[18] The X-Files
[20] Chat Quotes

Teaser


Life is like a box of chocolates.

Last night I went to the_mousehole to be fed dinner and see the inhabitants, including new kitten. I rather think that I neglected the other inhabitants in favor of kitten, but was forgiven for that.

She fell asleep on my lap! And I didn't even think that I liked cats! Maybe I just like kittens...

When last we left our hero, she was bemoaning the fact that her car died, kaput, and was only able to sell it for scrap for $150 after the mechanic hauled it out of the middle of the road.

Now I'm going back and forth a lot on the Sunset bus, which means I can get to Amoeba and my Starbucks, and so far that's kept me from going mad, though eventually I have to get to other places, like work and peoples' houses and the grocery store, and do other things, like shop and do laundry and then carry it home, so I think we're definitely in the band-aid phase of the healing process.

Also, Hawkeye, my boy cat, my furry boy, who's been with me for ten years and through as many apartments, who's driven across the country with me twice, is MISSING.

I mean, sometimes he wanders off or spends the night with friends, and has been known to be away for a couple or three days at a time, but it has now officially been OVER a WEEK and I am SCARED! I made signs to put up all over town, but I'm especially worried because he had fleas and so was engaged in some nervous licking, and was all patchy and raw, and I had to spray him with the anti-itch spray, which he hated, and it was a sad night a week or so ago when I went to spray him and he freaked out and ran off... and has not been home since.

That was a long sentence, but my furry boy is worth it. If you live in LA, he's black and puffy and scared and wonderful and patchy from licking, please help me find him!

Hey gang! I just made a post in my own journal about the books and feminism/women (surprisingly, I think they're awesome even in this context.) I'd be keen to get some discussion from any of you guys, since the books aren't well-known and I expect to be met by dizzying silence. ;)

does anyone ever get panic attacks or panic attack-like symptoms when they see something that reminds them of their moms?

every year at midnight on my moms birthday, no matter where i am or what im doing i start having trouble breathing. i take short shallow shaky breaths and feel very lightheaded.

i was at the hospital with her when she died (almost 5 years ago) and for a VERY long time i couldn't go into a hospital. the first time i did i thought i was going to throw up in the entrance. luckily my friend who was with me escorted me back out the doors. the second time was when my little sister was diagnosed with leukemia, and maybe because it was a children's hospital but i didn't have a bad reaction. i've been in the children's hospital hundreds of times since and everything has been fine. recently a friend of mine got into a pretty bad car wreck and i went to go visit him in the hospital. even though it was an adult hospital, i felt fine...until yesterday...

they changed my friends rooms. the person with the bed across from him is a woman who might be the same age as my mom would be if she was alive. as first i saw her and felt uncomfortable. and as time passed i started to get the same symptoms i do on her birthday: dizziness, short shallow breathing, feeling very nervous. my friend doesn't even know that my mom is dead, so i just sat there trying to cover it up. luckily the docs came in and had to do some procedures to him so they made me leave...

im just wondering if this happens to anyone else? i feel like it happens to me at the most random times, and i never had anything like this happen to me before her death..i have so many more questions but i'll save them for other posts, its getting late and i need sleep......

The cottage: for a small place, it's got a nice amount of space for my purposes
and feels homey, too.

It's been weeks since I posted last, but the time has flown with everyone getting settled in and starting to find a common rhythm. Due to difficulties in finding an electrician to work on the cottage, things took longer than expected and I only moved in here three days ago, but it's a peaceful, welcoming spot, and I've discovered that since it's really easy to get sucked into other activities while hanging out in the house, having this separate space is going to be crucial to getting work or writing done.

I have to say that it's great to have everyone around. To see four people working together--and laughing--as they prep dinner, to watch Paul and Ben (who grew up without younger brothers or sisters around) interacting with the three-year-old or to know Aaron's outside spearheading some household task that's needed doing for a long time--it's all good. Did I mention I've barely had to cook since they got here? :-)

The next joint project: canning as many peaches and roasted tomatoes--and making as much applesauce--as we can before they're out of season... and before the baby arrives in roughly another five weeks. I can see that the pace around here isn't likely to slow down anytime soon.

bechainiyo ka faaslo ka silsila hai
dard-e-jigar ka yeh sabab humko mila hai

A question from frey_at_last: When did you learn history? When did you learn American history? (If you did learn it.) How old are you and where were you schooled?

