hermionesviolin: (andro)
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.
hermionesviolin: (andro)
Friday

My brother came to pick me up on Friday and commented that it smelled like gas.  I had a cold so I hadn't noticed.  I mentioned the gas oven, he suggested the pilot light was out, I mentioned (which I had mentioned to OriginalRoomie weeks ago) that on one side of our stove the burners no longer work.  Yeah, pilot light.  I've always had the impression that the pilot light being out is this big deal thing to fix but no, it turns out to be really easy.  So that's one new thing I learned.  Now I also need to invest in matches in case this happens again.

In conversation on the ride home I learned that my brother really likes Heroes, including the early episodes (he saw the last 3 or 4 eps and then started from the beginning thanks to NBC having them up online).

Every year we say we're going to get a small tree, and every year the tree we get turns out to be rather large, but the tree my brother picked out this year actually is fairly small (though not, despite our joking, a Charlie Brown tree).  Decorated, it actually turned out well (and my brother conceded to my desire for white lights -- no colored lights -- which made me happy).

I watched so much tv Friday night.

Watching Jeopardy I learned that not only is there is a ballet of Dracula but there is also one of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.  I continue to be struck in watching Jeopardy by how easy a lot of the questions are (though of course the majority of them I don't know at all).

I caught some of The Simpsons due to being on the computer while my brother watched in the adjoining room.

I watched WWE Smackdown with my dad as per usual.  Near the beginning, of the players referred to it as the "cornerstone of the CW network."  Hee.  Read more... )

My brother and I watched 1 vs. 100 for the first time.  We were not impressed.  Both the questions and the contestants/mob were stupid (North America/Asia/Africa has the largest desert, static is caused by protons/neutrons/electrons).

We saw Numb3rs (3.07 "Blackout"), which I had never seen before (though I recognized Peter MacNicol from The Practice Ally McBeal; and checking IMDb I was right in thinking Navi Rawat was the name of the actress who played Dana in Angel -- "Damage" 5.11).  The show itself, though?  ::shrug::  Read more... )

My brother watched South Park, and when I was home over Thanksgiving I'd seen part of an episode and really wasn't taken with it.  However, I quickly got sucked into the episode that played Friday night, and it turned out to be awesome.  Read more... )

I also kinda liked the Christmas in Nebraska one, in large part because I have Santa issuesRead more... )

Saturday

I went to Frank Crowley's funeral because that's what one does.  It was open casket, which I shouldn't have been surprised by, since it was viewing followed immediately by funeral, but I was still a little wigged, especially 'cause he looked kinda yellowish.

While one of the daughters was talking, it occurred to me that in the not too distant future I'll have to stand up and say nice things about my grandmother.  I told my mother this later, and she said I could just be keeper of the tissues.  If she had died when she fell five and a half years ago, I wouldn't have minded, but she's just declined so much that it's hard to remember the good days.

After the funeral, I went over to my grandma's to help her wrap presents.  I was there for four or five hours (the wrapping only took about an hour, but first there was lunch and after there was keeping her company -- i.e., listening to her talk nonstop) and that last hour was painful.

I didn't bring Joyce home with me, knowing I wouldn't have time (or motivation) to work on it.  However, I had ILL-ed 1971 text on masochism which also included an English translation of Venus in Furs (the latter being the purpose in ILLing it).  Saturday night I had time to kill, so I read Venus and then started reading the psych/litcrit text.  I wasn't impressed with either.  Sigh.

Sunday

Fourth Sunday in Advent

(For my reference: there was a program in my hymnal from the Second Sunday in Advent which said "Light the Candle of Love.")  Read more... )

Sunday afternoon I worked on a Firefly fic I've had sitting around for quite some time and actually got a couple sections finished (and an idea for a companion piece).  I was really proud of myself, though there's still one section I'm struggling with.  Anyone interested in betaing?

We watched an episode of CSI: Miami (2.06 "Hurricane Anthony").  This show doesn't particularly grab me, but I don't actively dislike it either, so I could easily get sucked into an A&E marathon or something if I ever felt like I had the free time.  I also really enjoy Emily Proctor.  Read more... )

Christmas Eve
Looking back at LJ, I'm impressed that the order of worship almost exactly the same as last year.
Only differences:
*First Scripture Reading was listed as John 3:16-18 instead of John 1:1-14.
*After "Sweet Little Jesus Boy" we sang "O Little Town of Bethlehem" instead of proceeding directly to the Lighting of the Christ Candle.
*Choral Selection after Lighting of the Christ Candle was "Beautiful Star of Bethlehem" (instead of "Rejoice With Exceeding Great Joy").

