More catchup

• "Day 21 - A picture of something that makes you happy"

My bookcases make me happy. Being an English major was awesome. Also, comic books and sci-fi books and church books are awesome. And now I need a whole new set of shelves for all the kid books we're getting! ♥

• "Day 22 - What makes you different from everyone else?"

Wow, what a question. I often wonder if anything does.

For a lot of my life, it really mattered to me to categorize myself very exactly, and to be clearly special and distinct from everyone else around me in as many ways as possible. I think I've made a big deal about every single one of my features and predilections at some point--I'm oh so pale, my nose is oh so big, my hair is oh so precise a shade of golden red, I'm short but not that short, I'm an alto but I'm versatile like so, I'm a geek but not like those other geeks, I'm a Mormon but you don't know what that means to me, I like guys who are exactly like this except for these exceptions, I'm the most empathetic person who ever didn't cry at movies, my favorite books are ABCDEF in precisely that order, I have the worst menstrual cramps you've ever heard of, I know more than you do about (fill in the blank).

I went through a big meltdown when I was a teenager because I started to figure out that there were other people named Rachel in the world; that people named Rachael weren't spelling it wrong; that some people have my same hair, or like the same books but like other ones better, or are a lot better than me at my best subjects. I still struggle with this, sometimes. But, there's nothing I can actually do about that, because everything about me is shared by a gazillion other people who don't care they're on my turf.

And really, that's a good thing, because it was kind of exhausting trying to be Mary Sue all the time. (Yes--I was living as an author-insertion into the fanfic of my OWN LIFE. Try that one on for size!) Meanwhile, I've learned (and am still learning) that the more people I meet, the more they're super awesome and fascinating and unique themselves, so I feel much happier if I worry about that, and let them worry about whether or not to be interested in me.

So, I was going to call shenanigans on this one, but wait. I think I just figured it out.

Whatever else is going on, I'm the only person in the world who gets to be Daniel's mommy.

• "Day 23 - Something you crave often"

Hmm... Well, pasta. And I've gotten in the habit of having a little bit of chocolate after most meals, to get rid of the my-mouth-tastes-like-chewed-food feeling. Other than that, I don't really know! I crave everything I like sometimes.

• "Day 24 - A letter to your parents"

This makes me really uncomfortable! Writeups about my friends and loved ones is one thing, but an actual letter seems inappropriately intimate for posting to a blog. I guess I could write up my parents. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow.

Okay, so instead, I guess I'll do tomorrow's in this space:

• "Day 25 - What I would find in your bag"

 My purse is now my diaper bag, and when I leave the house I try to have:

• Awesome, cute cloth diapers, usually one or two more than I think I'll need
• Changing pad, cloth wipes, and an awesome wetbag for the dirties
• My spare sling, which is flat and tiny and stowable
• A spare outfit for Daniel
• Several toys for Daniel
• My planner and pencil
• Keys, wallet, sunglasses, camera
• Hand sanitizer, chapstick, Orajel
• Map of Corvallis's bus system, which I guess I don't need anymore, weird
• A bunch of other random, useless papers in the side pocket that I haven't thrown out
• Snacks for both myself and Daniel, if I was smart that day
• A Rubik's cube

At my most beautiful

"Day 20 - Someone you see yourself marrying or being with in the future"

Here are some pictures that Heath and I took a few years back when my parents were on vacation somewhere. We were staying at their house for the weekend, and the first one here is how we assured them everything was okay. The others (and a few more I didn't post) were just for our own amusement:

Hmm. What to write.

I met Heath when I moved to Monmouth at age 12; he's my brother Michael's age, and was first notable for responding to my presence with enthusiasm (the others had tended more toward "AIIEEE IT'S A LITTLE SISTER"). The first interaction with him that I remember is when I popped into Michael's room to see what they were doing, and he lent me a book. Over the course of the next year or two I got to know him better as an extremely funny, hyperactive, long-winded, fun-loving, RPG-loving, kind, smart, humble, eager to volunteer, eager to compliment people, delighted to spend his life totally immersed in the gospel sort of fellow.

Actually, I've still never met anyone so spiritual in my life--Heath the teenager lived to go on his mission and could hardly stand the fact that he wasn't 19 yet--nor have I met anyone else who can be so hardworking and easygoing at the same time. When I suddenly found myself having a big old crush on him, it was when he was doing something he's totally uncomfortable with, namely singing and dancing. He auditioned for a musical at church, expecting that his lack of experience with music or drama would get him a comfortably anonymous backup role. He wildly underestimated his charisma, and was cast as the main character instead. I was a backup character, and got to hover around gawping at his adorableness while he had minor panic attacks about his supposed unfitness for the job. And we got to hang out! Specifically, he was playing the Prodigal Son of parable, and I was one of his evil friends who rips off his money and then abandons him. Even more specifically: we beat him up and stole his purse and his hat, and I remained alone on stage to kick him in the ribs while he was down. Aww yeah.

