Moi was ranting about GoodReads (she far prefers LibraryThing).

I said:

I use LT to catalog all the books I own, but GR to make lots of lists of books I want to read (and theoretically to review books I've read, but I'm crap at getting writeups done in a timely fashion -- by which I mean "ever").

http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/489381
http://www.librarything.com/profile/scripturient

What about you all?  What do you want out of an online cataloging system?  What are the pros/cons of the ones you've checked out?

juleskicks' mistsandmellow.net is dead, as is jennyo's imjustsayin.net. On the plus side, silverlake has moved from imjustsayin.net to dymphna.net and I was able to find most of the deadlinks on silverlake (except Jules' RPF and 2 of Jen's fics -- an HP and a crossover) so I'll update the recs links (plus del.icio.us, especially since I think most of Jules' links were dead when I started using del.icio.us so I never put them in there in the first place). Oh, and the silverlake move means I'm gonna have to do a Ctrl+F on the page source of my recs pages to fix all the other silverlake links. [There's some easier way to make mass changes like that if I used CSS or something, isn't there?]

(Amy, one of these days you're gonna put your fic back up on innergeekdom, yes?)

"Joy Sadhana is a daily practice in the observation of joy."
-mylittleredgirl [more info]
"Sin is necessary, but all will be well, and all will be well, and every kind of thing will be well."
-Julian of Norwich, Showings

Five good things about today:
1. I got 10½ hours of sleep!  (And yet a few hours later I was dozing off reading The Meaning of Jesus [CHPC adult ed] and ended up taking a couple naps.  Maybe I should have gone for a walk?)
2. Terry called me!  The last I'd heard was when I bumped into Harriet the Friday of MLK Day weekend and she said he'd hurt his knee at his non-library job and that place was balking at paying the workman's comp.  He says he's been having physical therapy -- hasn't had knee surgery, though he'll probably have to.  He's working the closing shift at the library these days (5-9pm).  And his son just got a job.  Apparently he hadn't actually had one when he moved in with them.  *sighs*
3. It was snowing lightly both times I was outside today.
4. I got a free dinner.
5. The "motivational poster" in the most recent Neil Gaiman blogpost [lj synfeed link].  I had not known there was as make your own "motivational poster" Internet tool.

Three things I did well today:
1. I visited CWM-Beth.  I had White Ambrosia tea from tea forte.  It was indeed good -- and came in a lovely container.  We went to House of Tibet for dinner.  I was in the mood for dumplings but got seduced by the potatoes-and-spinach stir-fry.
2. I did some additional processing (and praying) about a certain relationship.
3. I updated my GoodReads.  And did some tag-tweaking -- in which process I learned that there is a 35-character limit on tags.  Oh intarnets, why do you thwart my organizational attempts?  Oh, I tagged recent posts on femslash_minis, too.  Ari, am I evil for wanting a moderator account for masterlist posting, so that any Maintainer can go back and edit masterlist entries to update them?
4. I actually left various LJ comments.  (I've been so bad at commenting recently.)

Two things I am looking forward to (doing [better]) tomorrow:
1. Seeing Rachel at CHPC and getting to debrief with her.
2. Going to church.

"Joy Sadhana is a daily practice in the observation of joy."
-mylittleredgirl [more info]
This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
-Psalm 118:24

Five good things about today:
1. ~10½ hrs of sleep
2. I can has femslash_minis maintainer status!!!  And Ari helped me with some tricksy bits of tagging decisions.  I utilized the comments in recent femslah_minis posts as well as Wikipedia's minor character list and s8 comics listings (plus other assorted Wiki/IMDb poking, and an old femslash_minis discussion post) to make a really thorough "character: []" tag listing, because if you don't have Maintainer status you can't add new tags, can only utilize pre-existing tags.  I erred way on the side of too many minor characters, but hey.  (Also, for my reference, Slayer list Wiki entry.)
3. It was lovely weather outside.
4. At the grocery store, a kid was short 37¢ and the bagger (David) spotted him it.
5. Megs Y!IMed me, including "New York state has decided to recognize same-sex marriages from out-of-state sources (ie, Canada and Massachussetts) as legal. So April and I can go get married in Boston and you and Ian can attend, and then it'll still count when we go home. :-D" [edit: msnbc article link from paper_crystals /edit]

Three things I did well today:
1. I washed dishes, laundered my bedsheets, and bought milk.
2. I did femslash_minis tagging.  (Yes, given all the other stuff I have to do, I should have left that for down-time at work, but . . .)
3. I called Beth.  (She left me a voicemail Thursday night.)

Two things I am looking forward to (doing [better]) tomorrow:
1. Going to church.
2. Doing laundry.  (Yes, I know what I said above, but I still need to get my clothes washed.)

* online cataloguing

I finally signed up for GoodReads.  And updated my LibraryThing catalog.  Feel free to friend me on either or both.

