As per the request of joeashley5, I have updated my Amazon.com wishlist, available by searching for my primary email address. I've gotten rid of things I have, things I no longer want, and more importantly, have sorted it into several sub-lists: Knitting/Sewing/Handwork, Science/CogSci/Linguistics, FFF: Fat Feminism & Fashion, Cooking & Baking, DreamHouse, and Fiction/Misc. This is probably also where I mention that my 33rd birthday is Thursday...

I suppose it should come as no surprise -- given that in the last few days, I have listened to the entirety of the abridged audiobook of The Wee Free Men and about 90% of the unabridged audiobook of Wintersmith -- that I have started talking like a Nac Mac Feegle.

Ach, wailie wailie...

I finally met the bebeh puggles who lives in our neighborhood (I'd seen her out for walkies a couple times before). Her name is Nacho, and when I picked her up to snorgle her and get puppeh keeses, she tried to eat my nose. She actually broke the skin with her tiny fangs -- I have two little parallel scratchmarks on the side of my nose now. Silly little puggles... I am not fudz.

P2, Danmarks Radio's mostly-classical station, has a weekday-ly trivia question, the first letter of which composes a weekly word, which one can send in to take part in drawings for some fairly spectacular musical prizes (like trips to Vienna to see some awesome concert or another). They usually play some sort of musical clue as well.

Today, the host asked who was Benjamin Britten's life partner*, the tenor for whom he composed many a song and operatic role, and collaborated with over a number of years on works such as realizations of Henry Purcell's lesser-documented works. (Which I happen to have a library copy of in my posession at this very moment! My voice seems to be very well-suited to Purcell, and as such I intend to add more of his works to my repertoire.) As these were 20th-century men, we have recordings of many of their collaborations, and which did the DJ play?

Purcell's "Man is for the Woman Made". *headdesk* Playing down the gay aspect much, Frank Jensen?

*The answer, of course, being Peter Pears.

Good news: while off-grid this weekend, I made a short list of time-sensitive tasks I needed to accomplish by today. Some are related to my term papers, now due in a week's time (eek!), some are related to getting my ducks in a row for my thesis research before everyone leaves for summer vacation (in about three weeks, give or take), and some are just personal things. Save for identifying the actual schools within the cities in which I want to do my research (did identify the actual cities however), I have done all these things.

Bad news: I woke up exhausted this morning, despite a reasonable amount of sleep with Lars in the living room in case of snoring. I went back to bed after a quick bathroom trip, and didn't emerge again until a quarter after noon. I am beginning to suspect that my vitamin B12 deficiency is resurfacing, and aside from taking more sublingual B12 tabs with greater frequency (as opposed to swallowing them twice a week, as I'd been doing until today), there's not a damn thing I can do about it until my doctor's telephone consultation time tomorrow AM. Knowing her, she'll want to measure my blood levels before giving me a shot; I'm hoping I can, by virtue of my looming deadline, convince her to give me one based on similarity with previous symptoms, as soon as humanly possible.

Good news: I'm really enjoying my curriculum-development project*, though I wish I had time to actually *read* all these references I'm gathering info on, instead of merely identifying them and sorting them into their appropriate modules. I'm strongly considering begging Bill and Jakob to let me teach this class in spring, as I will (ideally) have cand.mag. in hand by then, and will need some source of income anyway... This is all stuff I really want to learn and understand, and for me at least, there's no better way to really grok material than to teach it to others.

Bad news: I'm totally losing motivation on my language-change project, as I once again bit off way more than I can chew, but unfortunately, it's the one with the most left to do. I just want to get the damn thing over and done with (though preferably to a level of quality that won't blow my excellent GPA), so I can get on to working on my thesis research, to say nothing of writing the book review for Linguistic Typology that I've been sitting on for nearly a year. On the bright side, I think I can tilt the way I write the essay as "preliminary results", write a lot about pitfalls, future directions, and clear definition of the problem, and still have it work. After all, it's an elective credit, so it's not as if there are clear subject-specific guidelines I have to meet.

Good news: It feels good to be flexing my brain muscles again.

Bad news: Despite this, especially in light of my overwhelming fatigue, all I want to do is watch police procedurals TV shows and knit. :P

*I think I haven't described it here before... On our BA curriculum for linguistics here at Uni Aarhus, psycholinguistics is supposed to be alternated every spring with a class called "Sprog, Kognition, Kultur og Hjerne" (Language, Cognition, Culture and Brain). No one has actually developed said curriculum until now, which is what I'm doing.

Basic Books just sent me an actual release copy of Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham, so I've got an ARC I don't need. Anybody want it?

EDIT: sylvar is the lucky book recipient!

Anyone with depression of any stripe, be it seasonal, unipolar or bipolar, will tell you that it affects the way you eat and the foods you crave. When my depression is kicking up, and I don't have ready-meal leftovers or easy frozen food, foraging for food in my kitchen gets to be a weird dance between my illness, my adult-self who reminds me that I have to put nutritious food into my body, and my palate who, while kicked onto the back burner when I'm down, is never so far gone that it won't at least chime in with its $.02.