After a while I decided my infatuation was harmless but hopeless, and emotionally moved on. As is my wont, I later confessed to Heath that I had had a crush on him--I've always done this, because I want people to know about it when I think they're that cool. What I didn't know was that Heath had the beginnings of a crush on me, too. He was a bunch older than me, though, and I wouldn't turn 16 (dating age) until he was already gone on his mission, so he tried to put it out of his mind, apparently with limited success. He was, meanwhile, an insanely awesome friend.

Annnnnnnnnd... here I got hung up on writing this for several days. I cannot explain to you what an awesome friend Heath is unless you've experienced it. It's unreal. Some of it was just for me, like how he would sometimes write me a sweet letter about how cool and good he thought I was, but the other stuff was for everyone, like how he gives really really good presents. In fact, he was always so helpful and thoughtful to everyone all the dang time that it took me years to notice he was doing anything extra for me.

Anyway,  he went on his mission and got home; I graduated from high school; we both started college. Extremely slowly, we each noticed that maybe we were paying unusually great attention to each other. Or were we?? Around us, everyone rolled their eyes and snickered.

Once we finally figured out that we should date, we had been best friends for so long that it was immediately really, really obvious that this was a good idea. I was living in a co-op house at OSU, and he was in Monmouth, so our courtship consisted mainly of stuff like this: we pay $1 to take a lesson with OSU's Ballroom Dance club, we pick up some Panda Express at the MU, we watch a whole bunch of Babylon 5 episodes. The span from the time we first held hands to our wedding day was exactly eight months. This seems fast, and yet it took us an entire one of those months to get around to kissing. :P Our shynesses are shaped weird! PS. Kissing Heath remains totally awesome.

Anyway. We got married November 19, 2005 at the Portland Temple. It was awesome! And I was only 19, so we got to be alone together for a good long time before we graduated and started our family. That was also extremely awesome. Now we have Daniel, and the awesomeness continues.

This entry feels long because those photos squish up the scroll-bar! Also boring because I'm not trying very hard to make it interesting. It's one of those topics anyone could talk about, and there are cliches lurking everywhere, and they're so hard to avoid when you're in a hurry.

Here is the takeaway: Heath is my favorite superhero. He is preternaturally gentle and patient and forgiving, yet still passionate and communicative and just. He works harder and more honestly than anyone I've even heard of. He cares about people and about injustice and is determined to spend his life helping and inspiring others. He's smart and quick-witted and tells the most awesome, exciting stories. He makes them up off the top of his head. He's spontaneous and bizarre and makes me laugh my head off. He laughs his head off at me. He asks for my advice. He walks Daniel back to sleep in the middle of the night. He makes me feel goddess-level beautiful.

This spring, I will have known Heath for longer than I didn't know him. We still spend as much time together as we possibly can. There's so much more to say than I can possibly get around to--especially about recent stuff, and the new ways in which he's been awesome. But this is already three or four days late, so I give up for now. It's not like the subject won't come up again in my day-to-day postings, eh?

In conclusion,

♥

Catchup

I missed a whole week!! That's what happens when awesome people come from out of town to hang out with me. Fortunately, most of these are pretty quick and easy, so I'll just mush a bunch of the old ones together.

• Day 14 - A picture of you and your family 

 "Day 11 - Another picture of you and your friends"

Arghhhhhhh! The whole reason I skipped this one was because I wanted to do a picture with Heath and Andy and Joanne, but we totally forgot! :@ So I have nothing, or at least I don't have what I wanted. Sad.

Uh, what should I post instead? I don't know. I'll think of something later. :P

• "Day 15 - Put your ipod or shuffle on-first 10 songs that play"

I don't really have anything that does this; I always just pick the one song I want to hear. I guess it would be kind of lame to just cop out on everything, though. So, okay. I'll try and open all the mp3 folders on my computer into a master playlist and see what happens.

1. Sailor Mars - Last Christmas
2. Sloan - Losing California
3. Kris Straub - Ode to a Pie Gnome
4. Ein Deutsche Requiem - Movement IV
5. No Doubt - Don't Speak
6. Audioslave - Show Me How to Live
7. The Dears - Heartless Romantic
8. Fleetwood Mac - Big Love
9. Chrono Trigger - Schala's Theme
10. Jonathan Coulton - I Feel Fantastic

So uh...okay then? For the record, I have no freaking idea what #6 is, how it got on my computer, or whether it's any good! I do know for a fact that #1 is hilariously terrible. The others are pretty good, though obviously not representative or anything.

