Cimorene

↵ The highlight of my month was finding a cream chartreuse nailpolish. (I've been dying for some ever since I saw the image in my icon, which is from the 2008 Lavazza Espresso calendar, so.)

↵ Dammit, that is the second time I have dreamt about Adam Lambert. I don't understand why I'd have multiple dreams where the whole point of his presence is to perform at a concert, but I don't get to dream about the concert even though I want to see it both in the dream and reality, and even though I have actually seen him perform a concert in real life. >:[!!! I'm being tormented by my own subconscious with withheld Adam Lambert concerts! WHY?

↵ This very much makes me want to see a particular production of a show live, which has never happened to me before at all (at least not with a show that was still in the future. I would really have liked to have seen the lesbian version of Hamlet that someone-or-other famously put on one time). But all-male gay Swan Lake with a closeted prince? *_* But come on, nobody can afford to go to New York! At least go on tour or something! :|

↵ waxjism wistfully mentioned trying to sign up to co-write for Lambliff Big Bang together, under the theory that it might make our mutual writer's block easier to overcome. We have wildly different levels of investment in Adam Lambert fandom, but surprisingly similar feelings about fic about him. The problem is we each had one tiny kernel of an idea and couldn't imagine working on the other's. She was talked into signing up anyway with her idea, and I had to abandon the idea because without the excuse & motivation of writing with her (doing something as a favor to one's wife is always virtuous, sort of like writing for Yuletide. I wish all year was just a series of Yuletide-like multifandom challenges), I couldn't see writing a story about two white guys right now, even if one of them is an out gay dude. But now, after that 5 seconds of pitifully stunted hope, I'm feeling disproportionately disappointed.

↵ Jeans that fit. I know it's a universal problem, but I kind of go through stages with being more-or-less satisfied, versus stages (like now) when I kind of don't want to wear any pants because none of them fit quite right. I put on my cords for the first time in ≈1yr and experienced a brief revelation followed by a period of anger: "Why can't all pants fit like this?!" Then I remembered the reason they fit like that is that I redid the outer leg seam from ankle to hip pocket. I can't do this with all my jeans because a) denim is heavy and b) it only works if the waistband and rise are good & only the leg/hip is loose. It's also very annoying that waxjism and I can almost always borrow each other's shoes and even wear the same size of Converse but I can't wear her 8-hole Dr Martens even for the amount of time it takes to walk the dog without my poor toes being squashed & cramping.

↵ Anxiety, depression. It's as bad as anticipated or slightly worse, given my lack of motivation has spread from preparing what I consider "real meals" to actually eating. A week ago I spent 2 days feeling sort of sick because I almost completely forgot to eat. 6 days until I see a psychiatrist! I am, however, looking forward to having regular scheduled social interaction this winter which may help combat my SAD & hopefully, possibly, also my social anxiety. pierydys and I are planning to go to a weekly Finnish for Beginners course in Rauma (which is something of a commute, ouch. But it's not like I have anything better to do?) and combine it with some kind of crafting day. And morningfine at least has agreed to trying to get together weekly or biweekly this winter to watch things, the way we did when we were going through the Highlander box set. Of course we very much hope that bluesbell and anglepoiselamp will join these gatherings as well.

This weekend Brother Windows Metal¹ loaned us his second car, and we used it to do things. Thursday we did the grocery shopping at one of those large suburban shopping centers, and bought things not carried at the corner store or the posh food boutique at our favorite department store (such as oregano in bulk, strawberry-lime cider, peach-mango black tea and salt & vinegar potato chips). Then Friday we drove to anglepoiselamp's apartment in the suburbs (after getting lost for about 45 minutes) and installed Kubuntu Karmic Koala on her spare partition, because she has been having Problems of Death with Windows 7 on her brand new desktop. Then yesterday we got up early and took all our dead electronics accumulated in the last six years to the closest electronics recycling station. These included:

i: ~The Dead Electronics List~

• Gleeb the green-tinted 13" monitor from the 1990s, still chugging along, but greenly and with smaller than 800x600 resolution


• Wax's last cathode-ray monitor, 17 19", dead since 2005


• The giant television weighing more than I do which has been dead since 2005 when I dropped it on its face


• We had to leave the broken LCD monitor in the basement because they charge you to take more than 3 monitors at a time


• Four keyboards


• Two modems


• A toaster


• A microwave


• A bag containing three graphics cards, a sound card, three hard drives, a broken power source, and a number of other things


• We meant to throw away another bag of cables, a broken clock, and a bag of dead electronics from anglepoiselamp that we collected night before last, but forgot to bring them with us, so they reside now in the basement

After returning from this expedition - before breakfast - we collected all the old clothes around the house. This amounted to:

ii: ~The Unwearable Clothes List~

• Four Ikea-bag-sized paper bags occupying most of the wall of our bedroom, and


• Seven or eight plastic trash bags filling most of the floor of our basement storage room,
containing


