ghosts are good company

i know that sometimes it seems like choir is the only thing i talk about, probably because it… is the only thing i talk about. i started grad school and quit my job (again!) since i last posted, but really.

election day marked a year of choir, in which it has grown exponentially in awesomeness and more than doubled in the amount of time we meet each week. yesterday was kimya’s birthday, and she was super sick. she requested that her friends post videos of themselves singing soft rock, but instead of soft rock i decided to have choir work on a response to this new song of hers… we recorded it and i made it into a moving picture. hooray!

this weekend is gender jam: olympia’s 2009 lad.i.y. and trans fest. i’m greatly anticipating many of the awesome workshops (nat and i are taking our little brother to chelsea baker’s “comics aren’t just for boys” workshop – it’s one of chelsea’s comics that closes out the video), and then sunday’s free choir practice is going to be part of gender jam as well, from four to six, in fertile ground guesthouse’s living room. it’d be a great first visit to choir, if you’ve been holding back – there should be lots of other new folks too, and we’re focusing on making sure that everybody is able to feel super welcome.

May has been busy what with the sun being out and the houses being moved and the seedlings that *still* need to go into the ground… We have deer all over the place in our back acres, and I can’t stand the thought of planting the babes without some kind of deer protection.

Cable internet should show up next week, in which case I’ll have more of an opportunity to update – dial up, ah how I did not miss you.

i can see the matterhorn mountain from my window. my mother’s at a conference here at the disneyland hotel, so i’m relaxing in a bed that’s not mine. i need to get to work soon; i have proofreading to do, but for now it’s relaxytime.

i’ve been on an adventuretrip for a little while – on sunday i took a bus to the train to portland, then headed over to the zine symposium. the symposium was was pretty delightful – even if i was only there for a little while. it’s probably for the best, because had i been there longer, i’d only have managed to spend even more money. as it is i spent too much, but i also traded some of my button stock, and that comes together to mean that i have a pretty lot of awesome stuff. it was weird for me to be at the symposium because i really have no idea where to start with zines. i mean, there are *so many* that it’s overwhelming – even when it’s just single people with multiple zines they’ve written at one table it’s tricky figuring out which one of theirs i want. because they’re all awesome exciting promising.

so, um. end zine symposium tangent. i left my atm card in a machine up there, i realized as i went to pay for my dinner at the portland airport. fortunately i had enough cash, so was allowed to get on my plane to san diego.

in san diego i… bought a car. and filled it up with a bunch of my stuff. and then drove it up here.

full circle so far. on friday i’m driving up to san francisco, staying the night there, then picking up mr. butter banana saturday morning and heading to olympia, where i will take the giant step of… moving in with my boyfriend. i’m excited and worried and hopeful and we’ll see how it all goes.

i need to get a job.

i’m almost afraid to tell you about how things are going well and seeming to come together, because it seems like whenever i tell you that things fall apart again. but. i’m pending on a job, have a pretty-sure-thing place to live, and am going to probably buy a car sometime next week. yes, after a summer of not growing up, this is where we get to. more plans, but pretty secure plans.

i’m still feeling pretty young, so recently graduated and recently smitten. every time i tell myself i’m not going to get seriously involved with somebody… i do. i mean, i was single for a year this time, which is… better for me than the, what, month or two between my last big relationships? but i’m surprised that i’m letting myself fall this hard. i’m trying my best to trust, but also to be prepared for implosion at any point. i think we both are.

so yeah. staying in olympia for a while. this boy also dreams of running off to amsterdam, so maybe (when our powers combine!) we can make that happen at some point.

i need to head to sophie’s house to water her plant. i like when she’s gone and i can sleep at her house, but i like even more when she’s in town and i can spend time with her! i have this evil plan that by being her only friend left in town, i can be her newbestfriend. don’t tell her, though. i’m keeping it on the down-low. only telling the internet, nobody else.