Her other readers seem to be answering the question in the form of comments to her entry, but I thought it was good enough to become an entry of my own; being about me as it is.

My interest in things historical dates back to second or third grade, at least. Most of my historical learning at that age happened at home, where I was mostly exposed to history through Disney films (Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Johnny Tremain, and the Swamp Fox stand out to me).

Latter-day Saints consider the Bible to be historical--I was amazed when I later learned that a lot of people throughout recent centuries didn't see it as such. So learning Biblical stories at church was also part of what I considered my historical education. Indeed, early Church history (1820-1847) is so intertwined with contemporary American history that the one field was needed to keep the other in context.

After third grade, my mom started homeschooling us. She read a few historical books out loud, but the majority of my historical knowledge at the time came from self-study. It started with reading biographies of Davy Crockett, then reading about the American Revolution and the personalities involved with that. Then my focus fell to the world wars, medieval western Europe, the Age of Discovery, the Napoleonic era, and ancient Rome. (Somehow, the American Civil War never interested me as much as other military history did.) My dad bought a 29-volume set of encyclopedias in the early 1980s, and once I discovered what kind of information they held I spent countless hours perusing them for information on what interested me. Occasional trips to the library provided more books, but the encyclopedia was always there for me.

An experimental private school I attended during ninth grade further solidified the connections between Biblical history and academically accepted history. It dealt with other parts of world history and American governmental history as well.

Sophomores at my high school were required to take world history; over the course of the year the class covered the time between ancient Sumeria and Egypt up to the Gulf War. The content itself wasn't too demanding, though Mr. Neeley did insist on good writing and clear penmanship. (He once docked points on an assignment I did while riding in a car, and another time he took off points when I typed out my homework.)

There were two reasons why I chose not to take AP American history as a junior. The first was that it wasn't taught by Mr. Sutton, who my brother Bill had spoken of very favorably. American history was required for juniors, so if I had to take it from anyone, I wanted it taught by someone I'd have a good chance of liking. And Sutton didn't disappoint. The other reason I opted out of the AP classes was because I saw how much busywork the AP students were assigned, and decided I didn't need that.

Some people might have argued with me about whether all those worksheets and stuff constituted busywork, but I had a good enough grasp of past events to not need much of that. Looking back at it as a college graduate, yep, it was busywork. I never took a history class in college that assigned busywork. You go to class, take notes from the lectures, read the books, write a paper, and take a couple of tests. (The first three steps are optional in proportion to either how well you already know the material, or to how high the risk of bad grades appeals to you.) That's it.

I almost took AP European history as a senior, but didn't. The two periods during which it was taught conflicted with AP music theory and the advanced band class, and at the time I thought would major in music and minor in history once I got to college. So music took priority, and whatever history I learned as a senior was gleaned from other classes (German and English were most useful for this) or on my own.

After a semester of figuring out how competitive the music program was at BYU, I changed my major to history and graduated with a degree in it. I took two classes of American history, two of world civilization, three about historiography (two were choose-your-own-adventure; the middle one focused on European imperialism), and classes on Utah, ancient Rome, the Jewish Holocaust, the Middle East, European urbanization, and the Italian Renaissance. I also took a class on 20th century LDS Church history; it gets skimmed over so much compared to the 19th century, I had to take it. (It wasn't offered by the history department, so didn't apply to my major.) The quality of my college classes was fairly uniform, though some professors were more outstanding than others.

Most of the history I've learned since college has been obtained from online sources. The university sometimes sends out surveys to check on its graduates, and I feel like such a slacker when I'm asked what historical journals I subscribe to or what research I'm pursuing. I just don't have the space in my budget or the time to follow what's happening in the field.

But the beautiful thing about history is that once an event happens and slides into the past, it's in my field! The subject is so broad, and there's no end to the obscure and arcane areas one can specialize in. I expect I'll be learning it informally for the rest of my life, as long as my brain remembers how.

http://www.journalfen.net/users/melannen/38750.html

So my newest Early Review book for LibraryThing is The Art Of Darkness, about undercover work; and there's been all this talk about the far north lately; and I had a whole bag of mending to do, and needed something to watch. So (as could be clearly deduced from that list of circumstances) I pulled out the tape I got at con.txt of the dueSouth pilot.

Several things:

No amount of fanfic, icons, picspam, or squee posts can possibly prepare you for just how indescribably, irrepressible-grin-inducingly cute Constable Fraser is.