What struck me this year in "Sweet Little Jesus Boy" instead of "But please, sir, forgive us Lord, we didn't know 'twas You," was "The world treat You mean, Lord; treat me mean, too. But that's how things is down here, we didn't know 'twas You."

Meditation (sermon) was entitled "What Time Is Christmas?" and I swear I was awake, but I remember nothing.  At least Christmas Eve sermons are shorter than Sunday morning ones are.

The sanctuary wasn't very warm, but then the receiving line afterward?  Someone had left the front door open (our receiving line ends right at that door, mind) and it looked like it was propped open (else I would have pulled it shut when I walked by).  omg so cold.  weather.com when we came home said 11pm: 38F feels like 33F, which made me feel like a wimp since I am she who loves cold and all.  Nevertheless, I felt like death -- which was actually happened once before: cold, achy, occasional stabbing chest pain.  Dunno what causes it.  I was given permission to bust up the heat in the apartment (shockingly, it was already at 68), and I felt better the following morning, and by the end of the day on Christmas felt wholly myself again. 

Because there is nothing on Sunday late-night on broadcast tv, my brother and I watched King of the Hill (5.20 "Kidney Boy and Hamster Girl: A Love Story") and Farscape (3.13 "Scratch 'n Sniff ").

Monday

Remember how FormerUnitHead gave me a gift saying "You may already have this, but I hope you don't"?  Best boss ever.  I also got an amazon.com gift certificate for a quite pleasant amount, but really, the book was the best part.  I have often said that all you need to win me is to be attentive.  (Hee, I just flipped the book over for the ISBN to add to LibraryThing, and it still has the Borders pricetag on it.  Clearly he does not come from my grandmother's school where it is tres gauche to leave price tags on ever.  Personally I don't care much.)

rest of the loot list )

My brother got Family Guy UNO, and we played a few rounds Christmas afternoon before 4pm dinner.  Grandma was so out of it (and color-blind?) but thankfully the experience was still enjoyable.

Linnea came for a visit.  She brought me a gift basket of apartment stuff (okay, some of which I'm dispersing -- like the meat thermometer :) ) 'cause she couldn't make my apartment-warming.

Maureen also came to visit.  The place she went was sold out of Frangelico (my mom's preferred liqueur), so she got Baileys, which my dad prefers.  I agree with him that the first sip has that overpowering taste of alcohol at the end and the second sip doesn't.  I'm still not really taken with it, though.

After everyone had gone home, I watched a little bit of Remember the Titans with my parents, but then Jonah came over, and of course he trumps movies.  [IMDb-ing: The white coach's daughter?  Is played by the actress who plays Claire in Heroes!]

After he'd left, we watched another episode of 1 vs. 100.  This one was less ridiculous -- some of the questions required niche knowledge (The Night Before Christmas poem, Will Ferrell's movie Elf) -- though 54/99 (plus the contestant) didn't grasp parallel/perpendicular.

I saw an ad for Freedom Writers and it's Sia "Breathe Me" that's playing in the trailer, right?

Tuesday

I saw one of the new MBTA commuter rail schedules.  The shiny is a little disconcerting, though it does have a lot of useful stuff (subway map, etc.).  One of the blurbs talks about this form will be more durable and yadda yadda, in a way which makes me wonder whether they'll have scads of them at the Information counter at South Station like they used to.

Waiting at the Mass Ave.-Alewife Brook Parkway intersection when my brother drove me home, I wondered if it would be more efficient for me to just take Mass Ave. the whole way home if I were walking from Harvard or Porter, rather than switching to Elm St. at Porter, given where I live.  (I also wanna learn how to walk to my house from Alewife T station.)

I came home to a reminder that I live with idiots.  Our trash day is Monday; Monday was Christmas, so trash day would have been today; I came home around 3pm to full trash barrels still sitting by the side of our house.  I hope that OriginalRoomie really did, unbeknownst to me, go somewhere for Christmas, 'cause that would be a reasonable explanation for it.

