Looking in the Weatherglass

I'm pretty bad at maps, really.

2011-02-04T17:39:50Z

As a citizen of a commonwealth nation, I think I should be a bit ashamed at how helpful I found this video: The Difference Between the United Kingdom, Great Britain, and England Explained.

In other news, I've taken the last couple of days off, mostly by accident (where for 'accident' please read 'sloth'). To be absolutely fair to myself, I also had what I'm pretty sure was a (minor) migraine headache, though naturally that didn't actually prevent me from reading two novels and playing several hours of video games while I was "unable" to focus on doing work.

Today is therefore Back To Work Day! Such fun.

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Nothing to see here, really.

2011-01-22T23:42:45Z

Like a little girl, occasionally I am seized by the urge to play dress-up or experiment with makeup. Playing dress-up is always totally fine, because even if you put on the most ridiculous outfit ever, you can always change before leaving the house.

Makeup is a little bit less forgiving. When I play with makeup, I usually end up looking either deeply, tragically gothic (not the goal), or like I have two black eyes (on bad days). Neither is a look I really want to wear out into the world, but when you've caked that much product onto your face, it's not going to come off immediately, however much soap you get in your eyes in the attempt.

I bring all this up because, with lots of work before me this evening, I am naturally distracted by the thought of producing an exciting, rock-star-esque, smoky eye (my enthusiasm in the face of many past failures is inspiring, really). This is a terrible plan -- about a quarter of the time heavy eye makeup makes my eyes water, so applying it when I know I have to stare at a screen would be a poor life choice -- but it's not like I can do it tomorrow, because we have plans with friends and I'd prefer not to show up looking like the World's Saddest Clown.

Decisions, decisions.

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End of semester funk

2010-12-18T20:57:08Z

You know it's been a bad week when you keep vaguely hoping that you'll come down with the flu, to retroactively justify all the work you haven't been doing. Were I to list my major accomplishments this week, they would include:

1. Doing some laundry.

2. Watching the first 11 episodes of Hawaii 5-0.

3. Reading enough Hawaii 5-0 fic that I lost all perspective on whether any of it was any good.

4. Getting my hair cut.

And there the list ends. Today, in an effort to Get Something Done I went to the public library. Unfortunately, this just changed the venue in which I have stared fixedly at the internet, waiting for it to entertain me. Geez.

It does not help that I am experimenting with Google Chrome's Chrome for a Cause, because it allows me to tell myself that having the attention span of a hyperactive squirrel is good for charity. Which it kind of is, in this case.

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Not to say I don't like it...

2010-12-14T13:01:51Z

I am watching the first episode of Hawaii-5-0, not being intellectually equal to anything more demanding.

Guys, this show is so bad.

That is all, you may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

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A puzzling kerfuffle.

2010-11-29T16:48:06Z

There has been a recent flurry of articles discussing evidence that Jane Austen's style was actually due to an editor, and people, I am confused by the discussion.

There's been some interesting discussion of this topic on Language Log, but I still feel it misses the point, which is this: surely many writers get enormous feedback from their editors not only on their spelling and punctuation, but on their general style, plot architecture, characterization, and many other things.

Is this a false impression I have based on fandom, where friends and beta-readers are known for hugely influencing the shape of finished works? I feel like every pro writer I've ever heard talk about their process also talks about having to rework enormous parts of what they've written based on feedback from others.

So what's the big deal? Is the claim that Jane Austen's (male) contemporaries didn't get this kind of feedback at the manuscript stage, and so she's not "really" a classic author? Is the claim that she didn't actually see/approve the relevant changes, so this wasn't input into her writing so much as an ex-post-facto change to her books?

As I said: so confused.

In other news, I'm totally on track with my writing goals!

14790 / 15000 (98.60%)

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On track!

2010-11-21T20:48:17Z

10368 / 15000 (69.12%)

*does dance of being on track*

In other news, a week of sleeping very badly has me once again attempting to drastically reduce my caffeine intake. So far so good, I'm drinking tea instead of coffee and vaguely planning to switch to decaf in a few more days.

The trouble is that experience tells me that as soon as free coffee is available, I will crumble like a crumbly thing. And free coffee is widely available when I travel, on airplanes and in hotels and at conferences. And what should I be doing in ten days but leaving on a trip? So yes, slightly doomed to failure, though I might be able to hold the line at tea (instead of coffee), since the place I am travelling to is Northern Ireland.

(By the way, does anyone know how to refer if referring to it as Ireland is likely to get me punched in the face? My current plan is to not call it anything until I clear this up.)

But yes, my plan for sleep is to avoid caffeine. We'll see if this helps.

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Sometimes I enable. I'm an enabler.

2010-11-17T15:47:50Z

Something I thought some people on my flist might be interested in:

Marvel-themed skins for your iPhone.

(Or your iPod, or your Kindle, or your computer, or your non-Mac phone...)

Also represented are Dark Horse, Hellboy, and Tim Burton, among others.

Who, me? Browsing iPad paraphenalia even though I don't own one? Surely not.

Also, apparently the closest I have to a comics-themed icon is Delirium of the Endless. That's something to fix... not-today.

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NaNo and a couple of awesome things

2010-11-17T04:06:49Z

8261 / 15000 (55.07%)

( There really is something to this writing-as-a-habit thing. )

Anyhow.

I also made the mistake of beginning to read a novel yesterday, before I did any work in the evening. As I have said before, I am almost completely unable to stop reading a(n engaging) book once I've started it (if only this were true of literature, or academic papers.) So three-and-a-half hours later, I finally got up off the couch, but by then it was too late to do anything but sleep. This is why I am on a no-fiction diet, people (I am also avoiding fic like the plague).

