Testing, testing. This is my first week with iJournal, which is a poor shadow of my favored xJournal, but as xJournal does not support DW, I have to try something else.

I FINALLY got a set of beads that I purchased from Etsy several weeks ago (okay, they were really actually pretty fast in shipping, but I wanted my new shiny objects NOW NOW NOW). They are lovely and I intend to make some very nice necklaces out of them with the help of a friend.

Watching DOCTOR WHO episode, "Time of Angels", I had a brilliant fannish thought.  Or, a sick demented fanish thought, but I'm hoping it was one of the good ones.

River Song= River Tam + one (ended) marriage

Think about it. Think about the possibility for crossovers. Just... let it percolate. And then write me some fic, you crazy brilliant wacko.

Rewatching 5.20- "The Devil You Know."  First part, running commentary- second part, my thoughts on the episode as a whole.


( Running Commentary: Spoilers, ho! )

Total bitch count: 1
 

( More organized thoughts on the episode. Spoilers thru season 5 )

In keeping with Three Weeks of Dreamwidth, I will not be posting this to my lj kitewithfish account.

Testing, testing la la la.

Dreamwidth has a number of nice aspects to it, but this is my first time trying to x-post.

To keep my mind off of my schoolwork and on the loveliness of my life, I have taken up some projects.

The Garden:
My family home had a large yard with a patch that had been turned into a garden. Part of that was some weird staple-like structures that my mother convinced wisteria to climb, but the other part was a small veggie garden. Though not very productive, the garden did produce enough small tomatoes to make me addicted, and made me really like gardening.

I'm in an apartment, so I don't really have enough space for a proper garden (and I've missed the chance to get in on the communal gardening area's alotment for the rest of the year), so I'm going with a small selection of herbs to aid in my new foodie-focused home cooking. I have:

Mint!- this is an actual plant in an actual pot that I purchased cause I knew that I would be ripping leaves off this sucker inside of a day. It's making water tasting that much better, and there is some serious planning going on in my mind about drying some leaves to make tea.
Rosemary!- I am addicted to rosemary, and it's even better when it's fresh. The little plant is zooming happily upwards in its own pot.
Peas!- These are actual seeds, and the first and most vigorous to have sprouted so far. I am planning on putting them in their own pot and trailing them across the railing outside to make them grow upright. I love fresh peas, even if it takes forever to grow them.
Chamomile!- I have hopes for tea, here. And I also wanted something that would flower, since the rest of the garden is herbs.
Herbs!- Dill, cilantro, parsley, and chives. All things that I use and like, and all of them fairly green and leafy. There is no space left on the windowsill of my kitchen, and that's how I like.

The Jewelry:
I have lately been feeling that I don't have enough variety in necklaces- I have a fair number of pendants and a very versatile string of peals, but I don't have enough in the way of colorful beaded necklaces. I have a friend who makes necklaces and her stuff is lovely, but her aunt prices things and this makes it rather expensive to consider. So, I bought myself some stone beads off an etsy vendor and I am resolved to try and Make Things with them. I already have some ideas with regards to combinations, I just need to get some wire and stuff together. I love the fluidity one has when one makes jewelry- you can just take something apart and it's not ruined or lost- it's just in pieces that you can put back together again.

I've also got hopes for some matching earrings, and that would be fine indeed. The total cost of this project is probably going to end up around twice the price of one necklace from my friend, but I will hopefully end up with somewhere between six and eight necklaces and a few pairs of earrings, so I think that it's a good idea.

It feels like summer vacation. This is a weird and unproductive feeling that only makes the fact that I have no classes today worse.

In recent days:

1. I have gotten a new phone and lost previously acquired phone numbers through not having saved them to my SIM card but rather only my phone's memory. That said, I am much happier with the new phone, with has the full keyboard that makes texting so much easier.

2. My on-going saga with the Electric Company, by which I called them every month since January to ask what the heck they think they are trying to pull (which I say in a much nicer way) could perhaps just maybe be coming to an end soon. Today, finally, the service rep called her supervisor over and they have told me to call back in 10 days to make sure the credit has gone through and that the mistaken charges have been taken off.

Today the woman I talked and to whom I explained the situation involving mistaken addresses and inappropriate transfers told me she followed the story very well. I said, "Thanks, I've gotten some practice telling it."