Depression: CARBS! Must have carbs! *sees leftover rice from Chinese take-out* *throws in bowl* *sees leftover potato slices that Lars brought home from work* *throws in bowl*
Adult Self: That's a whole lot of simple carbs. You really need to add some protein to that. *adds cheese slices on top of rice and potatoes*
Palate: That's totally bland. *adds Mojave blend seasoning*
Adult Self: You really need some veggies, too. *cuts up snack pepper and a couple of tomatoes* *adds to bowl*
Palate: I ain't eating that shit cold. *heats up bowl* (Yes, heating up my leftovers is not necessarily a given when my depression is kicking up.)
Adult Self: That's a lot of food. You probably shouldn't eat all the rice.
Depression: Yeah, yeah, shut up, Mom. MMM CARBS NOM NOM NOM.
Palate: This shit is weird. *adds ketchup*

Thought du jour: it should be no surprise that, as an avowed dog-person, I seem to have a peciular weakness for men with dark brown eyes describable as "puppy-dog eyes".

Quote du jour: "Her hormones broke out party streamers and kazoos." -- Kiss of the Highlander, by Karen Marie Moning

EDIT: LJ quote du jour, from nebulawindphone: "Either you believe in equality or you don't. If you do, then you've got no place calling anyone inferior. If you don't, then I'm gonna do my best to keep your innate dignity and value as a human being in mind while I tell you to go fuck yourself."

To which I had to reply, "Oh, I didn't know you were a UU as well!"

Dear Life,

Look, while I appreciate that you've been mixing a large amount of Good Shit in with the Bad Shit lately, which if nothing else is a dramatic improvement over much of the last year and a half or so, do you think you could tone down the frequency a bit for the next couple weeks? I do have term papers to finish, you know...

Love,
Mickey

My friend Adam, creator of many a catchy song, has just created an even catchier one. I hope he records this at some point on something nicer than his old spinnet.



And two different video-collaboration interpretations of a fabulous song I can't believe I'm only now hearing. Serious, O Great LJBrain, how long has this song been out? I love it!

Please note, lyrics are NSFW unless you work someplace really really cool, and you probably don't even wanna listen to it on headphones, 'cuz if you're anything like me, you're gonna be singing it all damn day.

And, just two days after our anniversary, Lars once again proves that he is Best Husband EVAR. During one of his periodic checking-in calls, during which I was hip-deep in Drama with a friend, I blew him off and said that I just didn't feel like talking right then. He gave me the space I needed for the rest of the day, and came home not only with a bouquet of flowers, but of my favorite cut-flower type flowers, brightly colored Gerber daisies (in hot pink no less!), with a cockscomb celosia in the bouquet as well. He said it sounded like I was unhappy, and that I might need a little something to cheer me up.

I think I just melted...

I'd been doing pretty well about whittling down my stash, between all the time spent knitting, as well as allocating my extant yarn for projects.

Then came Ravelry, and swaps. There are now several skeins of yarn in my stash (all lovely, not complaining, mind) that never would have been there, had I not gotten involved in various and sundry yarn swaps.

Then came silenciador, and his offer to buy me a metric asston of yarn from his LYS's discount bin (and mind you, it wasn't discount because it was boring or icky yarn... mostly just discount by virtue of being discontinued yarns/colorways and/or older dye lots). Said asston arrived in the mail last week.

And then, while on our anniversary retreat, I found several nice partial skeins and various bits and ends in secondhand stores, with which I can begin building up my palate for my planned Next Crafting Phase, namely "painting with yarn" (aka artistic free-form knit/crochet). And I also got three more skeins with which to knit some sort of feltable item from the chunky yarns in my stash.

OMG. I am now drowning in yarn...

Six years today! Even though we hit our first serious rough patch this year (at least in terms of between us, rather than us vs. the world), we made it through, and we're stronger than ever. Our dreams seem a little closer every day. Never once have I regretted marrying you, O Geek of my Dreams. *MWAH* Happy anniversary!

Clearly, these two require a mashup. Or a meetup. Warning: may induce snarfage. I seriously cackled at both of these, and am most grateful I did not have liquid in my mouth.

As I was riding the bus home, I could see that there was a fantastic storm system moving in. I got slightly sprinkled on between the bus and my door, but didn't care in the slightest because I saw lightning flashes and heard thunder! You American peeps have no idea how rare this is in DK, and as a born-and-bred Midwesterner, I totally miss my thunderstorms! *does happy dance* Gonna chill with the windows open now...

