ghosts are good company

baaaaaaby seahorses

Originally uploaded by capnpuck

i hadn’t actually spend much time with seahorses before i had them tattooed on my leg, so it was nice that i had a chance to see some at the birch aquarium. the aquarium itself i didn’t like as much as the california academy of sciences‘ setup of fishyness, but the academy only had dead seahorses, so i maybe cried a little bit. until i wandered into the penguin room where they were feeding the penguins.

but the birch aquarium. seahorses that are alive, yes. a big porcupine pufferfish, yes. mostly, though, the baaaaby seahorses pictured (and titular). so small, two inches or so from head to tail-tip, they made the bumbling adult seahorses look positively graceful. the babies had managed to get tangled up when we first found them, but eventually unlinked themselves (i think they designed monkeys in a barrel after seahorses) and started bobbing around, upside-down and sideways. i love them.

other than the seahorses and the faux otka (r.i.p. real otka), the aquarium was just so-so. but there were four separate tanks with seahorses in them, so it was a worthwhile trip all-in-all.

hey look, november happened.

that’s about all i have to say about that.  nat’s still in spokane for that harvest festival they celebrate out those parts – he’ll be back tomorrow, about which i’m excited.

i don’t really have any money, but i keep dreaming about a tiny vacation, maybe even just a night or two at one of the state campgrounds…  i started my americorps vista position, about which i will write something sometime probably, which has been really great but also superbusy.

i’ve started singing with olympia’s new free choir, which has been beautiful – an open community of people just singing their butts off – and hope to get involved with some more stuff like that as the next few months roll in (After January, is when i will hopefully have some downtime, but i would like some extracurriculars before that, i think).

oh dear.  the exhaustion.

Three!

Originally uploaded by capnpuck

i am so proud of myself!

the night of great-grandma’s funeral, we drove from oly to des moines for a celebration at my grandmother’s house. on the way, nat and i got distracted by my father’s house (it’s right on the way, i couldn’t not stop by) and were gifted an abundance of fruit – canned peaches, dried apples, jam jam jam, amazing grapes (how sweet) and a big bag of apples. i spent a day soon after paring them, and when i was done i noticed… that some neighbors had a bunch of apples sitting in buckets with a sign that said, of course, “free apples.”

so i pared some more. and now there is so much applesauce.

i’ve been piecing together my canning knowledge with information from The Internets, and in one minute (yes, i will be taking a break from typing this), there will be a third jar of applesauce successfully canned!

and we’re at three. there are probably ten or so more to go, as there’s a giant bowl still of applesauce, and then the apple butter. for a total of six dollar’s worth of financial investment, and hecka more time – something that i have a fair amout of, for now. i got the jars from great-grandma, and the only thing that we purchased was the lids. whenever i hear them sucking in, actually sealing, i feel like jumping up and down.

bird = love

Originally uploaded by capnpuck

i know, i know – part three is still pending. i’m trying to get the apartment packed up, which is really hard to do when i’m… not packing at all. that needs to start now – better, a few days ago. as a filler, here’s a picture of butter banana and i.

corgi and bess

Originally uploaded by capnpuck

per my previous post. his name is peter.

actually, when i came to add a post to the blog, it was to say none of those geeky things. it was instead to share with you the fact that

I HAVE FIGURED OUT WHAT I WANT TO BE FOR HALLOWEEN.

if only i had realized before 5am on halloween that I WANT TO BE A GNOME for halloween.

because, i mean, they are round and cozy and perhaps the best ever. all i need is… a hat. which i could knit if i had time. and a belt. which i could knit if i had time. and a beard. which i could fashion if i had time.

we’ll see how it goes. for now, look how much cuter this child looks as a gnome than i ever will (i just looked at that link as if it were a parenthetical, and said to myself “for now, look how much cuter than i ever will” doesn’t make sense as a sentence!!”).

for now i am studying up on my gnome puns just in case i dress up and go out somewhere.

anyway, whatever happens, may this day be full of at least a little magic and peace for you all. gnome what i mean?

other things:

+ you have probably realized by now that i am safe from the fires. a lot of people aren’t, and if there’s a way for you to donate/help out that you feel comfortable with, please try.

- amsterdam application is still pending based on three items which are all out of my control. in fact, these are the same things that it was pending on two weeks ago. and the program is full. apparently if those things show up at the study abroad office soon, i should be able to get on the waitlist. yes, i *have* actually been in touch with people about these things.

