This is the Totally Efficient Combination Thread that combines Open Threadiness with a Moving Update!
We closed on our houses (the old-one-being-sold and the new-one-being-bought) on Tuesday and Wednesday, and started moving to the new house Thursday (yesterday). Today is Official "Trying To Find All The Stuff We Put In Boxes" day, possibly with a side of "Update Our Address At Every Place Online". Although that last one will be tricky because we won't have internet until next Friday because oh my god, I hate AT&T so much you cannot even believe, but no one else services this otherwise-perfect-for-us house. Seriously, I hate AT&T, ya'll. I'm a normally very peaceful person, but talking to AT&T makes me want to blow up one of Saturn's moons just to be a jackwagon. Take that, Mimas!
Anyway! Happy thoughts! Happy moving thoughts! There will not be internet in our house for a week! (*sounds of weeping*) But! There will be tethering-of-laptops-to-3G-smartphones! Which is very very slow internet! But it is internet!
In the meantime, you guys should be set for posts, although next week's Twilight post might be a touch late. I'll try to make sure it's on time. I don't think I've missed one yet. *grin*
OPEN THREAD BELOW! What have you been doing with your awesome selves while Ana has descended into the self-absorption and sleepy morass of house buying?
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I've been writing character sketches on the Blog o' Doom, so when the Busy Season dies down a bit I can go remind myself why I want to write about these people.
Moving... yuck. Was it Mark Twain who said that two moves are worth one good fire?
Don't cats love crawling into open moving boxes?
I finally made myself go back to read a gross argument on facebook so that I could complete a blog post detailing how to get ALL of the Sexism Bonus Points in one easy rant, and how I earned the title of Bleeding Heart. On International Women's Day, for extra irony.
Moving is such fun, isn't it? I have one friend who moves constantly and uses the opportunity to give away as much of her stuff as possible every time; even the book collection gets trimmed (which is how I ended up with half the Wheel of Time on my shelf). M'self, I have an apartment in which furniture has been installed which is so ungainly to shift that I wonder what it would take to get me to haul it out again. (Thankfully, I live in a great area and I'm unlikely to want to move any time soon.)
Take that, Mimas!
That's no moon, it's a space station.
Seriously, look at it. If you take a shot at it, it will shoot back.
Rats! I missed my closing paranthesis. If I don't fix that, it's gonna bug me all day.
)
Primary Cat is having an honest to goodness breakdown. He apparently feels that the new bedroom's combination of recessed lighting and ceiling fan constitutes Lovecraftian geometries that terrify him. He spent all day yesterday cowering under the bed starting up at the ceiling fan with dilated eyes and bushy tail.
He seems better today. Breaks my heart, as we've moved dozens of times and I've never seen him like this before.
I had to give up one cat when I moved into my place because he refused to leave the closet. For months. (He lives with my parents, not a shelter.) He'd moved lots before, but this one just killed it for him. Poor Sammy. Mostly, though, I find cats are okay within 2 weeks. They forget about the misery shortly thereafter.
I have been really truly considering buying curtains and reupholstering my dining room chairs and finally putting up the last few pieces of art I have. Also buying more plastic containers for flour and rice and other dry goods. (And I realise now I forgot to buy one for brown sugar. Damn.)
I hate moving with a passion rivalled only by my loathing of travelling to destinations unknown, so I have no cheerful moving stories. I do have a weird bug clinging to my window (outside! no flailing needed!) that looks kinda like a backwards lobster.
Ana, I loled at your description of the cat's reaction to the ceiling fan. I hope he settles in soon!
I just bought a car. My first car purchase, I've been driving a hand-me-down since high school. When the dealer asked how long I was planning on owning the car, I blinked and said, "how long until it falls apart?"
For some reason, buying a car freaked me out more than buying a condo, although maybe the years have just dulled that sense of wow-do-I-really-own-this-I-guess-I'm-an-adult-now that I had when I got my keys for the first time. But big purchases make me nervous, and I got pretty burned on the condo. Not that I don't like it, but I would like it a lot more if the outstanding mortgage balance was about 30% less.
