ghosts are good company

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.

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.

oh, hi blog!

lately i’ve had Too Much Staring At A Computer Syndrome, which i don’t think will go away anytime soon, what with the 35 hours of computer-staring i’m scheduled for next week. ah, well, at least they’re giving me money for it.

they’re also allowing me to knit in between jobs, which is great. i made a baby hat for a baby who is due to arrive a few months from now - the hat looks like this except more baby-sized - and am currently working on a scarf for my unclestephen.

stephen approached me at christmas about making him a checkered scarf and i said “sure, that’ll be easy!” before realizing that frankly, no. that would be confusing. i tried everything i could think of - stranded colorwork in the round, stranded colorwork to be folded over, just making three striped scarfs and then crocheting them together - before heading back to what i had been avoiding all along: double knitting.

i was avoiding it because it seemed harrrrd, and confusing, and (shh) sometimes i forget how to purl. the knittinghelp video on doubleknitting didn’t help much either because “um, i thing i messed up” in the middle doesn’t inspire much confidence, does it?

eventually i found the stitchdiva tutorials and, while i was still confused, decided to give it a go. and now i’m this far! …and excessively proud of myself.

other things going: Plans for school might work out, apparently i could have walked at graduation last year, and i’m excited and nervous about heading up to the bay area next month for the trans leadership summit.

and those are things.

i just got out of a hot bath and into dirty clothes. tonight my mother and i are staying at the serrano hotel, which has lovely deep bathtubs - with enough hot water! at my apartment, you have to turn the water to its hottest possible to get anything near a nice bath, and then pretty soon it’s cold.

when we started planning my move, she booked this room with two beds just in case i wanted to stay. it’s good she did, because everything i own is now stuffed into a cheerful ten-foot u-haul truck. a year ago i drove my car down to san diego to sell, and now i’m driving my whole life down there. from here i can see the building in which everything i own is parked, but i can’t see my truck. it worries me - but not as much as parking the truck in front of my tenderloin apartment does.

i should sleep, as i need to be up in five-and-a-half hours to clean (after three hours sleep last night, awesome), but i wanted to check in and tell you that, hurrah hurrah and hallelujah, there will be no ore packing updates from me here. for now.

oh! and my mother was a sweetheart, after me bitching all day, and took us out to dinner at the tonga room. she mentioned as we walked in that she expected birds to start talking - and it was indeed as awesome as hoped.

i hurt everywhere, folks. soon my move will be over, and the world will be happier.

hello.

i’ve packed thirty-something boxes thus far. i’m running out of time. half of those boxes that i’ve packed are books. whoops.

i went out to dinner tonight, at millennium, with the two people here to whom i really needed to say goodbye. i didn’t really, though - at the end it was just goodbye hugs, not Goodbye hugs. dinner was tasty and filling, but is now on the sidewalk. the good thing about living in the drunkard’s neighborhood is that nobody looks at you strangely as your anxiety disorder causes you to puke down the block. i still always feel bad for my companions, though. and today, my shoes and dress. ew?

it’s amazing how used one can get to puking. i’ve been doing it unintentionally for six years now. six years?!

eventually, maybe, i will be able to navigate the world without making it messier. for now, i’ll continue packing.

yet again, patches emulates life. tomorrow is the “monsters of accordion” tour (well, two days from now - there’s still all of thursday to go), and i’m sourly tempted… but there’s the whole way that even though my last post was about not spending money? i’ve been spending money.

on:

• the patches book (mentioned in the past post)
• both anna oxygen albums, because i have found that her music makes me immensely happy.
• wreck this journal. there’s a grammatical error on that page. perhaps it is not the best journal for me after all. but, to quote strongbad, “oooh, if you want to be possessive, it’s just i-t-s, but if it’s supposed to be a contraction, then it’s i-t-apostrophe-s. scalawag.”

i’m feeling self-conscious because maybe two new people have said “hello, i am reading your blog!” and that makes it so many more people than the one person who was reading it before. i’ve been blogging since (this is the part where i count on my fingers) 2000? but i’ve been doing it mostly privately until last summer, when i took a class called “art of the blog” which was pretty awesome, but also really scary. the class was mostly blog design, truthfully, but it also asked me to step out of the protected space bubble and take credit for my thoughts and opinion and overabundant rambling on google, which i’m still rather afraid of (speaking of bad grammar).