Is is weird that I feel like I have a really good method of dealing with servicepeople and suchlike on the phone? It's a weird skill to feel like you have. It mostly comes down to having a good book on hand while you're waiting on hold and having a clear grasp of being in the right.

3. I have an episode of Supernatural waiting for me to watch when I get home/have the time. This season has been overly dark, to my taste, but I am still hopeful.

4. I am reading Tillich and I am happy with him, shockingly. I am told this is something that I should not be, but I am.

5. Dried strawberries! They keep popping up in the grocery store. They are chewy and delicious.

6. I have just had a meeting with the boss at my next-year internship and I feel much better about the whole thing and much more clear about the issues. We set out a good set-up for my time there and we chatted afterwards about my critique/ thoughts on a class that he recently taught and I recently attended at the Place of Work, and he thought I had good points. In the near future I will devise a nickname for him.

Erykah Badu's concept for this video is thoughtful and visually stunning. It was an uncomfortable watch, primarily because I kept being distracted by the reactions of the people caught in the one-take public shot. Ms. Badu, however, was stunning, poised, and powerful, just walking down the street alone.

My favorite description of a small woman of incredible personality and poise is that "she made everyone else in the room feel like gangly giants," and that's the kind of reality-altering power that this woman has as she walked down the street removing her clothes. Everyone else around her looked uncomfortable and out of place, while she looked like a queen.

This is not really a blog where I talk about popular issues or public debate- mostly I'm in it for the analysis, the art, and the random moments where I can just really let my brains pour out. But Window Seat is, in both song and visuals, a stunning project, and I really do think that this is excellent work. This makes me want to look up the rest of Erykah Badu's works and music and see what I've been missing.

The end of the video is shocking and, in my opinion, does not seem to garner the attention it deserves. Yes, there is a naked Black woman walking down the street, but what Badu uses her nudity to symbolize here (inner strength and honesty to the world about her beliefs) is commendable- the actions of the unseen gunman are not. The parallels to JFK are obvious but never the less still striking.

I purchased a large red leather purse-briefcase yesterday, large enough to hold my computer and my documents with a certain amount of flare.

The process went something like this:

Beanie: I am out of my meeting early and the Boy will not be downtown for an hour! Oh, here is a shop having a very cheap sale. I will go in an look at things.

After several minutes, I develop exacting standards- the bag must be leather, professional-looking, have flat shoulder straps of good quality, zip at the top, fit my (rather small) laptop and several books comfortably, have a light-colored lining, little metal feet to keep the bottom from dragging in the dirt, and it should be somewhere under $100. The last criterion is negotiable, but since there's a clearance sale going on, I feel okay about trying to stick with it.

I found about three bags that very nearly meet my standards, and I successfully talk myself out of buying all of them- I liked them all, but I was not certain and I kind of wanted to get a second opinion. When the Boy arrives, I kind of give up on sticking around in the store. I offer to go somewhere else, but we have a lunch reservation somewhere and we stick around. I go back to the bags, describing what I'm looking for and leaving out the fact that I have already talked myself out of getting things. I show him the last few that I was looking at, and he picked out the same one to purchase that I did- I had kind of wanted his opinion because he can actually offer good opinions on fashion-y ideas.

So, I ended up getting a nice red leather tote that works for my purposes- I emptied my backpack into it, and its a snug fit, but an actual fit. I am pleasantly surprised.

And, that was the random thing that I was holding in my brain.

Because you really can't expect to make a decent impression with a nylon backpack, no matter how comfortable it may be. Which is sad, because it would be a nice world if people really did judge you based on a well-intentioned assessment of your character, but I don' t think the world actually works that way. So, for reasons totally unrelated to me, I needed the damned bag.

And, quite frankly, I liked it. It's nice to have something pretty and tough and useful all in one item.

ETA- wow. I am really uncomfortable with spending money and making lots of justifications for it. But I did kind of spend a great deal of money while my friend was here, and I should cut that back a bit.

Diane Duane's A Wizard of Mars, 9th in the Young Wizards series, will arrive on Wednesday!* Which is not really April, but technically the book is coming out in April in stores, so I will name this mere early April Awesomeness.

Jim Butcher's Changes, the 12th book in The Dresden Files, will be coming out on April 6th, and I have preordered a copy! For kind of ridiculously cheap, for a hardcover book, but this makes me consider actually becoming a real preorder kind of person.