• "Day 16 - Another picture of yourself"

Not shown: one red and one blue sock.

• "Day 17 - Someone you would want to switch lives with for one day and why"

What do you mean, "why?"

• "Day 18 - List some plans, dreams, and goals that you have"

In no particular order: Have approximately three more kids and raise them all 'til they're kind, happy adults. Birth them all naturally. Finish Runewood Abbey. Publish something important that makes people happy. Sing in a really good group again, possibly a rock band. Get a master's degree. Get a doctorate. Go to the moon as a tourist. Travel all over the world with Heath, a little at a time, slowly. Attend a ton of temples. See the Pietà. Go on a mission together. Publish another awesome thing or two. Get super fast at cubing. Teach more age groups at church, especially teenage girls. Found a non-sucky school with Heath, Andy, Joanne, Nicole, my parents, and other awesome teacher friends. Get good at cooking. Learn to play the piano. Draw my own webcomic. Play my dream roles in a bunch of awesome musicals (Mother in Ragtime, the witch in Into the Woods, etc). Do something significant to educate people about feminism, ending violence, etc. Get in a totally firm habit of daily scripture study and prayer. Learn to control my temper. Stay and/or get pretty. Live to a ripe old age, and get Heath there, too.

There are probably a lot more.

• "Day 19 - Nicknames you have and why you have them"

I don't have very many. People who knew me as a baby occasionally call me Chaycho. My mom calls me Rachelita, or sometimes Chaychelita. The mean name people called me in elementary school was Elfworld, which is hilarious. People who knew me in middle school used to call me Snoopy, because of the musical. Random people sometimes call me Rach even though it's weird and ugly; I used to always discourage it, but sometimes I don't mind.

That's about it, unless you count internet handles! People pretty much just call me Rachel. Except I guess Heath has a pretty large repertoire of pet names, but I don't want to embarrass him. :3

Speaking of which, the next one totally still needs its own entry. I started this yesterday, so it would even have been timely, but oh well. Better late and awesome than late and bootleg!

Belated

I missed yesterday's, because I was too busy going to church and playing and being sleep-deprived and playing. (I gave a talk; it was really good.) Also, Andy and his family are here! Huzzah!

Unfortunately, the topic is a bummer:

"Day 13 - A letter to someone who has hurt you recently"

Instead of doing that, I'll just copy and paste an email that I sent in which I complained about a situation that had hurt me. I remember feeling at the time that it could have been a journal entry instead.

"I just looked backwards at the [facebook] wall of someone I've known since I was 12 years old. She unfriended me a while ago, and apparently it was because I think I'm, quote, "so damn right about everything." She also deleted one of my smartest friends--even though we were being extremely friendly and I repeatedly expressed that I meant no hostility by my disagreeing with her. She had posted like three sentences in return. It wasn't even an argument. I'm pretty sure it was the first time I'd ever tried to discuss anything of substance with her.

The next day, splat. Public announcement rejoicing that I was gone.

I'm sorry, what the #*#&. How much more polite do you need me to be, world? How far back into myself do you want me to crawl? Will I still be able to freaking feed myself when I get there?"

This, hopefully-obviously, is no longer emotionally current. It always messes me up inside when I get proof that it's impossible to please everyone, but I guess maybe it's good to start getting used to it. Anyway, just because I'd known this person a long time doesn't mean we were close. Nothing was really lost; just a few hit points from my pride. I still hate having bridges burned, on principle, and the motivation was so insulting. I try SO HARD to make every conversation peaceful. I try so hard that people way more frequently get mad at me for expecting the same. This, getting deleted because someone didn't like my opinion, was just weird.
 
And yet, oh well! I only have so much energy for this stuff.

Now I'm gonna go have a good day. :P

This here

"Day 12 - How you found out about blogging and why you have a blog"

The first online journal I can ever remember seeing belonged to my friend Marilee. I thought it was super awesome, followed it with great interest, and started my own in January 2002, halfway through my sophomore year of high school. It was integrated into my personal website, and hand-coded. I wrote pretty frequently, usually short little posts, because the format didn't make me feel like I had to write long ones--most blogging systems make all your posts into little pages, so I feel like I have to fill them out and justify taking up that much space. A few years later I moved to LiveJournal, and now I'm here.

I have a blog because I like writing, because my church advises everyone to keep records, because I like talking about myself, and because I like publishing things that other people can see and comment on. I have a paper journal, too, but it's sadly neglected. I've been planning to compile all my blog posts from the original site and LJ and print a book of them to shelve along with my paper journals, but that project is only partway done. I should get back to it.

