so much I ached all over the next day, but danced in the evening anyway! And improved my dancing so much that no one believed I was a beginner any more! And got to dance with a couple of Geniune Celebrities of the U.S. blues scene! It was amazing! I'm so determined to go to more exchanges! Laney says she'll take me to one in Chicago in February! I wish it was tomorrow!

This is me dancing in my Halloween costume (in the unheated barn) with a very nice kid named Ian who likes to follow me around and give me back massages:

(Please note the oh-so-classy tissue paper earplugs. I got teased a lot for those. I don't care though, it was LOUD.)

And some more photos of my Halloween costume, just for kicks:

(All photos posted so far were taken by Ben Hejkal. Check out his website, he's awesome. I have THREE photos in his 'portraits' gallery! *proud*)

I admit, I don't know exactly what my costume was supposed to be. I found the suit at Goodwill a few months ago, dubbed it my 'slut suit' and had been looking for an occasion to wear it ever since. Added some gloves, sheer seamed stockings, wool hat, black pumps, and some very red lipstick, and the result was... sexy flight attendant? 1940's war propaganda? Alberto Vargas' fantasy of a female Navy lieutenant? Don't really know. I got lots of suggestions, but even more catcalls. Good times.

I miss everyone I met already. We hosted a blues party at Laurel on Saturday, which was massively well-attended, but it only went from 9 until 1 AM and the soundsystem was dreadful and I didn't get to dance with anyone I didn't know already, so it only took the barest edge off of my post-exchange blues lust.

Blues dance. It's amazing, I tell you what.

(^=me having a happy 3 AM lollipop on the last night -- morning, rather -- of the exchange weekend. Photo taken by a very fun lady named Alicia.)

Okay, what else?

I'm weaving an enormous rug for the living room out of recycled fabric. It's a massive undertaking, but somehow I'm already almost halfway done. I love that I have the attention span and follow through for this now. Thank you, ADD meds.

Speaking of attention span and follow through and meds.... I'm still chipping away at the monolithic state health bureaucracy, trying to secure myself some affordable health insurance. The various missteps and travails and endless reams of paperwork that I've slogged through make for a really long boring story that I won't tell here, but suffice it to say that when I finally do get approved (this next week? I hope? Please please please?) I will have earned every penny of the benefits I receive, goddammit.

I'm taking on even more stuff at work. I'm now mostly in charge of soups as well as the specialty baked goods, and I've ended up doing the majority of the work for the last couple of catering projects we've had. I've started coming in mornings instead of afternoons. I get up at 6:30 or so, catch a ride with Dani, she drops me off and gets morning coffee and a goodbye smooch before she goes to work. I have some breakfast, read the news, research some recipes online. Start cooking around 8 AM. Lunch soups and odd jobs are done by 11:30, cake layers are frosted by 1, I'm out the door by 2. It's almost like a real job!

And it might become even realer in the nearish future. My bosses are considering opening another location in Saint Paul -- 'considering' meaning the real estate agent is negotiating for it right now. Most of the food would be prepped here and baked/heated over there. This would mean a solid 10+ hour increase in my job, such that it would actually be full-time. For real. I would be a full-time chef.

I don't know quite how I feel about this. Part of me knows I should be overjoyed. In this economy, to have a full-time job with a substantial amount of creative freedom and schedule flexibility, doing something I enjoy for bosses I respect and like? WOW. .... But then there's the other part that whispers about music and grad school and other cities and other things I would like to pursue, and won't have the time/ money/freedom for if I'm working full-time as a cook.

And then another bit comes back and suggests that maybe I should see this as destiny. Maybe fate wants me to cook for a living. Maybe I should keep working this job for another year, get to the point where I can train an assistant, then scale back my hours and actually go to culinary school and get some sort of professional training/certification, pursue an internship somewhere, and see where it takes me.

But... I don't think I WANT to be a chef. I miss music. I miss artistic and intellectual involvement. Cooking's fun, but it isn't all I want to do, and I would infinitely rather be cooking for friends and family just for fun and doing something else for my living.

At least, I think that's what I want. But I don't know. Help?

Yesterday was National Bundt Cake Day! I made a chocolate-orange bundt cake in celebration.

From http://www.foodandwine.com

Happy belated Bundt Cake Day, everyone!

Phew, that was quite a livejournaling workout.

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:43:33 GMT

Hi! Hi! I'm alive! You can stop poking me now! You four or five who poked me! I'm here! I'm posting!

... And now I'm having trouble thinking of things to say. Okay. Well, here's some rambling:

My father came to visit me!

He brought me apricot preserves from home, stayed a week, met my housemates and friends, approved of Danielle, wandered around the house fixing things, survived the social onslaught of chattery young people that is an Official Laurel House Potluck (and contributed a very well-received goulash), poked around the café and met my bosses, enjoyed the random unseasonable snowfall (IT'S ONLY OCTOBER DAMMIT), came as my date to a very good SPCO concert, forgave me for getting him all lost on the bus system, fell in love with our local junk/surplus stores especially AxMan, and generally seemed to enjoy himself. It was very nice to have him here. Thank you for the visit, Father Sir.

Hm. What else. Well... I'm finally starting to feel twitchy about how little my life contains in the way of music, theater, or dance.

I miss flamenco classes. I miss voice lessons. Theater seems a long way off unless I start talking about it for some reason and then I miss it like WOAH. I miss hanging around with music people. I had a dream a couple of nights ago that I contacted a former Mac music buddy and we started a band together, a sort of blues/jazz/flamenco/salsa/tango/opera/improv fusion, and we were performing at Laurel House blues dances but there was this feeling that we were going to start getting gigs in actual clubs. It was a very good dream.

I guess this is evidence that I won't be indefinitely content just baking cakes and frittering away spare time on random hobbies. I kind of figured that was the case, but I felt like I needed to try a very very low-stress leisure life with virtually no long-term projects or goals in it for a while. I think I proved to myself that yes, I still exist and have a personality and interests and stuff even when I'm not being ambitious or super busy. Good to know. It's also good to know that the idea of being involved in music/theater performance is still the thing that lights that little yearning fire in my gut, even when I'm not pushing myself to do anything arts-related.

And I know generally what my first steps should be to get that bit of my life rolling again. Now I just need to work up the courage to take some of them...

Okay, there has to be a third thing, just for symmetry's sake. Umm.... um. Okay, here's this: for the first time ever (well, that I can remember) I celebrated a romantic anniversary with someone!

