Ramblings of a professional fence-sitter

Argh

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 04:55:10 GMT

Dear friends and relations of my roommates,

You are wonderful dear people. However, having 5 of you (including 2 toddlers) descend on my household without warning is stressful. I do not blame you for that, I blame the roommates.

However: please stop with the cleaning my house and the moving my shit! Summarily throwing out things because they're not what you would want/you think it's ugly etc, is Not Okay. Unplugging my coffeepot so that I had to reset it, and generally making it difficult to work in my kitchen, not to mention feeling crowded out in my own home is stressful and obnoxious. That being said, you're wonderful people. Please go home.

Also to my roommate who thought it was a good idea to first poke me and then slap my ass as I was watering the christmas tree: you deserved the 2 cups of water I dumped on you. Stop being a drama queen. You may have been preventing kids from touching the radiator, but that does not mean that you can hit me.

Recycling is tomorrow night. I will not be here. If it does not go out tomorrow night despite the big red writing on the white board that says "Recycling wednesday night" I will be most put out.

I am running away to Albany for 3 days to spend time with my own friends and almost-relations, and to spend some quality time almost alone and quiet with my boyfriend.

With care, but not love,

~Me

The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:13:22 GMT

Hilarity!

You know you're a theapist when:

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:51:36 GMT

You know you're a therapist when:

-you have the urge to resort to clinical shorthand in everyday writing. Ie bx, dx, sxs. rx,, mo fa, gmo.

- you watch portrayals of "psychologists" on TV/ movies and constantly go "You're doing it wrong!" and "Ethical/boundary violation!" Relatedly, you watch portrayals of mental illness on TV and also go "you're doing it wrong!"

- you use gait/behavior as a diagnostic tool when encountering someone who seems overly polite/interested in Boston. If they're doing that then there *must* be something wrong with them. :p

- you're totally not weirded out when someone on the bus is ticing and yelping. You just assume Tourettes or other tic disorder and feel kind of bad for them.

- you get pissed at people for making disparaging comments about "ethnic" names. Specifically of the "where do these names come from? don't the kids get teased?" etc. Especially when that person is a member of the clinical team.

- you are acutely aware of racism/sexism/classism on TV/movies/ advertisements. (This one isn't restricted to therapists, but I'm surprised how much more social-justice-minded I am now.)

-you are acutely aware of being white, middle-class and female. (which is the majority of therapists out there.)

There are probably others, but that's what I can think of off the top of my head. Anyone else?

Not what I needed tonight

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:34:33 GMT

I came home after a long and trying day, and after the first trip to the gym in 6 weeks, to find three pieces of mail: one from the University of Rochester, begging for money, one from my physical therapist's billing department saying "pay us or we send you to collections" and one from my bank telling me that I'm $244 overdrawn.

It was an instant trip from "tired, cranky and hungry" to "holyshit I can't do anything right and I'm trying so hard and nothing's working!" *flail*

Today has not been a good day. I was 30 min late to work because it took my bus 20 min longer than usual to get to the train station. Fuckers. This is the second day in a row that a bus fuckup has made me late to work and one of my coworkers goes "you need to get up earlier". Bitch.
I had my CPR re-certification training, which I was late to. And I've got two kids who keep demanding to have a different therapist every time I tell them "no." I know that that part is them being 14 and needing limits, but still... these two girls won't engage with me on any deeper than surface level.

And to top it all off... the gym sucked. I'm a lot more out of shape than I thought I was. I wimped out on my squats.

The T is Interesting

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:14:53 GMT

I take Boston's public transit daily to work. We tall it "The T" My commute is about 80 minutes, depending on whether or not the busses and the red line are playing nice. I do a lot of people watching. Some noteworthy observations recently.

- Skinny black guy, late teens/early twenties, wearing skinny jeans and puma high tops, puffy black vest. His messenger bag flap came open when he sat down on the bus to reveal tan ballet shoes tucked into a pocket.