In other news, I'm supposed to give a talk in church tomorrow and I haven't started on it. AHHHHHHH

Famble

"Day 11 - Another picture of you and your friends"
"Day 14 - A picture of you and your family"

I'm swapping these two because I have other plans for that one. Meanwhile, have this!:

 Not a new picture; a picture of new

I'd probably have preferred to use a more recent picture, but I'm at my parents' house, so I'm limited to what I've uploaded to facebook. :P But I've been thinking a lot about Daniel's birth lately, and I spent a bunch of time this morning looking at pictures from the end of my pregnancy and from when he was new. There's a lot of sweetness and beauty there. It makes me a little baby hungry despite the fact that having #2 would be kind of unreasonable right now (or possibly because of that, since I'm all safe?).

Incidentally, I've just learned that I live a lot closer to this lovely birth center than I thought I did. Very very very interesting.

Anyway. ♥ ♥ Heath. ♥ ♥ Daniel. ♥ ♥ the ones who are waiting. I'm frazzled a lot of the time as it is, but I miss them and I want to meet them soon.

Mu

"Day 10 - Songs you listen to when you're bored, happy, sad, mad, etc."

Wellllllllllll... huh. I guess I don't really do this anymore? Listen to music in response to my mood, I mean. I did when I was a teenager, slightly obsessively. I was kind of masochistic then, though.

Um. I like to listen to Abbey Road while I'm cleaning. And Sigur Rós music while studying. But most of the time I listen to things that have nothing to do with how I feel or what I'm doing, just because I like them. Anyway, a lot of sad music makes me giddy-happy because it's so well-crafted, and sometimes happy music makes me sad because I was already sad. Here's a pretty good anger song, but like I say, it's actually a happy song in disguise.

I guess that's that.

PS. Today is the day from hell. Thanks anyway, yesterday. And no, I'm not listening to any music.

Day of awesome

"Day 9 - Something you're proud of in the past few days"

Oh man, today was the right day for this prompt. Usually, I don't get very much done because I'm tired and Danieled and anemic and lazy. But today! Today, presented with the clean kitchen my wonderful husband gave me last night, I had a psychological high that carried me through getting a thing done, which carried my through getting some more things done, and before you know it I was getting things done all day long.

Things I got done!:

• Folded and put away a junkton of laundry
• Played under a sheet with Daniel
• Tidied up a bunch of random stuff
• Looked up a recipe online
• Made dinner?!?!?!
• Unloaded dishwasher
• Loaded dishwasher
• Installed cupboard latches in the kitchen
• Wrote a haiku about Star Trek
• Gave Daniel three solid-food mini-meals (aside from his normal nums)
• Hung my necklace rack and finally unpacked all my necklaces
• Tidied nightstand
• Changed sheets
• Had awesome food and watched funny videos with Heath and Jennifer
• Went to the grocery store with Jennifer, was hilarious apparently? 
• Left Daniel with Heath! Was a leaf on the wind in the produce section!!
• Came home and helped Daniel get to sleep
• Oh, I even played Minecraft a little this morning!
• Now I'm blogging!

In conclusion, aw yeah. So now, I guess tomorrow will either be awesome or terrible! Or maybe somewhere in between! J...just like always?

PS. Remember how I was talking before about wanting to cook? Yeahhhh, baby. The dinner I made was this dinner! It was insanely easy and it tasted prooty goot. I like this crock pot thing, by golly.

PPS. Using a bedsheet and your arms to make a big tent around yourself and your baby: five stars. He giggled and flopped around like mad. It was adorable. He's getting so fun and snuggly. It's hard when I need to do something else, though. He kept trying to crawl into my lap and grab the screwdriver while I was working on the cupboards, and he got all sad and clingy just as I was needing to hang up clothes. But mostly, he's just jolly and interested and busy.

PPPS. Sometimes when Daniel can't sleep, I have to tickle him, and then he can. :)

An easy one

"Day 8 - Short term goals for this month and when you'll accomplish them"

• Buy Heath a new desk - Today!
• Finish rearranging furniture - Tomorrow 
• Clean - ?
• Watch movie with Heath, return it to library - Tonight and tomorrow
• Go to the grocery store - Tomorrow
• Make an appointment for Daniel's check-up - This week
• Set up camp at parents' house - Next few days
• Get tax refund! Pay off student loan!! Celebrate!!! - This weekend
• Awesome church activities - Thursday and Friday
•  Be visited by Andy, Joanne, and kids - Saturday!!
• Give a talk in church - Sunday
• Switch from evil bank to awesome credit union - After bill payments have cleared
• Script at least half of the next comic chapter - ???
• Make an appointment at the consignment shop - ASAP
• Establish friendly exercise regimen - Soon
• Call city and whine about power bill, question water hardness - Soon
• Go to two baby showers
• Watch more Avatar
• Hang out with a bunch of people
• Clean again
• Buy diaper detergent
• Answer emails
• Set up ads on the site