I've mostly avoided these; I like celebrating friend-anniversaries and whatnot, but I've hated the couple of Valentine's Days when I've actually been dating someone. It always just seemed artificial and awkward and expensive and not-fun. But this was great -- partly because it happened pretty much by accident.

About a week ago (Wednesday? yeah, Wednesday...) Danielle left a little present outside my door for me to find when I woke up. She'd saved a couple of little origami flowers that I'd absent-mindedly folded out of a restaurant napkin, stuck them in a little porcelain thimble (see Peter Pan for reference), and left them together with a package of pretty origami paper and a short note saying that it had been exactly one month since the day we first kissed, that she likes kissing me, and she hopes I like the present.

This is the sort of date I would never remember unless reminded, but I was all 'awwww' and 'blush' and so forth, so later that afternoon I went and bought her a green calligraphy pen (she had been admiring mine and wanted one of her own), folded another origami flower out of yellow paper (she likes yellow flowers), and taped it to the pen so it looked like a sunflower on a stem, together with a note written on a leaf saying I liked kissing her too. We'd agreed the day before to go see UP that afternoon, so I gave it to her when we met at the theater after work. Watched the movie (she cried in all the places that everyone cries, and I loved it even more the third time than I had the first and second).

We were both starving afterward, so we went across the street to the wine bar and got a delicious pizza and a flight of cabernets, and joked about how very Cliché Romantic Date this was (flowers, gifts, cute movie, classy wine bar, candle lighting, I was wearing my usual pretty-dress-and-heels and she was in a suit because of work) and how if we'd planned this it would have been awkward and too-much-too-soon but since it sort of happen spontaneously we were both really enjoying it.

Which is sort of representative of this whole relationship so far, actually. Things that should be awkward (like hooking up with your housemate), or that I would have disliked/avoided in another context (celebrating an 'anniversary' so early in a relationship), or that I would warn someone against if I were hearing about it secondhand (either of the above) seem to work out unexpectedly well.

I still feel as though I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop -- everything seems almost too easy and pleasant to be real.

It's awfully nice, though.

Okay. That's that. Um... how are you all these days?

ETA: Ehehehe, I like how I claim to have nothing to say and then type about 10,000 words anyway. Natter natter natter.

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 06:10:39 GMT

The Ever-Increasing List
of things I should actually write details about so I can remember later how much fun they were but might never get around to writing more about because I'm lazy and busy having fun so this run-on-sentence-ridden update is probably all for now:

- Minnesota Brownie Exchange + Blues Dancing! (Picture Laurel House stuffed to the gills with 40 or so people -- mostly blues dancers -- and brownies of every conceivable type, followed by an impromptu dance party that lasted until 2 AMish, god I hope the neighbors forgive us)

- Dancing with Laney and her coworkers at Conga Bistro, which masquerades a restaurant by day, but at night fills up with what must be a small but notable percentage of the Latin American immigrant population of Minneapolis and becomes a bar/club. The men are rather aggressive but fun to dance with and they go away with a grin and a shrug when you tell them firmly, the drinks are strong, the bartender is hot, and they play almost enough reggaetón and merengue to satisfy Laney and me. It's so much fun, we've gone twice and I think it's going to become our Sunday-night tradition. Despite the overwhelming heteronormativity, the blasting music, and the very obvious presence of a few gangsters, it feels amazingly safe and friendly and laid-back. Everyone's there to drink and dance, and if that's what you feel like doing then you're welcome there, and it doesn't matter if you're white or don't speak any Spanish or can't really dance well, and it apparently doesn't even matter if you're queer because last time we were there the bar was totally taken over by a happy party of half a dozen gorgeous transwomen and a couple of accompanying lesbians and one gay man, and nobody even blinked (except me). It was awesome. I love it.

- It's pear and apple season, and I'm going crazy at work trying to come up with recipes to use everything. There've been a couple of crab apple-pear crumbles, one pear-chocolate-walnut pie, one caramel apple pie, a couple of apple-raspberry pies, one ginger-pear upsidedown cake, a multi-layered apple bundt cake, and one cinnamon apple bread pudding with maple cream sauce. Tomorrow I have an experiment I want to try which will involve layers of phyllo dough, pears sautéed in brandy and butter, and a honey glaze infused with a tiny bit of thyme. I'll be curious to see how well my sense of invention can hold out against the onslaught of apples.

- In the past two weeks, I've had one person favorably compare a chocolate-raspberry torte of mine to the cakes at Café Latte (one of the most famous cake places in the city, ahahaha), two people say that the white chocolate almond layer cake was the best cake they've ever had, one person say I've completely sabotaged her attempts to go vegan because she can't stop eating my baked goods, and one person say she's been recommending this place to all of her coworkers since I started working there. And this is just the stuff I hear directly; apparently my coworkers don't pass on the stuff that customers tell them. I can't even describe how good all this makes me feel. I have a cool job! And I'm GOOD at it! How amazing is that!

- Slightly over a week after having begun Things with Danielle (we're not calling it a Relationship yet, except accidentally, because we still have to work out some stuff re: monogamy/nonmonogamy/etc). I'm a little bit bowled over by how well it's all going. I was expecting things to fizzle, I was expecting the housemates to get weird, I was expecting to need way more private time than she wanted to give me, I was expecting to be sexually incompatible, I was expecting everything and everything except what I've actually got -- which is an incredibly sweet and comfortable and fun and interesting and hot... Thing. For once, I'm not worrying about whether things are moving too fast, whether I'm giving the other person what she needs, whether I'm attaching too much or too little emotionally, blah blah blah blah... I'm just enjoying the good conversations and the lovely companionship and the gradually deepening intimacy ~~and the stupefyingly large quantity of really good sex~~ and so forth. What's even better, she's on pretty much the same page -- i.e. "this is fun, this is satisfying, I really enjoy spending time together, I don't really know where this is going but I'm having fun figuring it out, I'm learning a lot, etc." If anyone had told me ten days ago that this would happen, I would have blinked quizzically and laughed a little bit. But boy am I glad it did happen.

- ... I think I had like eight more things to write about, but I'm sleepy. Oh well.

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:19:36 GMT

やった！

When I walked in, Narita-sensei did a little double-take and went “懐かしいいい！”　... Although it became apparent when we talked after class that she couldn't quite remember my name. Heehee. But she did remember other things about me (music major, worked in a café, liked to cook, etc.) and wanted to know all about my trip to Japan and what I was up to now. She was very interested to hear that I'm a baker now, and wants to come visit my café. (Incidentally, apparently there's really no exact word for what I'm doing for a living right now -- 料理人 implies mostly savory stuff and much more expertise, and although I rather like 炊婦 apparently no one actually says that. Anyone currently living in Japan have any suggestions?)

