ghosts are good company

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.

we have been working on the Getting Getting Things Done project with our household, and while some things have been highly delightful, others have stalled.

we went to ikea last week and bought a handful (truckful, actually) of shelves from the gorm ’system,’ and i’ve been putting them together bit by bit. i have one shelf constructed, except for the top extender piece - because i really need a drill to do that. also, a drill would be optimal for the brace which will keep it from… slumping over. kind of important. i could just drive the screws into unscrewed holes, but i don’t trust myself in that being secure. another challenge in our gorm experiment is that our favorite piece in the series, the hangers with five knobs, apparently have been discontinued (and are missing from the website, now?). as have the hangers with three knobs. this is super disappointing because 1) we need to hang things up and 2) one end of the shelving is next to the heater, which would have been great for hang-drying clothes.

speaking of drying clothes? i did laundry. well, 2/3 of the laundry. which is an awesome start! i also cleaned out the closet. the next step after that was to install the hand-shower that we got for christmas, but… our waterpik mist and massage showerhead leaks from its “control ring.” it works, as a shower, but it doesn’t work as a mist and massage shower - it works as a spray and dlub shower. dlub being the sound and experience of water dripping in masses from the showerhead. apparently, according to the, hugely obnoxious automated assistant, i will have to get a replacement - however, the website failed me after that step, so i was forced to ask her “how can i contact a real person?” after filling out the form, they will get back to me in three days. maybe.

i just deleted my account with flickr because they insisted that today i merge my flickr account with my yahoo account. which is difficult for somebody who really doesn’t want a yahoo account. i need to figure out a way to easily host and display pictures hosted on my own webspace. thoughts? i could write something myself, but the moral of the story is that i’m lazy (which is why flickr was so nice!). i’m tired of big companies (yahoo, six apart, etc.) buying things that i like and “making them better” but actually making them not so good.

which reminds me that my friend taylor posted a link from her music blog informing folks that it’s boycott the riaa month. the most useful thing i’ve learned about from this (i don’t have money to spend on music pretty much ever) is about the riaa radar, which will tell you if your favorite artists (or their parent company’s parent company’s parent companies) are controlled by the riaa.

and again a speaking of - wanna get me a present? no sweat’s high tops in pink are on sale for $10.71 here, and $5.00 of the sale goes to benefit code pink for peace. i approve of that. civic center blog has been posting some good imagery about war protests recently - both the peace march about how we’re in the fourth year of this war now, and almost weekly coverage of the weekly quaker vigil.

this has been quite a tangental post. hi folks. how are you? oh! and don’t forget to celebrate st. cuthbert’s day! it’s today. my own cuthbert is sleeping to get ready, and i should do my best to join him now.

i’ve been busy (haven’t we all?) - with school, of all things! online classes have been doing me pretty well; i’m six weeks in and haven’t screwed anything up as badly as i tend to. my in person class is also going well - last wednesday we went to the glbt history archives. cubbie came along, and we both fell in love with the place. i got to take a tour of the museum of flight’s archives a few years ago, and that was fascinating (and huge), but these… smaller, quaint, and so much things i have worked with and wondered about for the past while. unlike airplanes.

i’ve been going through my music collection, culling out cds that i want to sell (…somewhere). recently, i’ve applied that practice to the music on my computer, deleting about six gigabyte’s worth of files. now i’m listening to all of the songs alphabetically. it’ll take a while. i’m currently listening to “act iii scene ii (shakespeare)” by saul williams. saul is pretty amazing - i got to work the show he played while i was at evergreen. actually, i asked if i could see his hand stamp at the door, and he looked at me and said in a very serious deep voice, “i’m saul.” pretty soon the person across from me doing the same job asked the opener to see her handstamp, so i felt a little less absurd.

speaking of live shows, i’m really looking forward to seeing the mountain goats with cubbie in a couple of weeks. i hope that the show will be as exciting as the one cubbie and i saw last summer, but without the long winters will be playing at the same venue. i miss seattle, and i don’t know if going to that show would help it, or make it worse.