Well... at least some of them are specific. :P

Cannot title -- paralyzed by sheer volume of injokes

"Day 7 - A picture of someone/something that has had the biggest impact on you"

The obvious place to go here would be to talk about my husband, or my mother, or other people who have lived in my house for years, but the blogging challenge has plenty of other entries for family members and romance. Which is awesome, because it allows me to talk about my other best friend!

 Hooray!

Andy is known to most of you as "my Canadian friend, with the long hair." We first interacted on a mailing list about kender when we were pre-teens. So this was the mid-90s, some 15 years ago, and we were known as Bramble Moonwillow and Flop Twinkletoes--because, as I say, it was a mailing list about kender and we were pre-teens. Whose name was whose is left as an exercise for the reader. After a couple years of exchanging the most random, ridiculous emails, we noticed that we were best friends and decided to meet in real life. Our parents came along to ensure the up-and-up, and despite ubiquitous dire warnings about the internet and its inhabitants, we all turned out to be real people and to have lots of fun. He and I have continued to chat and email and to have visits once or twice a year ever since. And now, suddenly, we're all grown up and have families of our own who like each other, too. It's about the most awesome thing there could possibly be.

Andy has played a super interesting part in my life, sort of like a half pen-pal, half brother, with some girlfriend and some neighbor and a bit of ex-that-I-never-actually-dated thrown in. (Which, by the way, has always been proudly open and mutual and angst-free.) Because we've always lived so far apart, we've always been able to get an outsider's opinion on whatever was going on in our lives. I hardly know how other people get along without that, especially since this particular confidante also happens to be an extremely, almost unbelievably intelligent, good, brave, and honest person.

He is responsible for introducing me to several good friends, most of my music collection, virtually all of my favorite books, and a lot of my ideas about how the world works.When I couldn't get a date to my senior prom, he cheerfully came down to go with me even though he hated dances, and we had a great time having a terrible time together. We've stayed up chatting until the sun rose on us laughing ourselves sick at insanity and nonsense. We've cried and comforted our way through crisis after stupid teenage crisis after serious grown-up crisis and back again. We've schemed and brain-stormed and made up stories and had brilliant ideas and written some down and forgotten others. We've hurt each other and let each other down and called each other the worst things we could think of and found out we still missed each other after it was all out.

I literally have no idea who I would have been without Andy. It is beyond my powers of imagination. We've conspired to turn our lives into parallel lines, running separately on and on and on into the distance without ever diverging. I sometimes feared, in past years, that we might stop being close one day--whether from a giant fight, from awkwardness with future spouses, or just from gradually falling out of touch. This is not something I worry about anymore.

Life is awesome. And I have a really, really, really good friend.

Born on the same earth

Today I will talk about something I usually keep kind of quiet because it's the kind of thing that could cause people to never take me seriously again.

Guys! I'm still a cool, responsible grown-up! Don't walk away! (Wait! Other guys--I'm still a cool, carefree kid! Come back! Aiiiiiieeeeeee)

"Day 6 - Favorite superhero and why"

 Surprising no one.

I was really into Sailor Moon as a young teenager, but not because of the dubbed anime. I first learned about the series while web-surfing one night, eating peanut butter cookies and listening to Space Oddity on repeat. I saw manga pictures first, then moved on to obsessively reading all the episode synopses at Hitoshi Doi's website. It was at least a year before I was able see even a single episode, and though I had a brief fling with the version of the show in English, its laughable, obvious, embarrassing, sometimes offensive inferiority was already known to me from my research on the internet. I didn't have access to any of the Japanese episodes (this was before Youtube) and couldn't afford to buy much of anything, but I read translations and downloaded music and drew fanart. I did get a T-shirt, and one volume of the original manga (which we found in Hawaii). Later, I taped over a bunch of my dad's movies (sorry, Dad!!), and later than that Heath bought me the first four volumes of the English comic. I created a website for a massive planned fanfic with my own cast of Senshi characters, which never got off the ground but which garnered a minor fanbase anyway because I networked like crazy and the internet is weird that way.