Almost a year ago, when the brochure for the 2008/09 season at Musikhuset came out, I knew what I would be doing today: seeing Cecilia Bartoli in concert. Had to get a loan from the Bank of Mor to buy the ticket, but worth every øre of the 1200DKK it cost. (In case you're unfamiliar with the exchange rate, that's over $200US.) But getting the ticket that far in advance meant I got 7th row just left of center, in the new Symphonic Hall, an intimate room with probably not more than 600 seats on the ground level (as well as two balconies, plus side seating and choir balcony as well; it's a fabulous room).

And I feel... utterly seduced, in the most platonic and positive connotation of the word. She doesn't just sing the music, she communicates the music, she draws you in with her eyes, her hands, her face, and she commands the emotions of every person in the room. If you were to watch her with the sound off, she'd probably be gut-bustingly comical, given the kinds of bizarre facial expressions she makes while singing, but the expressiveness with which she conveys the music is second to none.

The first half, wherein she wore a gown that looked positively bridal, was filled with the kind of Italian-language opera music one would expect from an opera-star mezzo-soprano like La Maestra. The first half? Was for Art. The second? It was for Fun! And I've never seen a classically-trained musician who has more FUN while performing than she does. She had us crying, laughing, and cheering. We gave her a standing ovation when she left the stage for INTERMISSION! We got her out for FOUR encores! A group of Danes, from Aarhus no less where they're known for reserve and understatement, with an average age of well over fifty, clapped and cheered and whistled and stomped so hard that she looked almost overwhelmed with gratitude. One of her encores was a caballe by a 19th century Spanish composer, and she brought out castinets; when she was done playing them, and it came to a part of the song where she clapped, she tucked them in the (ample and lovely!) cleavage of her dress, which had us just about rolling in the aisles with laughter.

One of the things that has always boggled me about Cecilia Bartoli's voice, so much so that I actually didn't like her the first time I heard her, is the strange articulation she uses on melismatic sections. I think I actually figured it out tonight while watching her closely. I think she manages to voluntarily harness the kind of rapid diaphragmatic contraction that most people only get involuntarily while laughing, and incorporates that into her air stream. Truly incredible... I've never heard anyone else do it, but it's amazing.

The orchestra she performs with, La Scintilla (the orchestra of the Zürich Opera House), is quite special as well. Not only is it led by a concertmaster instead of a director, the concertmaster is a woman, and an American woman from Cleveland at that (by the name of Ada Pesch). That has to be one of the best small ensembles I've ever seen or heard. And to add a nice little bit of seasoning, the bass player was (by my reckoning) a nice bit of eye candy: big guy, a little pudgy, wearing an all-black suit with a black shirt, and with a black and silver striped tie that perfectly matched the silver forelock in his otherwise dark brown hair. And watching his fingering.... *mmmmm*

So, hopefully I'll be able to calm down enough to sleep soon... for now, I'm paraphrasing My Fair Lady: Sleep? Sleep? I couldn't go to sleep... I could have clapped all night, I could have clapped all night, and still have begged for more... I only know when she began to sing to me, I could have clapped clapped clapped all night. Seriously, I clapped so hard my arms hurt...

Where you feel like you're walking along the road to h-e-double-hockeysticks, looking down and going, "Gee, what lovely paving stones!"?

Yeah, that.

I <3 my president like WHOA.

Kids get all the fun... storytime with Uncle Pterry, storytime with Uncle Prez...

Tuesday, Lars stayed home sick from work with a cold. Tuesday night, I had a hardcore insomnia attack, and by Wednesday morning determined that I was fighting off whatever Lars had. I went back to bed, and did not emerge until almost 2pm when Lars came home early from work to telecommute and take care of me. Last night, I went to bed before 9, and got up this morning about 11:30.

After my coffee, provigil, and several glasses of diet cola, I'm starting to feel human again, which is a Very Good Thing, as I have a Stitch'n'Bitch at 4 and the performance of Elijah to attend tonight. As I told Lars when he asked yesterday about whether or not to buy the tickets, given that I could not sing in this performance, the only way I'm missing the damn thing is on my deathbed.

I am a little bummed that no one has yet offered to hook me up with booky goodness. I am even more bummed at ladyofthemasque's news of her poor quarterly earnings. However, there is some comfort to be found, namely, yet another reason why I want to get a cute little ugly dog as a pet.

My dear friend ladyofthemasque's last book in her Sons of Destiny series comes out in a week. Since AmazonUK was totally cockblocking me when book 7 came out, I ended up buying it as a downloadable e-book, and then later bought the physical book again. PostDanmark's evil alliance with the Danish Customs Service means that, if I buy book 8 directly from AmazonUS, I will not only pay something like its cost again in shipping, I will end up paying its cost again in import duties and VAT.

Would some lovely person stateside be willing to secure me the book, and send it as a letter, marked gift on the customs form with a declared value of no more than $10? I will be most happy to either repay via paypal, or send a lovely gifty from DK. Please to hook a girl up with her favorite form for crack... and if you haven't done so yet, buy the first in the series and get hooked yourself! Jean is a talented new author, a lovely person, and it would be awesome to see her become self-supporting from her writing.