P.S. I wish GoodReads had a spell-check function.

* backing up my hard drive

As I noted in the edit on my last post, I beat the CD burning program into submission this morning.  So I now have basically the entire contents of my hard drive backed up.

I have still not managed to upgrade to XP (my brother as a Plan B, though),  so I still can't use my external hard drive, but we're getting there.

* fixing my tv

My genius brother took apart my tv and put it back together, saying if anything he'd made it worse.  It actually turned on, though.  The color was mostly grayscale with patches of purple and some green, but he knew how to fix that -- he'd replugged in something backwards -- so he took it apart again, fixed that, and the tv still turned on after he put it back together (complete with correct picture this time).

The clock is still frozen, and on his VCR you can't program channels [your options are like L1, L2, 59, 76, 118, 124], so tomorrow I'll go to the Best Buy at Cambridgeside Galleria and hopefully come home with a VCR and a coaxial cable.  (And hopefully my tv will not die again in the near future.)

* house decoration

My brother locked his keys in the trunk, and AAA took ten minutes shy of two hours to show up.  (They sent someone to Dorchester!  After repeating back to my brother the address in "Somerville.")  So one of the things we did to pass the time was to finally hang up my painting from Maureen of the Boston skyline at sunset.  We also hung up a small blue painting I bought from the spray paint artist at Harvard.  I decided I didn't really want the big red one I got, so I'll be posting a photo of that (when I upload from my digital camera on Tueday) in the hopes that someone else wants it 'cause he does high quality work and I'd like it to go to someone who really wants it.

* massage table setup

The doorway at my parents' house is basically the width of the room/s, but in my house it's actually a doorway, so it's maybe five-feet-five wide and seven feet high, so I do only need one room divider, which is nice.

My brother suggested a curtain rod.  Can you even get a six-foot curtain rod?

I think I am gonna buy this (unless someone talks me out of it with a better offer).

I'm thinking I'll head up to Palmer after work on Wednesday to get sheets and oil.

Yeah, I say all this as if I'll actually get to use any of this, but hope springs eternal, no?

* other

The measuring tape in the chest of drawers in the dining room seems to have vanished, but the drawer does contain assorted screwdrivers and suchlike -- as does the large flashlight I have; who knew?

I have also been deemed the family member most likely to actually use a set of champagne flutes.  Clearly I need to start having fancy dinner parties.

My mom sent my brother over with homemade chocolate chip cookies.  Nice :)

I bought cranberry black cherry juice the last time I was in the supermarket, and it is yummy.

* Yuletide

I'm not doing yuletide, though I think I'm gonna do Secret Slasha again (a decision I'll live to regret, I'm sure), but all the talk about it makes me feel almost like I should offer to write fic for people as gifts.

Amy and Sheila's most recent voiceposts?  So adorable and awesome.  (Summer Glau: also awesome, and adorable.)

I'm also enjoying: writing my femslash_minis fic, and the comfortable air temperature, and feeling no guilt about skipping out on the CWM benefit concert.

Edit: Ari, I also started tagging Somebody's entries.  I thought you'd be pleased :)

I'm almost ready to make my del.icio.us public, but I'm still tagging and my big problem is what to do with stories that aren't primarily pairing stories. I want pairing stories to also be tagged with each character's name, so you can click on a character's name and see all the fics involving them as major characters, but I also want a way to be able to pull up the non-pairing fics about any given character . . . as well as ensemble fics. This is further complicated by the existence of fics which pair a single character with a number of other people but the focus is really on the single character, so it would be more accurate to tag it with just the main character than with all the pairings, but I can't tag it "non-ship" or "non-pairing" or "gen." (I'm not even touching the issue of surprise pairings/characters.)

Yes, I realize my del.icio.us will be more complicated than anyone else's ever, and that possibly I will only serve to overwhelm anyone who comes across it. In my delusional world it maximizes del.icio.us' usefulness, though.

Is the weather making the Internet punk out?  'Cause I'm a little sad that I'm so close to being done with putting all my recs into del.icio.us (785 thus far -- you thought I was kidding about 900?) and can't finish.  [Though the smell of rain on pavement makes me so happy.]  Of course, it's only title line and preliminary tagging.  Complete tagging will probably take exponentially longer.  I think I've spent ~16 hours on this.  (I literally haven't set foot outside today, though I am showered and dressed and have taken breaks for food and toilet.)  I said last night that it was better than drugs, and I wouldn't actually know since I'm enough of a control freak to have no desire to try mind-altering substances beyond stuff like over-the-counter painkillers (yeah. I know, alcohol, but that makes me tired and dizzy if I have a lot of it, so I really don't even have much of that), but I was struck by how much I just got into the groove of it and would just work on for long periods of time straight-through -- as opposed to how I've been unable to focus on any task recently, including plenty of stuff I legitimately wanna be working on (e.g. church writeups).

