Strong Verbs Are Just Better

Cannot has internet connection yet because I wasn't able to print out the passcodes from my inbox yesterday. They're on Sjazz's hard drive instead, but she's off doing exciting Birthday Things for now.

kayloulee and I invented the BEST FOOD EVER.

It is: toasted apple and cheese tortillas.

You get your tortilla, and lay teeeny thin apple slices down the middle of it and then cover them in cheese and toast it and then fold the tortilla in half. THEN YOU HAVE NOMS.

Other things:
1. Latin will kill me
2. Am only capable of comprehending 1000 lines of Old French poetry a day. Some days I can read that in an hour, some days it takes me four hours, but invariably, brain fizzles out after 1000 lines.
3. Going to dinner with some college people tonight.
4. Going latin grammar book shopping with Lucy tomorrow, because we really know how to party.
5. Meeting up with Aissi on Saturday.
6. Going to see french film on Sunday. Thought it was LAST sunday, but no, it is not.
7. Have exam at nine am on monday. FUNZIES.

Finally, you should know that eggs_maledict and performed some TRULY MAGNIFICENT impromptu interpretive dance renditions of the Seafarer and the Wife's Lament outside the quad yesterday. ("I'm all ALONE in my BOAT and I HAVE NO FRIENDS" and "I'm all ALONE in a HOLE UNDER A TREE and I HAVE NO FRIENDS", respectively.) Classic works of literature living on into a new age, I tell you.

We went to the shop to buy bourbon.

Says clavicular: What's bourbon made out of?
Says kitsunejin: Wheat, but it's distilled, so I can't see how the gluten would climb up the distillation pipes.
clavicular: I was going to say "I don't drink alcohol, how would I know how it's made", but then I thought - you don't need to eat babies to know how they're made!

And then we got drunk on pink wine and talked about feminism and porn and lesbianism. And we ate dead pig and we're now going going back to watching Hot Fuzz.

Quel que chose que ma chere Lucy et moi avons établi ce soir:

Merde ce passe.
Merde ce passe SUR TON VISAGE.
Merde ce passe SUR TA MERE.
(Ça, c'est qu'elle a dit.)

OK, you know what? I LIKE MY FRIENDS. I have awesome friends. I keep making new friends, and they continue to be awesome, and, for the most part, work well with my existing friends. Who was it was telling me that I should take official notes every time social stuff does not in fact go awry? (I think it was the infinitely sensible sjazz?)

Alice, aka sommeille, came down to Canberra for the weekend, for the combined purpose of seeing myself and Lucy. Alice is AWESOME ON TOAST. We had a few hours to ourselves, and nattered on about such things as The Wanderer and his man-pain (which I will not be able to take seriously ever again without picturing Alice singing 'this is the way we row the boat'... :D), the joys of substantive adjectives, and Alice's completely batty family. We may or may not have veered dangerously close to D&M territory at times, too, and nothing exploded. Knowing things about one's friends, it's always an interesting experiment. Alice is Good People. I don't see much of her; I'd like to see more of her; but regardless of whether or not this happens, I think I Can Has Good Friend.

Last night, I had a party! It was supposed to be more dinner than party, but I think it's officially a Party if it ends up with teenagers making out on the couch. This is a thing which has never happened to me before! (Being host to such a thing, anyway. Let's not talk about my brief foray into party attendance as a teenager.) I dunno, it's probably a silly standard, but I feel like having parties, or sedate gatherings, as the case may be, at which Stuff Happens (and people go away and remember that time at Amy's place when Stuff Happened and people met and whatever) is an important component of Real Social Life. That it is possible to have such a thing with a handful of people, a mishmash of food, not all that much alcohol, and a high level of geekery is really quite excellent.

Stuff which Happened also included the meeting of Alice and kitsunejin, who turn out to be THE SAME PERSON. Quite different personalities, as anyone who's met them knows, but uncannily similar sets of interests and HILARIOUSLY similar backgrounds. How many sapphically inclined Australian students of Asian studies were born in San Francisco to lapsed Christian fathers and mothers who were the children of communist jews? Much glee was had over this, in English and Japanese, at an extremely fast pace and much to the amusement of Ali and I.

