ghosts are good company

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 challenge between making this blog [my] “family friendly” and making it… about much of my life. but i guess since folks wouldn’t know me very well at all without knowing this, i spend the vast majority of my social time engaged it trans community activism and/or at the “local queerlady-owned sexuality boutique” – “a sex store even your mother would love.”

partially i bring this up because they (the rubber rose, the store mentioned above), just hosted the annual traveling roadshow that is the sex worker’s art show. i’ve been four out of the last five years now, and this year i had the most fun (even though nomy lamm wasn’t on the tour), largely because carly and lea (see above queerladies) made it such an awesome environment.

i attribute the environment mostly to lea and carly, even though the show was at a different venue, because it had the same spirit of delight, enthusiasm, and wonder that makes all of the rubber rose’s events awesome. still, it was missing as much of a feeling of power (youtube, sound) as some of their past events. the show was at a different venue becauuuuse the rubber rose has permit Issues. due to their being an “adult business” apparently there is a whole laundry list of things that are not allowed in their performance space. which drives me crazy.

ah, well. if you haven’t missed it yet, go see the art show. and if you’re in the area, go give the rubber rose some money. because i can’t. because i still don’t have a job. awesome!! oh: and official no-go on amsterdam today. double-awesome.

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.

first off: i have possibly not mentioned here how awesome my webhost is, but they are. greendinosaur.net is hosted by laughingsquid, which is the best web service i could imagine. like, everything i want out of webstuff? right there. with super customer service and good community.

i’m bringing this up not because i just felt like making a random promo, though – i’m actually brought to it attempting to promote something else.

i just updated the wordpress for this blog. it used to take an hour or so to update, but i have recently started using the wordpress automatic upgrade plugin, and it is great. which is to say, it does it all for me while i write this post. so i haven’t actually updated yet, but i will have by the time you r-never mind.

the moral of the story is that this plugin is great if you’re managing wordpress blogs, and scott beale, who runs laughing squid, blogged about it here and that’s what i found first on google when searching for the plugin for you.

another plugin that i’m loving is the comment email responder plugin, because i grew up with diary and journal services online that told me when people responded to things that i said in their journals. it’s not working 100% perfectly for me, but i think that it’s at least working for you – you’re getting comment notifications, aren’t you? i hope so.

in final geek news, i have a big crush on this really gay pointless thing.

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.

i’ve decided that if i wait just a little longer without changing the layout, this blog will be in season again.

although truthfully, i’m in a web design class and i need to figure out *something* to design for my final project.

i’ve been in seattle and olympia for the past few weeks, staying with various people and seeing lots of exciting things. it’s dreadfully warm here. so i’ve been knitting, of course. i designed a little mouse finger puppet, which i adore. i gave it to a girl that i have a crush on, but she’s not dating new people right now, apparently. i learned that through observation, not rejection. thank goodness.

there’s a thing about blogging that the longer you spend not doing it, the harder it is to pick it up again because you feel like you need to say something profound to make up for your absence.

cubbie and i broke up a while ago. i get teary a lot, still.

i haven’t updated many things in the back end of the blogs recently – nor the front end, for that matter (this is the part where i look shiftily at my “it is beginning to be autumn!” image). but! today, tonight, i updated wordpress to 2.13 (apparently 2.2 is coming out very soon and has tags…) and i created a tag cloud… list… for our categories. hooray! while i was turning off all of the plugins so that i could do the installation, i got seven spams in two minutes! insanity. thank goodness for the amazing spam filtration of akismet.

so, those are things.

also, i made a marble cake today. except that i don’t know where the baking powder is, and the molasses/baking soda suggestion… worked, but not so much. so it’s a half-risen cake, but that’s *much* better than my not-risen cakes of late. i substitute things much, and it’s a bad plan. i need to either recipe or not, i think. at least when it comes to baking.

do any of you want a blog here? especially those of you without blogs – i keep meaning to ask. there’s plenty of space.

what else? oh! i’m almost done listening to my music in alphabetical order by song. that means that i can return to listening to biased random mixes. i’ve been missing some of my favorite artists, who just don’t have as much music out as other folks.

i really want to go to daiso! my mother trained me to adore asian things by first doling out infrequent trips to uwajimaya, and then moving us into the fringes of an asian neighborhood in san diego (not *the* asian neighborhood, although i spent time there after school sometimes, but definitely a neighborhood that had lots of asian groceries). so, i miss mostly the shiny cookie aspects of these communities, and chamalyn, although amazing, isn’t doing enough – it’s too tiny. besides, where else could i get dinosaur origami paper? or mini bamboo furniture for aviva alexander?

i’m glad that you understand.

i’m sorry that the rss feed is spewing! i’m doing some work on the blogs – upgrading wordpress and reformatting the permalinks, mostly, so if you are attacked by me (and/or cubbie) again later, i very much apologize.

in one of my classes, i’m doing well – getting each week’s work (because it’s online) done quickly, being on top of things… and it was just mentioned that i hadn’t signed in, yesterday, since the fourth. which is only a week, but apparently in the world of the internet, that’s a Long Time. what can you do?

so, i also haven’t updated here since then. so that’s a Long Time as well. i guess.

it’s been a busy world for cubbie and i, full of lots of delicious drama. we’re working it out, which is lovely. we’ve been Going Out and Doing Things, having dates, which we haven’t done for a while.

in searching for things to do with cubbie, i’ve also found things that i want to do on my own. gay shame meets every week, which is great because i had thought they were defunct.

trouble is, though, i keep finding things to do and then… not doing them. i have one in-person class and the rest are online and you’d think that maybe i would want to get out of the house more, but… no. this is why i haven’t been updating, see, because then i’d have to tell you about this and that’s certainly no fun.

what else, though. something is fun, and i’ve forgotten what it is. cleaning the house? no. um, oh! we’re thinking about moving to a new apartment in our building, if we ever make an appointment to see it. apparently there are studios that are only $50 more per month that are bigger and overlook the bay! i’m so hopeful.

that’s all i got.