I think I'll wrap up with a couple of things that are awesome:

1. When I was in my early teens, I had a tape of a radio play the BBC made for Murder on the Orient Express. I listened to this tape while falling asleep for years, until finally both cassettes were lost and/or eaten by broken tape players. For me this is the definitive edition of this story.

I've tried and failed to find it on the internet before, but I decided to try again this weekend and it was available on iTunes! (And also as a torrent, which I confess is how I actually acquired it.) I am so happy to be reunited with this radio play, you have no idea. I also have several other plays in which John Moffat plays Hercule Poirot!

I would heartily recommend these dramatizations, but I have no idea if they're objectively any good or if I'm blinded by a fog of sentimentality. I leave it to you.

2. I have new shoes! Mine are off eBay in a discontinued colour (cognac?), so they didn't actually cost $110, but they are wonderful. My feet have been getting increasingly cranky about any heel in a shoe, and insufficient width, and these are absolutely flat and very wide. They are also "minimalist" shoes, which feel slightly more like walking barefoot than a normal shoe, and I really really like that about them. I want all the colours, and it is only their exorbitant price tag that is preventing me.

If they had a winter boot that wasn't absolutely hideous, I would totally drop $250 on a pair.

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Soup!

2010-10-27T02:53:09Z

The list of things I Really Must Do Very Soon is growing daily, especially what with tartary_lamb coming to visit soon (so exciting!).

Despite this, I only managed the following today, due in part to the 7 hours I spent in class:

(1) Knit a bit less than 1/3 of a scarf I'm hoping to give my brother for Christmas. (7 hours in class are good for something.)

(2) Find out that a postdoc I was hoping to apply for, I can't apply for after all.

(3) Make soup.

I was hoping to do some writing after I got home, but it's increasingly clear to me that this is not going to happen. So instead I am going to give you all a recipe for soup, which I sort of made up as I went along but which turned out pretty well.

It's that time of the year where I find it necessary to focus on my concrete accomplishments.

( Recipe: Chicken Quinoa Soup (with some curry) )

I have only recently realized that soup is actually very easy to make. Since I really like soup, especially this kind of vegetable-based soup, this realization has improved my life considerably.

It turns out that 'contemplating my inevitable unemployment' is too long to fit in dreamwidth's mood box.

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It seems wrong to contemplate reading less.

2010-10-19T07:09:17Z

Once, talking to a councellor*, I was listing the kinds of books I like to read in my spare time (science fiction, fantasy, and romance), and she was like: "you realize those are all very escapist."

Yeah, no shit sherlock. I've known that since I was a pre-teen, though at the time maybe I didn't know the actual word 'escapist'.

In recent years this escapism has developed such that when I'm stressed I go into lock down mode and read some really epic sci-fi/fantasy romance fic. If I can't find any, I look harder. And when I'm finished the first one I find more.

And then suddenly it's 3AM the night before I have to give a practice talk and I don't have my handout finished. *headdesk*

Faced with exactly this situation, some time ago I commented here that I was going to try to stop reading fiction until I could develop a healthier relationship with it. That is slowly moving up my list of priorities, in much the same way that quitting smoking probably figures for other people. While it goes against my character and my upbringing to ever admit that reading less could possibly be a good thing, I am forced to admit that maybe in this case it would be.

In other news, wedding of cousin was very nice, and the caffeine necessary to manage the 7.5 hour drive home is also helpful when it comes to pulling all-nighters.

*Did you know that the 'e' and the second 'l' in this word are both canadianisms? I thought this was one of those words I Just Can't Spell, because despite all my efforts it remained underlined in red by my computer, but it turns out I'm just being oppressed by my resolutely American spell check!

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There are just so many states.

2010-10-09T23:17:19Z

Sometimes I am abruptly reminded of just how bad my American geography is. Case in point: today I read Dreadnought by Cherie Priest. This book (which is part of an excellent alternate-history American-civil-war steampunk series, by the by) involves a cross-continental journey from Virginia to Washington state. And they'd keep mentioning things still ahead of them, and I'd think wait, no, that's in the flat bit below the Great Lakes, isn't it?

Take Idaho. Despite the fact that I've driven through Idaho (something I only remembered after confirming its location on a map), I was under the vague impression that it was located somewhere in the vicinity of Iowa. You know, because they put all the states with lots of vowels close to one another? IDEK.

Adding to my problems is that I sort of assume that the Rocky Mountains are the same width, and the same distance from the ocean, the whole way down the coast, something that is plainly untrue. Or maybe I just assume that they continue to be the width of a single governing jurisdiction, and so naturally (in my mind) they end at the eastern borders of Washington, Oregon, and California. Thus I get confused when, in a book, people talk about going through the Rockies to get to Salt Lake City, in Utah.

So yeah. Deeply confused by American geography.

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Procrastination is making several cups of tea.

2010-08-30T16:02:44Z

You should all go right now and watch this video on procrastination. What is so awesome is that it has perfectly captured the tone of definitional clips I remember seeing as a child. I don't even know where I saw them, maybe this was something Sesame Street did? Maybe the National Film Board?

( Embedded YouTube video behind the cut. )

ETA: It turns out I didn't actually include the embedded video. *headdesk* Negative 1 million points to me!

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Continuing to test.

2009-08-19T14:53:28Z

I still really like barometry as a username -- if only it were available on livejournal!

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