While on the tag-end of my travels in Norway and Sweden, my ears started acting funny. By the time I got home, my throat had joined the chorus. I've spent the last week in full-blown snotty unpleasantness, treating it symptomatically and trying to support my immune system in kicking these buggers' arses, as my internal microflora balance is sufficiently delicate that I vastly prefer *not* to use antibiotics except as a measure of last resort.

Yesterday, I went to the doctor's office, partly to see about the current yuck, partly to ask for some tests to see if thyroid/adrenal thingies could be an underlying cause of my ongoing health problems. I arrived early, so I got a few rows done on the scarf I'm making for Mor for Christmas. I'd just finished a row when my GP, Doctor Lis, called me in, so I just grabbed purse in one hand, knitting and accoutrements in the other, and headed in to her office.

As Doctor Lis is also a knitter, the first five minutes of my 20-minute slot were spent showing her what I was knitting on, her asking what the pattern was, my giving her my printout of the pattern (since it's a downloaded PDF, I can always print another one) and explaining what the English instructions meant in Danish, and ultimately knitting one row with the lace pattern repeat so she could see how it worked. I am amused by this. Sick, still, and pretty tired, but rather amused.

I'd been mentally mulling an entry that would function as an homage to all the fabulous gay men I know and have known, but then I found this, which is made of so much awesome that a 20-gallon tub of awesomesauce wouldn't even hold all the awesome:



And for some reason, it made me think of firestrike... I can't decide which I liked best: Animal's verse, Beaker on the high notes, or the first re-appearance I can recall ever seeing of the Manamanah muppets. Or those may well all be topped by the action on the word "monstrosity". I just can't decide.

EDIT: And, of course, this video now joins 1776 in my "Must Watch Every July 4th" list:

For reasons I can't go into without friends-locking this post (indeed, I may well follow up with a heavily locked and filtered post explaining why), I've been ruminating this morning on the "Marry, Fuck, Kill" game, and how it can be used to describe my attraction responses.

To place a guy in the "marry" category, he has to be the sort of man who engages my attraction on multiple levels -- not only the physical, but also the intellectual, the emotional, and whatever else I can't put a finger on that just falls into the nebulous realm of "chemistry". A pleasant face is well and good, but what's between the ears is of vastly greater importance, as that's most of where my day-to-day attractive responses are engaged. Obviously, since bigamy is illegal in pretty much every country in the world, not someone I'd actually legally marry, but certainly a guy I'd date if given the chance.

To put a guy in the "fuck" category, he's of a physically outstanding sort that makes my ovaries sit up and beg, and makes my mammalian hindbrain want to be picked up, thrown over his shoulder, taken back to his cave, and ravished like my inner cavewoman wants it. Were I a woman who picks up guys in bars for the purpose of a one-night stand, this is the guy I'd be making come-hither glances to; the kind to whom I'd say, "I don't even want to know your name, unless you like hearing it screamed while you're making me come so hard my eyes cross." The Venn diagram of the physical types that trigger this response in me has little to no crossover with the kind of guys I like to date and hang out with, so if I were to go after a guy like this, it'd be for the sex and nothing more, since we wouldn't really have much to talk about.

And, of course, the "kill" category doesn't mean I'd actually kill the guy, just that he elicits a big ol' "meh" reaction from me, does nothing for me even if other women think he's the best thing since sliced stupid people on toast.

To whit, a few examples:

( Ding! Round 1! )
( Back to your corners! Round 2! )
( EDIT: Ah, heck, one more round! )

MFK: Ladies' Night

And the fun part of being bi? I can play this game with women, too! Except in the middle category, they make my ovaries purr instead of sit up and beg and bark. Go fig. Insert inevitable "pussy" joke here. :P

( And now, the ladies' round! )

So, anybody wanna bat me another round of MFK? Or have me throw one to them?

