Seriously, please, just LOOK out the window before you open the car door.

A school aged girl nearly doored me tonight on my way home, in the bike lane, with a headlight on and everything, because SHE DID NOT LOOK BEFORE SHE OPENED THE CAR DOOR.

So she opened car door into the bike lane a couple feet in front of me, and by the grace of God and good brakes and the fact that I was suspicious of the car not having any turn signals on approaching a T-intersection, I managed to stop before I hit the car door headfirst with her between me and the door.

Just say, "Check for bikes!" to your passengers before they leave the car. That's all you have to do. Literally, you can save someone's life with this one, very simple thing.

But *you* have to do it. The person on the bike cannot do it for you.

The main style is still Mobility, I just played around with the background image (yarn, bitches) and the colors.

The Mobility style got so popular in post-Tumblr users that I wanted a clearer way to just look at my blog and immediately know it was mine.

I used this HTML color tool to pull colors from the image I used as my background - https://html-color-codes.info/colors-from-image/?imageLoader= - Reasonably happy with it so far.

Trying to round up people on Tumblr before they disappear has caused me to interact with more people on Tumblr than I have in actual years.

Ok, I mean, I was on there daily and reblogged a lot, but I didn't create stuff on Tumblr. And (as I've mentioned) interacting with people was fraught bc so much of it so weirdly public and hard to track.

So now I'm seeking people out and encouraging them to come to dreamwidth and trying to follow up with folks and it's waaaaay more interaction with Tumblr than I have had in a long ass time, and DW, and and and... gosh it takes a lot of people-energy to be a fan.

I mean, Yahoo bought it so, no surprises there?

But, for those of you who are seeking ways to keep in touch, add me and I'll add you back!

I just moved back to Boston, and I am kind of interested in fun, cheap things to do. (Cheap being less than $20 per person), and in particular ways to meet new people.

So, anyone have any great experiences of Boston that they would love to pass on? I don't care how touristy or silly or mildly insane, I will take all suggestions!

Wow, that was not where I expected this episode to go. Seriously, this is the kind of father/son relationship that you come back from?

From the minute Dr. Mora showed up to talk about Odo's past, I assumed that the episode was setting him up as the villain-- the abusive father figure.

( Read more! )

She didn't have a library card. That's the part that sunk in, despite the fact that her credit cards and her favorite wallet were gone now, too, and she would have to call and get replacements for all her insurance cards. The stamps were gone, and that check from her aunt too.

But the library card stuck in her mind. She'd been on her way to the Harold Washington Library, massive orange-brown building crowned with outrageous green bronze wings and swirls, when she noticed the wallet was missing. She had to backtrack to the cafe and leave a note in case anyone found it, and then back to the office where she had interviewed to call and check that she hadn't lost it there.

The interviewer let her in, confused, and very nice about it- she let her go back in the interview room and helped check around. They even let her borrow a computer to get the numbers for her banks and credit union and the Chicago police department. She let her out of the office again with a sympathetic smile and promised to call in a week about the position.

She spent the afternoon pacing the plaza around Calder's Flamingo while bankers also cooed and hushed over her and asked if a $2389.56 charge at Bloomingdales was hers? That cleared it up- stolen, not lost. She was miserable and hungry. She couldn't buy lunch like she had planned. It was a warmer day in April, but it was April in Chicago. She'd been standing in the cold for two and half hours now while a cop on the phone congratulated her on not having more than two credit cards.

Her CTA card in a side pocket had escaped- she could take the train home. She had her iPod, she could listen to music. Her phone in a side pocket was fine. Her Kindle in her tote was still there, she could read. But she didn't have a library card. She couldn't go and get the Royko book from the library now, and she'd been trying to find it as an ebook for a week already. It didn't exist. And stealing a library card was just so petty.

She'd had a library card since she was eight, living at the old house in Rhode Island with the public library built out of rough stone that always seemed to swelter or freeze. The first paper card she'd had with the bar code on the back let her take out 10 books at a time. She'd never really bothered to leave the children's section of that library, which had seemed so massive to her back then. The weekly stack of books varied, and eventually even that library card was put aside for one to another library in another state, to be replaced by a college ID that doubled for her course books. Until she got to Chicago and had to sign the back of another chunky piece of plastic for the public library system, and she was in.

It just seemed so pointless, stealing a library card- the credit cards she could understand, and she'd really only lost a couple hours of time with the police and the banks. And the license could be sold and used for underage club goers. The wallet even, which was her favorite by far and a considered choice, to finally put out more money than she needed on something nice and sturdy and matched her purse. She could understand stealing the wallet.

But stealing her library card? For access to books that were already free. For the first little bit of adult responsibility that even little children get to have, that basic right to get out into the world and know things and learn and to have conversations with adults that were not family or parents. For that duty to keep safe library books because they didn't just belong to you, they belonged to everyone, and it was so important that they belong to everyone that towns built buildings and hired staff to make sure everyone could get them. For that security that said even if the internet failed and she never got a job, she could still get things to read. She'd still be a person.

She felt the loss of the credit cards as the loss of a convenience. She felt the loss of the library card like she'd walked into her childhood home to find her bedroom was gone.