There were six of us, and we were an excellent six. Female homosociality ftw. Uninhibited queerness ftw. It was all very affirming after the demoralising encounter I had on Friday with garden-variety homophobes. At some point in the evening, we'd managed to tangle ourselves up in a giant group hug in my kitchen, and the niceness of it all hurt my heart. Back in my camp-going days, groups of us would wind up sprawled out on the grass or the worship hall floor, or piled up in group hugs, or whatever, and that was what stuck out to me: the sensation that I could spin around and around and crash down in any direction and there would automatically be someone to fall on. The physical proximity goes with the emotional, I guess.

College was a bit like that, at its best. You guys, the group which collected itself around K and I last year, you were like that. I left last year with the horrible feeling that, once again, as soon as I'd found myself a secure network, I was leaving it behind. Cue END OF THE WORLD, reboot Loner Drive, etc. Maybe not that dramatic, but it was a possibility.

Lookit this. Seven months in, and I have a) not lost the network I left behind and b) gathered a new one, which integrates quite nicely into the old one when geographical proximity allows. I had expected it would take years before I found another group amidst whom I could be as comfortable as I was last night - and I would not at all have expected that I could compose such a group myself from disparate acquaintances.

Also, I counted. Excluding workmates, I have exactly one straight friend in this town. Skep, step up and take a bow! ;) That's... quite cool. Especially since I didn't arrange it that way on purpose.

Lilyface! What are you doing this weekend? I wants to see you. And also make pie with you. Perhaps you are out of credit, and I do not have your email address, although if you're out of internet as well then this is a hopeless endeavour.

Lucy and I and a friend of Lucy's are going skating on Saturday afternoon, 1.30, if you want to come? Additionally, I am free both Saturday and Sunday nights around dinnertime, although on Saturday night I have a tellingbone call to make at 10.30pm and Sunday afternoon I has a date with the library. (And, uh, I don't know how we would get you back to uni on Sunday night, blasted buses stop at, like, 7pm)

Left work early because sitting in my chair was killing me. So's this chair, so I'm going to bed ASAP.

Went via ANU because Lily has been sick and I was unable to deliver foods when she really needed it, so now she's getting better AND she has FOOODS. However, I didn't know there was a bus straight to her dorm, so I got off in the city and walked in the rain and got soaking wet (but did not get lost! I win!); I haven't walked very far for a week, and it's a good hike over to the far side of campus, and I had to breathe and it hurt (this is probably a good thing. Doctor said I have to exercise my lungs or they could collapse). Took shelter with Lily for half an hour and then caught two different buses home, only they weren't the expresses, they were old buses on bumpy roads and turning corners all the time, and my bones got all jarred and I was coughing for a bit and HOY BOY DID THAT HURT.

EVERYTHING SUCKS. Except the part where I have leftover spag bol; and the part where KYLEE IS COMING TOMORROW and I am going to be such a wet blanket and cling to her like a limpet, but a limpet that you can't touch on the right hand side.

 
Me, in fonts of woe: I'm barely passing Human Relations 101.
Trojie: Human Relations 101 is the Kobayashi Maru. It IS. There's no way to win. Unless you, I dunno, find a way to reprogram humans? 0.o
Me: So... if I sit in my chair and smirk in a superior fashion and do nothing while threatened on all sides, eventually the program will break down and everyone calls me Captain?
On the other hand, then I get court-martialled for cheating being an arsehole.

1. So I saw Star Trek. It was GLEE. If you have any fondness for sci-fi at all, RUN DON'T WALK.

2. Subsequently, I acquired me a Lucy for the evening, and kept her awake until some silly hour talking pointless crap. This was fun, although not necessarily good for either of our sleep debts.