Anyway, after a while I sort of got over it and obsessed over things I had more access to. Fast-forward to college, when I started spending a lot of time on Wikipedia. I was attracted to my ability to fix grammar and add information on a whim, and eventually I wound up migrating over to the section on Sailor Moon. Seeing that it needed a lot of help (because most of its fans are, like the characters themselves, giggling schoolgirls), and because I still had this massive store of useless information saved up in my brain from when I was younger, I decided to dive in. Long story short, I ended up founding a special "WikiProject" task force, personally rewriting almost all the articles (some more than once), researching every freaking thing I could find about the manga, anime, live-action series, musicals, soundtrack, video games, cast, etc. etc. etc. etc., and generally putting in enough time and edits and discussion to be nominated and then voted in as a Wikipedia administrator. It was totally insane. It was totally awesome. Then I got pregnant and became allergic to internet drama, so I logged out one day and never logged back in. In some ways I miss it, and in other ways I am terrified to even peek at it again.

So yeah. That was all just to explain what I mean when I say "favorite". XD I don't know whether I'm more deeply proud of my work or deeply mortified about its subject--I guess it depends on who I'm talking to and whether they seem unimpressed. (Whatever the case, being an admin does look pretty sexy on my resume, even though in reality it's a pretty thankless job.)

"But why, Rachel?? Why!?!?"

The obsessive part came from being 11, and later from wanting to justify having been 11 (while simultaneously practicing my writing/editing/researching/committee-running), so I'll leave that aside. But why the original attraction?

The main reason is that I really, really like pantheons. As a little kid, I was really into Greek and Norse legends, and into systems of classifying the elements. Organizing reality into discrete chunks, and then splitting those chunks up among humanoids with thematically appropriate character designs, is a trope that hits my brain right in its happy spot. I don't really know why, but if that's gonna be your happy spot, nothing lives up to it like Sailor Moon does. The creator, Naoko Takeuchi, thought of absolutely everything. From name kanji to birthdays to color schemes to powers to the flowers they like, every single friggin' thing about the characters is subtly sorted to match their planets--astronomically, astrologically, Greekly, and Japanesely (and sometimes even morely). It's completely amazing. (Also, Naoko is adorable and one of my favorite creators of anything. She makes me want to make things, too.)

And the characters are so exciting! They're three-dimensional, and have complicated relationships with one another, and there sure are a lot of them. They are happy and angsty and silly and tragic and sexy and stupid. They have interesting problems. They don't always solve them. They try their best.

It's also just a high quality franchise. The actors' performances are above top-notch (in Japanese--in English they're hilariously terrible), the art is usually gorgeous (especially in the manga), the music won a bajillion awards, and the video games are fun. But that's true of a lot of other things, too. What really grabbed me and captured me and refused to let me go was the characters. They are both awesome and sorted into multiple highly complex elemental compartments, so I was doomed. I also really like how specific the costumes are. :P

Keen observers may note that I am now running a webcomic which features a large number of women with elemental powers (although I'm subverting the trope as hard as I can). That comes from a lot of places, mainly the Muses, but I'd be lying if I said this wasn't an influence, too.

Hmm. I feel like this was mostly a lot of embarrassingly pretentious rambling. But it's gotta be better than just going, OMGoober, Sailor Moon! She's awwesomex0rs!!!!! LOL~ ^___^;;_v

...Or maybe it's totally not. And I didn't even explain why I like it/her/them! I dunno, man. Read the manga. It's not that long. It's pretty and funny and plotful and good.

Making the earth say "beans" instead of "grass"

"Day 5 - A picture of somewhere you've been"

Well, the coolest one I have is probably this:

 Looking out over Walden Pond

(and 13 weeks pregnant!)

I have a whole folder of pictures from my Boston trip that I never posted anywhere. They're extremely awesome because of all the family history pictures I illegally took of William Brewster museum displays. I should make a facebook album.

Rargh

"Day 4 - A habit that you wish you didn't have"

 I don't feel like I deal with my anger very well. Most of the time, my responses fall into one of these two categories:

Situation 1: I am angry at someone I feel very comfortable with.
Response: FIGHT (by getting sarcastic, rude, loud, etc.; throwing pillows)

Situation 2: I am angry at someone I do not feel comfortable with.
Response: FLIGHT (by withdrawing into a quietly polite ball of boiling resentment)

(The internet is a whole different matter. I'm usually pretty calm because I get so much time to think about what to say. (This was a lot of the reason I got voted into being a Wikipedia admin.) It only breaks down if I'm feeling fragile, and then I rush my responses and revert to one of the above, usually the latter.)

The worst is when I'm angry at someone I'm only sort of comfortable with, like a family member who doesn't live with me or an old classmate who insists on something that hits me in a bad place. Then I tend to kind of blow up sideways like a firework factory reject and run away.