I guess it's probably just as well since I do actually have to get up tomorrow morning to go to work.  It has been suggested that I should just take the whole week off since the network is unlikely to actually be back as scheduled (though I just checked, and Intranet at least is back) but I do have work I can get done without the network, so since the network is scheduled to be back I would feel guilty (I do not have guilt about my two days off earlier this week, though).

MaryAlice is taking the week off, so I'll be spared excessive rantings about the Libby thing.  Trelawney's traveling, but if Sue's at small group tomorrow night I'm sure I'll hear about it.  I really should read up on it [as usual, my instinct is to be contrary and start with reading places like InstaPundit rather than the flist], though that won't happen if I don't have 'Net tomorrow.

In unrelated news, while intellectually I'm aware that anything I post here unlocked could feasibly be read by anyone with an Internet connection, I'm still jarred when worlds collide sometimes.  Someone I spoke with briefly on a Red Line e-mailed me Thomas Friedman's "The Whole World Is Watching" NYT Op-Ed (June 27, 2007).  I should of course be concerned in terms of my job, but it mostly gets me thinking about how someone would perceive me based solely on this space in contrast to how I perceive myself.  I find myself laughing a little when people call this a "blog," because to me that implies so much more actual thematic content of relevance, whereas my LJ is some amalgam of personal anecdotes, fannish reactions, and less thoughtful commentary than I would like.

(P.S. Ms. Lewis, thank you so much for your kind e-mail.  It really brightened my day, and I'll write back at more length when I have a chance.)

Dear tourists, the holiday is tomorrow. Why are you here now? Unless summer weekdays are always like this and I'm just never around to notice. I go back and forth between wanting to stop and help people who look a little lost and being generally annoyed with people.

Anyway, my To Do List plan for the day:

* go to gym
I oped not to do this 'cause I was tired. I did do a good amount of walking around, though.

* go to Keegan's to pick up my fixed wristwatch
Success. I bumped into Jay Pendse on the train; he's going to NYC for med school (Mt. Sinai). I also saw Connie and Alisha on the train back, but didn't say hi to them.

* get my hair cut
I had heard Salon Femia does walk-ins. Turns out the stylists are off for the holiday, so I made an appointment for Saturday morning.

* go to the Harvard Farmer's Market (12:30-6, by the Science Center)
I got strawberries and raspberries.
I was sad that there are no apples. Apples are great. They should be in season all the time.
I also really need to get a good blender/food processor so I have fruit smoothies as summer snack/meal option.

* BONUS: del.icio.us
I started with my own fics, which was definitely a good idea, 'cause I know the content and don't have to worry about deadlinks, plus no one else has any of them tagged so I didn't have to worry about it being public while I was figuring out how it all works.

OMG, though, I have 75 fics and that took forever (for values of "forever" which approximate 4 hours). The next project is putting all my recs up on del.icio.us [separate account], and I have like 900 of those (no lie). I guess I should just input all the links and go back and tag them later. (And wow I am a masochist. 'Cause I wanna start on that right now. Woot vacation/holiday. Edit, 15 minutes in: Fuck, this is better than drugs.)

[Edit2: Okay, four hours later, I've input(ted?) 152 recs, complete with preliminary tagging and sometimes hunting down deadlinks and correcting them on my website (and keeping a list of the unfindable ones, to be posted when I'm done). Bedtime now.]

Friday

I downloaded Firefox 2.0.0.4 on my work computer.
I'm not sure how I feel about the glossy gray rounded edge style.
It gives me the red-underline spellcheck in all windows where there's a composing box, which is neat.
I'm really not sure how I feel about the fact that the close tab is on the active tab itself, not off at the end -- so you can't just quickly click closed a lot of them (unless you start at the far right end).
Also interesting (and kind of annoying), only a limited number of tabs are shown, so you have to use the drop-down menu at the end of the bar to select other ones -- though this does mean you can actually read the titles of your open tabs (the ones that are showing) which ultimately makes navigation easier.

In other news: I am tempted to switch to S2 so for the ease of seeing what other tags an entry has when viewing by tag [I also really like the sidebar of tiered tags -- as seen on emotionalperil, marginalia, nikitangel, etc.,], but I hate S2 on principle, and it's so unwieldy.  Okay, my S1 mainpage ("lastn") style is tweaked from one that someone had already customized, but still, not that hard -- whereas S2 so often feels non-intuitive to me.  *growls*

[I also continue to be annoyed by people who force their styles on the comment page.  I have my flist set to give me ?style=mine, but when I'm browsing other journals, or visiting from Message Center or Memories, I have it inflicted on me.  Yes, I know there are GreaseMonkey scripts for that.  But still.]

And so often I'm browsing journals of people who do have S2 and it makes me sad that their entries aren't (consistently) tagged.  Hi, "cataloguer at heart" = no lie.