3. I caught a bus with her this morning as far as the city, and went to Lincraft to buy buttons. I came home with a Teach-yourself-to-knit kit and very pink yarn. Fuschia, if you're generous.. The instructions are incomprehensible, but with the aid of YouTube, I have succeeded in knitting a wonky pink rectangle! I appear to be knitting one row and purling the other, entirely by accident - instead of knitting the second row back right-to-left I turned it around and did it left-to-right. This does not match up to what my instructions say is a purl stitch (they say turn it around and then stitch left-to-right with the right needle coming through on top instead of underneath. This is odd, because I didn't think you HAD to turn it around in order to purl - I remember learning to knit one purl one as a kid. But whatever, I'll ask youtube later), but it does get a nice reversey pattern happening. I shall continue with this, until such time as I have a wonky pink scarf. I am dropping stitches like they're going out of fashion, but I appear to be MAKING stitches accidentally too, at a greater rate, so it's going to be a wonky pink TRIANGULAR scarf at this rate.
People keep telling me I need a non-academic hobby. Knitting seems like fun. And maybe I could make one of those Ravenclaw bags eventually. BESIDES. Yarn = texture. I love textured things.

4. I'm editing a friends' essay. It's 20 000 words long. It should be 6-8000. *headdesk*

5. I made spag bol! I love cooking, have I mentioned that? Tomorrow I'm going to get out cookbooks and decide on exciting things to cook through the week, because I'm sick of cooking the same two or three dishes around in circles.

6. Also, I'm listening to Rent (Motion picture OST). I'd forgotten how much I LOVE that show. Lucy, add it to the list of things I need to inflict upon you at some point.

7. HANG ON. phrasemuffin, did I see you say that you'd proposed bare to SUDs? HAVE I MENTIONED HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU? P.S. your birthday present is way easier than Lucy's. Can't get a sense of how long the story's trying to be, though, so I'm not sure how far into it I am.

Happy Easter everyone!

This has been the best Easter I've spent for many years - at least three, probably... four or five. kayloulee, phrasemuffin, sommeille and cameo appearances from xxlucyferxx and tahira_saki made it so. Verily. Our cooking was more entertaining than exact, but it was a truly excellent way to spend three and a bit days, I tell you.

To say that I am happy. Happy as in I spent an hour drinking tea from a tiny cup and reading a book about female friendships in early 20th century Australia/Australian expat literary circles. Happy as in my desk is set up and all I need now is a LOOOOONG LAN cable. Also my MP3 is charged and connected to my speakers and, to round off this set of excellence, I am wearing my favourite comfort jacket.

Probably still lonely, since I'm posting nine hundred times today. (Also I have a case of Disappearing Housemate, which is worrying since she was driving from Melbourne this afternoon and, as I have lost my phone, I do not know if she has sent me messages to say she's not coming home / running late / eaten by wildebeest.) But I'm feeling... optimistically lonely? I have a functioning social life, as much of a one as I had in Sydney and more than I had at home. The problem, such as it is, is that I spent last year with my life wrapped around K's, and the year-and-a-bit before that intensely twined with the Wife, and the year before THAT I was a sort of orbiting planet around the TessNReena binary star. I didn't go anywhere or do anything much or talk to many people I didn't live right next to, but they were always around. The last time I've been not constantly surrounded by people was first year, and then I spent every spare minute online talking to gryphonvere.

When I got to Canberra I was so glad to be on my own for once. The novelty is kinda wearing off, but I'll adjust. I really need to spend some not in the sort of intense friendships I seem to have formed in the last few years, remember how to be alone in my head again.

As for friends... I'm sulky about the necessity of making a whole new set, since I liked the set K and I gathered last year so very well. But I have xxlucyferxx and tahira_saki, and I would much rather have two good friends (and these two were good friends the moment I laid eyes on them) whom I see every couple of weeks than the kinds of friends I had for many years at uni: ones you ate with every day and then never emailed after uni broke up, ones you saw every week at church and bible study but never felt compelled to meet up with outside of those circles.

sommeille, when you come online: email me your postal address pretty please? If anyone sees her in person before she gets the intarwub back, pls filch her contact details for me ( I don't even have her phone number).