+ i should be able to get back on my skates soon. i need to remember to start shuffling around the house on them, so that i don’t panic the second i get on skates at the rink.

i’ve somehow managed to become nocturnal again. it’s interesting, rather like the world is hanging upside down. it’s not very good, though, because by the time i’m ready to be productive, it’s late and my mind tells me that i should be going to bed, so then i’m not productive in hopes that i’ll go to bed, but i don’t.

today i made gross scones out of strange mexican pancake mix (it was “tres estrellas” brand; i should have held out for cinco estrellas) and pumpkin. i ate one, but i still have two more sitting there and leering at me.

i also made quiche. i think that quiche is somewhat the perfect food, as it combines lots of different foods and also has protein! which is important and i don’t get enough of. however, my pie crust skills are currently lacking (they used to be good, but have declined for want of materials such as real butter). this is the second quiche i’ve made since getting home from seattle – i bought a dozen eggs and distributed them evenly. hurray quiche.

there are twelve days left to pack up my house, after which i will be moving to san diego. i’m getting panicky because i’m having a very hard time getting started. i’ve been acquiring boxes and i’m pretty sure that i have enough, and most of my stuff is actually already in boxes, but i’m still super-overwhelmed.

i started a savings account for my amsterdam trip. i’m getting 5.27% interest or something, so that’s nice – and also it’s preventing me from giving in and buying these amazingly attractive shoes that happen to be on sale and only available in my size. i love fluevogs and don’t currently have any particularly femme ones – just these boots and these in pink and black. i might still have them in white and black as well, but i wore those out pretty quickly my first few years of college. oh fluevog, you do hold claim to an extensive piece of my shoe-loyalty heart. when you’re on sale. and now you’re working on lovely vegan shoes as well? quite tidy.

that was an extensive shoe-related tangent. i have a lot of shoes. this is a problem that comes with being deeply invested in many gender presentations and having an obsession with shoes. perhaps if i picked just one gender presentation, i would have just as many shoes pertaining to that one as i do now. of course, i could just have more (of course we would, we’d just eat more).

i’ve recently come to adore this comic. usually when online comics release books i manage to convince myself that their online presence will be enough for me, but here… a bit of me aches to hold suspenders and glasses tangibly in my hands. i’m a little bit too much like suspenders. seriously. the author has an art show in san diego that’ll still be running for two or three days that i’m there. maybe i can go.

i have to decide if i want to, on saturday, go to a blythe doll meetup in san jose or to a flashmob dance party at the ferry building or to watch clueless at cubbie’s house. i’ll probably end up at the latter, because (can you have latter if there’s more than two items? if not, final) it’s people i know, but it’s so so weird trying to be his friend.

recap since last entry (if just because that’d be a sad note to end on): i did not go to ground kontrol, instead i went to a store called collage (i think), where i purchased things to make a thank you card for the folks’ at whose house i spent the night. i did go to see the bishop allen show, and it was delightful. i am still obsessed with roller derby, and the san diego derby dolls have their bouts a mile and a half from where i’ll be living. hurray!

i hope you all are doing well. recommend me good podcasts, if you want to.

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!

i was going to ramble at you about the four humours because i am a little too sanguine and choleric and phlegmatic. so i looked it up to see if the fourth humour was something in which i was lacking, but it’s melancholy and i’m generally full of the black bile, so why have the bile and the phlegm and the blood taken over? melancholy is better than this mysterious sick.

although, i like to think of the four humours as the houses in hoggy hoggy hogwarts. see the table at this part of the wikipedia page. we’ve got black bile, which is my lovely slytherin house. from aristotle’ four sources of happiness, propraitari. gryffs, although this is debatable and increases the gryffindor/slytherin overlap, would be blood, characterized by courageous and amorous actions. yellow bile is our yellow house, the bumbleriffic lovely hufflepuff, who work on their ethikos (moral value), and then phlegm as the logical, dialogike, ravenclaws. although really, we could just as easily make slytherins blood, hufflepuff black bile, and gryffs yellow bile. i should decide these things before i ramble. looking at the whole table, though, that makes a lot more sense – looking also at fromm’s eorientations, kretchmer’s character styles, spränger’s four values, etc.

you have to understand, i’m also listening to eddie izzard’s “highlights of history.” if you are familiar with that delightful piece of comedy, you will be much more familiar with the batshit crazy logic that is going on at the moment.