burning like matchsticks in the face of the darkness

I kept waking up this morning -- hot and sticky, wanting to sleep longer but clearly not sleeping well.  I napped a little around 3pm, but still.  I did put a fan in one bedroom window tonight.  (Yes, it was a combination of stubbornness and forgetting that I'd bought window fans either last summer or the summer before.)

***

In the CHPC liturgy this morning, I found myself really struck by the bits on forgiveness -- thinking about what I crave forgiveness for.

excerpt from the Unison Prayer of Confession:

    We confess our selfishness of heart and meanness of spirit; our slowness to forgive as we have been forgiven; our faltering attempts to love others and our awkward responses to those who want to love us.
    (from "A Call to Prayer" edited by C. Micklem, adapted)

In the Words of Assurance, Karl said, "in that forgiveness comes freedom and joy and possibility."

***

The ecumenical Somerville Pride service tonight went well.  (And it was not as warm in the chapel/fellowship hall as I had feared it might be.)

The Opening Hymn was "Gather Us In" and I saw Laura Ruth signing along.  I was gonna talk to her afterward, but I didn't see her during fellowship.  I have her e-mail from Molly's e-mailing everyone involved in the Reader's Theater, though.

During fellowship, people seemed to actually mingle with people other than the ones they came with, which pleased me.  Okay, I didn't really talk to anyone I didn't already know, but hey, I already knew 3/5 of the congregations.

At one point, Tiffany mentioned that Laura Ruth had told her I'd started going to their Wednesday service, and I told her the story about how I  was like, "Do I really need to be involved in four churches?"  She said maybe I'd become that which they're all striving for... where all the different colors come together in that white light.  (Yes, this was a metaphor from tonight's service.)  She suggested I could be a mediator 'cause I'd know what was important to the different groups and suchlike.

***

As post-CWM fellowship was winding down, I switched seats to where Sean and Marla and people were sitting.  Marla mentioned that Will's moving out in July (he got an appointment in Hull) so if I know anyone who's looking for a place to live...  I said I'm looking for a new place to live as I'm moving out of my current apartment August 1st, said I was weighing whether Marla and I would kill each other :)  Marla said we wouldn't, looked genuinely surprised at the suggestion that we would.  She also joked to Sean that I would complete the... she didn't say quota, but I forget what exactly she did say... but anyway, as a bisexual I would complete the GLBTA representation at the Collective :)

The idea of living with people I already know and like definitely had appeal -- and they're just over the border into Arlington, so it wouldn't be much of an adjustment from where I am in terms of how I commute to work, where I get my groceries, etc.  And there's definitely low risk that they'll be moving any time soon (one of my few Wanted items in my apartment-hunting this time around is people who are gonna stay more than a year, after having lived with the revolving door of graduate students).

She drove me home with them to check out the place.  It's a little smaller than my current room (10x11 vs. 11x11), but Marla's sympathetic to my "I know a move is a good excuse to go through the boxes of crap I haven't touched since I last moved two years about, but that may not actually happen..." and they have basement storage, so that would alleviate a lot of the problem.  And it's got a double sliding door closet like my room in my parents' house.

They have washer-dryer in the basement, and the totally reasonable rent (more than I'm paying now, but I know what I'm paying now is far on the low end of anything I would find) would include all utilities (thus making it about equal with what I pay in total each month).

They don't have cable, but they do have HD and a dvd/vcr, so I could tape stuff in high-quality, and if there are any Sci-Fi/Lifetime/whatever Original Movies I desperately need to see or whatever (I heard about Circuit with Michelle Trachtenberg premiering on ABC Family tonight at 8 thanks to facebook sponsored links or whatever they are on your mini-feed homepage) I'm sure I can obtain them from Amy or whatever.

( gym )

***

on the WGA [Writers Guild of America] strike:
* Mark Evanier (via Rhi).
* Brian K. Vaughan (via whedonesque)

***

via whedonesque: SMG plays "Sorrow" in The Air We Breathe (opening Jan. 25, 2008)
I'm interested to see this.

***

Gmail keeps taking forever to load entries, which is frustrating since I abuse its Draft function.  Why does it tell me there's a script running which is slowing everything down?  MLN recently added new features to their web catalog, which, okay, but it was taking forever to load on my computer at work today.  Not on, people.  My home computer I'm willing to believe it's that I'm running XP on an old machine and am overloading the processor, but this should not be the case on my work machine.

I think we've come to some sort of peace re: the heating of the apartment, though, so that's a blessing.

Now if I could just manage to to get enough sleep.  I would have liked to have been awake for more of tonight's extension school class (Augustine), for example.

Monday's xkcd strip = awesome.

