I dream so many dreams, I put my heart at stake

• 03:34 Learning to play Carcassonne w/familia. The verdict so far: game win! #
• 23:54 I'd forgotten how much I love driving standard! Muhahaha, control is mine! #

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• 16:20 Convincing self to get out of bed and nice new pj pants and go to bank. Ugh. Don'twanna. #
• 16:23 @ginnyjake @phiremangston Tuesday is looking good for me. I've got lunch & supper plans with Familia, but before or after each is open. #

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Today:

Bought very expensive cat food for the cat (Wellness Indoor Health) and told mom again that the first ingredient in any dry food she buys should be some kind of meat, not brewer's rice. Have resigned self to just buying the right food whenever visiting.

Ate deliciously spicy homemade samosas from a local Indian grocery store that opened recently.

Failed to find missing volume of the BASARA manga.

Cleaned up cat puke (<--easier than it sounds).

Watched several episodes of the new Hagaren series (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood) and was quite impressed by the faithfulness to the original source (as well as the obvious high budget!). Started at episode 3 and may therefore have avoided the slow beginning that several people mentioned. Also am puzzled by people complaining that it's "exactly the same as the manga." No shit? Hated all the changes the first anime made, so no problems here. Anyway, have grown very fond of the first OP and ED (duly d/led from Gendou). The entire series so far can be found on Hulu, subtitled. Only real issue is that Ed's seiyuu this time around (doesn't sound like Romi Park, so guessing his voice changed like Mustang's and Scar's did <--a friend was quite upset about this) really milks his lines on occasion. FMA fans are damned lucky - not every series gets a second chance at an anime adaptation like this (IY doesn't count, it's just a continuation, not a remake).

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• 19:10 Okay, Pellacans, I'm here until Wedneday! #Pella #

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Yesterday's "Western-style" holiday dinner by the "children" of the family (3 of whom are not technically children anymore) was a success! :D Witness our delicious meal, followed by the cooks in charge. (J=sister, E=younger brother, N=youngest brother)

Menu

Hors d'oeuvres
Celery sticks (J)
Crispy chicken wings (J)
Honey BBQ chicken wings (J)
Salami & cheese finger sandwiches (J&N)
Apple, orange, and cranberry salad (J)

Main dish
Whole chicken with 40 cloves of garlic (Me)

Side dishes
Yummy yam casserole (Me)
Sweet baby carrots (Me)

Dessert
Fish-shaped cream puffs (J)
Flan (E)

Hehehehehe.XD We are shaping up to be a family of cooking machines! (When together, that is. I'd never be able to work up the energy of making all that food by myself.)

Ooh, and another thing. I got a new cell phone yesterday! :D (A Samsung Gravity, free with rebate.) It's got one of those slide-out QWERTY keypads, so if you suddenly start getting text messages from me when you've never gotten one before, that would be why.XD

Yesterday was also awesome because I managed to check out The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss before the library closed for Christmas (the thing's huge!). Basically the waking hours were all just a ringing success. Now I think I'm going to try and get some work done.

Merry Christmas, secular or religious version!

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• 14:06 Okay Porter, I an super impressed by you. This is the only way to fly! #
• 23:15 Wishing I were playing Paper Mario with mulled cider and the two of the dearest little boys I know. Merry Christmas, guys! #

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Hello Kleenex. Let me introduce you to my face.

ewww...

Thank you, anonymous and awesome individual who got me the Overlook Press edition of Wodehouse's The Mating Season!!!!!!! I now have every single Jeeves & Wooster story ever written, and I feel pretty incredible! XD (TMS is like the hardest book to find, lemme tell you. Either no one owns it or no one wants to part with it.)

The only problem is that you appear to have sent me 2 copies, Anonymous, and I don't want you to have spent more money than you'd planned. So if you could please contact me about what you'd like done re: copy #2, I would be much obliged.^^;

WHEEEEEEEEE WODEHOUSE COLLECTION IS ALL DONE!!!!!! XXXOOO

Also today: I finally got cake!

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Now, moving in, cartons on the floor,
the radio playing to bare walls,
picture hooks left stranded
in the unsoiled squares where paintings were,
and something reminding us
this is like all other moving days;
finding the dirty ends of someone else’s life,
hair fallen in the sink, a peach pit,
and burned-out matches in the corner;
things not preserved, yet never swept away
like fragments of disturbing dreams
we stumble on all day . . .
in ordering our lives, we will discard them,
scrub clean the floorboards of this our home
lest refuse from the lives we did not lead
become, in some strange, frightening way, our own.
And we have plans that will not tolerate
our fears--a year laid out like rooms
in a new house--the dusty wine glasses
rinsed off, the vases filled, and bookshelves
sagging with heavy winter books.
Seeing the room always as it will be,
we are content to dust and wait.
We will return here from the dark and silent
streets, arms full of books and food,
anxious as we always are in winter,
and looking for the Good Life we have made.