No amount of fanfic can prepare you for how *bad* Ray's fashion sense is. I am more convinced than ever that he's actually a Time Lord. (Though another thing that fanfic hadn't conveyed is that Ray is apparently already doing primarily undercover work, which does make that whole two-Rays thing make a lot more sense without having to bring in regeneration.)

(Ray is also indescribably cute. And Dief is a much better actor than I was expecting him to be. Remember when I was talking about watching Old!Who, and it's like being a historian who's heard all the myths and read all the theories, who gets a chance to actually *be there* and *see it happen* and it's so much more amazingly amazing than any reconstruction? Yeah, like that.)

Also, this song will *get stuck in your head*.


Undercover book is also making me really want fic exploring the Master's tendency to go into deep cover at the slightest pretext. And making me want to re-read A Howling In The Factory Yard, again, but, y'know, that's kind of a given.)

For a "love story with detective interludes," Busman's Honeymoon has way too many detective interludes! But the love story parts are wonderful. (Overall I prefer Gaudy Night, for precisely that reason, though. In every word, it's conscious of *being* a love story; BH has too much now let's follow the police superintendent around all afternoon! and augh, no, show me Peter and Harriet!)

The rain was lovely, too.

Also I took the ends of some old candles and melted them into new candles. It's the first time I've done that, so hopefully I didn't mess up the wick, or anything.

I may try to walk to Dodona Manor tomorrow and hit some shops downtown.

I am alive. I now live in Vancouver, BC. I have yet to be stabbed by a stabby hobo. School so far is pretty intense, and I have to do a group project thing that has me sweating down my back a little. Otherwise things are fine. Except that I am poor. I don't officially have the internet until the 16th, which is incredibly horrible to me, but I am reading more! But I don't want to read books. I want to read the internet.

I may do hourly comics again once I have the internet? I don't know. I was vaaaguely thinking (because I can not currently see myself affording bus fare for the year let alone feeding myself) that maybe I'd attempt to do some deal where like I continue doing hourlies possibly for a long time based upon some sort of donation thing???? Like eight or nine dollars a day or some kind of something? And I'd mail each month of originals to the highest donator? I probably will wuss out of doing that since the thought of trying to get people to give me money for things that I do makes me shudder with embarrassment, but perhaps it'd be something for people to check every day at least, I guess? If you are interested in that, or something similar, let me know. Because man do I need to make some money somehow this year.

Apparently in my illustration fundamentals class I will be made to do some kind of final project, and the professor mentioned that some students have done graphic novel-style things before, so I may even have a productive year non-journal-comics-wise as well. We will see.

On Wednesday we were assigned our Nikon D40s and I have been trying to take pictures with it. Taking pictures is difficult as fuck, but also very fun. I stink at it so far. Next year we get a computer (a new imac, which is rad but also I will have to learn to use it) and I am more excited for that, though the camera is quite nice.

I would normally attach some kind of picture to this post to make it more likely to be read by people, but I cannot. Sorry.

I'm most of the way through Peter Thompson's 'The Battle for Singapore', how he doesn't actually say at any point 'I cannot believe what this fella did just there' I really don't know... also, they didn't use cardboard cut-outs but what really happened wouldn't fit in a single frame...

Horarium for September 7
Universalis

Office of Readings / Vigils
Morning Prayer / Lauds
Mass Readings
Evening Prayer / Vespers
Night Prayer / Compline

Liturgy of the Hours Apostolate

September 7. Subscription required

Saints of the Day

Saint Cast podcast
Saint of the Day.

Yep, I wrote another one.

Title: The Things That Are Given
Classification: VRA
Keywords: MSR
Spoilers: IWTB
Rating: PG
The rest of the heading and the fic can be found at my journal. Please read and comment if you'd like!

Hi, all! Is it alright to use this community to process mom abandomnent issues? I certainly don't want to be triggery or disrespectful to anyone whose mother has actually died, with my issues of dealing with one who still is.

Made a bunch of XF related stuff while I had no internet for a day...here they are!

[x] Gillian Anderson [lkos, magazine shots]
[x] X-Files (all things, millenium, random magazine shots]
[x] Meryl Streep

         

Rest are here at queenballroom 

This is a song I did to another television series about four years ago but I
heard it on the radio the other day and scenes of Scully jumped in my head so I
had to do it and thought I'd share for those who may be interested.

( Cut for video )