• Many clothes that have been too big for Wax since 2007, when she went on Effexor and went down from size 44? to size 38


• About four pairs of high school/college jeans of mine, ie tight high-waisted (ie above the hip-bone) bell bottoms, completely devoid of stretch, that are now too short and which I haven't fit into since I went off the evil anorexia-causing Prozac in 2003


• Enough fifteen-year-old clothes from when Wax was in high school, including oceans of hideous colored denim and striped chenille from the mid 90s, to fill 2 shelves in our closet before we cleaned it out 3 years ago


• I didn't know that they took shoes as well, so our old shoes, dating back only to 2006 when we last threw away old shoes, are still filling a shelf in the hall closet: 3 pairs of dead sneakers, 2 pairs of hideous sandals, 1 pair purple satin formal sandals from the 90s, 1 pair hideous canvas and cork wedges

We drove across town searching in vain for a Goodwill drop box before it occurred to me to call morningfine. She was our savior, and we went to scoop her up in the car, and she directed us to a parking lot near the hospital where we dumped all the old clothes before driving downtown to meet up with satu who was briefly in town. Our adventures weren't over, however, because:

iii: ~The Parking Garage of Pure Evil~

We tried to park in the first non-empty parking garage we found downtown, and I forget what it's called - maybe City Center or something. The thing is, this parking garage is exposed to the open air, not underground, and the ramp leading to it is not roofed. This ramp was steep and covered in snow and ice and the first thing we saw was an electrician's van parked smack-dab at the top of it. When we turned up to the ramp to the upper level we found out why... we couldn't get up it. The car would chug up to the top, then right before the final hump that would lead to leveling out, the wheels would spin furiously.

Now, I grew up in Alabama, and I don't know much about driving on snow/ice except, basically:

• Don't do it because you will probably die (absorbed from Alabamian culture), and


• It is mysterious and a difficult and arcane art known to people from the rest of the country, although not so difficult that Alabamians aren't really stupid about it because the amount of snow we get there is not enough to actually impede driving (from my parents, who did not grow up in Alabama).

So when the wheels spun furiously and then the car started creaking, and Wax said "Oh shit," and it actually started to slide backwards down the ramp, I shrieked, because, obviously, I thought we were probably going to die. When the car slid sideways while sliding backwards down the ramp and into the wall of the ramp (well, it would have if not for the several feet of snow drifts there providing a bumper), I sort of started rocking and whimpering. My hardy, Finnish companions were very annoyed and kept making comments like "You're not helping!" but I could not rid myself of my terror until they finally gave up on getting up the ramp (after 2 tries) and we left the garage without parking, and went to Anttila's garage, which is entirely inside a building.

And then we had fun with our friends, came home, and reorganized the living room. The De-Clutteringening had made space for an additional computer (Six, the WinBorg XP box) as well as 6 out of 7 shelves of paperback fiction from the bedroom bookcase in the living room bookcases, after extraneous items were moved into the built-in cabinets in the hall closet which were previously completely full of junk. Also, you can now see the bedroom wall! \o/




1. Brother Windows and Brother Linux both work in computers and are both geeks. They acquired their names back when Brother Linux was running Slackware and Brother Windows was still running XP, but Brother Windows has since converted his home system to Linux Mint (An Ubuntu Gnome-based distro) and has even surreptitiously installed Mint in VirtualBox on his work machine, running with his second monitor, and now uses it all day and the Windows machine not at all. He should probably, at this point, be renamed. I could call them Brother BB and Brother Triplets? Or perhaps I'll go with Brother Metal and Brother ThinkGeek (Brother Windows Metal is also a geek, but his geekery is more to do with movies and pop culture. Threadless is the t-shirt store of his dreams, whereas Brother Linux ThinkGeek could happily move into the ThinkGeek store, I think, if he were willing to move places without his wife, whose ideal location is rainbow-colored and sparkly, like the interior of your friendly local Indian homegoods store). Brother Windows Metal, or mece66, is a BNF in the black & death metal fandom on Twitter, so this is his defining feature. Brother Linux ThinkGeek is more about nature photography and/or esoteric gadgets.

We went to see the city's St Lucia procession from the cathedral to the carriage this evening with our peeps Chi and Bell. I have never seen Lucia before, except the top of the head of a Lucia at the Old Apothecary Museum two years ago.