/complaint (for the moment, on that topic, anyway)

***

The book my mom's boss is co-writing, turns out they don't need the References, which is good news for her in that she doesn't have to format them, but this makes the baby jesus me cry 'cause it's a nonfiction book, how can you not include References?  And it's easy to list them all in the back, so it's not like they're gonna infringe on your reading experience.  Are people really gonna be intimidated by the presence of superscript numerals?  Oh the irony that the title is: "Come on, People! On the Path from Victims to Victors."

I felt tired after dinner (had kinda napped on the train ride home) but obviously 7:30pm is a bit early to go to bed -- especially when you're sleeping on the living room couch.

Excluding West Wing at work, this is the most tv I've watched in I don't know how long.

We watched Jeopardy (trivia learned: W. H. Harrison was the first POTUS to die in office).

My brother channel-surfed during the commercial breaks, so we watched a large chunk of The Simpsons -- "Eight Misbehavin' " [11.07] -- and some snippets Malcolm in the Middle -- "Secret Boyfriend" [7.06].

I was frequently like dead from laughter at The Simpsons.  For shame.  Hi, that show is not allowed to be that funny.

Malcolm in the Middle had a character who struck me as a Topanga knock-off, and my brother said I should know the actress, and indeed, it was Hayden Panettiere.

A couple minutes before 8:00 it was pointed out that Smackdown would be on soon.  Aww, father-daughter bonding.  ( Read more... )

I also saw more commercials than I have in ages. ( Read more... )

Saturday

My great-aunt Grace died early in June, and we went down to Falmouth for the Memorial Mass.  ( Read more... )

I finally went to Keegan's to get my watchband fixed/replaced. I also stopped by the library -- in part because I was purposely postponing going home to where OriginalRoomie's high-energy chatty family would be waiting.

I was wearing my light blue shirt, Beth said it was a great color on me, was in fact my color.  I tend to prefer darker colors, but I can see that.  (And she didn't ask me if I'd lost weight!  Which, okay, is Marcia's schtick, but still.  I don't actually have weight issues, but I get so tired of the idea that looking good clearly equals looking thinner.)  She said, "You look great -- better than you ever have before.  Whatever you're doing must agree with you."

I told her I was learning ASL, and she said she'd learned some way back in the day but forgotten most of it now.  But she signed that sentence, which I was impressed by.

I really should check out Simmons' night school program.  She said she thought if I went into librarianship I should become an academic librarian -- academic or some specialty like business, law, medical library.  People tell me this, and I'm honestly not sure it's true, but I haven't hashed out exactly what "being a librarian" would look like for me ideally, so I just nod at people.
She said she can see me running my own library (♥!) and if I ever need reference letters, let them know :)

I forget how it came up, but my dad and I finally looked up "que sera sera."  Was nice to know that we're right that in Spanish it would be "Lo que será, será.

There has been some minor controversy about the reputed language of the song title. The phrase "Que sera, sera" was an alteration by the songwriters of a quasi-Italian phrase, "Che sara, sara," a fictional family motto in the 1954 film The Barefoot Contessa. It is not Spanish, Italian, or French (but is acceptable in spoken Portuguese). The correct Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese renderings of the phrase are: 
* Portuguese: O que será, será
* Spanish: Lo que será, será
* Italian: Quello che sarà, sarà
* French: Ce qui sera, sera.
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Que_sera_sera#Trivia

I saw Mrs. Leary on my way back to the train, and she mentioned Glasgow.  I'd heard about London, but Glasgow was news to me.  Sigh.  Last time I flew overseas people worried (it was summer of 2003, so people were still recovering from 9/11; I memoried this entry as "i'm not afraid of flying overseas even with a war") and I'm not enjoying starting to have these conversations again.

OriginalRoomie's family was actually not overwhelming (and they did dishes and bought lots of food including booze and ice cream).

My "For the Next X: A Benefit CD for RAINN" arrived, and I am underwhelmed.  Anyone want it?

Sunday

I thought my string of dreams of destruction was over, but this morning I had an extended dream which was not only full of destruction but also actually hit me on an emotional level, as the previous string of dreams hadn't.

As I walked to the laundromat, a car drove by and a guy in it yelled, "Happy Canada Day."

OriginalRoomie's mom's chattiness is starting to grate on me.

However, she asked about where to go to get a new parking pass.  I hadn't realized mine expired Jan. 1 rather than 12 months after I got it, so that was good.  I have definitely been loaning them to visitors, though, and no one has told me they've gotten a ticket.

And they keep washing our dishes, so I can't complain too much.

Do I want to even have a birthday party this year?  I'm already planning to party two weekends in a row, and the Saturday that looks like it'll work better for more people is the date of the CWM benefit concert.

Monday

I slept for ~9 hours.  Rock.

OriginalRoomie's mom gave me a heart-shaped throw pillow with an American flag design.  Um, okay.  Last time she gave me a couple of nice gold-and-black ones.