-There was a festival of activist street bands last Sunday in Cambridge. One of the bands got on the train at Harvard and started playing. Horns, snare, very loud, very fun. Lots of people took pictures. Got on the bus, and there were a similar group taking up huge portions of the bus. Fortunately they got off a few stops later.

- There was a girl with a turquoise, purple and pink yarn wig on the bus headed home. At first it looked like dreads, but upon closer look it was definitely yarn.

-A group of 40-somethings were playing harmonica singing and clapping for about 4 stops.

- Everyone stares at the girl who is knitting. (meaning me)

- There's a Rollerderby girl who occasionally gets on/off at my stop. I've seen her with her skates over her shoulder.

-There is one woman who always pulls the same "I need (specific amount) of money to get home, I lost my wallet. etc." on the red line. I've seen her do this 3+ times.

-Adorable, skinny, clueless Jehovah's witness missionary boys ignore the girl in the headphones. Yay.

- I routinely get odd looks for being the only white girl on the bus near work. It doesn't help that 90% of my stuff is blue.

In which Anne does not use her brain

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:23:51 GMT

So you know how when a smoke detector has a low battery it blips at you? There was one doing that last night. And I woke up at 5am and it was doing it it at regular intervals, such that I got pissy and decided to replace it right then. Whooops. I unscrewed the detector from the wall and went to pull the plug out of it. (ours are all wired into the house. Probably something to do with building codes.) And it goes off.... loudly. And because they're all wired together the whole house goes off. It's not attached to the fire dept thankfully, but ugh. At 5am. Woke up my roommates, and D came up and helped me pull it all out and make it stop. But my adrenaline was up and it took me a while to go back to sleep. Suffice to say I didn't go to the gym this AM because I was such a zombie. Instead I will go to the chiropractor at 9:45 and then go to work. Yay.

Oh, and in the process of pulling plugs I badly chipped my nailpolish that I had *just* put on last night. Grrrrr. I'm normally not girly, so when a girly thing messes up I get annoyed. It's bright red and shiny.

Also: I can't help but feel like my friends are doing cooler/more important/more good for society work than I am. I have friends working in sustainability, and medicine and stuff like that, and while I recycle and try to be good to the earth, I work with kids and am somewhat doubtful about the impact I have on society at large. I love my job, but I kind of feel like a slacker sometimes. Which is silly I know.

Remind me to write some of my fun stories from work. Like supremegoddess1 stories from "The Place That Shall Not Be Named are almost completely unbelievable.

Chores

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:36:38 GMT

Due to having an insane work schedule, pet sitting 2 weekends ago, going to Nisky last weekend, and general busy and lazy, my house is a wreck. So I am dedicating today to chores.

To do today:
~~laundry (started last night)~~
make bread
~~sweep kitchen floor~~
wash kitchen floor
~~clean coffee maker~~
clean bedroom
sweep entire upstairs
clean bathroom
make studio workable
go grocery shopping
buy hair dye
re-dye hair
go to chiropractic appt (missed last night's due to MBTA fuckup)
go to the gym
feel accomplished

I will update as needed. :P
(edited @ 7:00pm)

I'm realizing how much I value time by myself. Spending the entire day with people and then spending multiple evenings out gets really tiring for me. I need time to just veg, and go to the gym. I'm such an introvert...I need to remember that I ought to keep Wednesday and Thursday evenings free to try to recharge from the week, otherwise I'm just fried by the time Friday rolls around.

Just Be

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:07:41 GMT

I realized last night that the best advice for myself right now is expressed in the lyrics of the DJ Tiesto/Kristy Harkshaw song "Just Be". Well duh... it helps that the track makes me feel like I'm flying.