She's actually going to a bit of trouble for me, emailing me the worksheets because I can't log in to the website without officially registering for the course, which would mean having to pay. I am very touched and grateful.

And very glad that the third time was the charm.

Phew.

... Now to review 200 kanji and handfuls of honorific forms and transitive verbs in time for Wednesday. Eheheheh.

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 05:12:27 GMT

Damn, I am so lucky to have the job I do.

I came in early today, because things are crazy this week (we're catering a wedding on Saturday, business is picking up because it's autumn, and the usual farmer's market madness, etc) and I need to work roughly double the usual number of hours. Boss #1 (Lisa) cheered when she saw me and called out to Boss #2 (her husband Dave) "Dave, guess what! Anna's here!" And then the usual crazy banter ensued. I love making my bosses laugh. I love that they DO laugh when I build little model Stonehenges out of butter sticks and demonstrate that rosemary leaves make an excellent Charlie Chaplin mustache and invent happy little song-and-dance routines to honor the arrival of the UPS man. (Um, yes, I also do actual work sometimes. Really.) I love that Dave liked my Highly Experimental Coconut Cake, and that Lisa called me a "raging bitch from hell" when I accidentally melted a spatula making a caramel rum sauce.

I love that customers wave to me and inquire what I'm baking today. I love that people come back especially for the Linzer cookies and bring friends along. I love that employees recommend the things I make to new customers. I love that I'm actually good at this job for which I have absolutely no official qualification, and that even though the economy is horrible and people are supposedly spending less money on treats, the little café I work at is actually expanding business somewhat, and that I'm helping that to happen because the food I make is tasty.

It's not intellectually stimulating, it's not especially well-paid, and it's certainly not what I want to do with the rest of my life. But oh, it's cozy, and simple, and safe, and I'm one of the very very few recent college grads I know who's currently making money doing something they love. I just strolled into this place, not even looking for work, and they offered me a veritable dream job.

How amazing is that?

This gloat brought to you by a totally exhausting day spent making eight quarts of ratatouille (no, I'm not joking, and boy have my knife skills improved) and also inventing ways to use up ten pounds of Bramely apples (answer: raspberry-apple-candied ginger tart, cranberry-apple deep dish pie with an oatmeal crumble topping, and a rum apple cake which will be frosted with maple buttercream tomorrow). Yay, I win!

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:07:16 GMT

First Japanese class started five minutes ago. I'm still at home in my room. I got scared.

Arrrrrg, self.

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 05:02:59 GMT

Phew. Life!

We had another blues dance party at Laurel House last Friday.

It seems almost impossible to me that the first and only one was almost a YEAR ago. As of the dance last Friday, I'm offically in love with blues dance, even though we've only met twice. It didn't matter that my only blues dance experience was the one workshop last October and a quick lesson Laney gave me a few days before the party; I still got to dance with a large handful of men and women, two of whom were actually blues dance teachers, and all of whom were absolutely incredible leaders. I felt stiff and awkward for the first hour of the party, and there's no way you can dance blues when you feel stiff and awkward. But once I'd tossed back a couple of drinks and chatted with some people and let the music sink into my bones a bit, I began to get the hang of it.

And it's... incredible. I've loved what little I've done of salsa and merengue and swing and tango, but blues dancing is sensual and spontaneous and soulful in a way that's unequaled by any other form of social dance I've tried. You and your partner just listen to the music with your whole body; the leader becomes the beat, and the follower becomes the liquid space between the beat that is so expressively emphasized in blues, and together you become one fluid earbodyheart that hears and moves and feels without recognizing any distinction between those three functions. It's easily as wonderful as the best sex I've ever had, and for many of the same reasons; but it isn't sexual, and I never felt threatened or disembodied the way I generally do in actual sexual situations involving boy-types. Just happy. All over. Delicious.

Of course, I also felt like a total klutz, since most of these people were very advanced dancers -- in fact, I'm pretty certain I was the only beginner in the room. But feeling seems to count as much as experience in blues dance. The two instructors I danced with both expressed surprise that I was a beginner. And apparently the girl I couldn't stop watching (this party's Hot Hips) asked Laney who I was, thinking I was an "out of town dancer" (because the TC swing/blues people all know each other) and commented that she wished she was such good buddies with The Great Damon (cute instructor I spent much of the night talking too), and couldn't believe Laney when she told her I'd only learned the moves three days ago. So even though I felt like a total clutz (albeit a very happy clutz) apparently I looked convincingly confident enough to be mistaken for a friend of The Great Damon. YAY ME.

Laney talked to some big honchos in the blues community who were at the party, and it's now OFFICIAL -- we're
making it a regular thing. Third Saturday of every month, the Laurel House Blues Party. I AM SO THRILLED.

Corey and Peter, on the final leg of their crazy six-week roadtrip, arrived at 2 AM, just as the house was emptying of the last dancers. (They'd driven straight here from Niagra Falls, holy shit.) I squealed, tackled them, fed them and put them to bed.

They only intended to stay until Monday or Tuesday, but I am such a good hostess (and they were so sick of being on the road) that they extended the stay until yesterday morning. We went for walks. We saw UP (second time for Peter and me, first for Corey, we all got teary). We went to bookstores and thriftstores and junk shops. I met their friends Scott and Kayley, who just moved from Portland to a house only four blocks from mine, HOORAY new friends. We ate delicious meals; Japanese noodle shop Tanpopo, my cooking, Scott and Kayley's cooking, iccream at Izzy's, brunch at Luce (oh wow), takeout from Pad Thai, various bits snitched from Fireroast and impromptu breakfasts and snacks from my rather stretched larder. We hung out in a big group (Peter, Corey, Danielle, Scott, Kayley, Lindsay, Emily, and me), got very drunk, and played Never Have I Ever until we were all too hilariously intoxicated to remember any of the more incriminating details of things people had revealed. We danced until 3 one night, and stayed up equally late most other nights talking and laughing and being high and messing around. It was a wonderful wonderful visit. I almost cried when they had to leave.

During their stay and since they left, I've been fielding a few questions from bemused housemates about how exactly this friendship+ works, and how come no one's jealous, and doesn't it feel weird, etc. The answers: it seems to be working well, because everyone cares about each other, and no it doesn't feel weird it feels perfectly natural. Crypticness is cryptic... But I'm quite happy with this small corner of my personal life. And I'm certainly learning a lot from it.

In summary: hooray for wonderful visits, and I am so amazingly lucky in my friends.