I did a couple errands and went to the gym.
I was kinda tired, so I started in the weight room, did a few of the machines.
I decided to try the the StairMaster.  Intensity ranges from 1 (lowest) to 20 (highest).  I started at 1, which felt obscenely slow, and ended up spending most of my time at 7 (my average was 6.3).
I am not a fan of the machine.  I kept stepping too far forward and thus smushing my shoe, and I felt like I had to keep watching the stairs because if I wasn't I would get off rhythm and that would be bad.  I also felt like I was being bad to my back, like I was leaning down funny or something, but I couldn't figure out how to do it right.
I had plugged in 20minutes (Fat Burner program, 'cause why not), but I stopped at 10min 'cause I didn't feel like dying.
workout summary: 41 flights of stairs, 0.84miles

I stopped by the office to see if Katie had killed herself from boredom yet :) and chatted with her and Greg for an hour or two.
Katie said her mom has been stressing for the past 8 weeks trying to find a dress to wear to her cousin's wedding.  This led to conversations about how when it's your own kid's wedding, and I insisted that my parents were not of that sort, was like, "They will wear clothes..." though this then prompted ideas (which I did not voice) about having a nude wedding.  Which then reminded me of a recent conversation with Katie about a wedding one of her roommates is going to which will have a pig roast.  I'm a vegetarian so of course I'm opposed to this in principle, but I also thought it would be such a great visual to have a giant pig roasting on a spit.  Katie was joking about going dressed in tattered clothes with a nametag saying "Simon" and going off to die in the bushes.

I felt like I should go clothes shopping but was really not excited about that.  Meh.  Tomorrow will be more productive.

I saw Katherine from CHPC on my way out of the T station.  She's reading Jasper Fforde, on her son's recommendation.  Yay.
I hadn't realized they lived right on Curtis St. so close to Davis Square (for some reason I thought they lived up toward Medford).

What is up with our disappearing trash barrels?  I know we started out with 3 (I recall boggling that we filled them up since there were only 5 of us living in bathe house, and my family of 4 growing up would fill up one trash bag maybe 3/4 of the way each week) but we've had 2 for a while now, but tonight we were down to 1. [Edit: Turns out DownstairsNeighbors are moving to a place closer to the Square, but I think all the trash barrels pre-dated them anyway, so that doesn't help.]

I do not react well to people fussing over me -- which I think is a control freak thing.
OriginalRoomie's grandma was moving stuff in the fridge so I could fit my stuff in when I came back with groceries, and I was like, "No, it's fine, I'll make it fit, don't worry about it {flaps hands}."

Hi, it's my birthday in a week.  Craziness.

Having thought about how close I live to Mass Ave. when coming home with my brother on Tuesday, I decided to try the trek to Harvard Square since I had to go there to pick up the new Astonishing X-Men anyway.

Looking at GoogleMaps I decided to take Clarendon Ave. to Mass Ave., and that worked out well.  I didn't think to look at my watch (to time the trip) until I was about halfway down Clarendon, at which point I'd been walking for I would guess 5-10 minutes.  15-20 minutes later I was at Porter Square, and 15-20 minutes after that I was at Harvard -- well, a big sign for Harvard Law School anyway.  I'd forgotten that I'd be hitting Harvard from a direction I'm unfamiliar with.  So I decided to just keep going, knowing that if I kept on Mass Ave. I'd hit familiarity eventually (if nothing else because Nicole lives on Mass Ave.).  So I passed Harvard-Epworth Methodist Church, the giant building that is Littauer (so now I know where that is; FormerUnitHead is over there a lot), and then saw the Science Center which I know so I could orient myself and pass through main campus to the Square.

At The Million Year Picnic I couldn't resist a Mark Ryden Christmas card.  I also picked up chocolate on sale (post-Christmas) at CVS (I had stopped into pick up something I actually needed and then, sale...).

I took the T back.  It takes me about 40 minutes to get to work as I normally commute, so this isn't actually that much longer -- except that I'm commuting to the b-school, which is an additional ~10 minute walk from the Square.  So yeah, not gonna be giving up my T-Pass anytime soon.  But it's good to feel more confident in my ability to walk between the two places.

[It occurs to me that an actual Subject line would be something like "I walked 3 miles for AXM #19" but no, we quote lyrics etc., making it incredibly hard to find anything by Calendar:Subjects.  What really drives me crazy is when people Memory posts with those same unhelpful post titles; hi, people, you can give it a different title in Memories.  At least I'm likely to remember what I tagged it.]

