Shell Game

Ha! Awesome! Turn on the noise for your prize.

Opera!

My geeky pursuits

So this is what I look like when engaging in my second-geekiest of pasttimes: being a SCAdian.

Sounds about right.

My pirate name is:

Black Mary Flint

Like anyone confronted with the harshness of robbery on the high seas, you can be pessimistic at times. Like the rock flint, you're hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you're easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

Good News!

I got bumped up to the 'big girl class' at bellydancing! So if you see me doing some sort of odd twitching while standing around, I probably was just too excited about practicing.

Torah Terror

http://www.cracked.com/article_15699_9-most-badass-bible-verses.html

Must make Spanish particolored cotehardie. With many buttons. Must!

Must make Spanish particolored cotehardie. With many buttons. Must!

On my merry way to Coronation!

The following is far too disgustingly biological to be of general interest. Consider yourself forewarned.

The following is far too disgustingly biological to be of general interest. Consider yourself forewarned.

For those about to wake, I comiserate you,

I am, what is termed by some, a lazy person. By this, I mean that I insist on a good eight to nine hours of sleep a night. Sometimes more, but if ever less, I make up for it within a night or two. Sleep is important to me. So, when I drop off around midnight, quarter 'til, I expect to be out until at least six or seven.
This was not to be the case last night. Instead, I awoke at 3 AM, frustrated and worried and irritable. Sleep remained unforthcoming, so I gave up and got up around 3:30.
So forgive me if there's snappiness and queasiousity.

Frustration is the natural result of many commonly occurring stimuli.

Kashrut

So, I've decided. It's Elul, the month when one is supposed to concentrate on the year, the previous and the next. To think about being a better Jew.
I've kept away from pork and shellfish all this time. It isn't really that hard. Except at Chinese food. Ouch. I've been reasonably good at separating meat and milk. It's a bit tougher, but do-able. I even skip candies with gelatin in them.
But I think it's time for the next step - no non-kosher meat. Which, in Boise, Idaho, makes me more or less a vegetarian. The price of kosher meat is, well, high. Apart from Hebrew Nationals and Sinai Dogs, there's really not much kosher meat in the valley, far as I know.
So, yeah. Difficulty.

The need for cheese

I am a cheese snob. There's nothing inherently wrong with a slice of honest cheddar, I admit, but if it comes in a spray can, it's not cheese. If it's labeled 'American' and has the consistency of some sort of marital aid*, it's not cheese. Cheese can be smooth and creamy, hard and pungent, nutty and spreadable. I want, so badly, to go the Le Café de Paris, get a glass of red, a selection of cheeses (the Roquefort kicked my @$$ last time - I shall prevail), and curl up with my book. Cheese, wine, and a book. What's the matter with America today that I'm considering this to be 'special occasion' fare?

Morbier
Camembert
That other one
Roquefort
Chèvre

And a glass of the Macon Villages, if they've still got it. That's my dream for the afternnoon.


*favorite euphemism of the day.

Dearth of Chivalry.

Really. It must be completely dead in the general population. I was retuning to my car after school, crossing Capitol Boulevard/Ninth Street. The day was hot, somewhat muggy, enveloped in the fumes of at least five lanes of traffic. Heat radiated from the concrete. I was crossing the last few feet, surrounded by my colleagues, my co-instruction seekers. Fellow students of all genders and creeds. Just before we reached the beckoning sidewalk, I heard several quick thumps. I turn around, in case it was my recently acquired books. Alas! So it was.

I knelt speedily, my bare knees pressed into the tarred surface, and began to refill my errant bag with the recently lost articles. I was hampered by people stepping past, by, and even over me. I was able to get out of the road before a hasty Jeep barely bothered to swerve around me. I glared at their backs, the polo-shirted, cargo-panted cad, the Slipknot-torsoed scoundrel, and the V-necked, faux-label bag betoting villainess. (There were others. I choose these three to bear the weight of public scourging.)

Home, home, home.

Am v. pleased to be back in the great desert wastes. While the climate of the Bay area is superb, the array of ethnic restaurants dizzying (Mem: Am fond of Peruvian food. Who would have guessed it?), and the hammock a great distraction, all my people are here.

Off to prepare for school.

Annoyed by little bimbo camp counselor.

Surrounded by palms and what appears, to my eyes, as papyrus. Cool shade.

Children and monkeys have more in common than one would think. But some are adorable enough to make up for it.

Smoked whitefish for lunch. /parevegasm

Smoked whitefish for lunch. /parevegasm

Winding wool, listening to the Dead, awaiting the aeroplane.

So, this is what I spent Saturday doing. That is a silken banner, hand-dyed to my own heraldic specifications. The gent on the left is my good friend Gomez, who offered his masculine charms in modeling the hedgehog-and-pomegranate studded bit of windcatchery.