*

Marla-and-company's cookout started at 4:30, and I headed out around quarter of five, which meant I got there a little after five.  Sadly, it was like another hour before there was real food to eat.  (Used to Layna's and Nicole's parties, which admittedly start later in the evening, I hadn't eaten before arriving.)  There weren't a whole lot of people there, and no one was very talkative, so I kind of wished I hadn't come.  By like 5:30 or 6 it had picked up, though.

There were a couple volleyball rounds, but I wasn't sure how athletic I was feeling, and there was lots of goose poop so I opted to stay on the sidelines.  I had or listened to a variety of nice conversations.  This guy Shelby was talking about having downloaded a collected X-Men from beginning (1963) to present and how he thought someone should -- if no one has already -- do Ph.D. work on how comics reflect the society of the time and watching that change -- like one of the early ones had a scene with the X-Men all practicing their powers in the Danger Room and Jean's practicing honing her telekinesis by sewing.  He also was at one point having neck/back pain/soreness and sort of offhandedly said he needed a massage, so of course I got up and said, "What do you want?" and started massaging his shoulders and upper back -- for which I was rewarded by immediate orgasmic sounds.

By this point it was definitely getting dark (so like 8pm).  Later, Sean said something to me about how he'd heard I had a good time on my Europe trip.  I said I never know how much people wanna hear, so basically all I've been saying is, "Yeah, I had a really good time."  He said that he'll never get a passport that says he's male (he's trans) so he'll never be able to travel internationally, so he loves hearing about other people's international travels.

He had been smoking a pipe and asked if the smoke would bother me and I said I'd be fine, that I'd survived that night at the club in Prague after all.  So I talked about Prague and going to a Catholic church service in Czech, which led to talk about ecumenical church-hopping, and he mentioned Jehovah's Witnesses.  He had a question which I obviously didn't have the answer to, and I said I wished I had a laptop with wireless [we were in the backyard] so I could look it up, and thus I learned that he is totally one of those people after my own heart who always wants to have a "fact finder" handy for those questions that randomly come up, even when just watching tv.

At one point, Will went up to take care of something, so Sean invited Jayson to "join the circle."  The neighbors' dog Toby came by, and apparently Sean and the dog had had an "incident" earlier in the evening.  Sean and Jayson were joking so matter-of-factly about having sex with a dog, which I never would have expected.  Of course there were jokes about how we're an inclusive community, and Sean said that Tiffany did draw a line at hitting people in church even if you're in a consensual BDSM relationship, and I said I was there for that conversation.  This led to my usual hobby-horsing about how we're inclusive of everyone except the stupid evil conservatives.  Jayson said he thinks we need to draw a line, need to have standards, that we shouldn't be inclusive to the people who hate us.  I said that I would have a lot more respect for liberals if they were honest like that -- though I would still take great pains to remind Christian communities that they are called to love their enemies and would encourage them to, as per Tiffany's sermon, be at table with them.  He said he would love to be at table with these people, but that they refuse to let him be at the table -- cf. 1032, which allows pastors to deny membership to persons based solely on their being gay.  I said I have no background with the United Methodist Church, so I can't speak to the validity of his feeling of being denied a place at the table, but conceded that even with my sympathy for the conservative theological arguments I have a hard time rationalizing the membership thing because regardless of one's opinion on homosexuality, isn't the church for the broken and the sinners?

Later, Sean and I were talking about his personal history (springing from my question about his pipe).  Talking about Marla's husband, he said, "I was trying with Jake, and that wasn't working, because he's from Missouri and they're authentic there.  Which is confusing,  We're from New England.  What does 'authentic' even mean?"

After the umpteenth time he lit a match for the pipe, I asked, "Is it supposed to take that many matches?"
Sean: "Fuck you."
me: "Do you wanna take this inside?"
It took half a beat and then he made some impressed approving statement about that line.  He said he had wondered, "Are we at that point?" (where you can say stuff like that to a friend) and yeah, apparently we are.  I said I considered him a safe person and he had permission to say anything he wanted to me.  I also said that while I will complain about Smith, one thing I will happily credit it for is making me very sex-positive in sometimes inappropriate contexts.

He said, "I love that you traverse the spectrum from conservative to liberal and are sex-positive the whole way," saying that even in liberal circles there's some shying away from some of that.

About quarter of eleven people were cleaning up, and Sean asked if I wanted a ride home.  I said that I was happy to walk home, but that if it would make him worry I would take a ride.  (This is my response to anyone who offers me a ride unless I have a strong desire to spend more time with them.)  He was like, "Don't make me examine the feminist implications...."  I said it wasn't about that and we had some back-and-forth and I accepted the ride and tried to explain that I didn't interpret it as a patriarchal condescending thing, that usually the people who offer me rides are female -- since most of the people I hang out with are female.

Yes, I know I shouldn't be allowed to get my hopes up regarding tv ever -- especially when it's on FOX.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles: trailer up on YouTube + Joss comment on the whedonesque page

Summer Glau's character appears to be made of awesome, and the young male protagonist is played by the actor who played Zach on Heroes.