I see myself then: tense, solemn,
in high-heeled shoes that pinch,
not basking in the light of goals fulfilled,
but looking back to now and seeing
a lazy, sunburned, sandaled girl
in a bare room, full of promise
and feeling envious.

Now we plan, postponing, pushing our lives forward
into the future--as if, when the room
contains us and all our treasured junk
we will have filled whatever gap it is
that makes us wander, discontented
from ourselves.

The room will not change:
a rug, or armchair, or new coat of paint
won’t make much difference;
our eyes are fickle
but we remain the same beneath our suntans,
pale, frightened,
dreaming ourselves backward and forward in time,
dreaming our dreaming selves.

I look forward and see myself looking back.

Erica Jong

Appropriate to the season, the new poem in the sidebar is "Starlings in Winter," by Mary Oliver.

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I've been home for several days and it has been an orgy of laziness. Don't get me wrong, it feels fantastic, but I actually should be getting some work done, and getting up at 11:30 or noon every day isn't conducive to that plan. Still, it's nice to see family - just yesterday, for instance, my sister made me a little felt owl, suggested that I should use it as a pincushion, and further suggested that I dub it an "OW!l". I made the appropriate face in response.

Today I bought a new pair of gloves and a suitcase, having finally decided to consign my beloved, but ancient and tottering green one to the depths of the family basement. It used to be my father's, but he abandoned it for one reason or another, and the little guy saw me through college, my job at BU, my grad school interviews, and numerous trips home. But the wheels have gone to pot (as in, "one part ground flat and both parts rusted," pot) and it was such a chore to drag even over the smooth airport floor last week, that I figured the time had come. The new suitcase is actually extremely cute (credit where credit's due: my sister actually spotted it while I was looking at a different one) and has lots of useful pockets, so I'm pretty excited.XD <--lame.

The gloves were part of my determined mission to find hand-warming gear that actually fits. They are quite nice and more compact than my other gloves, which is great for pocket storage. But once again either they grew or my fingers shrank from the store to home, so that they only fit "alright" and not "perfectly." :p Oh well, at least they look pretty darned cool, dark green with a brown streak. I'm dressing more and more like a tree everyday.

Criminal Minds is on right now and the episode is going to be about some serial killers murdering entire families. The very thought is freaking me out so I just left the living room.@_@ Occasionally I get surprisingly affected by popular TV shows.

Off to draw work on my grant! (Which probably means "draw.")

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• 05:04 Oof. Sneaked Yuletide fic in under the wire. Now only SPN femslash, and that's not due until Feb. #
• 05:05 Off to New Brunswick for the next two days, then back to Halifax just in time to leave for Iowa. Back in Canada for NYE! #

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• 19:43 Have valid passport again. Travel win! #

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Okay friends. Today is the day. I'm off to sequester myself in a coffee shop and write my Yuletide story until my poor typing fingers are all typed out.

I've already got wordcount, so now it's just a matter of finishing the damn story. Also I know where I'm planning on going with it. So I just have to FINISH THE DAMN THING!

Why you so hard, Yuletide? I even really like my prompt and everything!

From the Terms of Service of the Archive of Our Own:

You understand that using the Archive may expose you to material that is offensive, erroneous, sexually explicit, indecent, blasphemous, objectionable, or badly spelled.

Also this totally counts as working on Yuletide, since I need to create an account on AO3 in order to post this year (Yuletide is Mooooooving!).

I am definitely NOT procrastinating at all... OOOOOOO shiny!

I have so much work I need to do on Yuletide right now! So why am I working on Transcript request forms?

...

Oh.

Riiiiiight.

• 14:58 Awesome of the day: bwmxx.tk #

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TOOL USE IN OCTOPI. Guys, you have no idea, that is @#$%ing awesome. Tool use only exists in primates, forsooth! (Well, corvids have been challenging that notion for years, but this is definitely the first INvertebrate tool user. Kick. ASS.)

Also, here is the description of a talk hosted by the classics department next January: "Why do modern writers regard friendship with misgivings or indifference? Looking at key literary texts of the Greek tradition from Homer to Kazantzakis, this lecture will argue that friendship is a non-essentialist human relationship that does not yield an ethics of identity. Internally ambivalent and existing without any social, religious, and legal support, friendship undoes rather than reinforces social hierarchies."

OMG OMG they are speaking my language! I want to gooooooo!!!!

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