As I have mentioned before a time or two, I have a weakness for ugly-cute dogs. My dream, should I someday have a home with enough space to allow it, would be to have a pentafecta (like trifecta, except with five) pack of ugly-cute dogs: a boxer, an English bulldog, a French bulldog, a Boston terrier, and a pug. It occurred to me the other night, as I took advantage of a really bad insomnia attack to have an all-too-rare phone chat with qnonimous, that if/when I do, I should get a t-shirt made that says "ALPHA BITCH".

cassiopeja is saving my ass and proctoring my thesis research in Sweden, and I just heard from someone at the Uni of Oslo that a couple students from the psycholinguistics seminar might be willing and able to do so in Norway. Still no schools in DK, though, so I'm planning to go one step up the food chain and contact relevant folks in the municipal school administrations. Thankfully, I have plenty of people in DK that I can beg/borrow/bribe/blackmail into proctoring for me, and in a pinch, I could probably manage on my own (it's occasionally a bit random whether Danish kids can understand me, although my near-daily dose of surrealism Oline has helped me in understanding them a bit better).

After I finish my thesis, I will have been working primarily on language and linguistics for almost seven years. I am strongly considering the very crazy idea of taking a sabbatical year, and using it to go to attend the inaugural year of Skals Design and Handiwork School's new one-year design program. A bit of a strange tangent, yes, but you see, I have An IDEA. And this IDEA, if seen through to reality, and sold on to an appropriate entity in the fashion industry, could revolutionize the way that clothing is designed for, and marketed to, fat women. And, to quote Young Frankenstein, "IT... JUST... MIGHT... WORK!!!"

Lars and I have been admiring a farm that just came up for sale on Samsø. As well as the various gallery/workshop/retreat ideas we've had about how we can derive income from the farm itself, the possibility of a B&B had entered our minds. A few months back, we read about a B&B in southern Sweden that's specifically geared as an erotic/sensual couple's retreat, an idea intriguing enough that we're contemplating going there for our next anniversary retreat. The historical name of the farm we were considering is Bollegaard, and one of the ways you can parse that name in Danish is as "fuck farm" (I'd wager that wasn't the original etymology). My my friend Lone's statement on the topic best summed up that curious synchronicity: "I don't believe in signs, but clearly this is a sign that you should buy the farm and open that kind of B&B!" We are, in all likelihood, not going to buy it, but the very fact that it constituted such a strong candidate has helped us practice the mental processes involved in buying our Dream!Farm, which takes it a few steps closer to Actual!Plans, and a few steps further away from Idle!Dreams.

EDIT: Aaaand, I just got a call back from FOF Aarhus. I am cleared for teaching my proposed class, "DIY Fashion: Upcycle, Recycle, Re-Design", for spring! I need to send them a shorter description for the catalog, as well as my personal/employment-related data, but I'm in! Yay!

I've been going about matters all wrong up to now. By avoiding moping about Brad, I've let the sadness from missing him vastly overshadow the sadness from all the myriad ways he caused me pain, showed me disrespect, and kept me entangled in a web of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't. By avoiding the music that re-evoked the pain he caused me, I prevented myself from remembering how frustrated and angry he made me, how toxic our interactions had become, and how damned crazy he could make me. By keeping myself from wallowing in the pain of our parting, I let myself forget just what caused it, and how, in the end, we were both racing for the kill-switch, but he made it first because I hesitated by holding to hope. In short, I kept myself from focusing on the bad, which meant that every time I thought of him, I only missed the good, thus denying myself the motivation I needed to just get the hell over him for a goodly damn long time. As billazilla so wisely advised me at the time, I needed to grok my sadness.

Tonight, for the first time in quite a while, I re-read all those entries from late May, the ones I'd forced myself not to go back and wallow in. (Not unpromptedly, actually; I finally gave in and asked a mutual friend to ask Brad if he'd be willing to receive an email from me; no great surprise, the answer was no.) With every falling tear, I felt myself getting stronger. I felt that tiny ember of hope that's left me in limbo far too long finally giving up the ghost (good fucking riddance), and cold resolve crystallizing around it.

I find myself wondering if post-hypnotic suggestion can actually make you forget a person... even if not, 'twould be a great time to finally get around to seeing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and wouldn't you know I have a Blockbuster gift certificate...

From here on out, you guys are welcome and encouraged to do or say anything and everything likely to make me get over him. Not only do I no longer need him, I've finally realized that I no longer want him. Just took one last slapping away of a reached-out hand to get me there.

It's time to stop treading water in a sea I filled with my own tears. Starting now, I'm swimming to shore, and then I'm walking away.

