Let's see...

Friend from Edmonton came down for a great three day visit. Went out to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, saw the Olympic flame, got hooked on Wonderfalls, belatedly.

Somehow, have ended up running a grade 1-3 spelling bee. O_o And on the judging panel for the regional spelling bee. (Must rewatch Psych ep.)

It has been chinooking all week, temperatures jumping from -30C to 12C. (Scroll down for the pretty pictures of a chinook arch.) Instant spring! I am ready for spring nowwww. I can see my garden, since most of the snow is gone. I want it to be time for my bulbs to come up...

I assembled soup for supper for supper last night. It is our current favourite. It contains:

- homemade turkey stock (although there is now no more stock in the freezer)
- potato and a bit of onion, browned a bit then added to the stock
- sausage, browned separately and added at the last minute
- kale, added with the sausage
- parmesan cheese, including a chunk of parmesan rind to gnaw on at the bottom of each bowl

Later today, I am going to buy the last little bits of stocking stuffer, and new glasses. For I got my eyes tested, and they did NOT put in the stupid drops that dilate your pupils, oh happy day. And lo, my eyes were proclaimed perfectly healthy, independent of my hereditary needing glasses to see past the end of my nose.

Things I have found lately while reading the internet:

- Simon's Cat This is the guy who did the "wake-up cat" cartoon. Scarily, hilariously accurate. Also, the sound of the cat meowing while I watched them made Trout run to the window, intently looking for the OTHER CAT in the vicinity of HIS HOUSE.

- A recipe for chocolate spiced zucchini loaf that troutkitty IM'd me from all the way across the living room, accompanied with a pleading look. The same circumstances also surrounded this banana bread recipe, which looks very close to my usual recipe from the Rebar cookbook.

- A hopeful article: Significantly More Teens Think 'That's So Gay' is Wrong as GLSEN's Ad Council Campaign Enters Second Phase

- A bunch of improv tips. Anybody local-ish will probably guess which Calgarian linked this on Facebook. *g*

- The Electronic Frontier Foundation looks like an excellent place to donate to, and not just because of the bonus of a special-edition XKCD shirt.

It is snowing again, big, fat white drifting flakes. I see more sidewalk-shovelling in my future. But first, I am going to finish reading the internet (I have a weekend addiction to apartment therapy) and before anything else, hunt down socks or slippers. Brr, cold floor!

I know I need some time off when I can't summon up the energy to post on LJ... My anti-stress fandom drug of choice lately has been vast quantities of cracktastic American Idol fic. Aheh.

I am using up vacation days. Well, technically, I am using up thirty-some hours of banked overtime, and carrying over almost two weeks of vacation to next year.

I have to go in to the library either this afternoon or tomorrow to finish up a couple of things that have to get done by the end of the year, and one day next week to make sure everyone gets paid. But... I have, counting from yesterday, sixteen days in a row where I am not obligated to fix problems, go to meetings, or be anywhere of a work-related nature at any particular time.

And... I may have been overly ambitious in the sheer quantity of books I brought home to read. But such is the joy of libraries.

I am about ninety percent done my Christmas shopping. Most of it was accomplished online, with the traditional Amazon order o' doom. There needs to be wrapping of presents, and if I am really ambitious, there will be Christmas cards mailed on Monday. Maybe. I am notoriously bad at getting things into the mail.

There are plans to make Christmas cookies on Tuesday. I also have been delegated the task of making cabbage rolls for Christmas Eve. I have thus far been denied the chance to read the Grinch Who Stole Christmas out loud to anyone, since it blizzarded the day of my December kids' book club at the library, but my cousin's kids are going to be at my parents' for Christmas Eve...

Well. As I'm sure most everyone has heard, Livejournal is making gender a required field at registration, and a binary field with no option but male or female.

It's bad enough to not modify an existing policy, but to take a policy that currently allows for the option of chosing "unspecified" and changing it to one or the other male or female is a big step backwards. And if it's about stats or demographics, surely how many people choose not to self-identify as male or female is part of those statistics.

Really, LJ. Sex is biological and is as relevant to my account for an online journalling site as my eye colour or height (which, as far as I'm concerned, is NOT AT ALL), and gender is performative and likewise not something that should be mandatory on a registration form. YEESH.