However, I also came home to mail including a Charlie Card from work and a handmade (purple! my favorite color) coaster from [livejournal.com profile] maechi.

I've been seeing so many Yuletide recs on the flist I just wanna immerse myself in that, but I have to write a Joyce paper, plus I have a gazillion writeups I wanna make a dent in.  Speaking of recs, I should really look into renewing my domain/hosting since it's gonna run out in a couple weeks.  There are also lots of people I wanna see over Break, and I fail at coming up with actual plans.

Why can I not find the flyer of Shakespeare productions I picked up at Ladders to Heaven?  I remember it mentioned Titus and I think also Winter's Tale.  I can find the latter on ArtsBoston, but Google is not at all helping with the former.
hermionesviolin: image of Numfar with animated text "Dance of Joy!" (dance of joy [kibarika])
Managed to actually forget my wallet this morning (which I always worry I'm gonna do, but which I never actually do -- except, apparently, today).  Mommy spotted me money, though, so it was okay.  And really that was the low point of the day.

V!A e-mailed RMK on Friday saying, "Before leaving today, Elizabeth asked if she could leave next Friday, Sept. 30 at 4:30 p.m. to make a public transportation connection for a weekend trip.  She said she would shorten her lunch to make up the time."  I saw RMK's reply this morning: "YES, OF COURSE"  [Admittedly she was replying to an assortment of stuff in caps to make it stand out from the paragraphs of stuff to which she was replying, but the statement is much appreciated regardless.]  This relieved me tremendously.  And gave me considerably more faith that I would actually make it through this week.

Dunno if it was just because RMK was out of the office all day or what, but while Friday seemed nonstop, today felt positively slow.  I'm still somewhat anxious about tomorrow, but I think I'll be okay.  And I'm trying not to stress myself out about how I could have done this afternoon's phone interview better.

And on the way home it started raining (lightly) and I was happy.

And I caught the end of "Sideshow Bob Roberts" (scroll here) ♥

Oh, and I may end up having to read Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys after all.  Trickster narratives are not my cuppa, so I was all prepared to give this particular one a pass, but then [livejournal.com profile] musesfool wrote: "what I really, really liked about this book is that it's about stories, and how they get told, and what they mean, and how they can change your life."
hermionesviolin: an image of Alyson Hannigan (who plays Willow Rosenberg) with animated text "you think you know / what you are / what's to come / you haven't even / BEGUN" (Default)
From the sidebar to the June 21, 2002 Entertainment Weekly article on Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze, Jr., talking about doing Scooby Doo without an actual Scooby Doo.

One of the most difficult parts, according to the actors---who ranged from the 5'3" Gellar to the 6'4" Lillard---was getting the sight lines correct. "What's odd about cameras is perception, so where I'm looking at Scooby would not be where Freddie would look," says Gellar. "With my height, [the eye line] wa sprt fo at Matt Lillard's waist. So I spent months staring at his crotch. Matt's package and I are very well acquainted."

I am amused. Especially because i first read it as "said Prinze." I happened to see the Simpsons-go-to-Brazil episode a few days ago (My brother watches it, so i often end up seeing parts of episodes even though i have no real interest in or love for the show.) and there was more gayness in that episode than i have ever seen in a Simpsons episode. This made me happy. I don't understand why Brazilians got so bent out of shape over the episode. It wasn't bad at all, esp. compared to what i remember of the Simpsons-go-to-Japan episode. Not to mention the fact that the Simpsons make fun of everything.

And continuing with the amusedness, this is from "Flag on the Field: Soccer, the last acceptable form of nationalism" by Anne Applebaum:

But the significance of the American team's weakness has always been underrated, too. Particularly now that the Olympics have been spoiled by total American dominance, it is nice for everybody else that the United States always loses at the only game the rest of the world really cares about. Now that the United States has started to do a bit better, the future looks darker. Hearing the score of this morning's Mexico game—and the rumors that riots might start in Mexico City—I immediately worried: If the United States started to dominate soccer the way it dominates basketball, then anti-Americanism might really start to get ugly.

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hermionesviolin: an image of Alyson Hannigan (who plays Willow Rosenberg) with animated text "you think you know / what you are / what's to come / you haven't even / BEGUN" (Default)
Elizabeth (the delinquent, ecumenical)

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