And now I'm starting on a Week of Crazy, during which I will have to work nearly double the usual number of hours at Fireroast (we're catering a huge wedding next Saturday) and will also (I hope I hope I hope) start Japanese classes again at Macalester. And there are birthday parties springing up everywhere, and Evan visiting the cities this weekend, and I'm going dancing with Laney on Saturday, and the house is a mess and I have a to-do list a mile long, and wow I don't think life has ever had such a wonderfully high ratio of fun/stress.

There. That's me, mostly.

... And how are you all?

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:37:00 GMT

Didn't get the job.

Dammit.

ETA: For what it's worth, I'm not terribly upset or anything. I get to keep my free schedule and pursue more hobbies and whatnot. I just have to continue trying to do it on about $160/week. Ugh. And I feel bad, because I really could have done that job quite well, so I can't help fretting a bit over why I didn't get it.

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 05:12:09 GMT

THE CLOSET DRAMA
Or, What To Wear?
A drama in verse, composed by a Sad Pauper, two evenings before an important interview

Dramatis Personae
ANNA, a young woman
CLOSET, her closet

ACT 1, SCENE 1

[Enter ANNA.]

ANNA: Oh Closet mine, I come to thee in hope.
Thou hast in long years past revealed such cloth's
Of varying shapes and sizes, types and makes
To suit not only me, but also too my friends,
My housemates dear, and strangers on the street
For all occasions, costume balls, fêtes, hikes,
and trips to cafés, there to chic-ly lounge.
Preponderance of ruffles there may be
Within thy bowels, also fair long skirts,
and blouses that display the female bosom,
Perhaps a few too many patterns bold
and colors that proclaim the wearer's cheer.
And yet, oh Closet, I have faith in thee,
No quav'ring doubt gnaws at my confidence.
Produce thou, then, an outfit fit for this
My first interview for an office job!

CLOSET: Alas! My mistress, though I've served you long
And faithfully, I hope, and with success
I cannot give what you have never bought
Nor e're concealed in my capacious chest.
You wish a blouse, not over-large, nor yet
Of smallness that reveals immodestly?
A skirt, not long, but yet of such a length
So as to hide your rounded thigh and knee?
And shoes that, while not sneakers, seem to say
That you come not intending to beguile
By tottering heels, peeping toes and such
Your future boss? (For t'would be in poor style.)
And furthermore, for fear of seeming clownish
Must all these things be dyed in sober hues
No yellows bright nor reds flamboyant
But such as Earnestness herself might choose?

ANNA: Thou speak'st exactly, darling Closet mine,
And neatly voiced my thought before I spoke.
Moreover, I must also pause to note
You're rhyming your iambic! Most impressive.
I would but add to that list you have named
The stipulation, be it not too hard
That such as you produce for this occasion
Be at least a little stylish.
For I am young and vain, and would not like
To appear frumpy, though I must be modest.

CLOSET: Oh Mistress Anna, I must beg you, cease!
No more conditions -- t'will, I fear, be fruitless.
For I have nothing such as we have named
And must send you off shirtless, skirtless, bootless!

ANNA: What sayest thou? Would'st have me go naked?
T'would be, I fear, a rather grave offence
Against my former teachers and my school
To appear nude when they debate my hiring.

CLOSET: And yet, if such conditions as I named
Be truly needful, I confess I've naught
Within the confines of my bulging breast
For you to seem as office workers ought.
In all your soujourns to and from Goodwill
You've brought back fluffy skirts and battered heels,
Shirts in glorious stripes and 'broidery bold
And dresses over which the lustful keel.
Amongst these riches, many holes abound
And stains, for all were bought at such a price
As would not serve to buy a single suit
Of decent quality, nor yet a bag of rice.
Search though you may within my well-stuffed walls
Tearing clothes from hangers in your rage
Yet will you find nothing inside to suit
The solemn rites in which you will engage.

ANNA: Mine ears! Mine eyes! Can it be true? Can thou
Who hast e're now provided all I need
Have truly nothing I can wear on Tuesday?
What shall I do? Oh help! Oh woe is me!

CLOSET: Perhaps tomorrow you could buy a suit?

ANNA: This sensible suggestion gives me pain
For such requires going to a store,
A real one, not the Goodwill, where they'll charge
What clothing's actually worth! These four long years
I've scarce set foot in such a place as that.

CLOSET: But if you get the job, you'll have the money
For things like suits, though they be priced at cost.

ANNA: And if I don't? What then? I shall have paid
And yet not got the post!

CLOSET: You'll have the suit.
'Twill serve for other interviews to come.
Perhaps auditions also. Come now, Mistress,
Dry your sulky tears of disappointment
And face the morrow's shopping with brave heart.

ANNA: I won't! I shan't! I'll wear what you can give.
Convention be damned, I will not buy a suit.

CLOSET: A grave mistake, I fear --

ANNA: Shut up. You've failed.
I'm going now to sleep. Think well on this.
Tomorrow, Closet, we shall speak again
And if thou still hast nothing meet to give
I'll clean thee out, give all my clothes away,
And go to find a nudist camp to live in.

[Exit ANNA. The CLOSET sighs and goes to sleep.]

END SCENE 1.

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:07:14 GMT

A couple of people (including my beloved maternal unit) have recently informed me that I haven't been posting enough lately. But... well, I'm sorta stuck for things to post about. Life is as usual -- burying myself in mountains of butter-flour-sugar at work, hanging out with friends, pretending to study Japanese, and avoiding cleaning my room. There's been a goodbye party for Evan (*sniffle*), and a nice trip to the lake, and a surprise birthday party for Laney, and a hangout with old Mac music buddies, and a couple of visits to nice bookstores, and one funny visit to my very first sex toy store ever, heehee. And we finished Avatar a couple of days ago (I cried a little bit). And I have an interview for that job at Macalester. And I haven't called my voice teacher or my psychiatrist and I feel guilty about that. And there were tornados yesterday (Danielle and I cuddled up in the basement and she tried to get me interested in Buffy with zero success) and it's cold and rainy now and it's AUGUST for god's sake so I'm annoyed. In general ... well, life is as usual. Blah blah blah.

But this is not the kind of posting that satisfies my mother.

So I'm reviving this meme from a year ago.

"Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, favorite type of underwear, life experiences etc. Repost in your own journal so that we can all learn more about each other."

Fire away, peanut gallery.

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 06:22:40 GMT

Hey guys. You know what's awesome?

日本語！

The fall semester at Macalester starts on the 28th, and I'm going to try to audit the 5th course in the sequence (rather hilariously titled "Advanced Japanese 1", ahahaha, 'advanced', that's a good one).

