queenbookwench

I'm at spuffyduds and washa_way's house! Much squee has been had, and spuffyduds has actually succeeded in talking me past my mental crafting block and teaching me how to knit!

We're probably doing the classic small-town fireworks display tonight (I think those are the best ones--forget the Mall), and hopefully meeting likeadeuce and her family.

In other news, I was inspired by the "Twitter in Plain English" video on our work intranet, and decided to finally give in and see what it's all about. An early adapter, I ain't.

New job starts tomorrow! I'm excited!

I did a trial run of the bus-to-Metro commute last week and it doesn't seem too onerous--it took a little over an hour each way, and wasn't hideously crowded. The only thing I'm not sure about is how it will work if I have to work late, or on the weekend. The northern Virginia extension buses are a different system than MetroBus, and have wonky hours.

I'm going to have to get used to getting up early again though--I've gotten out of the habit.

I do wish I were a little healthier--I'm on my 2nd round of antibiotics for bronchitis and I've been sick for a month. I'm functional, but I feel like an easily-fatigued shadow of my normal self.

I'm also hoping that I'll be able to get down to visit my family, which is by no means guaranteed. Normally it wouldn't be a thing, since I was just there for a whole week around Thanksgiving, but my 90-year-old grandfather is coming up from FL with my aunt and uncle and I don't get to see them nearly as often as I'd like.

I GOT A JOB OFFER!!

It's for a library associate position at a branch library in the city, working primarily with children and teens, but at a branch you do a little bit of everything.

I start two weeks from Monday.

OMG so excited!

I started avoiding LJ for awhile, because I get these weird moods when I find interacting with people online to be anxiety-producing and stressful. And I was having a fair amount of RL stress--I got turned down for the only job I've had a serious interview for, and it was a job that I really wanted, too. Combine that with increasing money worries, and you get avoidant!BookWench.

But things are much better now, or at least they could be a lot worse. I have basically rent-free housing (with a little room of my own) for the next few months, courtesy of my friend chrystalguy and I have lots of other friends who've been incredibly supportive as well and aren't sick of me yet :). My parents have been really encouraging too--and they haven't been pressuring me to move home like I was afraid they might. My unemployment compensation finally came through, so my money situation is much less dire. I'm kind of in a period of rethinking what my job-hunting approach should be, because focusing primarily on libraries hasn't worked out so well for me. I haven't entirely given up on that front though, because I still have several applications out, and the wheels of city/county government do turn slowly. And it looks like I might be able to use some of this open time productively to pursue another one of my interests--I'm in the process of trying to work something out with a local alternative school for me to come and volunteer. The contact person there is kind of hard to get ahold of, but I have faith that I will prevail. ;)

I'm trying not to spend too much time reading the news and wallowing in the badness of things.

I saw likeadeuce today--she's a special person to me, and I'm thankful that we've been able to maintain our friendship in spite of a certain amount of physical distance and also fandom/friendsgroup drift. Today we had fun talking about comics, especially Iron Fist. She lent me the recent graphic novel _The Last Iron Fist Story_ (which it isn't), and I just read it. It was immensely fun, and now I really want to find out if there are any good Heroes for Hire graphic novels (I'm not a single-issue girl for the most part). Maybe I should be posting this on a comics blog, but I never underestimate the potential knowledge of my flist. I'm sure there are some comics fans here (in addition to likeadeuce of course.

This weekend I went to the National Book Festival and, despite standing in line for over an hour, did not manage to get anything signed by Neil Gaiman. However, I did manage to pick up a copy of his new book _The Graveyard Book_ for my friends before they sold out of them, and I also got to see the Jim Henson exhibit at the Smithsonian, which closes next week. It was exceedingly nifty--in addition to Mupppets, they had a lot of storyboards and video of his earlier projects--shows, commercials, and experimental films, which I'd never seen before. It was a real shame that he died so relatively young.

Dear Yuletide Santa,

Odds are that I don't know you, given that yuletide has now reached over 1200 participants (I think that's vaguely frightening--don't you?) but I do know that you are going to write a story for me, in one of four really obscure fandoms that I love, and thus you rock :)

The first thing I want to say is this--if the details I provided feel confining rather than inspiring, please don't hesitate to go in a direction that _does_ inspire you. Like the Pirates' Code from Pirates of the Caribbean, they're really more like guidelines. Sometimes the best story is one that you never could have expected.

For example, when I did yuletide last year, I threw out a pairing idea for Homicide: Life on the Street that was just sort of random ("Oh, there should totally be femslash with this pairing, why isn't there any?"), among a bunch of other loose suggestions. My Yuletide writer took that pairing and ran with it in a direction I wouldn't have thought of, and it was awesome. Give me a good story in any of these fandoms, and I'm going to love it.

I think I included about the right amount of specificity in my details this year, so at first I wasn't quite sure what to put in my Dear Santa letter. So I looked around at what other people were doing, and decided that I'd talk a little bit about what I love in fic in general and what I love about each of the specific fandoms I listed.

( Read more... )

ALA is finally here!! I don't have to be at work! Come find me, people of my flist who are also partaking of the librarian-y goodness. If you have not actually met me, I am Caucasian, have shoulder-length brown hair, and all throughout the conference will be carrying a bag that I got at BEA last year, advertising a picture book called _Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?_. Shortly my dear gwynraven will be flying in, and then we will rock the house!

I didn't even realize it was International Women's Day, until I saw it on LJ! What would I do without my flist? I ask you. Anyhow, I gakked this from inlovewithnight--a favorite women characters meme!