Sterile proficiency is the hallmark of revamping my resume. It's not a creative task- in fact, it's a task that requires a certain inflexible uniformity, an awareness of the norms ands strict adherence to them. It's a miserable, soul grinding task. It's the skill of making oneself unobjectionable.

Also, I hate men in cafes. Not that I don't hate men in other circumstances. But in cafes it becomes obvious: men lack social graces. Women are cordial: Pardon me. Would you mind...? may I sit here? The subjunctive and the conditional abound, and all in all the pressure of other people's mind is gently soothed away by a clear signal: I mean no harm. Men are blunt: I need another chair. Is this space free? Not the slightest energy put into being anything than large and present and taking up as much space as they feel is their due.

I'm being harsh. There are plenty of thoughtful, gentle men and even traditional gentlemen who do not impose themselves unnecessarily on others.

But shit on a cinderblock, if you're going to ask for the other chair sitting empty at my table, could you please bother to do better than, "I need a chair." I don't care if you need a chair. I don't know you. I am unmoved by you. You are breaking my attention for the thing I am doing and offer no acknowledgment of that fact, much less an apology for the imposition.

Do better.






Note: Yes, I have encountered rude women. They are farther between by far than men. Women are generally obliged to apologize for our existence in a way men are not, and so "I'm sorry" comes to our lips far more readily in situations where it's even slightly called for. Rude women are generally specific and pointed in their rudeness, rather than blundering.

Since my fall from ordination, which had its very first crappy anniversary a few weeks ago, I have been pretty dissatisfied with church. Specifically, I haven't been even going to church, even tho I now live pretty far from the church that burned my ass not that long ago.

So, for the first time in my life, the season of this year have not been measured in the contraction of space and time predetermined by the church's holy calendar. I've been free of the crushing sadness of going to church, where I invariably sit back judging the priest on what I would have done in their place, but I also have been unmoored. I grew up behind the scenes of parish life, with a clear understanding of the power struggles and personal vendettas that go into being mired in the fallen world of physical being while striving to build a community whose foundations have been laid in eternity. People are people, and so there will be squabbles and snarls and someone will throw up in the plant pot. Without the smell of incense, my nose is uncalibrated. Without the stained glass windows, my eyes feel strange to themselves. (And how perfect a metaphor, that even the windows are stained as we are with the imperfections that make us glorious and give us identity.)

I was turned down for ordination in Lent, and it feels in some way as if this year has been an unending Lent, a penitent season to a child who does not understand her sins, and thus cannot understand to repent for them. Until she understands that is not her sins, but those against her from which she has to heal.

I went to Ash Wednesday this year. You are dust, and to dust you shall return. I feel the truth of that in the base carbon of my own body and in my achy feet and in my tired eyes.

But I did not go to Easter this year, because I do not feel myself resurrected.

I was having a brief conversation with the Gentleman, and he wouldn't look at me, and he said he was leaving me and getting back together with an old girlfriend, [Christina]. Then he left.

So I was left in our apartment without any money, because he's the one with the job and he had just... left. And I wanted to get in touch with him, but I kept getting distracted. The apartment building had turned into a gutted multistory slum, populated with people having sex in public stairwells and generally being scary in the shadows of the concrete remaining. At least one character from 'The Wire' was there, and being extra snarly.

I kept wandering through it and thinking, I should get in touch with the Gentleman, it's been a day. Where will I get enough money to live on? Then something would happen and I would forget to call him. Whenever I thought of calling him, it was laced through with this numb disbelief that it's been two days, why haven't I called him? Why am I not worried about calling him?

Except that somehow I knew he was not there and would not answer and would not look me in the eye, and that was completely wrong. Even if he did break up with me, he would take my call and help me get out of a scary slum because he is a nice person. So I was both aware of how out of character he was acting, and still completely not phased by it because it was a dream and reality is never quite set.

Then I somehow got out of the dream-slum and into a fancy restaurant set up for a banquet, only I was dressed in rags and the hostess was calling my name like a teacher calling attendance. There was a big tufted chair waiting for me next to my mom and she was mad at me for being late but everything else seemed rather dreamy.

When I sat down, I saw that down at the far end of the table in a party dress was the woman that the Gentleman was leaving me for. And she sat there glaring at me all the way down the table. The Gentleman was not there and I still was terribly upset that he was avoiding me, and still kind of half-sleepily recognized that he was behaving completely out of character.

I guess I woke up during the banquet, and of course, the Gentleman was out of bed because his alarm had gone off fifteen minutes before, which I think means that this entire dream took place realtime after he got out of bed and I sleepily noticed it and went back to bed.

So the thing to do was of course crawl out of bed and into the living room and plop myself onto his lap and tell him the whole story about how he'd divorced me in a dream and it was terrible. The woman he was dating in the dream was not someone he's ever dated, and she's married too, but she does have a fairly impressive glare. A whole lot of the feeling associated with the dream felt very much like the whole fiasco last year around this time with a boss who was being fairly terrible and noncommunicative, which came to a boil and resulted in me leaving that informal internship.

And I'm fairly certain this was all triggered by my normal sleepy mind noticing that the Gentleman had gotten out of bed and left, spinning wild fantasies as to why he was not staying when I had never called out for him in real life.

So yeah, I need some freaking tea.