I missed almost half of the 4th semester in the sequence when I actually went to Japan for a few weeks -- and although I learned quite a lot there, most of it was about how to communicate with people when you have practically no vocabulary, and how not to cry when highschoolers laugh at you for speaking too politely to them, and how to apologize for being too tall for people to see over you, and things like that.

Meanwhile my classmates back stateside were learning trifles like kanji and grammar and keigo and whatnot. So I have a lot to catch up on in the next two weeks before classes start.

But I keep getting distracted by wonderful things like this:

which is a diagram for how to decide which verb to use when describing receiving or giving something, depending on the social relationship between speaker, giver, and receiver.

.... Ahahahahahaha.

Seriously. In what other language would feeding the dog or borrowing a book or giving someone a hug require diagrams that look like they come from a textbook on microphysics??

I ask you.

And then there's the kanji compounds. Oh those kanji compounds. They're agonizing, and yet there's this beautiful poeticism to them that makes me so happy to be learning this ridiculous alchemical mishmash of a language.

For example. The kanji "意" is pronounced 'i' and means 'mind' or 'heart'. The kanji "味" is pronounced 'mi' or sometimes 'aji' and means 'taste'. Put them together, and what do you get? 意味、'imi', which means 'meaning'. So when you ask the meaning of something in Japanese, you're asking about its heart taste.

Come on. Tell me that's not kinda beautiful.

No? Okay, well, I have another one for you. 大 is prounounced 'tai' or 'dai' and means 'large' or 'great'. 変 is 'hen' and means 'change' or 'strange'. Together they are 大変, 'taihen', meaning difficult, tough, demanding. 'Great strangeness' or 'big change' = 'difficult, tough, demanding'. A psychological insight represented at the level of a simple written compound for an everyday adjective!

Not convinced yet? Okay, how about these:

人 (hito/jin/in) = person. 形 (kei/gyou/katachi) = shape. 人形 = "person shape" = doll or puppet.

有 (yuu/a(ru)) = to exist, to have. 名 (na/mei) = name, reputation. 有名 = "to have reputation" = fame.

雑 (za) = rough. 誌 (shi) = record. 雑誌 = "rough record" = newspaper or periodical.

広 (hiro/kou) = wide, spacious. 告 (tsubaru/ku) = tell, inform, announce. 広告 = "widely announce" = advertisement

I could go on for quite a while. But you probably get the idea.

And obviously all languages have roots and prefixes and whatnot, and the more you know about etymology the more you see how many words can be dissected in interesting, humorous, logical, and/or beautiful ways. (I vividly remember my intense delight as a little kid when I realized that 'tri' meant 'three' and 'cycle' meant 'round' and therefore 'tricycle' was 'three wheels'!) But somehow in Japanese these bits of ancestral cleverness seem more numerous and closer to the surface than in the other half dozen or so languages I've come in contact with.

It makes me happy. Even as it drives me crazy how each character has two or three meanings and half a dozen possible pronounciations, and how you need to know nearly two thousand of them before you can consider yourself at the level of a Japanese highschool student. ARRRRRG.

I think I have a hundred or so under my belt right now. Maybe two hundred.

... Well, I always like a challenge. *buckles down*

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 06:15:17 GMT

Home with the FAMILY! Until the 1st. Dad still lives for the thrill of a good pastry and a bit of linguistic trivia. Mom is sunburned and full of news and t'ai-chi joy. Jeremy enjoys saving videogame princesses, making cupcakes, being cynical, and biting me. Dogger continues to be adorable and smelly. I love them all.

Have also had a Corey and a Peter the past few days, on the first leg of the Epic Pre-Grad-School Roadtrip. Lots of loving. They left this morning for the Grand Canyon. I'll see them again in MN in a few weeks. Hooray.

Still experimenting with the Adderall dosage. No conclusions yet. I still can't quite believe I have ADD. Wouldn't I have noticed before now? I dunno.

I have internet only when I can steal it from another family member, so I have absolutely no idea what The Flist has been up to, sorry. Please let me know if anything thrilling or devastating or cute happens.

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 06:15:28 GMT

Following the instructions of Nice Psych Dude, I have increased the dose of Adderall to 20 mg the past couple of days.

And.... I still don't really think I feel anything. I don't know. I feel ever so slightly different, but I can't quite put my finger on what the difference actually is. And I've been studying my own behavior so closely, looking for signs of change, that I think it might just be a placebo effect.

I want to feel some difference. In fact, to be totally honest... I want to feel crazy and energetic and euphoric the way a 'normal' person does on 20 mg of amphetamine. Because the more I think about it, the more I realize that I'm intensely, irrationally uncomfortable with the idea of having ADD.

I've been feeling uncomfortable ever since N.P.D. first handed me the ADD diagnostic test to fill out, and I sat there puzzling over it, trying to decide how to rate myself on scales of one to five in issues of organization, social attentiveness, motor coordination, and all sorts of other things. I've always hated filling those things out. Partly because I can see through them -- I took a bunch of psychology and neuroscience classes, I know the diagnostic criteria for various disorders and I can tell what each question is aiming at. Partly because the very concept of trying to quantify something as intensely subjective and personal as feelings/behaviour/function/etc. is flawed -- there's no scale minute enough to measure the range of human experience, and no statistical model that will give truly accurate results when applied to something as slippery and complex as an individual human being. And partly because, when faced with these diagnostics, a battle always starts up inside my head. All the time I'm filling it out, there's the part of me that says:

"You're exaggerating. You're perfectly normal. You just WANT a diagnosis of depression/GAD/ADD because you'd like to be able to blame your failures on an official mental disorder. Then people will pat you and tell you it's not your fault, go easy on yourself, it'll get better, et cetera, you're just a poor little victim of your own flawed DNA, and they'll give you credit for all the things you could have done and been 'if you'd been healthy', which really just means 'if you'd tried hard enough and not been such a whiny pathetic self-absorbed shit.' So don't you go answering the question about feelings of despair/sense of panic/inability to concentrate with a '5' -- if you do, you're just trying to get pills and pats on the back, and you'll become one of those sad neurotic middle-aged women whose cocktail party conversation consists of repeating that thing their therapist said to them yesterday and trying to one-up each other when listing the number of medications they've used to treat their completely imaginary psychiatric illnesses, because they don't want to take responsibility for their lives and really throw their backs in to solving some of the immense fucked-upness of this goddamn world."

It's sort of hard to focus, with this voice talking.

... Hey, I just admitted I have trouble focusing because of the 'loudness' of my mental processes! That must mean I really do have ADD, right?? Hooray!