So, some of erinpoetchica's favorite women characters, in no particular order:

1.) All the women of Firefly rock! But if absolutely pressed, I'd have to pick Zoe and River--and yet, Inara and Kaylee are almost as awesome!
2.) Vesper Holly, from Lloyd Alexander's The Illyria Adventure, etc. One of the kick-ass girl heroines of my childhood, whom I still adore.
3.) C.J. Cregg. Because she's tall and glamorous (but not too pretty) and funny and thoughtful and passionate and sad.
4.) Kay Howard. Because she's sensible without being dull, and compassionate without being soft, and more competitive than she usually admits. The hair doesn't hurt either.
5.) Vicky Austin, from Madeleine L'Engle's books. Because she's one of the female characters I identify with most deeply, along with
6.) Julia Redfern, from Eleanor Cameron book A Room Made of Windows and sequels. She has a journal called The Book of Strangenesses--how cool is that? Yes, it's a sensitive-yet-rebellious-young-girl-wants-to-be-a-writer book, but it's a really good one.
7.) Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan, from Lois McMaster Bujold's books. Because I want to be her when she grows up. She kicks all kinds of ass.
8.) Death from the Sandman comics. Because she is perky, and wise, and uniquely fabulous.
8.) Laura Roslin. Because she cares deeply for the welfare of humanity, and is willing to make hard choices to that end--she's not always right, but I almost always understand why she does what she does. Because she starts out uncertain, but she's resolute, a quick learner, and doesn't allow herself to be intimidated by anyone. Because she seemed to genuinely love teaching.
9.) Jenna Boller from Joan Bauer's novels, Rules of the Road and Best Foot Forward for her wry and funny voice, for her responsibility and courage in following an unusual passion.
10.) Katharine, Duchess of Tremontaine from Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint series. I can't explain this one in a coherent way--just go read The Privilege of the Sword.

Of course there are plenty of other female characters that I adore--these are just the ones that popped into my head right at the moment. :)

Avoidance is not a useful all-purpose coping strategy.

I'm on day two of being out of school, and it is MADE OF AWESOME. Although I probably won't think so in June, when these days are added onto our already long schedule.

But right now, I'm floating on a cloud, and nothing can dampen my squee. Being snowed in for Valentine's Day was perfect, even if my Valentine is, well, me. :) But I suspect that there were a lot of happy couples enjoying themselves around the greater DC metro area. ;)

And, tomorrow is Parent-Teacher Conference Day, which is almost like a vacation day for me, because there are no kids, and of course librarians don't have to see parents, so I can work in peace and quiet, at my own pace, and get caught up with a bunch of stuff. Also, we don't have to be in until 9:45. Then we're into President's Day weekend, and the only dark spot is Saturday test prep, but frankly, since the kids have been off since Tuesday afternoon, I'll be very surprised if more than a couple of them show up.

My roommate vigee_le_brun is traveling for the long weekend, and I hope she makes it without too much difficulty. She's a great roommate (and probably far more tolerant of my foibles than I deserve), but sometimes it's fun to have the place to myself, so that I can do stuff that I would never subject other people to, like playing The Best of Sheryl Crow really loud and dancing in the living room, or making messy collages and watercolors in the kitchen.

It's been a while since I've felt so free, so contented and relaxed. I really needed this downtime, more than I realized.

Well, I survived Saturday Test Prep--my first class sort of lulled me into a false sense of security because there were only 4 of them (there were supposed to be more but no one else came) and they were pretty quiet and well-behaved--my only problem was keeping them awake. But the next group was really disruptive and silly, and totally overwhelmed the quiet half of the group. I ended up having the program director come over and speak to them, and she told me afterwards that I should just send people straight to her if their behavior becomes an issue.

I did what I thought was a good exercise, where we went through the test, and I asked different people to say their answer, and explain why they chose it, whether it was right or wrong. What I wanted them to understand is that wrong answers have a logic to them just as right answers do, but it's not the kind of logic the test wants. "Learn to think like the test," I told them, and I also explained how the test makers try to deliberately distract them by providing answers that are sort of right but not completely right. We also came across some really ambiguous and downright deceptive test items, which did nothing to diminish my belief that standardized tests are a lousy way to evaluate learning.

Tonight, though I am obsessively refreshing the closings page on channel 4 and hoping for a snow day tomorrow (or a 2-hour delay at the very least). I went to a yoga workshop in Dupont Circle right after church today (and I need to remember to email my friend Israel and thank him for rushing me to the Metro so that I could get back to DC), and wandered around for a while, feeling pleased by the falling snow, browsing in bookstores, and noting sadly that the plant store on the corner where I'd planned to go get houseplants when I had some extra money had closed sometime in the last few weeks since I'd been over there. On the way back to the metro, I saw next to CVS the mound of dirty blankets that usually marks the resting place of a homeless person, and I felt the brush of worry and guilt as I thought about where that person would likely be exposed to the cold weather. A Street Sense (the newspaper produced and sold by people who are homeless) vendor solicited me with a smile, and I felt bad that I didn't have any change.

When I was in Dupont, it seemed like the snow had only just begun to stick, but when I got off in my neighborhood, which is much less traveled, I saw that nearly an inch was sticking on the sidewalk, and it was starting to coat the streets as well. The streetlights gave the snowy air that fabulous orange glow, and I walked down the sidewalk toward my apartment, quietly chanting "Snow day, snow day, we're gonna have a snow day." I felt very much in touch with my inner six-year-old.