Do we notice how I haven't touched my Joyce since the Break began?  ::is bad::

***

Among the Year in Review memes going around is a top ten fannish moments of 2006 (from the source text).  I don't so much have source text moments; I have fandom/community. Seriously, ask me for top fannish "moments" of the year, and the list goes something like this:

1. WriterCon
2. froplay
3. the whedonesque/Joss Whedon/likeadeuce thing
4. getting into new fandoms (How I Met Your Mother, Astonishing X-Men, Heroes, The West Wing)
5. mainlining CSI with Cat
6. Eric
7. my boss getting me the Serenity: Left Behind graphic novel
8. Yuletide

Today was less productive than I had hoped for, but I did finally get the stuff I needed from Prof.B., and (again) I have stuff in place to get the remainder taken care of tomorrow.  So I went to the Community Holiday Party an hour late (as per yesterday).  Prof.B. asked, "Are you okay?"  I said I was just tired, from a month and a half of Recruiting, and I was very ready for my Break, and that I wasn't upset at him (the latter is a bit of a lie, but it wasn't a conversation we needed to have at that moment).

In mingling at the party, I got chatted up by a guy from Physical Plant (Glenn).  That was a little weird.  He claims we see each other around all the time (exchange hellos even); I did not mention that I have no recollection of seeing him ever.  It quickly became clear that he's very much not my type, and at a lull in the conversation I made my excuses and went to mingle elsewhere.  I saw him again at the end of the party and he offered me a ride home and I politely declined and he (smiling) said, "Well, I had to try."  I laughed and we parted amicably.  I pretty much always refuse rides, though (though obviously I was also purposefully declining this one).

Edit: I completely forgot to mention: in conversation I said my parents lived south of Boston, kinda near Foxboro (my new stock answer), and Glenn said, "Oh, Norwood area," and I was just flabbergasted, because that is in fact the exact town, but people almost never know the town (except for the Auto Mile). /edit

Emily was talking about getting a gift for one of her profs and yeah, fond as I am, none of my profs inspire that feeling in me.  (Of course, I'm kind of Grinchy generally.)  I am such an English Major, though.  She and his RA were talking about his big vocabulary, and she said something about a word on the exam today and the word was "idiosyncratic" and I was like, "That's a perfectly normal word."  RA mentioned "mellifluous," which while I don't think I've ever used it in conversation I can define unhesitatingly (I even know the mel=honey root).  Apparently he also uses the word "punctilious" like every day.

In other work news, the stressful craziness aside, my workplace is kind of fabulous.  For example, most any conversation involving Peter.  And I'm so glad to have Katie around to be on the same wavelength as me.

In non-work news: Ari is a little bit of a rockstar.  (I'll post the stuff that made me glow after the secret_slasha name reveal -- 'cause it's from her beta of my fic.)

I have put the majority of personal library collection up on LibraryThing (though I have definitely not yet completed the tagging).

Problems I have found:
* using the Author tag Cloud is clunky -- click on an author and it takes you to the author page and then you can get "You have books by [author] ( [hyperlink] see yours [/hyperlink] )."
* I can't find a way to sort alphabetically by author in List View.  (It took me a pathetically long time to realize that Cover View -- which I love -- is also sorted that way.  I am just such an inculcated librarian; alphabetical by title is an almost never thing -- the one exception is sorting within an author if it's not a set series.)
* "Enter 200 books for free, as many as you like for $10 (year) or $25 (life)."
Okay, not a serious complaint since I'm used to LiveJournal, which is significantly more expensive, but that just seems like such a low number to me.  I think of my personal library as moderate-to-small, and I'm right near 200.

I was telling Katie about it and she asked what the point of it is and, uh....  I pulled out the Suggestion option (It makes me sad that the UnSuggester will only work for specific titles not your whole library) but honestly, it's all about the fun of the organizing.

Edit: 12:38am I get an e-mail from Tim from LibraryThing.  Appearing on Google Blog Search = Rockstar!  (No, I don't know why "rockstar" is my current word of choice for things made of win.)  He said:

you can sort by author by clicking on the word "author" at the top of the column. This works with most of the columns—anything in blue. You can reverse-sort by clicking again.

I admit to feeling a little abashed that I hadn't already thought of that.

1. hi-res X3 poster images

2. a download of the Bones ep w/ Adam Baldwin -- which I downloaded last night and which plays as a blank avi, wtf?

3. Gina Torres is being hot on The Shield? *is sad to not get FX*

4. Prompted by the X3 pictures on my wall, Eric told me that the Ghost Rider trailer is gonna be attached to the X3 movie. He is annoyed that Nicholas Cage is playing Ghost Rider 'cause he doesn't like Nicholas Cage. I said I didn't particularly have strong feelings either way.
     "He named his kid Kal-el." (Kal-el Coppola Cage)
     "Not his best moment," I admitted. But not as bad as "Moon Unit," I pointed out.
     "Moon Unit"? Apparently this was completely new knowledge to Eric.
     I couldn't remember the other one ("Dweezil") so I Googled. And thereby learned that Frank Zappa had 4 badly named kids. (Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Rodan, and Diva) I totally thought there were just the 2 (Moon Unit and Dweezil).

5. glossing made my day like whoa.

