| Date: | 2009-10-30 00:18 |
| Subject: | poem post! |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  sleepy |
Alright, I mentioned finishing my Cantiga project and writing another rondeau redoublé, and I said I'd post them. Well, here they are:
( A Toast to the Muses )
( Rex Occidental )
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| Date: | 2009-10-28 11:33 |
| Subject: | I liiiiive! |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  calm |
Ha HA! The long wait is over! I have a functional computer (thanks, Joseph!) and an internet connection! So, what the heck have I been up to this past month and a half, anyway? I'm not going to go into detail on anything (ask if you really want to know), but here are some highlights:
-finished moving down to San Jose and am learning my way around
-working at Borders and getting paid to be around books
-got Greg involved in the SCA: he's been to two events and is totally hooked (wants to do brewing, woodworking and voice heralding), plus I made him tunics
-saw Tom at October Crown (and got computer from him); also saw Janos go to finals (go, Janos!) and then get his Pelican
-competed in Mists Bardic and came within a hair's breadth of winning: finished my Cantiga project and wrote a new rondeau redoublé, both of which got a lot of positive feedback and which I will be posting later
-joined the Treble Makers and am enjoying myself thoroughly
-went up to Allyshia (Humboldt County) for Harvest Feast, which was delicious and fun, and added to my guard and to my court; also set a challenge to my guard to write a piece in a period style on the subject of their choice by Lupe
-reread a bunch of Mercedes Lackey
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Yep, I'm mostly moved out of my parents' house. I have my new key and most of my belongings are in my room at the other house. Just got my bike and a couple more things to move and I'll be installed in San Jose. Well, that and furniture. I still need to get furniture.
This means that I'll have no computer access until I get a computer. This means that I won't be answering any emails for at least a week, if not two. Just to warn you. I'll be reachable by cell phone if you need to get a hold of me.
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| Date: | 2009-09-17 07:46 |
| Subject: | Job and moving |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: | perky | | Music: | whatever Dad is playing on the radio |
This afternoon, I have day four of my week-long training at the Santana Row Borders. Yesterday, we learned how to do registers and then got to work them (under supervision) for a couple of hours. It was pretty interesting, and I felt all competent and stuff. Go, me!
Also, I'm hoping to be able to move on Saturday. I've got all my paperwork done and just need to turn it in, so it should be possible. I just had a fantastic idea, too: I miss Tom and he has a truck. I don't know what he's doing this weekend, but if he's free, I'm going to ask him if he'd be willing to come out and help me move. I just need to get a hold of him...
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On Wednesday morning, I applied for a job at Borders. That afternoon, I got a call to schedule an interview for yesterday (Thursday) morning. I had my interview and it went really, really well. Last night, I got a call offering me a job as a bookseller. Sunday afternoon, I get to go in and fill out some paperwork, and then I start training either on Monday or Tuesday. Woohoo!
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I'm going to be moving in with my old friend Greg in San Jose. It's an old house (well over 100 years old) and a pretty neat one, too. I can take either the carpeted upstairs room for $525 or the hardwood downstairs room for $575 (leaning towards the upstairs). The house has two bathrooms, both downstairs, an older kitchen with an old gas stove, and a sizable back yard with two persimmon trees (yay!) and a Granny Smith apple tree.
( Stuff to do before I move )
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| Date: | 2009-09-04 16:17 |
| Subject: | Art I owe |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  determined |
I've just realized that I owe a lot of people art and I need to keep a list of it somewhere. Like here. This list is everything that I can remember right now - if I owe you something and it's not on the list, tell me! I don't want to forget anybody.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) merula31: calligraphy - done, need to scan and send
snowdragonct: 1x2 with calligraphy - lines done, calligraphy done, will finish coloring when I have my own computer again
redwolfgirl: coat of arms for wedding - started, and I found the concept sketch
redwolfgirl: calligraphy for tattoo - waiting for text
Adimurti (Gaia): calligraphy name - pondering
gunsandpocky (y!Gallery): calligraphy - done, need to send to liralen
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My brother and I sat down yesterday to do some basic preliminary planning and goal sketching. I have a lot less to figure out than I thought I did, which is nice. What I have on my To-Do list, though, is stuff that seems pretty big from my standpoint. I need to make a master resume, which will make my life much easier as I'm applying for jobs, I need to actually apply for jobs, and I need to decide which housing possibility would be better for me.
For the housing, I have two choices, both in San Jose:
One is with an old friend whose parents own the house. He's doing paramedic training right now, and has been back in California for about two weeks. I've known him for about eleven years. We're both huge anime geeks, and he has a cat. He's also interested in the SCA. I don't know what the rent would be yet.
The other possibility is a house with three other female musicians, all vocalists, two of whom go to SJSU. The house belongs to one of their parents. I went over to see the room on Tuesday and ended up staying for three hours just talking with them. There are also two cats in residence. The rent would be $750 for a room with a private bathroom.
