Strong Verbs Are Just Better

I have:

* Nice varigated cotton yarn for basic washcloths
* Blue and gold cotton yarn for fluer-de-lis washcloth
* A LOT OF ACRYLIC YARN for no better reason than "it was on sale"
* Nice new bamboo needles
* Patterns for ALL KINDS OF WASHCLOTHS. Plain ones! Funny ones! Ones with a moose on them!

I also have:

* Spaghetti, which was supposed to be housemate's boy's lunch today but he forgot it, so I thieved it. It has olives in it. Weird.

And I have:

* Ticket to Fire and Ice at Hush tonight
* And thus, an excuse to deck out in corset etc
* Every intention of taking a ball of yarn and needles with me. BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY KINK AND FETISH NIGHT IS A GOOD NIGHT TO KNIT IN THE PUB.

WHY IS IT LESS THAN FIFTEEN DEGREES OUTSIDE?

12.5 degrees. APPARENT TEMP 3.5 degrees (it's windy).

NOT HAPPY JAN. And I at least am sort of used to this (clothing check: pants, 3/4 top, cardigan, that's it. Hands went blue, but I'm used to that by now). Presume kayloulee and phrasemuffin are freeeeeezing out at their campsite place.

Saw the year out with good, dear friends. Spent not one minute of the night feeling socially awkward. Saw the new year in in a great big puppy-pile of a group hug.

It was pretty awesome.

Long Live The Fridge!

We are currently experiencing that dangerous period of civil instability, interfridgnum. Efforts are being made to ensure succession, and Uncle Freezer is serving as best he can as regent. If the dishwasher revolts and seizes the throne, or the washing machine goes anarchist and floods the bathroom in protest, don't say I didn't warn you.

Dear Canberra:

I thought I had adjusted. I rejoiced whenever the temperature exceeded 15 degrees celcius, and regarded four or five degrees as perfectly normal. I went to Sydney and laughed at the people on the streets shivering in 18 degree weather. I barely used my thermal underwear, despite my early-season panic.

I thought we had come to an agreement. Spring was boding well.

As I speak, the temperature has not been *below* fifteen degrees celcius for 48 hours (at 7.30am on the 31st, in fact). It was over twenty degrees at 8am this morning! And humid!

Nolove, leaving you for your stormy sticky sister Sydney as soon as possible,

Amy

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.

OK OK I AM NOW IN A POSITION TO THINK ABOUT THE WEEKEND!

Things I am doing:

* Friday night is poetry slam night! Trying to decide what to read...
* Saturday night, probably late evening, I am skyping with gryphonvere

At other times yet to be determined I am:

* HAVING LILY OVER TO MAKE PIE. Lily, please make me pie? My housemate has preserved apricots and cherries in jars in the bottom of the pantry, she says you can make pie with them if you want but you can also make any other sort of pie of your choosing. Maybe Sunday night, dinner and pie? There may or may not be a housemate around for this.

* GOING ICE SKATING. Possibly, anyway. With Lucy. I really need to expend some energy, even if I don't feel like I have any. Spend some to get some. Plus, ice-skating is innately happy-making. And it can be done by both Lucy and I, at differing speeds and energy levels. Many otherwise enjoyable activities are liable to end up with either my current flatness of mood slowing her down or my trying to keep up with her and getting drained. Time yet to be determined.

* If I have a spare wedge of time, going to hole up in the Nat Lib next to Ashie and pretend to study.

ASKED OUT THE BOY IN THE COFFEE SHOP. Some kind of date thing this weekend some time.

The slightly terrified look on his face was PRICELESS.

Further details when I'm not at work.

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.

I did a reverse park, backwards up a hill! In S's car, which I've only driven once, and that once being one of the only two times I've driven in six months. It's auto and has power steering, and is therefore insanely over-responsive by my standards. I can wrestle our little manual no-power-steering hatch into all kinds of places, but it is done slowly and carefully and with much elbow-grease. This car wanted to LEAP backwards into the spot, or possibly the curb or one of the nearby cars.

I did not hit any of these things.

Roads in Canberra are bloody weird.

I sorta miss driving. Not... really. But I miss being competent at it. I can do reverse parks and hill starts and tight u-turns, and I can do them because I spent years learning how. Not because I'm innately good at driving, I'm not.  I don't even like it. But I learnt it and became competent because I had to, and I miss being able to drive places and feel pleased with myself for being able to drive there.