i took another class with arlen this summer, and faced somewhat the same challenge - this time it was just basic web design. it was different for me than the rest of the class, because i started designing web pages in (finger-counting again) 1998 or so? maybe 1997? and they were crappy. i was very young, and this was right before/at the very begining of css, so all of the resources available were all about table-based layouts and… it was messy, is the moral of the story. still i lean toward the very simple design, so it was somewhat embarrassing. i ended up making that page and this mini-site for my ex-boyfriend, cubbie.

cubbie and i went to see the simpsons movie today, speaking of cubbie and spending money and evergreen (when i was a tour guide at evergreen we were always encouraged to mention groening. i was always kind of embarassed, not by his work but by how proud evergreen was of him). the movie was surprisingly good - i’m always afraid of things like that (vague, um, tv shows that are pretty good turning into movies? the simpsons’ potential for either greatness or sludge? things that are marketed explosively?), but i laughed a lot and waved my hands gleefully even more.

we were at the grand lake theater, where the matinee was affordable and the popcorn was free (mon.-thu. for the summer)! it feels like a good deal, even if i did have to pay seven dollars to cross the bay and back - one of us would have had to anyway. ho hum.

the theater is absolutely beautiful. we sat in the balcony of theater three (balcony because it reminded me of the capitol theater in olympia), which is decorated in a faux-egyptian theme, with paintings on the walls and statuary. all of the entrance wall has hieroglyphics stenciled on to it - i wonder if they say anything. my favorite part of the theater by far, however, was the ceiling. i looked up and… stars! cubbie’s analysis was “that’s how they do stars at disneyworld,” but mine was just “ooh, shiny.”

after the movie we walked around for a while, exploring, and found many places to have our nails done. had we, you know, wanted to get our nails done. eventually i came home and procrastinatorially puttered, although i was successful in emailing the derby dolls about my interest in them.

also i was successful in pouring a whole glass of water onto my bed. i had thought i would get to bed “early” tonight, too.

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’m sitting in a coffeeshop in portland, typing on my macbook. it’s a stereotype i don’t usually fit, but i’ve got four hours still until my train leaves. i should go soon and catch my bus downtown - i might go to ground kontrol and play video games for the rest of the wait, but they don’t open until noon (and that’s just theoretical).

i’ve only been here for a bit - twenty hours in portland, almost as long as my next train ride - but it’s been nice, i was able to visit with a friend and find a place to sleep, which is about all one can ask. next stop sacramento, for even less time than portland, and then i’ll be back in san francisco… at least for a bit.

first thing on the agenda in san francisco is to go see bishop allen when they play live there. i haven’t bought a ticket, but i don’t thiiink it will sell out… a concert alone is going to be weird.

anyhow, those are the travel things. in seattle last week i went to see a rat city rollergirls bout, which made me wish that i had seen the film about them, and also that i could be in seattle for the championships. there’s a special on derby from kbtc up on youtube here, which has just a basic intro to what derby is and stuff. other than how i will describe it, which mostly includes the word “awesome.”

so, yes, now it is later and i should really leave this coffehouse, because my joints are feeling like they would like to moooove.

ok internet, i have decided on what i want to do for my birthday. it will include a staple from both queer and hipster culture: camp.

that’s right, folks, it’s the tonga room. it must be recalled that perhaps one of my favorite things ever is the enchanted tiki room at disneyland.

then i wanted to go to either bonkers or portal one, but since happy hour at the tonga room ends at the same time bonkers closes, it seems like portal one. some other time, bonkers? you seem like a good warm afternoon place to go, but that’s just because i’m thinking you’ll be overly air conditioned. portal 1 is open until eleven.

hopefully cubbie doesn’t work too too late on friday (i’m afraid he works until ten) - if he does, can we make these thursday plans? that might be better, anyhow, with the less-busy, ja?

so, if you’re in san francisco and interested in doing these things starting at five on thursday the 26th, let me know - either in comments or by email. hurray!

edit: it’s friday again, actually. same plans, just change of date. xo

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.