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My room is now no longer claustrophobia-and-broken-ankle-inducing, thanks to four hours of work this morning and yesterday with a professional organizer. The floor is mostly clear, the bed is fully visible, and the top of the desk actually exists! Next step: the Closet of DOOOOOOOOOOM! It feels really good to have the room livable again, even if I (hopefully) won't be living there much longer.
On a completely different subject, I played with salmon a couple of nights ago. I got 2.75 lbs of wild Coho salmon for $10/lb and decided to cook it en papillote with white wine, tarragon, olive oil, a little bit of garlic, and a pinch of salt. It came out superb, even if I did forget the salt in three of the packets because I was teaching our Spanish exchange student how to do it.
Yeah, she's been here for almost a week, and she's so sweet. She's still adjusting to the huge time difference between here and Madrid, and there have been a lot of things she and Mom have had to deal with to get her registered at the high school here, but she's been a really good sport about it. I took her yesterday to get a cell phone she can use while she's in America, and there was a huge delay while they tried to sort out a problem with her phone. She was so patient, even though she was bored waiting. I was bored waiting, too.
In other news, I win. That is all.
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At least, I think the plural of rondeau is rondeaux. *shrug* Whatever.
So, a couple of months ago, I fell in love with a new poetry form: rondeau redoublé. It's nice and hard, and it turns out that it's even SCA period: it's French and dates to 1526 (thanks, Leah!). Woohoo! Anyway, the upshot of this is that I've now written two. Go, me!
The first one I wrote was on the prompt of "extramural":
( Faithful Lies )
*
The second one I wrote was on the prompt of "music":
( Sight-Singing )
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More John fic, not really canon, but if it were, it would happen in the middle of "Hands" (paragraph three, to be precise).
Call
John gets a call. 441 words, no prompt.
( Call )
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| Date: | 2009-08-13 20:27 |
| Subject: | Eh heh heh... |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  sheepish |
Learning experiences taste... interesting. Actually, it wasn't as bad this time around as it could have been. I decided to try making curried veggies. Normally, not a problem, but I had the brilliant idea to do a yogurt sauce and cheerfully dumped the yogurt into the hot pan with the veggies where it promptly curdled. Oops. I also put in the onions too soon and the carrots didn't go in soon enough. *sigh* As I said, though, it didn't taste too bad. Just a tad, um, odd.
On a completely unrelated subject, I finally got back to dance practice last night, which was a ton of fun. I hadn't been since the Wednesday before Crown. Old Mole is definitely a fun dance, as is Alta Regina.
Oh, and I seem to have found my errant muse, at least for the time being. The current prompt word in the poetry exercise thread I frequent is "cinnamon," which yielded this:
Apple Butter Season
Crisp wind in my hair, redolent
with cinnamon-spiked apples,
invokes the ghosts of wind-rosy cheeks
and frost-nipped noses that tingled
with returning warmth, of glove-thick fingers
that dropped as many apples as they picked,
perched in the gnarled Pippin tree behind the house,
of hands juice-slick from peeling and coring, and aching arms
that stirred the giant, bubbling pot on the stove for hours
in the heavy, fragrant heat of my grandmother's
autumn kitchen.
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| Date: | 2009-08-09 16:12 |
| Subject: | Book and music! Yay! |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  ecstatic | | Music: | Cantigas de Santa Maria |
I just headed over to BookBuyers after returning a couple of movies and, lo and behold, they not only had a copy of "Courtly Dances of the Renaissance/Nobilta di Dame" (16th century dance manual by Caroso), but a CD of a selection of the Cantigas de Santa Maria. Whee! Only cost me $16, too. Happy, happy.
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| Date: | 2009-08-02 18:48 |
| Subject: | grr. argh. |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  blah |
Ugh. I feel so heavy today. Not physically, just weighed down. I guess I'm just really freaking depressed. So, what's new?
At least I have something to look forward to now, though - finem and I are hanging out on Tuesday. Seeing her is always awesome.
I'm also displaying my typical "if it looks like a confrontation, run away!" behavior: I finally got the check I'd been expecting from the guy that took my place in the house in Arcata (oh, btw, I moved... more on that later), but it's not as much as he owes me. Now, a normal person would call the house and ask what was going on. I, of course, being me, look at the phone and think, "I should call..." and then proceed not to.
On the up side, I did draw some today.