"Come on, Anna, this could explain so much, this ADD business! It could explain why you can't remember most of what you read (or hear or see or say), and why you seem to skip entire sentences and paragraphs without noticing. It could explain why you have trouble engaging in small talk and tend to zone out when other people speak for more than fifteen seconds. It could explain why you keep messing up the fucking chocolate chip cookies at work, because it's the only recipe that has nine cups of flour, and even if you count the cups out loud while you measure them you can't focus for that long and you forget whether you just said six or seven and then they turn out weird and you want to tear yourself to shreds because what the fuck kind of professional baker has trouble making fucking chocolate chip cookies. It could explain why you've always loved repetitive mechanical tasks and motions, why you still play 'bang bang' when you get anxious, because rocking back and forth and hitting your head against something is soothing, it gives you a train of sensation to focus on. It could explain why you compulsively fold paper cranes without noticing, and sometimes unconsciously tear up boarding passes and theater tickets before you've used them. It could explain why background music and television stresses you out. It could explain why you forget people's names within seconds of being introduced. It could explain why you always put projects off to the last minute, why you can never get your room completely organized no matter how hard you try, why you avoid calling your friends and family even when you really do want to talk to them. It could explain so many things that drive you crazy about yourself!"

I don't know which voice to listen to. The first one appeals to my independence and my desire to be truthful and my fear of being spoiled and whiny and lazy. The second one appeals to my love for explanations and omphaloskepsis, my desire to make sense of the confusion and difficulty of life.

And there's a third voice, which is very quiet and very new, but which I'm trying to cling to with all my might. It says "Just breathe. The fate of the world does not hang on whether or not you accept this diagnosis. You'll figure it out. You'll be okay. Just try to answer honestly, take the pills as they're prescribed, and observe yourself calmly over the next few weeks. Just breathe."

Stillness is the hardest thing to live with. That's the main thing my nascent attempts at meditation practice have taught me.

So many questions in my mind right now. The same questions that ran through my head when I was first facing a psychiatrist who told me I had clinical depression. Am I faking or exaggerating my suffering out of a desire for sympathy, for absolution? What is this so-called disorder, this nebulous collection of poorly-defined symptoms and characteristics that can be 'treated' by swallowing a pill that has a neurochemical effect which no one fully understands yet? What am I doing if I say yes, check '5', take the medication, accept the diagnosis, live my life identifying as a person with a mental disorder, with multiple mental disorders? And if I hadn't had these problems, or if they'd been identified earlier and treated more effectively, what could I have been and done, what pain could I have spared myself and my loved ones, what opportunities and experiences have I already lost because of a tiny chance accident of genetics which I refused to acknowledge and treat as such? Because I was too proud to accept help, or felt too unworthy to receive it?

I have no answers, so I just keep plugging through online medical journals, trying to construct self-knowledge and confidence out of the available data.

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 22:26:23 GMT

So I've been on Adderall for five days now. The only time I had a reaction at all was that one day when I had a cup of coffee in the morning and my brain went fwoohm. Every other day, I've stuck to one cup of tea or less, and... nothing. No difference at all. I don't feel jittery and hyperactive and speedy the way a normal-brained person is supposed to on 10 mg.

Which means, according to Nice Psych Dude who I saw this morning, that I probably really do have mild ADD, which has been ignored jusqu'ici because females are so underdiagnosed, and because I have a lot of self-control and am a perfectionist and am therefore pretty high functioning. But to find out for sure we need to increase the dosage, et il reste à voir.

(Sorry for French, I've been reading some Zola stories all day et mes pensées sont actuellement toutes en Franglish, rarrgh.)

So. Hello, amphetamines. I never thought I'd be making your acquaintance. Nice to meet you, I suppose... IF you prove helpful, that is.

Also, my beloved Mom sent me fish oil to try, as it's supposed to work really well for some people with depression. It just arrived a little while ago, in a cute little package with sparkly stickers on it and a pretty Ansel Adams postcard inside to keep the pills company. My mom is so sweet.

Donc -- c'est le speed et l'huile de poisson pour moi! Qu'est que j'ai un trendy and high maintenance cerveau, quoi?

ETA:... Mais alors il faut que je me demande si c'est peut-être un effet de la drogue, cette effusion de français. Babble babble babble...

Evan just stopped by unexpectedly to give me a few hugs, some good news about his future apartment, and some homegrown berries. Awww. I like drop-by friends. It always boosts my mood to have those quick little interactions -- hi, how's it going, here's my news, what's yours, got time for a cup of tea?, okay see you later then, hug, goodbye. Ben drops by all the time too, and that's nice as well. It makes me wish I were friends with the neighbors, or that more of my friends lived nearby, or that more people felt comfortable just popping in on each other, and going away again if the visitee doesn't have time, no hard feelings. It's a kind of social interaction that I suspect used to exist more, and probably still does in small towns, but that has faded more and more with the frenetic pace and ubiquitous cellphonage of modern life. Props to you, Evan. ♥

Speaking of spontaneous interaction with nearby friends... I've been seeing lots more of my darling housemate Laney these past few days. Actually hanging out, instead of just accidentally ending up in the kitchen together and chatting a bit. I've gotten her hooked on Avatar, and we've been making dinner together and having good talks. At her request, we also went to Goodwill on Monday morning before I went to work, and I had my usual glorious time playing personal shopper, finding all sorts of cute things and making her try them on and generally proving to her how pretty she is and how cheaply you really CAN find nice clothes that suit you. She bought lots of things and has been wearing them every day, and is super pleased with how cute she looks. Awww. I do love being people's personal shoppers...

Yesterday we pooled our groceries and made a glorious vegetable stirfry. I also made us blackberry-vodka cocktails, and accidentally got her tipsy -- we drank the same amount, but she was giggling and blushing and making the happy slightly befuddled face of someone who doesn't often drink, while I might as well have been drinking just the blackberry juice. Hee. Giggly lightweights are cute.

Then I made her watch Malena Ernman, and we squeed together. (And she told me I'll be that awesome someday, she believes. Ahaha. In my dreams....) And it came to light that, although Laney likes opera and has taken voice lessons, she's never actually been to a live opera. Aghastness! But she really really wants to go. So we've agreed to go together when the new season starts at MN Opera in September. Yay!

And tonight our NEW HOUSEMATE, Laney's friend Danielle, arrives! I can't wait to meet her, she sounds fabulous. ... Although I still have cleaning to do, ack. But maybe I can still find the time to bake the strawberry tarts I've been promising Laney and Ben? It would be a nice "Welcome to Laurel House!" sort of thing, I think, arriving to the smell of fresh strawberry tarts. Mmmm.