and so it goes. it’s olympia, it’s raining. i can hear the rain on my balcony. i’ve moved into a house just above the fourth avenue bridge, with: two cats, three kids, four dogs and, come may, five adults. my room is pretty big – maybe twelve by eighteen, or a little bigger (larger than two pucks plus three pucks), plus closets. it’s got nicely green walls, two redorange doors, and a yellow ceiling, which matches the trim on the windows and th balcony doors. it might be hailing, actually; the rain is bouncing a bit more than usual.

at first i thought there was no wireless here, but there is and that is helpful – for one of my classes our weekly assignments are primarily blog-based, which makes sense. for another i have to have a livejournal, which makes less sense.

all of my classes seem pretty awesome, which is delightful. five courses means scads of reading, but it should be good. i’m trying to not get too distracted by student activities and such this quarter, but i have a plan simmering for a giant final project for myself/STAR (my trans group grew up without me!). if i want to make it happen i have to start NOW (after i get my homework for this week in order), so i need to decide if i want to commit as much time as it needs. i’m currently trying to have my entire College Experience As a Single Person in one quarter, so that’s exhausting in itself.

there is a corgi demanding my attention. i must go.

hi blog!

things are fine, the world has been proceeding normally without you. i’m heading up to evergreen on fool’s day – although it sounds all like a hoax, since i don’t actually have a place to live, i’m hoping to find some sort of stability once i’m there. i’m registered for eighteen credits at the moment, waiting to get through a wait list to bump it back down to sixteen – i’m taking enough credits to graduate just in case amsterdam doesn’t work out, as it has a tendency… not to, and considering the state of the dollar.

the trans leadership summit was a fantastic experience, and i’m lucky to have been able to go. i made the acquaintance of some great people, and got back in touch with folks i’d lost touch with. i was able to find genderqueers again (it’s lonely down here in san diego) and learned a lot, much of which was a reminder of the binaries and biases within the trans community. i had to walk out of a workshop which began with discussion of how badly the hrc had done with enda – and ended with the conclusion that perhaps the trans community would do better if we had the “normal” trans folks step up in the media, and let the “militant genderqueers” be out of the spotlight. so that “the mainstream” doesn’t think that the whole trans community is made up of “freaks” [like me*]?

i was enraged, and wrote an impassioned piece about it while i was on the plane, and then my computer deleted it. that’s what i get for writing in a program that doesn’t auto save.

i’m going to be updating wordpress sometime in the next few days, so if things get bumpy over in greendinoville, that’s why.

tonight i’m making buttons for the rubber rose (they made my button-helpers volunteers of the month for february, and that makes me happy) and tomorrow i’m going to the getty with my family! yay for things!

the birds are twittering outside. happy spring. i’m looking for the perfect daffodil header for my blog – which i recall doing last year as well…

* don’t you wish your partner was a. i was lucky that this rage was mostly productive, it’s the kind where i got pissed off and motivated, rather than pissed off and depressed.

i have a job! it is seasonal and low-paying and ultimately would be unexciting except that 1) it is a job and 2) they offered it to me less than two hours after my interview. which made me feel shiny.

i also have maybe a plan! i’m hoping to do evergreen in the spring (see boat class, below), hopefully walk at graduation, and then do a different, cheaper, nice, amsterdam sexuality program in the summer. i like having plans.

in long-term plans, a friend of mine mentioned dreaming of moving to vermont, and i glomped onto it. spring? next year? i’ll have graduated, need a place to go to. vermont? two amazing people to live with? uh, sounds great thanks.

derby starts again soon, with a double header exhibition bout on the 23rd. … and my work schedule means no skating class for me. damn, must figure that out.

anyhow, job excitement is the moral of this post!

it’s me! it’s 2008! it’s a new domain for a new year! … or something.

at any rate, greendinosaur.net is much more cuddly than buttoning, i find. because dinosaurs! that are green! so good.

more later, i’m sure. once things have been updated a bit all about.