You can travel the world
But you can't run away
From the person you are in your heart
You can be who you want to be
Make us believe in you
Keep all your light in the dark
If you're searching for truth
You must look in the mirror
And make sense of what you can see
Just be
Just be

They say learning to love yourself
Is the first step
That you take when you want to be real
Flying on planes to exotic locations
Won't teach you
How you really feel
Face up to the fact
That you are who you are
Nothing can change that belief
Just be
Just be

'cause now I know
It's not so far
To where I go
The hardest part
Is inside me
I need
To just be
Just be

Just be
Just be
Just be

I was lost
And I'm still lost
But I feel so much better

'cause now I know
It's not so far
To were I go
The hardest part
Is inside me
I need
To just be
Just be

I also realized that not going to the gym for a month has had a detrimental effect on my moods. I'm going to go tonight. I need more sleep and more gym time, and I think that will help. The problem is that I keep having things that I do in the evening, and there is NO way I'm getting up early enough to go before work.

Conundrum

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:49:58 GMT

We have 7 girls on a unit that holds 20. Usually we have between 12 and 16 girls. Right now we have 7. My case load right now is 1... I'm so bored it's silly. I feel like I should be doing things, but I have nothing to do. My groups are planned, all of my paperwork is up to date, we don't have any intakes coming in so far... I'm bored. In some ways it's good: few girls means that few girls are acting up enough to get arrested or timed-out of their other placements, but few girls also means that *all* of the admin and clinical staff are bored out of our skulls. I suppose I'll just take it as a blessing, and remember it for when I've got a caseload of 10 and I don't have time to breathe between sessions.

I made an appointment to get my hair cut and red-striped. It's Friday. I'm going to be very happy for having that.

I'm also borrowing fly_molo's car for the next day or so. Technically it's our dad's, but Si drives it all the time. It took me 40 minutes to get to work today, instead of the usual 90. I need a car. I'm debating getting a Subaru Outback. It's a hippie-wagon, but it holds stuff, and gets good gas mileage and lasts forever. October...

Baseball

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 16:19:09 GMT

Is it just me or does Justin Masterson look like he's 12? He's 24, born in 1985, but geez. He looks so friggin' young! Pedroia, Ellsbury and Kottaras are all 26, and Jon Lester is 25. I feel old though...

Then again all of the high level gymnasts and figure skaters are 10 years younger than I am. It freaks me out.

A truly strange week

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:38:43 GMT

Holy crap it's been a long week. After my fantabulous weekend I had to do the first 40 hours of my 80 hour training for DYS. Urgh. Had to drag my ass to Grafton, which is just this side of Worcester every morning. It's an hour if I drive straight from my house, it's an hour and forty if I have to go into Boston to meet with my coworkers when my roommate needs her car.

After seeing who some of the other DYS staff are, I fear for the kids in the system. There were a couple law-enforcement types who kept asking how/when you got to touch/hold etc a kid. One was asking about cavity searches. Urgh. We don't do them ever, and he seemed to think that strip searches were OK to do whenever. He fails to understand trauma and the history that most of our kids are coming from. I was one of 5 clinicians in the training. And oy... I debate whether or not half of them should be working with kids. What ever happened to "they're kids, not criminals". The good part is that I now know the DYS restraint, so I can move kids between areas and not get yelled at for not having training. I'm at work this week, then I go back next week for another 40 hours. Eugh.

fly_molo came down last night and we went to the They Might Be Giants concert at the Berkeley Performance Center. The opening act blew goats, he was highly pretentious and had the most boring, formulaic song writing ever. If he hadn't been an overweight, balding, 40something guy, I would have said that everything was written by a 12 year old girl. Just... ick. However, TMBG rocked. In honor of the 20th anniversary of their Flood album, they played Flood, in it's entirety, in order. It was glorious. They were awesome. And we had 3rd row mezzanine seating. It ruled.

As an aside : HAPPY BIRTHDAY fly_molo!!! You're 21, don't be an idiot about it.