it’s eight in the morning. i think that my neighbors are making stew or something. with pork. huh?
OH! this is the thing i really wanted to tell you about. i just finished reading this book, aaron renier’s spiral bound. i would like to recommend it to everyone, as, i imagine, would the author. it’s a deliciously drawn graphic novel with a fantastic group of characters, and an impeccable storyline. please, please, try to find a copy. especially if you like indie culture, or food, or children, or any combination of all of the above. or vegetables. no, not vegetables, anthropomorphized animals.

yes. once you have made an effort to acquire it, you may go about your regularly scheduled business. go, go!

no, seriously. i’m posting from under our kitchen table, where i have pasted pretty pictures and am basking in the glow of orange tablecloth.

pillows and blankets make it all the better.

this is my Homework Center for the quarter.  it has the best internet access in the house, which is necessary for those four online classes.  currently i am procrastinating from making Class Organizers which are just yellow file envelopes (the ones with the built-in brads?) with the names of my classes written on them. in sparkly crayon. you can’t tell me that this is an inappropriate way to spend my last quarter of college. well, i suppose you could, because comments are on, but you would be lying.
also, great news, i found a video store a block away from one of my schools (um, one of the campuses of my school) that reminds me of the song video bargainville by moxy früvous. yes, it’s that awesome. you can hear the song here, as well as seeing… a video that seems to stop in the middle.  anyhow, at *video wave*  they gave me popcorn and were supersweet and checked when my bus would be at the stop and now i’m going to go there every week. because why? because they have five day rentals, but since they know i’m in that neck of the woods every tuesday? they’re letting me keep my rentals the whole week, because they’re nice. this is perfect because every two weeks, i need a movie for the drama class i’m taking. they’re going to take my list and make sure they have everything, and they are my new best friends.

the end!

i’ve been having trouble sleeping, so i’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking lately. tonight i took a bath and finished (re-)reading my copy of genderqueer. the article about transy house, which is on page 297, i think, if you want to read it in google books. they have a cooperative house that operates in a family structure. the author of the piece owns the house, and discusses how wearing it can be, but the piece is so very full of hope. combining thought about that with the way that babies have been stars in the media that i’ve been consuming lately (the baby on lost is being baptized as i write this) and the dufty-goldfaber baby - oh, also and tango makes three… i’ve been in community baby-raising mood. i suppose it could also be that one of the guys we are hoping will be helping us with hypothetical child(ren) was (maybe is?) in town - and that cubbie is becoming friends with one of his friends who might want to carry a baby… so yeah. babystuff like woah.

i also think that cubbie and i should get registered as domestic partners soon. legal paperwork is good, sometimes - i also want to start thinking about what would be necessary should this type of baby-housing arrangement ever happen. eep.

anyhow, i’ve been doing crazily at school. i think i’m going to make twelve credits this quarter (after having originally registered for seventeen), and i should really pull eighteen credits next semester. i think i can do that, at least if most of them are online.

here are the classes that i’m looking at:

online
intro. to les/bi/gay/trans studies (3 credits)
mass media and society (3 credits)
racial and ethnic groups in the us (3 credits)
strategies for problem studies (2 credits)

in-person
aids in america (3 credits, wednesdays 6:30-9:30)
anthropology of homosexualities (3 credits, mondays 6:30-9:30)
supporting lgbt families in early childhood education (3 credits, tuesdays 6:00-9:00)
diversity: racism (.5 credits, 9:00-1:00, march 3&10)
diversity: classism (.5 credits, 9:00-1:00, february 3&10)

i could pick up a one-credit class if i wanted to get rid of the diversities (they’re early! it’s saturday! i have to get up at seven to get there on time!) in addition to one of the three-credits… i’m thinking that the e.c.e. class might not be for me. i think the best plan is to rank them and see what classes i can get, since my registration date is really late.

anyhow. i need to do better in school next semester, and then i need to graduate, and then i need to do well this summer, and then i need to do… something. and then maybe i’ll feel like i know what’s going on.