Last night was troutkitty's office Christmas party. I talked her into fancy clothes, and it was fun, despite the bad buffet food (dry roast beef with obviously packaged gravy and frozen corn with green onion were the low points, along with soggy only mostly-defrosted cream puffs--but I am spoiled from working many excellent buffets at Heritage Park as an undergrad). The hypnotist who was the entertainment was not as cringe-worthy as we were afraid he'd be, and we totally scored in the door prize department with 1kg of milk chocolate and a gift certificate to East Side Mario's.

So, tonight we went for mediocre chain restaurant food, and came home to watch Star Trek. We've been trying to have Star Trek Movie Date Night for ages. It is of the shiny, and I am enjoying it. troutkitty is full of squee, of course.

Crazy hour usually happens at indeterminate intervals between 11pm and 1am, when the cats chase each other through the house.

Not this morning. Crazy hour came early. Or late, depending on your perspective.

We are well-protected. from any crunchy leaves in the back entry that might murder us in our sleep. Trout fought a vicious battle. He is a wild and bright-eyed Trout, running from one end of the house to the other. He just tore into the living room, stopped in the middle, went hmph, leapt behind Barb's chair, and then bounded back out.

Now I am sitting in said chair witha tabby on each arm. But Trout has spotted birds outside, and his tail is hitting me in the ribs.

The question is, how can I get up to go get a cup of coffee now?

If you are a SF reader, you could help with research for a master's dissertation on SF and libraries by clicking and taking a short survey, were you so inclined.

Awww, Lethbridge had its first queer film festival! We went for Thursday night, and there were film shorts. Some of them were really good! ... some of them were not.

First off, there was free popcorn, pitchers of koolaid arranged in a rainbow, and tons of candy. Chewy, sour, convenience store candy. Mmmm, sugar. (Added bonus: watching grelse demonstrate that clearly queenzulu's foraging skills were inherited from the maternal line. Popcorn and candy FTW!)

There were a couple of well-intentioned almost-but-not-quite films, but... oh dear lord, then there was this one. With a guy dressed in drag down the left side of his body and in formal men's wear down the right, and he was marrying himself. The ceremony was presided over by an Elvis impersonator, and there was a wedding party of drag queens and drag kings, and.... you're probably thinking now that this doesn't sound too bad. A bit experimental, perhaps. But let me tell you right here and now that this was exactly like sitting through the wedding video of someone you've never met, complete with shaky camera-work, self-composed vows, and oh dear lord it just would not end! There was no point and it was totally self-indulgent. The girl has a similiar take here.

And I can't say I really GOT the black light glowing naked Dolly Parton look-a-like drag queen singing Whitney Huston at the end, but, meh. I'm sure it was profound in some context or another.

The up side: an adorable Spanish? maybe? film about two girls meeting in the park, an earnest student film about a boy too shy to talk to his crush on the bus, an awesome short about a young Chinese girl not comfortable with being a girl, an illustrated short about a nice Jewish gay man taking a trip to Prague and the elderly couple who keeps trying to set them up with their daughter ("What a nice Jewish boy like you needs is a nice Jewish girl...") and a local student film about road-tripping it to Vancouver Pride.

That last one was in its own class of awesome. It was less polished and nuanced than a lot of the films, but totally captured the way it feels to go on a road trip with friends towards something important, and brought you along with them for the in-jokes and the getting lost, and the fatigue and the giddiness. The parade footage was pretty neat to see, but the best part was watching their reactions, this bunch of friends in their early twenties from a prairie city in Canada's bible belt, all of a sudden in the middle of a big-city GLBT community and hit hard with a sense of belonging. There were tears, on-screen and in the audience. I think it was the most affecting and effective film of the whole night.

So yeah, I'm glad friends dragged us out to this, and I hope there's a next year!

Dear Psych,

I continue to find you highly entertaining. You are pretty damn adorable, and make me laugh out loud. True, there are the odd moments of racial FAIL (Shawn, plz to not be mentioning your Indian tracking skills, m'kay?), but I love your kick-ass female characters. And Shawn and Gus are so totally my OTP. Basically, you are squeeful in too many ways to enumerate, especially at 11pm on a weeknight.

Now, I know your grasp on reality is somewhat tenuous and you frequently go off in all kinds of improbable directions. And don't get me wrong, I totally appreciated the lack of Canadian politeness stereotypes in ep 401, "Extradition: British Columbia."( very minor spoilers hence )

Love,
Me.