I've been in a food rut recently. I often get home from work starving, but not knowing what I want to eat. It sucks. I made falafel tonight because I had a ton of chickpeas that needed eating. I need a food processor. The one that I've had is busted. And making things like hummus and falafel would be so much easier with a food processor. I broke my potato masher today trying to smush the chickpeas.

I had a friend IM me out of the blue on Friday night. I haven't heard from this guy since 2000-ish I think. He went into the Navy and then promptly fell of the face of the planet. Apparently he's married, with a 3 year old. YahooMail has been automatically starting YahooMessenger when you log in. And I've had that email since high school, so he decided to IM me. So strange! Incidentally, stoner_cowboy also found me on YM. The internet is a strange and small place.

And I'm crushing hugely right now. Like to the point where I'm distracted at work. It's bad.

So Mad right now

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:26:30 GMT

I'm supposed to be picking up a rental car right now to drive to Niskayuna to see Travis and co. for Americade. But I'm not. Why? Because Bank of America doesn't post payments until Midnight, meaning that the payments that I set up for today won't post until midnight tonight, meaning that I have $0 credit available meaning that I can't have a $300 hold put on my card to rent a car. FUCK!!! And of course I find this out now. If I'd known about it last night, I would have made a payment last night, but since I assumed that things worked on a business day model, not so much. FUCK!

So instead I'm leaving in 20 minutes to get a bus from South Station to Schenectady which instead of taking 3 hours will take me 5. And I've let down my friends. I am displeased.

Work has been fucked recently too. I keep staying late, because intakes come in around 4, and I foolishly think that I can finish them in an hour. And the last few intakes I've done have been trauma-licious and that means the write-up is really fucking long. The good thing is that my supervisor says that I'm pretty good at them, I just need to pay more attention to detail. Which is a relief, because I was really concerned that I wasn't doing them right at all.

I dislike my office mate. Distinctly. I'm able to be professional with her, but I really don't like her. She is one of the most judgmental people I've ever met. How do you become a therapist and be so fucking judgmental? I don't get it. She went to Smith for social work, and then did a year's fellowship at MGH in psychoanalysis. And she's not used to working within a team. I've done team approach my entire career so far, and I love it. And she has the gall to tell me what to do with my clients, and how to work with them. I've been working in the field longer than she has, albeit by a year or so, and I know how to work within a team, and with angry teens. With short term therapy such as ours we don't go to root problems, we problem solve. I don't want to hear about your family unless it has a direct bearing on what's happening now and how you're operating in the world.
She's smug, and superior, and thinks she's so wonderful for being vegetarian. We were having a conversation about it, and she said "I can give you some pointers on switching to vegetarianism if you're interested." And when I said "I'm not, thank you", she got pretty annoyed. I grew up veggie. I started eating meat for a reason, and I don't like the "veggie meat", because it's so fucking processed. She's full of contradictions, where she's all good for the earth veggie etc. and then she'll go drink 3 Diet Cokes in a day and eat stuff from the vending machine. And because I've been there 4 weeks longer than she has she expects me to tell her what to do/how to do things. I'm fucking busy! She hasn't managed to learn how to fill her time yet, and she'll just sit and stare and be bored.

Oh, and she's got severe anemia which means that she's always fucking freezing. I'm an athlete, I tend to run warm. I like my rooms cool. It's a constant battle, and one that I can't be super-forceful about because it is a medical thing. I work Sun-Thurs, she works Tues-Sat, so when she finally starts her normal schedule I'll only have to deal with her for 3 days a week, and one of those days will be short because one of us will have a Wednesday late night.

She also miraculously doesn't seem worried about waiting for the bus on Blue Hill Ave on her late night. Bitch is crazy. Seriously. Anyone who lives in Dorchester can tell you that it's a bad idea to hang out there at night if you want to stay safe.

My 80 hour training starts next week, It's a week of 40hours of training, a week at work, and then another 40 hours. This is the mandatory DYS statewide training, procedures, restraints, etc. I'll probably know 1/3 of it by the time I get in there just from working for a month.