I need to get better at not feeling threatened by bullies, at not being offended by ignorant rudeness, at not being outraged by irrationality, and at not expecting other people to try to be polite just because I do. Too often I let my emotions make me powerless to actually argue, so I give up in despair.

I also need to stop expecting all my time to be my own so that I can be more patient with Daniel when he's fussy. I need to have a much less sharp, critical, snipey tongue when I talk to my eternal companion, who has never once done anything to hurt or annoy me on purpose.

Meanwhile... I carry around a lot of leftover resentment about one or two things that you'd think were small, but mattered a lot to me. They happened a long time ago. I don't know how to let go of them. I should probably figure it out. It's really, really hard.

Discovered by Nicholas Fugly

"Day 3 - A picture of you and your friends"

This is a hard one. I don't get to hang out in realspace with people other than my family very often, and I take pictures of it less often than that, and remembering to hand the camera off so someone else can get me in the shot? Not so much, and not anytime recently.

So, okay, here is a two year old picture of me with exactly one awesome friend! It is still quite relevant.

Nicole and me in our natural habitat (a choir retreat),

engaging in our natural behavior (loungin' around and lookin' good).

You guys, Nicole is super extremely awesome in at least 936573 ways, including being talented and thoughtful and curious and hilarious and into awesome stuff and making me stay up to unconscionable hours of the morning.

So next time you venture out into the wilderness, please be careful, and remember that there are three kinds of bear: the Grizzly Bear, the Ultimate Bear, and the Fugly Bear.

Here's from Her to Me

"Day 2 - The meaning behind your blog name"

Seeing that this one was of the items in the blogging challenge thing was part of what motivated me to do it, because I've been meaning to mention this anyway. I just wish I was doing it at a time that I wasn't falling asleep! Day two is too early to wuss out, though.

So, okay! "Here's from Me to World" is the name of my journal. It was also the name of my regular column in the Daily Barometer, back in the day, and before that it was the subtitle of my LiveJournal. So it's kind of been around for a while, but this is my favorite use of it so far, I think.

It's a line from the song Euridyce, from the very oldest album by the beautiful and spooky and beautiful Noe Venable. (You can get an mp3 of it and several of her other marvelous songs here.) Her music in general is gorgeous and strange, which is pretty much a direct line of attack on my heart. She is very good at writing and singing things that make me want to write and sing, too, with the pleasant kind of despair that means I'll never be this good. All of her lyrics are pretty, and some are amazingly painful, and some are like this:

Here's from me to world... Here's from world to you.

I can sing my heart out, sing my self away,

Any day, any day.

That first line in particular just struck me one day as a really awesome way to describe the feeling of writing things to be published. In some ways, my writing just works out to be a big conversation. But in other ways (especially at the Barometer) it's a one-way fountain, and I just have to come up with things to say, then let them go and hope for the best. The second part of the line, I have used as the title of friend-pages and link lists. The rest of the chorus is reasonably appropriate, too. It fits my desire to do this stuff, and my insistence that I can, and my kind of having to insist. (Side-note: I really like the way the chorus fits into the rest of the song--it gives it a totally different mood than might be imagined.)

When I decided I wanted this for the name of my newspaper column, I actually emailed Noe to make sure it was okay, and got a super friendly reply back from a manager or someone saying that it was. This made me feel all fuzzy and special, and so I've gone right on using it.

I guess that's all. If you want to hear something really... I-don't-even-have-a-word-for-this..., scroll to the bottom of this page and listen to their live recording of Juniper. I think a certain corridors of my mind are shaped totally differently because of that song.

Suddenly, a meme month

Allanna is doing this thing. Because it is the first of the month, I have spontaneously decided that I will do it, too. In this thing, you write in your blog about a bunch of different stuff every day. I will include the full list below a cut, but for now, let's just start with day one: "Recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself."

Here is a picture! It was my fifth anniversary. ♥

About two years ago I did a couple of those "random facts about yourself" memes on facebook, so my greatest challenge here is to not repeat anything I said then. Let's see...

1. I really, really like dark hair. Every crush I've ever had was on someone with brown or black hair (except one video game character). When the Disney Pocahontas came out, it made me want to dye my hair black. I later came to my senses, and I enjoy having the slightly unusual hair color I do, but I still think shiny brown hair is crazy pretty.

2. Just because this seems funny, I will now give the first names of everyone I've ever had a major crush on: Taka, Ryan, Nick, Louis, Heath, another Nick, Heath again. Yes, they all know about it...except maybe the first one, because I was 2. And here is my list of fictional characters I've had the hots for: Squall, Ryoga, Lawfer, Peter Parker, Aragorn, Angel. Yeah, I know. Shut up!