Via a friend on Facebook:

" If anyone is on twitter, set your location to Tehran and your time zone to GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location/timezone searches. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut Iranians' access to the internet down. Cut & paste & please pass it on."

I have cleared out all of my Firefox tabs except for about a dozen that fall into the to-read category! Fic recs coming as soon as I pull everything from delicious and lgbt_fest that I meant to come back to later.

Here, have some random:

In which many people write Nine things About Oracles, as inspired by a pendant.

I Has a Sweet Potato, the saga of a dog and some sweet potatoes. Obviously. (And if you haven't already come across it, Dogs in Elk.)

In the realm of bookish discussion, authors that expose their id on paper. A somewhat belated link.

Here are some truly inspired ideas for Neil Gaiman t-shirts.

Battle of the church signs!.

Roger Sutton on the queerness of Batman.

I am sure we could dream up some sort of library program based around Romance Title Bingo.

How awesome is sex toy recycling as a concept?

A quiz, for your edification and amusement, So Who Do You Think You Are?, or, which Diana Wynne Jones character are you?

I know numerous people who'll relate to Writing a Novel, A Love Story, from YA author libba_bray. Also from Libba Bray and equally awesome, albeit in a different and much more serious way, thoughts on growing up with a gay, closeted dad, There is Nothing Wrong With You.

The Secrets of Storytelling, a look at narrative, the power of story, and our brains from Scientific American. Relatedly, What do kids love most? Their parents reading to them: Study finds that children are hungry for bedtime stories.

Six Reasons Why You Should be Watching Being Erica picspam. I emphatically agree.

I like this bag, but can't really justify buying it. Ah, well.

I have four open Firefox windows with something like 128 open tabs. (zulu/queenzulu, stop laughing!)

I have stolen troutkitty's laptop table (Dave. Dave the Ikea laptop table. Dave is awesome. and pulled my computer chair and a mouse into the living room, and am going to comment on posts and leave feedback, tag delicious links and compile recs to post.

Here is a slightly fuzzy picture:



Note the coffee, headphones on the keyboard, and the lovely Trout sprawled on the coffee table in front of the open window, from which there is the barest perfect hint of a cool breeze.

And then I need to go to Canadian Tire to get a soaker hose for the lawn and some potting soil for my tomato plants. Summer weekends, mmm.

I am on a Studio Ghibli kick.

A couple of months ago, we rewatched My Neighbour Totoro.

If you haven't seen it, words cannot describe either totoros (sorta like.. well.. maybe if you took a bear crossed with a cat and an owl and he was eight feet tall...) or the cute:





The first time I saw Totoro, it was a Chinese dub that a friend's coworker had lent to her when she found out she liked anime. We picked up a surprising amount of plot without understanding a word of it. The little totoros make dibby-dah sounds as they walk in the Chinese dub. We called it the dibby-dah movie for the longest time. It is still one of my all-time favourites, which was why there was about a four or five year period where everyone gave me stuffed totoros. They're all sitting on top of my bookcases, with the exception of the large one. By large, I mean two feet tall and three feet wide. He has taken up residence on top of my filing cabinet in my office at the library. (And if anyone tells you that totoros eat cows, they liiiiiie! Look at those teeth! Vegetarian!)

Totoro is still one of the best all-ages movies out there in existence ever. Also, I, um. Need another DVD copy. Mine is the old English release, and the newer Disney-released version has better subtitles. (Whiiich would make three versions, since I also have the Japanese version. And several more versions on VHS. But who's counting?)

Then a few weeks ago, we watched Kiki's Delivery Service when Mannie and her little guy came to visit. (Take that, fundamentalist extremists! An absolutely charming, gentle, endearing story about a little witch girl!)





Tonight, we watched most of Pom Poko but got bored before the end (now I remember why I don't own the DVD. Still good, but not my favourite.) I like the folklore elements (Japanese folklore, where shapeshifting racoon-dog/tanuki testicles are canon!), but with all the slapstick and the kinda weak plot, and it didn't stand up very well to a second viewing. I'll probably go back and watch the last twenty minutes later tonight. If you are curious:





Then we watched Whisper of the Heart, which is all kinds of awesome. It's a deceptively simple story about a Japanese schoolgirl who reads books, follows a cat on the train, and tries to decide what she wants to do with her life. (Budding romance via library book! Meticulously crafted visuals of everyday life in modern Japan! Heroine who is totally unaware that she could possibly be described as "spunky" and hence is not in the least annoying!)