So basically: job=awesome, stressful, office mate= bitch, staff=awesome, boss=awesome. I think it works out fairly well.

And now off to Americade. I will drink heavily tonight. I will also buy a motorcycle jacket this weekend. Wish me luck!

Memage

Thu, 14 May 2009 00:51:24 GMT

Stolen from redstapler

visited 23 states (46%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or Like this? try: Mapped Web

Between growing up in New England, track meets and mr_mindless's penchant for road trips, I've hit more states than I thought.

Also: I have a new favorite song.

Cleaning

Sat, 09 May 2009 21:41:56 GMT

I got a lot done today. So far today I have:
-cleaned the bathroom
-done 4 loads of laundry, including sheets, my winter jackets, and my hand-wash stuff
-picked up my room... mostly...
-swept the bedroom floor, and the hallway/stairs
-shook out the area rug in my room
-went grocery shopping. I got home and realized that I already had rolled oats, and pasta. Oh well. Call it stocking up.
-offered the soon-to-be empty room in my apartment for madmazula but he declined due to lack of funds/job upon moving to Boston.
-polished 3 pairs of shoes (I mink-oiled my clogs 2 days ago)

Still to do:
-sort and file 2 month's worth of papers
- make bread
-sweep/wash the kitchen floor

I have a friend coming over later to make me dinner, which will be awesome. No hanging out with my Little today because her mom's working and she's got to take care of her brother. Grr.

NYC trip

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 23:10:06 GMT

Hey New Yorkers! I'm coming down! I'll be there Saturday afternoon until Tuesday. We should do stuff! I'm planning on hitting either MOMA or the Guggenheim. (I doubt I can do both)

Let me know if you want to/can meet up!

Job!

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:45:54 GMT

I got the DYS job I was interviewing for! I found out on the 9th, but haven't gotten around to posting for a while. Short-term girl's pre-trial unit. So yay! Full time, good benefits, great pay, and I'd only be working one job!!! I start May 4 part-time, and then once I close out my clients at the high school I go full time on May 14. Meeeeep. I'm kind of nervous; it's going to be an intense job, and there's a lot to learn, but I think I can manage. They're going to send me to western Mass for a week to get restraint trained among other things, which will be exciting and terrifying at the same time. I also get some intensive DBT training, which will be cool.

I got the go-ahead to revamp my lifting program and not do PT anymore! I'll go back in 2 weeks for a check-up, but at this point I'm pretty much healed. I've got some restrictions, and I need to start really light, but I'm cleared! I'll hopefully be throwing in June! Yay!

Check the spam

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 01:45:18 GMT

I just reminded myself of the wisdom of skimming the spam folder before dumping it permanently. I checked on whim, before emptying it, and found a message from DYS asking if I was still interested in a full time position. Uh... yeah!!! So I just emailed the woman back letting her know that I'm still interested. I could have missed out on that opportunity had I not checked my email. And the email just came in today, so I'm not too far behind. Huzzah.

I'm frustrated with men... again/still. National Guard boy was supposed to contact me this weekend, and didn't. And Boy Wonder (D's coworker) didn't show up to the party we had for Alex and I'm wondering wtf is up with him. Dating is frustrating. I'm tired of chasing, but chasing is the only way things get done in my life.

My shoulder hurts. A lot. And I don't know why. Also, my back is locked. I need a massage badly.

Paid $350 for my third of fixing my mom's car. We had to replace the hub assembly and front brakes. It still needs an oil change. I was really hoping to use that money for student loans and/or my motorcycle license. Not so much anymore.

I'm sleepy-zombie recently. So low energy it's insane. I need to go to bed now. And I may skip PT if my shoulder keeps hurting this much. Ice is doing nothing for it anymore.

This is upsetting

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:57:50 GMT

Girls blame Rhianna

There is so much still wrong with our society. It is NEVER the victim's fault for getting abused.

Update!