2. When I was a little girl, I was afraid of old men for no good reason.

3. My right ankle creaks really loud when I flex my foot and wiggle my toes.

4. I have loved nearly every book I was ever forced to read for a class. This includes Hemingway. This includes Faulkner. This includes Howl. This does not include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which I hated! I also hated Riders of the Purple Sage, because aside from being rude and ignorant it was SO BAD. I'm glad I read it, though, for historical context reasons. Just, agh. Also, I've been meaning to watch the movie of CoaHTR just to see if I've come around. But anyway, everything else? Oh my goodness. So good. SO GOOD. Sometimes I've thought I didn't like something, but then I go to class and the teacher unfolds it like one of those origami fortune-tellers and I leave all excited. Aiiieeee. If I could do my major over again I would, just for all the class discussions. Eeeeee.

5. My favorite classes ever were a ten-week seminar on King Lear, another on Hamlet, and one on the Divine Comedy. OH MAN THAT WAS SO GOOD. You should totally be jealous of me. And take a class on Dante. And squee about it. Oh my goodness.

6. I started college as a Computer Science major. I have written a program or two in my day! There's nothing quite like the joy of getting your syntax right and seeing it do what it's supposed to do. I wonder if cooking can feel like that? See below.

7. I can lick my elbow.

8. I really want to learn to play the piano. I own a hilariously cheap-for-a-reason electronic keyboard, but Daniel plays it more than I do. I can play one-handed melodies pretty okay, and sight-read decently; I just need to practice more.

9. I get obsessed with things, and research them until I turn blue with crazy amounts of esoteric knowledge. My most recent obsession was with cloth diapers, but now that my stash is more or less satisfactory I think I should move on so that it remains a money-saving measure along with all the other benefits. :P (But ask me more and I will show you a world of awesomeness!) So yeah, now I'm looking for something new to be obsessed with. The diapers thing was super useful, so I'm thinking maybe I should try to be obsessed with nutrition and cooking next?

10. Right now I mostly just try to eat the healthiest convenience food I can find, which frankly doesn't give me a lot of options and probably doesn't work very well. I eat a lot of sandwiches and soup and pasta and bagels and cereal and yogurt and the brand of frozen whatever that has the least fat. I hate most vegetables to the extent of gagging on them, and I'm allergic to most fruit unless it's been cooked. But I would really like to figure out how to work with that and eat better anyway, and rely less on wheat and milk and meat. I'll have to start with "Cooking For Dummies," I guess.

11. I'm threatening to be obsessed with Rubik's Cubes instead.

12. I have a reasonably impressive cosplay collection for someone who's never been to an anime convention. It's entirely from my adoration for Halloween. I looooooooove costumes.

13. I really enjoyed being pregnant, at least for the latter 70% when the incessant puking was over. (Oh man did I have morning sickness. I wasn't telling facebook yet at the time, so not many people knew about it. I could hardly leave the house. I puked at least three times a day and in a lot of weird places.) Once I started showing, I had a blast, even though I got sore and waddly and psycho and all that normal stuff. It was so much fun. I'm looking forward to doing it again in a couple years.

14. I watched a football game once! No, twice! I was very proud of myself.

15. I no longer really self-identify as a geek, even though I still read the webcomics and wear the T-shirts and follow the news and debate the tiny details of the fandoms. Maybe I just don't feel distinct enough from non-geeks to need a label, or something? Or I don't want to be in a club with some of the other geeks? Or I feel weird defining my identity according to what I like? Something like that.

There you go! Now, for a full list of how everything else is going to go, you can look behind this cut.

Tabdump Tuesdays!

Okay, so I have a bad habit. It's that I always have 80 kajillion Firefox tabs open, because whenever I read something really interesting I go "I should send that to someone" or "I should look into that some more." Sometimes I do that, and then I can close the tab. Sometimes I don't, and it stays there forever until I get sick of having to reload 150 tabs every time Firefox crashes and give up on it.

So, to make this stop happening, I'm instituting Tabdump Tuesday! I will post here all the random crap I've been leaving open, and then I can close it, and you can look at it if you want, or I can find it here later. Sound good? Awesome! Let's get started.

This week I have a freakton of stuff to post, spanning five different windows. It easily appoaches the 150 estimate up there, because it's been at least two months since I last reset my life. Luckily, I have this awesome FF plugin called "URL lister" that feeds all your tab URLs out into a linked list, so all I have to do is copy-paste that and then screw around with it.

Hey, does Blogger do a "cut" thing? It does? Fantastic. Here we go.