I thnk either Spirited Away or Princes Mononoke next. (Although I also have Howl's Moving Castle, Castle in the Sky and Nausicaa.) Oh, Studio Ghibli! You are the anti-Disney and I love you for it!

Yesterday was my darling troutkitty's birthday! And I had meant to post then, but we were doing birthday-ish things like going out for supper and such. We had pizza and pasta at Coco Pazzo's, the local place with a wood-burning pizzaoven, mmm! I smuggled Lush bath stuff back from Edmonton for the girl, and she never suspected, bwaha. And by "smuggled," I mean handed to a friend attending the same conference and said "Quick! Can you pretend this is yours and take it back to the library for me?" Which made her car smell like Lush all the way back, and my office smell like Lush all last week.

I had arranged for a seekrit birthday visit from queenzulu/zulu and drakkenfyre, and had to sacrifice the seekritness because troutkitty's dad was going to come the same day (he came today instead, as all involved opted to spread out the visiting rather than having everyone here at once), but the important bit was that people came! Yay! There was Mario Kart Wii, homemade Mexican food (details of the truly awesome black bean mash here, and a ramble down into the coulees. Pictures to follow, of scenery, river-wading, expeditions up a hill, and other such things.

And now I am just about ready for bed. How long until another weekend?

Okay, I knew Sarah Waters had a new book out and I knew it took place in the 40's, and I was waffling on whether to order it from Amazon now along with a couple other books that fall into the want-enough-to-own category (plus seasons one and two of Psych) or wait and...

Nobody told me it was a GHOST STORY. (Thanks for the link, guyindkny!)

Especially after rewatching the BBC miniseries of Fingersmith this weekend, I am trying to convince myself that I don't need to spend an extras $10 just to buy it from Chapters in-store immediately.

Or in this case, an invite code to Dreamwidth? I've got four left. As I am on my usual curve of procastination vs intention, I don't know how many people are still needing one, but just comment if so!

... coffee. I need.

Hmm, let's see if I did this right and I can crosspost...

( in the meantime, have an awesome gay rights video from Singapore )

I can also be found at dreamwidth, daemonluna.dreamwidth.org. (Thank you, jadelennox!)

I... am still not sure what I am doing with it. I'm sure I'll figure it out. *g* Right now, I'm subscribing to and granting access to pretty much everyone on my flist over here who is over there. Eventually, there will probably be some cross-posting. (Learning things via mucking about FTW!)

I am Unimpressed.

You've all seen Amazon Rank a zillion times today, right? (And a more extensive list of affected books here.)

And the petition?

And the google-bombing?

The utter randomness of some of the titles make me wonder if part of the colossal fail is due to a search algorithm gone wrong. (ETA: ie, something like this.) But don't get me wrong--the underlying philosophy still makes me furious.

Today, I dragged troutkitty out of the house on the premise that taking a brief walk around the neighbourhood would make her feel better.

Then we ended up hiking through the coulees for almost two hours. ... oops? (If you have no idea what a coulee is, they are the folds in the hill around the river that look like this, and I am blatantly borrowing a picture from a friend's Flickr account for show and tell.) We went down the hill at the end of 4th St, meandered along the river bottom and ended up at Indian Battle Park.

I had a water bottle, cel phone, and two granola bars. We were wearing comfy runners. It was all good. But there is a lot of down and then up again between here and there, what with it being a river valley and all.

On a totally unrelated tangent, Dreamwidth is exciting! So far, I have only created an OpenID account. (My reading list has one person on it! It's dine! If anyone else has an account already and I have missed you, lemme know.) Definitely thinking about getting a paid account eventually.

Am still missing the lack of new Psych. This is what mainlining a series does to you. And Being Erica is done for the season, though I hear rumours of a season two. troutkitty has suggested Leverage. And I've also got half a season of Supernatural to catch up on.

We have opted to not drive to Calgary for the day for Easter, but will be cooking a ham, possibly tomorrow. Mmm, ham. If anyone feels like coming to Lethbridge to share it, we would happily feed you. :)