I am yet again considering getting a del.icio.us

Probably as public service much like tagging since LJMemories-dump basically works for keeping track of the stuff I personally have yet to read/officially rec. [Though I could also tag by themes etc., thus aiding my own searching/referencing purposes. *ponders* And yes of course my tagging system function as a search aid probably even more for myself than for anyone else. I mean, it is about me first and public service second.]

This is gonna be the part where nobody responds and I ultimately decide to go ahead and do it, right?

(Ooh, if I did del.icio.us I could also do it for fanart. Though, see, the danger in that is that then I might never do up a fanart recs page on my site.)

---

Day before Break? Yeah, 's been a slow day.

My trains ran fast this morning, so I was in at like 8:35. (Usually I'm in around 8:40, 8:45.)
Greg (who's always in before me): Do you live sufficiently close, or do you get up sufficiently early from far away?

Yesterday I decided not to bring a brownie with lunch and ended up craving one and bought a Snickers bar.
So today I brought a brownie and (before I'd eaten it) Barbara came back from a meeting bearing (among other things) fruit and cookies.

Wednesday's Metro there was a kerfluffle about IHOP coming to Harvard Square. 'Cause, um, it's a chain.
Non-kerfluffly, The Hempest is coming to Upstairs at the Garage. Oh the Northampton convergences.

Millionaire the other day I was wrong. Synovial fluid is cracking your knuckles, not popping your ears.

The receipt from a previous person who had my Martín Espada library book has 2 items on it:
   Imagine the angels of bread: poems
   Betty Crocker's Step-by-step cookbook
I was amused.

Rich's cell phone alarm went off and I jumped.
"I startle easily; it's not my fault."

---

Edit: Almost forgot: club_joss is doing BK's "Cry Havoc" -- which still makes me cry.

Went out to dinner with the fam last night.  Byblos (Lebanese restaurant downtown) has yummy hummus, though I wasn't particularly impressed by anything else.  (They score points for having Riesling on the wine menu -- and orderable by the glass, too -- but I didn't love their Riesling so it's perhaps a wash.)

Eric called this morning and I answered: "Whadda you want?"
Eric: [feignning shock] "That's not how you answer your phone."
Me: "It is when you're the one who's calling."
Eric: [something I don't remember]
Me: [sweetly] "Hello, this is Elizabeth [surname redacted], how can I help you?"
Eric: [sweetly] "You're so nice."

Later:
[Eric calls]
Me: [answering the phone] "Good morning, this is Elizabeth, how can I help you?"
Eric: "You're so nice."
Me: "I try."
Eric: [suddenly confused] "Why did I call?"
Me: "Because I'm charming?"
Eric: "No, that's not it, you're not."
Me: "Ow-ch!"
Eric: [at almost the same time] "I'm kidding."

I came into work and my new coat felt a bit overwarm, but 62F at lunchtime? (and winds ~34mph)  So not okay.  Blessedly it got coldish tonight.  At this rate, when it comes summer and I'm complaining about the hot&humid and get the "oh but you'll miss it come winter" I'll be able to say "what winter?"-- instead of my usual "no, actually; I love winter."

I wa so bad at Millionaire today.  One of the questions was about pre-Cana in the Catholic Church.  I had it narrowed down to 2 but had never heard of the term before and probably would have guessed wrong.  Mary Alice said one didn't have to be Catholic but one did have to know some Bible -- wedding at Canna.  I protest because it's not like that was the first wedding or anything, and it's not even famous so much for the wedding as for the miracle.

Prof. MW and I commiserated about HBS comp computers this afternoon :)  He likened his to a "cinder block."

I tend to forget that scans_daily sometimes has whole storylines rather than single crack panels, so encountering this link via the_red_shoes was a very pleasant surprise.  Dark, fucked-up, sex, story.  Just the way I like it :)

However, everything on LJ seems to be setting off my rage recently.  (And wasn't I just saying that recently?)

So, highlights of things that have set me off:

An acquaintance posted something recently about aging, and while I understand people's concerns -- worries about mortality and so forth -- this is one of the things guaranteed to set me off.  If you're actually slowing down and your body doesn't do as much as it used to be able to and so on, that's a valid complaint, but numbers themselves do not define you, and aging is so far.  tenebraeli once put it: "Old equals winning," explaining that we only have two options.  I recently read a NYT article on an ovarian cancer treatment, and it closes with a quote from a patient:
    "I turned 60 on the Fourth of July," Ms. Palmquist said. "That's one thing about this disease. I never complain about getting older."

musesfool discusses tagging and other organizational issues, and reading the comments from people saying things like "my Memories are a mess 'cause I never really mastered that feature" makes me weep 'cause I so love the Memories function.  It has recently come to my attention that ease-of-access is a huge issue for me, and that it's a handy umbrella term encompassing so many things that bug me in websites and LJs.

wisdomeagle wrote Ann M. Martin/Elaine Fairchild (that would be the BSC author and a Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood puppet).  She commented that "in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, the characters played by puppets and the characters played by humans (Mr. McFeely, Lady Aberlin, Mayor Maggie, Neighbor Abor, and Bob Dog are the ones springing to mind) interact on a pretty much equal level. Their being played by puppets has no actual plot-wise impact on anything that happens."  I wonder if this is part of why Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood never quite connected with me -- though that's probably not it.