In early August, I had a hormonal IUD inserted in hopes that it would a) reduce my annoying level of body hair, b) ameliorate my annoying periods, and c) maybe just maybe reduce or eliminate my acne, since a lot of hormonal BC methods ostensibly do that (for those who've forgotten, birth control was not actually a concern in this decision, as I had my tubes tied a couple years ago). Once again proving that my body is just weird and never reacts to *anything* the way it's supposed to (at least when I want it to, anyway), I spent the first 2.5 months with the damn thing in alternately bleeding or spotting, my first period since then has gone on for at least 10 days, my skin has gone completely berserk, and unless it's a combination of confirmation bias having a party in my brain with my innate paranoia, I seem to have gotten even hairier. So, long story short, got the damn thing yanked this morning, and am going to be very skittish about doing anything at all to my hormone levels from here on out (even though I seem to have some sort of built-in androgen hypersensitivity, it's not something that can either be tested or treated, as nearly as I can tell).

In other news, thanks to a Ravelry swap, I own a hoodie for the first time in recent memory, and I'm really starting to understand why my cousin Lauren is so infatuated with them (I have no idea how many she owns, but I know I gave her one last year, and am giving her another this year, so it's at least a couple dozen, I think). When you want to hide from the world but have to leave the house, they're kinda perfect. Am contemplating having a couple more in my wardrobe, especially one where I don't have to explain who the hell Austin Peay is or why I'm wearing a hoodie with his name.

Also, I find myself wishing I had more of the following in my wardrobe (as I currently have somewhere between "very few" and "none", but am convinced they look quite cute on me: palazzo pants, v-neck t-shirts, roomy wrap cardigans of a tunic/jacket length (especially those three together), wrap shirts, wrap dresses, and shirtdresses. Also, I really want to put together enough scratch to acquire a good pair of pumps, preferably from Ecco. I've been slowly re-entering the world of heels, but currently don't have anything to wear with skirts in cool weather other than boots. Also, cute heels under straight- or wide-legged pants make my legs look longer, which is never a bad thing.

I submitted a proposal to FOF (one of the myriad local adult-ed clearinghouses) to teach a class entitled "DIY Fashion: Upcycle, Recycle, Redesign". I got an email back wanting to do a phonecall, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

My application to be officially on my master's thesis period got lost in the crevasses of academia for a while, but I am now officially approved, with a submission deadline of March 30th. More and more ducks are getting lined up for doing my first round of data-gathering, so I'll be off to Sweden and Norway before too long!

Read an article in one of the uni papers about self-branding for students, and had a crazy-cool idea coalesce with seeds leftover from reading the book about The Slash Effect (no, this has nothing to do with fanfiction). Watch this spot to be subjected to being alpha-testers for My Master (Life-)Plan...

...my inner gay man totally wants to marry Tim Gunn.

And that was even before I found out that he's now a character in a comic book who gets to wear the Iron Man suit. *geekswoon*

EDIT: Gah, embedding is totally broken. See the video on this page.

Needless to say, I was rushing to call my local comic store to have them order it for me...

My hair is getting long enough again to be annoying, cause headaches, and generally be more bother than I want to deal with. When I put a photo set of pics Lars had taken of me up on Facebook recently, I got several compliments about how I looked with a freshly-done bob, so I'm contemplating going that way again.

The last time I cut off a major ponytail, I donated it to Locks of Love. However, there seems to be a bit of bad odor hanging around that particular organization, so I'm considering a UK organization called the Little Princess Trust. A few advantages:

1. Their wigs go only to children with cancer, not alopecia or other skin conditions. Not saying that losing your hair to alopecia wouldn't be traumatic, but it's a chronic non-life-threatening condition. No kid with cancer should have to add the trauma of being teased over their baldness to the trauma and worry that they and their family go through. Children can be cruel little buggers when another kid looks different, and if my hair can help prevent that, so much the better.

2. They fully fund the wigs, whereas Locks of Love charges families on a sliding scale. Again, not saying that's an inherently bad thing, and I realize that charities have overhead to deal with, but I'd prefer that the wig *my* hair goes into gets donated outright to a child with cancer.