so it’s official-ish. i just submitted my application for the amsterdam program this spring. i’ll need to make sure that all of my other things are in, but we should be pretty much on track.

i’m petrified. i’ve been panicking about and procrastinating on this final step – the “give them fifty dollars and then not be able to edit your application” step – for weeks now. but it’s done. and maybe sometime they’ll call me and go “hey, wanna give us lots of money?” … and maybe they won’t.

i joined a new library system today, so that i could check out knit a square, make a toy. it is for absolutely brainless knitting, and is an awesome book. cubbie (and as such really, i, because i inherited his knitting books when he stopped knitting) had a copy, but then our delightful cat butter (who i miss soooo much) peed on it. it’s out of print, and only sixteen libraries in the u.s. seem to have it. handy that one of them is seventeen miles from my house.

speaking of knitting, i am now a ravelry member! i’m puckish there. they’re chugging through invitations fast, if you want to be a member but haven’t signed up yet.

tweedle dum. i’m sitting on a phone book, because my butt still hurts. i’ve been singing “my butt hurrrts,” to the tune of cute overload’s “i et too moishe.” i’m pretty sure that i fractured it on the right side, because… that’s where it hurts the most! i took this week off of (telling my temp place that i’m looking for) work, because it hurts to sit for a long time, but i need to go back to work next week because, hi, amsterdam? i have 1300 saved, and that’s not going to get me far. i should get one of those little thermometers for how much i’ve saved. i wonder where on the internet i could do that in a lazy fashion. i don’t think i care enough to code my own.

i think when/if i hope when the time comes for amsterdam, i’ll create a new blog here for that. because everyone needs many many blogs. and why did i buy myself a fancy domain and stuff if i’m not going to fill it up with stuff? cubbie has, unsurprisingly, stopped using his blog here – and that makes me feel lonely.

want a blog, people i know? i’ve asked you this before, i’m sure.

wow, monday was a place for a bunch of new things.

my mother bought a car on sunday – traded hers in, actually -  so i spent some time in the new car, getting to know it and its quirks.  it’s pretty lovely, a 2007 civic hybrid, and seems to like me as well.  it’s cars.com “best car for first-time drivers” (here) which is an interesting category to even exist – and which i’m not, a first-time driver, but…  hmm.

one of the places from which i drove was derby bootcamp.  i finally made it there, and on the right day so that i wasn’t the only brand new kid!  the derby dolls have it set up so that there’s this bootcamp, and there’s also training camp – once you’ve mastered your skating and stopping skills, you then get to move up to training camp and work on your contact and falling.  i think it’s an awesome setup, and i’m super excited to be in a city that has such a through program.

bootcamp wiped me out.  i could only skate for part of the hour – because i am completely out of shape, which we already knew, and being careful to not spin into anxiety-mode.  i’m coming early next time, so that i can skate for longer, but with breaks more regularly.  so much sweat!  i haven’t participated in team sports in ten years, and i remember how much i hated it – but also those pockets of enjoyment.

after bootcamp i decided that it would be an awesome idea to go to the gym?  but the pool, truthfully.  there i had the dreadful surprise that i couldn’t swim a whole lap without feeling like i was going to sink.   a large part of this, of course, is just exhaustion from derby, but it’s unsettling.  still, i got to sit in the bubbly spa and then the sauna for a while, and talked to some folks there.

there was a crazy amount of womanness in the day – first “the girls” and “sisterhood” at derby, and then the women’s locker room.  i feel like such a foreigner in these kinds of places, but at the same time i know that i need to take advantage of how i do fit in, and not isolate myself when i don’t need to.

all through roller derby, i had a few bits in my head of a song that i don’t know.  on the way home i was playing with the radio controller on the steering wheel (this new car thing is crazy, guys) and kt tunstall’s “hold on” came on – the song that was in my head, of course.  what timing.

[[speaking of songs, i added the tracklist to my seattle mix-cd post, since the person it was a surprise for has now received it.]]