I was told it was going to snowstorm on Thursday.  Instead we got rain.

I knew Saturday was predicted to be a high of 50 and that that would feel warm after the temps we'd been having, but when I left my parents' house around 11am to go to the library, dressed in fairly light clothes, I thought it was astonishingly warm out.  When I got home to Somerville and checked weather.com at 4pm it said the current temp was 55F, so I wonder how warm it actually was then in Norwood.

Now we're back to winter temps for a while, which I'm okay with.

*

NHS has a cappella now?  My dad went to a performance on Friday while my mom and I went to Singspiration.

Naifee and Isabel both called me "Barbara" (my mom's name).  And the guy who gave me a ride home (JoeF's insistence, though I'd resigned myself to that in advance) asked me how old I was and when I told him said I looked much younger.  Yeah, I know.  Le sigh.

There were some hymns I liked -- e.g. "Shine, Jesus, Shine."
Four out of the eight 770's were requested.  They're in the "Everlasting Fellowship || Eternal Life and Heaven" section.  I obviously have issues with these.  The "Won't it be wonderful to leave this world" sentiment obviously troubles me, and at the same time most everyone regardless of religious beliefs seems very opposed to dying (and not even the suffering likely to accompany it but the actual dying -- c.f. JoeF's "Horse sense teaches about compassion and dignity") which seems very hypocritical to me.

*

My aunt's nursing program graduation is the same date as Smith graduation.  I'm okay with choosing Reunion and all that entails over seeing the immediate extended family but am miffed that I can't do both.

Does LJ do automatic IP address reading or something?  'Cause I went to log in to LiveJournal Friday night and the main page was showing me Westwood, MA classifieds.

links:
* (via escritoireazul): brynwulf has a poll up checking interest in a post-apocalyptical panfandom fic archive.
* Hi, I might be buying the next GQ -- for the Katie Heigl photoshoot.
* Which reminds me, 1968 topless Judi Dench.
* mind controlling pigeons, by remote control
* "Swiss Accidentally Invade Liechtenstein"

MaryAlice told me on Thursday that Wash (Alan Tudyk) was in 28 Days.  I remember recognizing Azura Skye (BtVS 7.04) in that, so I'm not sure how I didn't recognize Wash.

P.S. maechi made me a Kitty Pryde Ravenclaw icon which I like muchly :)

I left my house this morning and there was a definite coating of snow on the ground.  At first I thought the snow in the air was just loose snow blowing, but at least some of it was definitely falling fresh.  Had a beautiful six-pointed star on the lapel of my coat for a while.  ♥

One of the guys on our floor took an extra fifteen minutes walking to work this morning, stopping all the time to take pictures.  ♥

*

Alyssa and I have been proofing a book our profs are co-writing, and she was thrown by the use of the word "lest" (phrase: "lest you think").  I think it's common.  So,

[Poll #912845]

[Edit: I heart LJ. I post a poll at 9:50pm on a Tuesday night and in the first hour get 13 responses -- all of which agree with me even :) ]

*

links from today:

A Kitten's Guide to Nigerian Tuna Spam (v. v. funny)

cap of Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion in the film Waitress

today's Dinosaur comic: HAPPY "TELL YOUR BEST FRIEND WHAT TURNS YOU ON" DAY the holiday for people with Not Enough Problems (the syn feed allows you to share with the world if not your best friend)

*

I caught up on Heroes schtuff today.  (Eric was mysteriously absent, so I didn't get to chat with him about last night's episode.)

Thoughts on comic #12 "Super-heroics"?
"Wireless" is interesting, though that kind of story doesn't ping me.  Adds interesting info to the HRG story.  I disapprove of that silhouette in Part 3, though.  nbc.com's "Wireless" clip won't load on my computer, but athene proffered the YouTube link.  That was what really pulled me in.
#17 "How do you stop an exploding man?" also has some interesting stuff.

*

When I got on the train at Harvard to come home, there weren't any convenient open poles, so I actually took a seat (something I rarely do).  I'm reading Octavia Butler's Fledgling and apparently got more absorbed in it than I thought 'cause I got off the train and oops, I was at Alewife.  I've actually never been inside Alewife T Station, so that was kinda neat.  If I had a more solid idea as to how to walk home from there I would have just gone out and walked, but there are a bunch of highways around there and I don't really know which direction to go in, so I just got back on the train.

*

Um, just a little while ago I went to turn on the hot water and nothing came out.  Turn the cold water faucet and water comes out, but nothing when turning the hot water faucet.  Er, note to self: set alarm for early, so if this persists I can take a shower at the HBS gym. [Edit: I did indeed get a hot shower at home the next morning. Yay.]

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 issues.  ( Read 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 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.