Pfrancing

So, it looks like I have a lot of dancing ahead of me. Which is good, of course. I love to dance, and could definately be in better shape.

As of tomorrow (Tomorrow? Tomorrow!), I will be taking actual lessons in Raqs Sharqi, for which I am very excited. Between that and Baronial dance practices, and the upcoming Yoga and Judo classes for which I'm enrolled, I should be a beast, come this winter.

Not to mention, of course, the movement-, theater-, and dance-related Jewish day camp I'm helping with next week, for four to eight year olds, which should keep me a-moving for nearly eight straight days. Eek. I have to pack for that.

Capuccino at the park, waiting for fighter practice. Listening to zoo sounds. Almost a trumpeting. I wonder what kind of beast it is. Maybe a tiny elephantine creature. There's an oxymoron.

Wicked and Bad

A wicked, detestable girl. A gin-soaked wreck of maiden's fair promise. A braying slattern, fit only to be the lowest of orange-girls.

I had a martini lunch. Admittedly, only one martini, but still. I feel so . . . well, I feel '60s sophisticated, 1740s antiquated/degraded, and 00's medicated.

Gin martini, straight up, with a twist.

In defense of Fantasy literature for Adolescents

So, tonight, midnight (I know it's Shabbat. I'm . . . learning about being more observant) is the release party for the new Twilight series book. From what I hear on the radio, opinion among parents is divided.

"She's respectful to her parents, and daring! Good role model!" say the legions who read the series right along with, and quite as voraciously as their daugters.

"What are they talking about? She seems entirely ruled by her emotions and these books build up insupportable expectations in girls of the perfect boyfriend! He literally glitters! Also, it's gay." say the detractors, who would rather their daughters wear burkha and not read at all or wear cheerleading costumes and read The Rules.

In most cases, I always come down in favor of reading. So far, the only exceptions are things that are disgusting lies. (Examples include Unfit for Command and anything written by the loud, Horse-faced troll or the shanda-far-die-Goyim, schrunchy-faced troll.)

Also, I think building up impossible expectations in children might be a good thing. Lord knows I had them. And you know what that accomplished? Keeping me a nondating virgin for much longer than many of my contemporaries. Frankly, why do we want teen and pre-teen girls (the book's demographic, which I don't, ahem, expressly fit into) settling for anyone or anything? Let them keep their knees tightly shut beneath their books for a while longer.

I've resigned!

Reprinted from Facebook: Terror

What is one supposed to do when one's life begins the stately swirl into a Forster novel? When all the aching introspection and mistrust come into your sunny suburban life, without even being good enough to bring some of the servants and culture along with them? When one begins (fairly or not) to identify with those cool, genteel people and project some of those Edwardian malaises of Empire in decline onto one's friends and situation, can one do what the heroines would? Can one muster either the conviction of one or the courage of the other? Tentative answer: No.

The nature of surety

I wonder. I wonder if I’ve chosen well. I wonder if I’ve even chosen. I avoid choices, so often. Make my life into a series of events which happen to me, calamities and blessings which rain down like a shower of golden coins, falling heads up or tails, weal or woe.

I know things. I know things about myself. Are they good things? Mostly not. I am sure of my pettiness, my judgmentalism, and my selfishness. Maybe no more than the next person, but I know them. They are like old childhood friends, the memories of which may embarrass or hurt, but whom can no more be exorcised from memory than the smell of bread, or the feel of cold water. Knowing these things, can I then filter my thoughts and feelings, before deciding? Before making the choice to accept a choice?

What else? Is it worse to go on with doubts or to not go on with doubts? I’m unsure.
Is what I hope for impossible? I’m unsure.
Am I sure of anything?

Wharton Update

Having listened to Ethan Frome (via librivox.org, to which I advise all of you to hasten), I am thinking back to high school, wondering what all the kvetching was about. Admittedly, it was depressing. Admittedly, if it had a moral, it was ambigious at best. Admittedly, either Edith Wharton invented a good chunk of the clichés used in modern Anglophone literature, or she couldn't be bothered to develop a metaphor of her own. Sure, it seemed a transparent attempt to ease her own guilt at her infidelities to her husband.

But hey, at least it was short!

This technology is mad, I tell you!

Responsibility

If I'm to return to school, I may as well get ready for it now. Mostly, I'm all too happy - mending my sweaters, polishing my boots, knitting new warm-keepers, etc. However, as an English Education major, I really should reread all the required High School books. Which is again, fine. Anything had to read then tended to be short.

But.

I managed to escape from my primary education without having read one book. I switched from regular to AP English just in time, and side-stepped it. The infamous. Ethan Frome.

I've read Wharton. I actually kind of liked Summer, though I need to read it again and see if it's as creepy as I remember it. But Ethan Frome, man! I thought I'd never have to suffer it. Ah well. I suppose I'll have to in order to inflict it on my future pupils, as I can't imagine going all Ursula Brangwen on the little monsters and whipping them.