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:15:31 GMT

This is very curious.

For various reasons, the psych I've been seeing asked me to try Adderall for a week. I was dubious and a bit wary. So I procrastinated, and only picked the meds up yesterday.

Tried 5 milligrams yesterday afternoon just before work, went to work and sleepily struggled through, then came home and slept for almost 16 hours straight.

Hello, brain -- you know Adderall is an amphetamine, right? What gives?

Woke up this morning. Another 5 mg. No noticeable effect for an hour. Now I am twitchy and intense like I am when I've forgotten my Effexor and am having an anxiety episode, but am not terribly anxious, just... erm, speedy. But I'm not sure if it's because of the 16 hours of sleep, an unusually strong cup of coffee, or the Adderall.

Perplexity. And... twitchiness.

ETA: Tried to practice, but can't -- no focus. Having trouble reading because I keep skipping chunks of sentences. Very physically restless. Decreased motor control. Can't access any emotions. This is really weird.

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 05:40:52 GMT

I'm nearing the end of the second season of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

For those of you who don't know, Avatar is an animated fantasy television series which aired on Nickelodeon between 2005 and 2008. prof_vencire had mentioned it to me several times, but last Friday as his birthday party drew to a close he sat me down and had me watch a couple of episodes. I thought it was cute and interesting. There were fuzzy fantastical critters, and a strong female protagonist I liked. And Evan told me it got better, so I watched a few more episodes.

And then all of a sudden I was watching eight episodes in a single sitting, and muttering at my computer screen, and gasping when surprising things happen and squeeing out loud at cute things and awkward romantic situations and tearing up at sentimental moments. Please understand, this is a level of emotional response which is usually confined to Takarazuka plays starring performers I'm especially infatuated with.

I just watched the episode in which Jet dies. (He does die, yeah? They leave it a little bit ambiguous, but I'm pretty sure he's gone, along with the other ~~Lost Boys of Neverland~~ Freedom Fighters, dammit I liked those guys.) And now I'm afraid to finish the season. Because they've proved that yes, although this is technically a kids' show and therefore provides more than a fair share of rainbows and snuggles and last-minute redemptions and deus (well, cowskunkus) ex machinas, they WILL go so far as to kill off a significant character. And I'm even more afraid to start the third season, because then I'll race helplessly through it the way I've raced helplessly through the first two. And I know it will be tragic, and bad things will happen to lovable people, and I'm betting Zuko dies in some self-sacrificial gesture of redemption, or Aang gets killed and reincarnated, or GOD FORBID they kill Appa my beloved cowskunk (who is actually a flying bison) at which point I will cry. Really. And I only cry about once or twice a year.

Everyone, go watch this show. Now. If you have ever adored an animated film, or felt deeply moved by kids' fantasy stories like The Neverending Story or the Narnia Chronicles or the Lioness Quartet or whatever, go watch this show.

ETA:... I just realized. This is the first time in my life I have EVER cared about spoilers. Most any book or movie or play or whatever, I'm perfectly content to know the ending and who dies and who smooches and whatnot. But not this. Wow!

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:03:38 GMT

It's the one week anniversary of my shortest-ever haircut!

I promised pictures. Here they are.

This haircut is very different from any I've had before. And new haircuts call for a reinvention of self and style! There are an enormous number of looks I can pull off with this new do.

#1: The Pseudo-Audrey Hepburn

#2: The Befuddled Hedgehog

#3: The Dyke Heart Throb

#4: The Mezzo-Soprano

#5: The Jeremy (only funny if you know my brother)

#6: The Wannabe Takarazuka Otokoyaku

#7: The PunkGoth

#8: The Sad Antebellum Girl Who Sold Her Hair to Pay for Her Lover's Army Gear

#9: Myself

I'm finding it's a little short in the back for my taste, a little bit too square and not girly enough. So I'm a bit self-conscious.

Although on the plus side, it has led to lots of women obviously and unabashedly checking me out. Hee!

Also, it's fun to play with the short front bits.

Well, there you go, people who craved pictures. That ought to be enough to hold you off for a while.

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:48:22 GMT

My hair is gone. Gone, gone, GONE! (... Well, okay, not shaved, but definitely the shortest it's ever been.)

Popular consensus has it that I now look like Audrey Hepburn's gay sister.

People cannot stop giving me head rubs.

I am SO PLEASED.

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:21:33 GMT

Whew. What a weekend. Spent too much money, but I think it was worth it.

Friday night. Laurel House Potluck! Only about twelve people showed this time, roughly half the usual number, but for once it was mostly my friends rather than my housemates'. Got to catch up with beloved music department cronies who recently graduated or returned from study abroad programs. Flirted a tiny tiny bit with a friend who I always thought was beautiful, and who apparently has decided she likes girls. There were delicious tomato salads and hummus and pita and cantaloupe and balsamic-dressed strawberries and ham turnovers and apple-cornbread and beer and mojitos (my own contribution, with mint fresh from our garden and really good rum).

It turned out that absolutely everyone at the potluck had plans to go to the Dakota to hear some friends play backup for a Ukranian singer. So we all packed into three cars and headed out around 11. The Dakota was as intimidatingly classy as ever -- although when I mentioned that "I never feel classy enough for this place" I got incredulous looks from the rest of my table, who all said "dude, what place is too classy for Anna??" and "if you're not classy enough, what are we, huh? huh?" Morgan, already very tipsy, insisted on buying me a drink. I had the "Naked Ginger", Jack Daniels, ginger ale and a bit of cointreau, totally delicious.

Unfortunately our intrepid trio of wonderful Mac-grad musicians had been squelched into a tiny musical box by the Ukranian singer -- Ben got a couple of prelude-type solos, but Foreman and Knurr were stuck keeping the beat the entire time. Bit of a waste of some fabulous, deep-feeling artists, if you ask me. They looked super suave and professional and did their job well, though. Boy do I ever fangirl those three. Phew.

When Morgan and Ian got a bit too intoxicatedly silly to be much fun anymore, Chelsea and I (the heavyweights, apparently?) retired to the bar. She bought us gin and tonics, extra lime, Bombay Sapphire, just the way I love them best... and all of a sudden we were quite tipsy after all. Oops.

It began to rain as we left, and as we wandered around trying to remember where the hell we'd parked the car (yes, we had a designated driver, but she hadn't been paying attention) it increased to a downpour. Finally we found it and all piled sopping wet into a snuggly heap in the back. Ian draped himself across our laps; I rubbed his head until he fell asleep. Shannon dropped us off one by sleepy one. It was 3 AM by the time I got to bed, tipsy, tired and very contented.