♥

 




It was fucking freezing cold (okay, it was only like -1°C, but we weren't dressed quite warmly enough) and they lied and said Lucia would come out at 5:30, so we left the Christmas market across the street early and stood for a really long time, bored and freezing and watching dogs and children and their antics. Lucia's carriage arrived like 20 minutes before Lucia herself, and trotted around the square to great effect, where it was met by another tiny carriage carrying Santa, and pulled by a single tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiny VERY BAD Shetland pony which was basically being an asshole, hilariously, for the rest of the wait. It kept trying to eat its handler's reflective jacket and bouncing around and generally acting like the Shetland pony version of Frank Iero. When trying to get a picture of it (I ultimately failed), I accidentally took a picture of a Boxer that someone had brought instead because they were the same size and color. So I leave it to your imagination, but here is a Shetland pony from Wikipedia:


(waxjism: That's kind of what he looked like, only shaggier. And badder.)

( more pictures, bigger versions )

My last class before vacay was canceled for tomorrow evening which means my source of stress is gone, too, and now I'm just antsy to go! One week to kill and all I have left to do is dye my roots! Anyone want to meet in town during daylight hours? I'd like to take in some sun, have some coffee (not at Arnold's) and a bagel (at Arnold's), etc, and would love to have some company. It's a lot more fun to window-shop and take in downtown during the day like that.

Anyone want to meet me in town or alternatively go to Mylly today or tomorrow? (Obviously it's too late to go to Mylly today since it's almost 17:00.)

I want to go to that little rock & gem shop at Mylly and I also want to go to that hugely embarrassing scene kid shop on Auragatan Eriksgatan (it's between Julia and the Åland bank, right? Or is that my shitty sense of direction that could get lost in a paper bag again?), but I'm too apathetic to take the bus to Mylly alone and too embarrassed to enter the scene kid shop alone.

Well, compared to how well Channukah and Passover have always gone with my friends, Thanksgiving on my part yesterday was kind of a failure. This isn't to say anything negative about my guests - all my friends were incredibly gracious about having to wait forever because I hadn't started to fix the vegetables (only the pumpkin bread!) and they had to sit around chatting while I cooked.

I forgot to finish setting the table, I didn't have the serving implements in the dishes, I couldn't find the matches for the candles, I didn't have any proper substitute for the wine and Wax made orange juice from a box and served it in a plastic liquid measure with mL markings on the sides. I didn't have any spare wine when Sugar forgot to bring it. There was still enough food to stuff everyone and leave leftovers, but it didn't feel like Thanksgiving anyway because there still weren't enough dishes. bluesbell's heavenly apple pie was the best part. The roasted potatoes were a good second for deliciousness, but they weren't particularly fancy.

Maybe it's really just that I've been feeling depressed lately, but I was nervous and inadequate-feeling compared to the magical dinner-party powers of my mom and my aunts. I didn't even have a proper tablecloth on the table, or a real vase to put the flowers that Chi brought in. I really ought to have baked the pecan pie yesterday, but I didn't do that either. We actually didn't finish off the one pie, but it feels utterly wrong to have only one pie at Thanksgiving. Honestly, I'd like to look forward to Channukah and getting it right, but it seems likely that in a month's time I'll still be too full of fail to cook a full meal.

You know, growing up my Mom would always have post-holiday stress and depression around every main vacation or trip to visit anyone, feeling grumpy and growly during the whole period. That never happened to me, at least, not unless I was so terrified of being yelled at that I was hiding and withdrawn the whole time in self-defense; but maybe it was something like this.

As you can see, Wax's costume as a member of Kiss didn't exactly fit.



We were gonna have a three-person Halloween party yesterday. However, anglepoiselamp got a cold, lovebashed who has to travel from further away anyway got a terrible headache, and shiroi_chi napped all day and was unable to drag herself out of bed. So after an unfortunately necessary shopping trip to town (cat stuff, red wool and embroidery materials, a stuffed sheep I totally NEEDED which I named Vega, a Lilla My pillowcase, a lot of candy, peanut butter, and two beautiful turquoise Teema cereal bowls that match our plates)...

I napped for a few hours, and then watched tv and took slightly more than three hours to crochet the heart and sew it onto this hat:


(which took two days of tv-watching to make, including the last Slasha Party, where we watched all the extras from I ♥ Huckabees followed by Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), The Addams Family, the Dave Chappelle rap video from Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and the "I am NOT a merry man!" Robin Hood Q episode of Star Trek: TNG).

Also for Halloween see the Crazy disguised as a skein of wool:

Halloween slumber parties include:

• costumes - optional (shut up, the other options are pyjamas and lounge clothes)



• piles of blankets and spare mattress on the floor by the couch



• World's Tiniest Petting Zoo (tm anglepoiselamp)



• Lots of candy



• Movies.

We already watched The Addams Family... ideas?

[Poll #1287815]

I know this is short notice, but people seemed to want to and I guess it would be a shame to let it pass. Sleeping here is of course also optional. Maybe we could illegally download a bunch of classic Bewitched or something. Or we could just watch the Resident Evil trilogy? Or something?

Anyone wanna hang out in town in the next coupla days? It seems I've got to pick up a package at the post.