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| Date: | 2009-07-29 17:22 |
| Subject: | *whimper* |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  frustrated |
Things that are going on right now that are completely overwhelming me:
-trying to find a job
-trying to move out of my parents' house
-family dynamics
-missing Tom
-depression
-baronial duties and my impending abdication
-figuring out what the fuck I'm even supposed to be doing
-getting over being sick
-trying (and failing) to take care of myself
-Mom being Mom
-feeling useless/feeling like a burden
-trying not to cry
-crying anyway
-the disaster zone that is my room
-having no income of my own
I've been swinging back and forth between feeling numb, feeling overwhelmed, and wanting to scream, punctuated by spates of crying. I'm in bad shape, and I know it, but I can't seem to make myself care enough to do anything about it, so it just keeps getting worse. I feel like I'm drowning, and I'm so far underwater that I don't even know which way the surface is anymore. It's easy to pretend that everything's fine when there's stuff to do and tons of people around - away from it all, I just collapse in on myself.
On top of it all, I'm so fucking pissed at my mom. She set the wheels in motion to host an exchange student without really making sure that the whole family was alright with it. Well, she sort of did. Her method or asking me was to ask me if I was planning on living here. I told her that, though I love my family dearly, I need my space, meaning, yes, I do want to move out. She then asked if I would mind her hosting an exchange student who would, of course, be using my room. I said fine, not really knowing that she had meant this fall, and that I had to be out of the house by that point. Of course, had I known, I probably would have still said fine because I have an incredibly difficult time telling people "no" about anything. So, here she is, blithely setting the wheels in motion, while I'm sitting there feeling taken advantage of. And then, when we get back from vacation, she starts to complain to me that she's overwhelmed by all the things she still has to do for the student's arrival. I stopped myself from saying a couple of rather uncharitable things (such as, "Well, you wanted this, and you had no problem trampling me to get it, so suck it up and deal."). And she keeps poking at me to get my room packed and move out. I don't have a place to move to, but she seems to think that finding a place should be easy and that all I have to do is ask someone at church. I don't even know most of the people she suggests, but since she knows them and they know me, it obviously shouldn't be a problem. It's mostly little things that have me so mad at her, though. I can't list them all and I'm not going to try.
The funny thing about ranting like that is that sometimes it makes you feel a lot better and sometimes it just makes you feel worse. I feel worse now than I did when I started.
Do I let people take advantage of me too easily?
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I'm still not feeling like doing the Massive Update of DOOOOOOM, so you get the fabulous idea that just hit me while I was having breakfast:
I need to write something for the West, and it needs to be to the tune of "Santa Maria, strella do dia" from the Cantigas de Santa Maria. And, of course, being me, I have to use the rhyme structure of the original. ^______^
Here it is so far:
Rex Occidental,
Regina gentle,
your love parental
builds kingdom monumental.
Fairest rose, whose grace is undisputed,
only grows where chivalry has rooted.
Where she goes, the world 'round her seems muted,
for she glows with radiance undiluted.
Rex Occidental...
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Okay, yeah, it's been a while and, as some of you know, there have been a lot of major changes. However, I'm not in the mood to do a Massive-Update-no-Jutsu right now, so have a meme instead:
Stolen from liralen:
YOU'RE ON MY FRIENDS LIST. I want to know 28 things about you. I don't care if we've never talked, never really clicked, or if we already know everything about each other. You are obviously on my f-list, so let me know with whom I'm friends with!
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Yep, the new laptop is working out well. Just updating it and installing stuff in between researching for papers and writing my first resume. It's nice to be able to be social *and* be on the computer at the same time.
Today is the first day of finals, but my first final isn't till Wednesday at 8:ooAM.
Were moving on the 22nd, so a lot of cleaning and packing has to occur before then. I can't wait till we have the new place. It's so much nicer than our current house.
I just can't believe Patty's almost gone. She's leaving on Saturday, for good (except visits, of course). She'll be spending a month or more of this summer in France to finish off the last requirements for her French major. I've lived with her for nearly three years, so having her gone is going to be very weird. I'm going to miss her a lot.
To end on a cheerful note, I just got to try Haagen-Dazs' Carmelized Pear and Pecan ice cream (I bought a pint on sale), and it is delicious. <3
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| Date: | 2009-05-05 17:44 |
| Subject: | Woooooooo! |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: | ecstatic |
We got the house! *dances about*
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| Date: | 2009-05-05 15:48 |
| Subject: | Happy birthday to me! |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: | chipper | | Music: | whatever Laurel's iPod is playing |
I'm having a pretty good day so far. I didn't have class today, so Patty and I went out to lunch at Golden Harvest. Whole wheat pancakes with bananas are delicious. Also, when I checked my email this morning, I had eleven happy birthday messages. Yay!
On the computer front, it turns out that I won't have to buy a new one after all: my Dad discovered that he had an extra laptop from 2005 at his lab and he sent it up to me. It should arrive tomorrow morning. Double yay! Thank you, Dad!
Also, we should be finding out tomorrow or Thursday if we got approved for a house just down the street from our current place. It's a much nicer house, too. Keep your fingers crossed for us!
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