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:54:45 GMT

Today has been a complete wash. I have been utterly useless all day. Last night was Dropkick Murphys at The House of Blues with my roommate Andy. He had bought 2 tickets without having anyone to go with. So I went with him. It was amazing. However, my ears are still ringing. Next time I go to a show, I'm going to try to remember to bring ear plugs. Messed up hearing 14 hours after the end of the show is a bad sign. We got home around 1am, and I got to bed around 1:30.

The show itself? Absolutely amazing. The second song they played was "State of Massachusetts" which is one of my favorites. I've actually never been to a punk show, and kind of had to get used to being shoved, and shoving to get where I wanted to go. Andy dragged me towards the mosh pit, and tried to get me to go in. I fought him for 90% of the show, and ended up in it for a bit at the end. It was actually a lot of fun. The HOB posted rules about no crowd surfing or moshing disappeared pretty fast. I was amused. They played all the songs I knew, and a bunch that I didn't. During "Kiss me I'm shitfaced" they brought all the girls up on stage. And all the guys got up on stage for a .song at the end, I can't recall which one. It was great. Incidentally, they were filming for a special edition CD/DVD of all of these shows.

I got up at 6:30 to attempt to head to Brighton to steal National Guard Boy for breakfast after he got out of work. As I was waiting for the bus I got a text saying that I "have horrible timing, no offense". Basically he's dragging ass, and promised to call/email me later in the weeks so that we can possibly go out this weekend. This is the slowest, most infuriating dating sequence I've ever had. So since I didn't have anywhere to go, I went back to bed and slept until 12pm. That was much-needed sleep.

My boss gave me the day off today, mostly 'cause I asked nicely. So I've done nothing all day. I'll probably go hang out with my little around 3:30 for a bit, since we missed our weekend hangout due to some family stuff on her end. I should also do laundry, and go to the gym.

There is someone on my AIM contact list who insists on messaging me every single time I come online. She contacted me through LJ months ago, when I had my AIM listed. I get the impression that she's very lonely and isolated. She's a transwoman, who started as a drag queen and went the injected silicone route, and transitioned faster than she was ready for. So literally every time I sign on, she IMs me within about 15 seconds. Half the time I'm away, and it's just that my AIM starts automatically when I boot up my computer. I generally don't want to talk to her, because it's totally one sided, but I don't know how to tell her to go away nicely. Argh. I hate psychic leeches.

My cat has insisted on sitting on the desk next to the computer, which means that her front is largely on the laptop keyboard and over the track pad. She has been such an attention whore recently that it's driving me nuts.

Cravings much?

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:26:45 GMT

So apparently I'm craving green things/vegetables. This often happens at the end of the winter; my body says "clean out time!" and I crave greens and other veggies. I went shopping tonight, and somehow I blocked what I'd already bought when I realized that I needed the next thing. Good thing I was at Market Basket, because my $70 order would have been closer to $90.

Tonight I bought:
Green Leaf lettuce
chard
parsley
spinach
carrots
acorn squash
celery
small eggplant
apples
lemons
dried figs
my usual frozen veggie mix

Yup. Definitely craving greens. I've also eaten precious little produce recently anyway, which hasn't helped my cravings. All starches and protein make me a bit nutty. I also got little tiny mozzarella balls, 'cause they're just tasty. And they were cheap.

As a treat I got a half pound of haddock. It will be baked, with lemon juice, butter and parsley. Smelts are also in season, but I'm hesitant to incur the wrath of my roommates by cooking smelts here. Maybe I'll convince my mother that it's a good idea to do it where she's staying. ;)

New Little Sister and hammer time!

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:01:35 GMT

I met my Little Sister through Big Brothers/Big Sisters on Wednesday. Her name is Carmelita, she's 11, lives in Lexington and is totally awesome. I'm really excited. She's into arts and crafts and dancing and cooking. Our first day to hang out is next Friday. I've got the day off from work, and she's in school vacation. It will be awesome. We're just going to chill out here and do art and dance around the living room and other fun stuff like that. And her room is a mess. I told her mom that I'd be no help on that one. I'm such a slob in my own room.