3. They don't have the taint of scandal and bad press around them. Not saying that Locks of Love is necessarily shady, but I'd prefer to give my hair to an upright organization that's trustworthy.

4. Cheaper postage to the UK than to the US. Recent tax reforms here in DK have left our after tax income a bit lower, so that'd be nice.

So, UK folks, have any of you any impressions of the Little Princess Trust? Does it sound like a standup cause?

And the winner is...

The ramekin with old dried ketchup that was being soaked prior to washing. Go go Gadget dark-horse variable...

Due to some highly-ripe bananas that were splitting their peels and breaking away from their stems, we now have a preponderance of fruit flies in our kitchen. I asked Lars "Do you know a way to catch fruit flies?", to which he responded, "I've been wanting to do this experiment!"

He put out two ramekins on the countertop, one with honey and one with vinegar. I looked at them later, thought for a moment, and then put out a ramekin with water to act as a control.

Simon's Cat has another video! And an upcoming book!



The "feed me" gesture at the end always makes me think of jamiam.

Whee, a meme. Ganked from: ladyofthemasque. Tagging: cassiopeja, annamatic, qnonimous, einprosess, arclight, billazilla, chronicpaint, djrock3k, oxfordgirl, perial, silenciador, sylvar, vvbrillsuchi, zuptd, and empath_habibi whenever he finishes his dissertation (NB, Gavi: you are not to use this delightful time-waster to procrastinate with; also, please choose song titles from a language I understand, 'k?)

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to 15 people you like and include me. You can't use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It's a lot harder than you think! Repost as "my life according to (band name)".

Note: I honestly didn't find this at all difficult, more than anything it was hard to narrow my answers down to one song, so I didn't bother :P.


PICK YOUR ARTIST:
Barenaked Ladies

ARE YOU MALE OR FEMALE:
I'll Be That Girl

DESCRIBE YOURSELF:
Unfinished / Testing 1, 2, 3 / Stomach vs. Heart

HOW DO YOU FEEL:
Just a Toy / Break Your Heart / Wrap Your Arms Around Me

DESCRIBE WHERE YOU CURRENTLY LIVE:
The Old Apartment

IF YOU COULD GO ANYWHERE, WHERE WOULD YOU GO:
Conventioneers (would love to be at WorldCon) / Go Home (feeling homesick) / Hello City (aka "The City" aka "San Francisco")

YOUR FAVORITE FORM OF TRANSPORTATION:
Helicopters / In the Car (actually neither, but BNL have no songs about trains... clearly I should have chosen Jill Sobule, but that would have made this meme really hard, with only one album on my shelf to choose from instead of 6+)

YOUR BEST FRIEND IS:
A (closest I could get for qnonimous) / Alternative Girlfriend (aka annamatic / Shoe Box (you know who you are, cassiopeja...)
(unfortunately, am not close friends with a "Jane" or an "Enid", let alone a "Maybe Katie")

YOU AND YOUR BEST FRIENDS ARE:
Some Fantastic

WHAT'S THE WEATHER LIKE:
Light Up My Room / Take It Outside

FAVORITE TIME OF DAY:
Who Needs Sleep? / When You Dream

IF YOUR LIFE WAS A TV SHOW, IT WOULD BE CALLED:
Life, In A Nutshell

WHAT IS LIFE TO YOU:
The Humour of the Situation

YOUR CURRENT RELATIONSHIP:
For You / If I Had $1000000

YOUR FEAR:
In the Drink / Am I the Only One? / This Is Where It Ends
(drowning, abandonment, death...)

A FOND MEMORY:
Thanks, That Was Fun / Shopping / Alcohol

WHAT IS THE BEST ADVICE YOU HAVE TO GIVE:
Never Is Enough / Everything Old is New Again / Get In Line

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:
I Live With It Every Day

HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO DIE?
Tonight is the Night I Fell Asleep at the Wheel

YOUR SOUL'S PRESENT CONDITION:
Too Little Too Late / Never Do Anything / It's All Been Done
(i.e., I'm feeling rather weary and defeated today; check back later)

MOST FAITHFUL COMPANION:
What a Good Boy / I Love You

YOUR MOTTO:
Blame It On Me / Told You So

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!"