Vaguely related, there's discussion of 80s movies over in scrollgirl's journal.  Yeah, this list is clearly in descending order of rage-inducing-ness.  The 80s movie thing is more a general rolling of the eyes at something that just doesn't connect with me (likewise, the immediately above item is not really a rage item either).

Am still deciding whether or not to go to the Boston Smith College Club event tomorrow night.  I think I may opt for being anti-social.

I am in fact generally content, however -- lest anyone worry. (I so want to write long rageful posts, but I find myself wondering if I should do joy lists instead. Because it's me, of course the answer will ultimately be to do both. Yeah complexity :) )

( Felicia says she misses my whiteboard, so... )

Fefe came over Thursday afternoon, and updated me on my Fluffy, Muffy, Buffy, and Joanne future-life.  Joanne (the sheep) is trans.  Emma is a ho "flighty" (says Felicia).  She leaves me for Beatrice, then comes back, then leaves with Gary and Miltonia the plumbers.  Before Ohio, I went to Paris and worked as a maintenance worker (named Bob) while seeking out beaus for Felicia.  Yes this is up here because I told Felicia I would.

Fefe tells me Skarda's teaching a Da Vinci Code j-term course.  Must e-mail that woman.

Cryptic note that I expect to understand when I read this as an old entry: Grocery store insanity  My brother and I are efficiency addicts.

My brother was talking about how so few of the Red Sox who were part of the World Series winning team are still around.  This made me sad, like you win the Series, stick around one season, and then leave?  He said most of them weren't free agents, so they must have been traded, which makes me annoyed with the management.  I imagine samfeasor would know the details.

Later that night, my brother and I got distracted by country's movies ratings while looking up movies online.  [Now that I know what Rumor Has It is about I'm actually intrigued.  Though it's not like I'll spend money on it.  My Brokeback Mountain date got cancelled, though, so anyone who wants to use that as an excuse to come visit me....]  We tracked down an MPAA explanatory essay and also an explanation of other countries.  The stuff that France marks "U" (Universal)?  Crazy.

Later, we were looking at yearbooks, and wow so many people I haven't thought of in ages.  Part of me wants a five-year reunion to see where everyone's at, and part of me doesn't really wanna see them again, 'cause h.s. was awkward and it's not like things have gotten that much better.  (If there is a five-year reunion, however, I am so going, and I will be soliciting for volunteers to be my hottie date for the night.)

I had a weird dream that night.  ( for my own records )

So, Friday.

I got a haircut.  My mom says it makes me look older than I did before -- which is a blessing (last random person to guess my age was 8 years low, which is so not okay when one is 22 -- and I honestly have no need for it to happen decades from now).  Elouai dolls have heads way too big for their bodies, but hey.  (My hair so does not have that much body, though.)

Reading Shape magazine while waiting (I knew I should have brought a book) I felt like I was reading Playboy or something -- so many uber-toned women in sports bras and shorts.

Watched the first hour of WWE Smackdown with my dad.  ( Read more... )

---

The rage in my last entry reminded me that I miss discussing.  What I miss most about Smith is having people so close by, but a close second is discussions.  Like, I actually miss Inklings class -- 'cause at least there were a couple dozen people who had theoretically read the same text I had and had some shared background, and I had a floor at which to air my opinions, and worstcase scenario I would just rage at the prof after class.  (Ah, memories.)  This is also my biggest disappointment about LiveJournal -- that the way it's formatted it's so easy to have lengthy multi-person conversations complete with easy references (hyperlinks) to other sources, but we are all so busy and only have so much time and energy.  [There's also the issue of finding people with whom to discuss.  For tv one can find comms to discuss eps as they air, but if one is catching up on DVD -- or watching movies or reading books, or heaven forfend fic -- it's harder, and sometimes one is dissatisfied by the caliber in comms one does find.]

I feel like I've been such a slacker this break, and in some ways I have and in some ways I haven't.  I went through a slew of bookmarked fic to feedback/rec.  On the other hand, I have less than 200 words of FemGen written.  And it occurs to me that the huge amounts of sugar I've been consuming this week have probably been contributing to the whackedness of my sleep schedule.  This does mean that I still have my phone on when Cat calls with random post-work joy, though :)  ♥

The flist is resurrecting fandom opinion memes, which always makes me wanna write up manifestos of my opinions on ships/characters/arcs in all my fandoms.  So, um, anyone who wants my opinions on anything, just ask.

New meme seen via oyceter: If I had a daemon, what would it be and why?