She's going to be a lot of fun to hang out with. The tricky thing is that she's allergic to a ton of foods, specifically: eggs, wheat, nuts and fish. Whole milk is tricky, but 2% is ok. Does anyone have any suggestions of where to start looking for recipes that don't suck that respond to those dietary restrictions? erinmdmd I'm looking at you specifically.

In other news: I've expanded my lifting schedule to 3 days. I've had 2 sets of lifts that I've been doing and just alternating between them, and I figured it's time to rearrange things, now that I've added deadlifts and cleans back into my schedule. My legs are definitely getting bigger, through a combination of building muscle and gaining some pudge back. Yesterday I did wall sits and 1 1/4 lunges, which are incredibly hard to do. I also did balance drills. I have no balance anymore. It was bad... I need to do a lot more core work, probably 2-3 ab exercises per workout. I'll be better off if I don't try to do them all at once at the end of my lift too. Must remember that.

I also put on my throwing shoes and did some turns yesterday! My blood sugar was low and I got dizzy really easily, but I've still got the turns! I'll do one day a week of turns until it gets warm out, and then try to get a hammer and do some one-hands and other non-extension drills. I can't do winds until I get clearance from my PT though... grrr. I am doing pulls with the stretch band that mimic the hammer throw though, which is good. I'm still having a little bit of pain, but it's not bad most of the time.

Har!

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:59:32 GMT

Hey supremegoddess1 This is exactly what we do right? :P

Stan Rogers songs

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:45:23 GMT

I grew up with a lot of folk music. And a lot of it was Gordon Bok and Stan Rogers. Lots of old sea-chanty type stuff. Tragically, Stan Rogers died in a plane crash years ago. The first one here is "Mary Ellen Carter"

The song itself starts around 1:40. I love this song.

And then Barrett's Privateers. Good rollicking chanty. Enjoy!

madmazula and fly_molo and I sing this together.

I should be cleaning, going grocery shopping and otherwise prepping for my party tonight. But I'm procrastinating.

Books to read

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:57:52 GMT

Since I've been tearing through Discworld like a woman possessed, I've suddenly exhausted the options at the local library. I *know* there are more both at my branch, and probably at other branches in the Minuteman network. I now get to find out about how to make Interlibrary Loan work. I also need to start asking to put books on hold. Specifically Coraline and Good Omens. The book I started Saturday morning was finished last night. And that was a 350 pager... Yay reading for fun. So I picked up one of Pratchett's non-discworld books, and a book in the Ender series by Orson Scott Card instead. They may last me a week...

I saw this either in a review or online somewhere. I've decided I need it. Because I love his recipes, and the concept of the book seems interesting too. I also ought to go seek out Omnivore's Dilemma.

In the meantime I'm knitting a new pair of mittens. I'm dissatisfied with the last pair I made, and while my new knitted gloves are lovely, I'm going to want more than one pair of hand-warming-knitted-things when we go snow-tubing with work in a few weeks. So I'm learning to knit in stripes! Green and black Lambspride Worsted. Yay.

On a completely unrelated note: All of my friends are having babies. I am mildly distressed by this. I wish them all the best, but I had hoped that I'd be closer to being able to have a family at this point in my life than I am right now. Basically, I'm jealous.

D has decreed that I need someone by Valentine's Day, which is looking unlikely. But I do have a date tomorrow night, so cross your fingers.

Six degrees of separation

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 03:47:12 GMT

I just realized how close I am to President Obama. I went to school with Sen. Judd Gregg's kids. His son was on my soccer team and a year behind me at my tiny little school. His daughter was one of "those upper schoolers" who I looked at with awe as a 3rd grader. Sen. Judd Gregg just got nominated for Secretary of Commerce.

I believe the words "holy crap" are in order.