Doc Films is having a month of lots of really good movies, many of them Oscar-fodder, which means that there will actually be movies that I *want* to see during the time of the Quarter when I can, in fact, see them. This is all to the good.


* She commented on this blog once, and I just about had a heart attack from the sheer, unadulterated coolness of having a favorite author saying "Hi."

Despite my firm conviction that I would make copious notes about all the touristing that I have accomplished over the last few days (thanks to my out-of-towner friend R.), I came back from each day too strung out and overwhelmed to make good writing. Fortunately, she made some decent notes, so I can do a fairly decent info dump now.

Saturday
Friend arrives! At ass o'clock in the morning. Blessings, they are sometimes mixed. The public transport trip to and from the airport is kind of annoying as all get out, especially when you are making it on four hours of sleep and a general state of health that could only distinguished from a hang-over by use of special tools. She napped while I created an incredibly tasty chicken and dumpling stew that I use to make guests feel stuffed. This gives me a tactical advantage in making them do things I want.

Sunday
The Boy and his Friend, who are among the slashiest pair of heterosexual men that I have ever seen, take Milady R to the original House of Pancakes while I go and hang out with Jesus. Afterwards, we meander around Hyde Park a bit and stop into Rockefeller chapel to run around and try to find all the secret entrances to the towers that would make excellent water-balloon delivery stations. Milady R has some homework to do, so we headed back to the ranch after The Boy made us dinner at his place and finish that up before heading out to my roomie's house-sitting gig.

Monday
Just.... Wow. Monday, we walked a hell of a lot. We started with the Art Institute, which I had seen once before but not fully explored properly. We discovered that the American artists were not actually as bad as we had predicted- I think we only strayed that way to get a look at American Gothic, but we ended up staying and discovering some particular aspects of the collections that I want to re-investigate. Ivan Albright's incredibly detailed grotesque images challenged my brains particularly- my loved it but they made my brain scuttle away because the images portrayed with so much loving detail were so disturbing. The man has a way of making even just a white lace handkerchief seem blacked and scorched.

The Matisse: Radical Invention exhibition there was also particularly intriguing- something that caught by eye was a series of four sculptures of a woman's back that got progressively more abstracted (in very different ways each time) as he revisited the same image over again. Also, there was an image of a fish bowl in front of window that I really liked.

There were statues, there were some paintings by Georgia O'Keefe, it was a good visit save for the hungry Beanie issues- I often forget that I will need to eat, and it my museum-buddy is not hungry, I just hold off until I get crabby.

However, this time I was happy I had waited because dinner came at the original PIzzeria Uno, and it was delicious and think and cheesy. I was a very happy girl at the end of the night, but getting off my feet was a wonderful bonus.

Tuesday
Since the weather was actually warm and decent on Tuesday, we went to the Lincoln Park zoo. On the way we got sidetracked by an unfocused exploration of the Washington Library, which boggles the mind for the sheer size of the collection there- there were often three copies of the same book! As a good lending library should have! Since I am constantly disappointed by the meager selection and terrible turn-around time at the local branch library, this renewed my faith in the Chicago library system.

At the zoo, the gorillas and the big cats were the stars of the show, but I have a special regard for the Mixed Penguin exhibit (like Mixed Nuts, only much more awesome.) Afterwards, we followed a route through Old Town that took us into some very German-feeling areas and lead us to a nice dinner on the cheap at the Old Jerusalem Restaurant. We had Arabic coffee, which is strong and dark and not acidic at all. It makes me deeply happy.

Wednesday
Museum of Science and Industry! German submarines! Ice cream! and other cool things! We had dinner at home, revamping my dumpling experimentations into another fun stew.

Thursday
I'd just like to note that the Field Museum's collections of gems and jewelry make me want to take Neil Caffery there was my guest, just so he can case the joint and tell me all the secret history behind everything. The Diamond exhibit was amazing more for the collection of shiny objects of incredible price rather than the science behind them, and quite frankly it was much too full, but it was a great time to ooo and aaa over all the pretty things. We took Milady R back to the airport, and then went over to Comrade N's digs for a tapas experimentation, wine, mango lassi, and fine funny company.

Friday
Today I tried to get done all the shit that I was supposed to get done over the break and failed to get done. I now have homework in all of my classes. It's back to business at the U of C.