Saturday I slept in. Lazed. Then was almost late to work, ack! Had a note from my boss saying "Strawberries from farmers market. Have your way with them. Freeze the rest." So I puttered around the cookbooks for a while and invented a recipe for strawberry-white chocolate cupcakes, which looked and tasted like minature wedding cakes would taste if wedding cakes were as delicious as they ought to be. I was pleased with myself. Also epic quantities of guacamole (with roasted tomatillos!), a tomato-pepper-parmesan quiche, a huge batch of oatmeal cookies, and the vegetable prep for a French potato salad. I really like my job, I do.

Dashed out at 6:30 and biked home, then to Jefferson park for another gathering of Mac music people, mostly different ones this time. We sat around for a couple of hours, ate chips and talked nonsense. Biked back home under threateningly stormy clouds. Spent the entire evening switching off reading Deep Sea (about ocean critters that live below 1,000 feet), L'Aiguille creuse (I'm on an Arsène Lupin kick) and online articles about the Stonewall riots.

Sunday. PRIDE. I have never been to a Pride event before, except for some very brief wandering around at the Cristopher Street Festival in Munich, summer after my freshman year when I was still fairly uncertain about my sexuality, and not really ready to take much 'pride' in the amazing cultural history that allows me the freedom I have today. But I'd spent much of the previous evening reading about Stonewall, which left me primed to be amazed and grateful and happy for the explosion of positive merrymaking that is the Minneapolis Pride Festival. It's much 'cleaner' than what I've heard about the Los Angeles Pride -- no boys in thongs, no drunk people harassing passersby. Lots of little kids wearing rainbow sun visors and adorable puppies with rainbow collars. It was loud and crowded but very safe.

I took the bus, which filled up with a horde of loud happy lesbians about ten minutes away from the parade route. When we all piled off the bus, I walked along the route for a while, looking for Noelle and Aurora and pausing at intervals to enjoy the parade itself. Adored the drag queens -- for some reason drag queens always fill me with immense joy, I think part of me secretly aspires to be one. Cheered loudly for the PFLAGers (Mum, you'll be glad to know that they got the biggest cheer of any group that I saw). Wished I were one of the hot scantily clad girls that apparently constitutes a necessary accessory for the members of Dykes on Bikes -- I noticed that there were a few who didn't have hot girls hanging onto their waists, though, so perhaps that's a more realistic aspiration for next year's Pride than being a drag queen? I have the leather miniskirt and everything, all I need is a woman with a bike.

Then the Bears of Nothern Minnesota passed by, in a float which was decorated to look like a bathtub, pulled by a truck topped with a huge inflatable rubber duck, with a machine which sprayed clumps of bubbles all along the parade route. They were tossing little rubber ducks to the crowd, and one of them (aiming for the cute boy next to me, I think) hit me square in the left eye with a duck dressed in an army outfit. OW OW OW. The boy picked it up, and then kindly offered it to me as compensation for any corneal bruising. I can still feel an ache when I blink, but I think I'm okay, and it was funny as well as painful.

I couldn't find Noelle and Aurora, so I headed for Loring Park (where the main festival was) to meet Mattia. Got catcalled on the way by some hot (and rather drunk) girls -- was flattered but too shy to do anything but grin and wave and run away. Then I ran into a Ginkgo regular, who I ALWAYS had a little secret crush on, and suspected was gay, and also suspected returned my interest but probably thought I was too young for her, or maybe has a girlfriend, or something. Anyway, we grinned at each other and exchanged pleasantries, I got the same warm pit-of-the-stomach feeling I always got when she stopped by for her regular drink (seriously, SO attractive, sexy arm muscles and beautiful little smile wrinkles and bright blue eyes, gnghg) followed immediately by the succession of thoughts "Damn, I think you think I'm hot too! Damn, I wish I knew if you had a girlfriend! Damn, I wish I had your phone number! Damn, I wish I had the balls to ask about any of the previous three! .... Bye. (Damn!)" Oh well. I got a bit of a thrill out of knowing that my infantile gaydar actually worked in this instance -- she doesn't 'look gay' but somehow I was always totally sure that she was. Yay, little gaydar, keep improving at this rate and we might finally get somewhere!

Got to the park and found Mattia. We wandered around for a while collecting free stickers and pins and decorating ourselves with them. I was amazed at the scale of the festival and the diversity of the booths -- there must have been a couple of hundred booths, with dozens of groups and political issues represented, tons of jewelry and art, lots of delicious-looking food. Eventually we ended up near a tent where a young woman with a huge pile of hula hoops was teaching people. We each picked up a hoop. Mattia caught on instantly. I took ages but got it in the end, and had a fabulous time. We played with the hoops for nearly an hour, until Mattia's sister Natasha arrived. Then there was a bit more wandering before we all went to meet Noelle and Aurora at one of the five (!) concert stages, to hear the folk rock Minneapolis-native lesbian heartthrob <href='http://www.ellis-music.com/news/">Ellis</a> perform. Dear god, is she ever charming onstage -- she's got a goofy, nerdy, people-loving attitude which, when combined with heartfelt lyrics and an incredibly intense gaze, add up to a really compelling and memorable performer. (And, okay, yeah, pretty lustable too.) I thought some of the songs were a bit cliché, but I enjoyed it. And I definitely got one big grin from her, right at me. Squee.

What did we do after that...? I think we just wandered around trying to meet up with Mattia's friends. I ran into theravenflower and some other lovely Mac people! That was nice and serendipitous. I wish I'd thought to ask if you were going and try to meet up with you officially and hang out... Oh well, maybe next year?

We found Cassie and (boyfriend whose name I cannot remember?). Watched a bit of a drag performance, which made me all happy. But we were all tired and HUNGRY, so we headed away from the festival and went to find something to eat. Ended up at The Local. Had my first hamburger in a year or so. Tasty enough, I guess. What was really delicious was the Big Ginger (Jameson and ginger ale) which Mattia ordered and then let me drink nearly half of. Yum. I don't like ginger ale much on its own, but apparently it makes a fabulous mixer.

All said goodbye. Headed home. So tired.

Spoils of the day: Huge handful of pins and stickers and other free Pride paraphernalia, a renewed desire to actually like go to a gay bar or something because getting hit on by girls is FUN go figure, a sense of intense gratitude towards the hard work done by queers and allies in the past forty years that made an event like this possible, and a slight sunburn on my shoulders. Oh, and the little rubber duck.

... I think I need a day off, after a weekend like that. Phew.