Good news on the cat front. As horrors from beyond the veil of time and space have failed to materialize and eat his sister (Auxiliary Backup Cat), Primary Cat has decided that the ceiling is NOT a Lovecraftian geometry after all, and has decided to leave the closet in order to stand in the middle of the living room and loudly voice his complaints to anyone who walks by.
As this was business as usual at the old house, we are happy.
Good for you and your cat, and since I was warning you about the space station which is a not a moon, I never did say congratulations on the house. So congratulations on the house. I hope that it continues to be as perfect for you as you currently think it for as long as you shall remain there.
Congratulations, Ana!
My cats had the same terror of the ceiling fans when I moved, and would crouch in the doorways, half-hidden behind the frame, so they could keep an eye on them. Fortunately, they relaxed after a while, but it was a tense few weeks.
I read Bio-Meat recently, which is one of the best graphic novels I've ever read, and I highly recommend it to everyone, but especially people that like survival horror.
Also, can't remember if I mentioned it here: I am now a grad-student-to-be. Assuming all goes well, I will one day be Dr. Dav*, epidemiologist. Or microbiologist. Or cancer researcher. Or virologist. Or vaccinologist. Or toxicologist. I'm realizing that I have a total Fantasy of Being a Grad Student, and what that will mean. Rather unsurprisingly, it is rather a lot like the Fantasy of Being Thin, or the Fantasy of Being Tall, or the Fantasy of Being Rich. Basically, my life is going to be *awesome* from now on, and I will become the sort of person who reads biostatistics textbooks for fun, and I will be Not Weird at social events, and I will be stylish and funny and learn to love exercise and cook delicious meals and everyone will love me.
Either way, it means I don't have to be an admin any more, which is really just as good as learning to love exercise and being universally loved. Maybe better.
*I really wanted to be a Dr. Scientist, one of those engineering/chemistry/physics/biology wunderkinds you see in the movies - people who design a computer virus for an alien computer system they've never seen before, or create a vaccine for a disease that just emerged last week, or cure cancer over the weekend, but none of those programs are accepting students. Oh, well. Fortunately, I am easily excitably about lots of different disciplines.
Er, Davinside = me, Dav.
Sometimes I wonder if Disqus is actually just out to get me.
Oh, that's good. Cats aren't fond of moving. (Driving a jeep full of them, well, okay, four from Iowa to Colorado was an interesting experience. Involving a lot of mournful howling.)
I've been engrossed in Mass Effect 3; I'm roughly thirty hours into the game and not even close to the ending, as far as I can tell. I'm cool with that; the series has got me so emotionally invested that I don't care about minor flaws or even how EA's a piece of crap. Ironically, that's cut down on the writing I do; both because it soaks up time, and all of my 'Sci-Fi Energy' or whatever goes into my LP of it instead of writing.
Tried to look at blogs and sites about self-publishing online and whatnot, but I quickly realized I needed to actually have a book written before I could do anything with said book. Hrm.
I am so so excited about you being a grad-student-to-be now. Yay!
And I can imagine it's like the FoBT. The new house has been like that for me -- now I will have twenty EIGHT hours in a day in which to do all the things! No... probably not. :) But the good news is that once you know where the fantasy comes from, you hopefully won't be disappointed in yourself if magic doesn't happen. That's my hope for me, anyway. :)
Ah, Dav, that's WONDERFUL! I wish you many happy years of delving into incomprehensible mysteries, and only the barest minimum of dull bored incomprehension upon freshman faces during your two oclock lab tutorials.
@Ana -
Yay for house! (The magic wears off when you find you've managed to avert a basement almost flooded for the THIRD TIME in nearly two years. And when the "Honey Do" list never seems to get smaller, only bigger...)
@Dav(rosinside)
Cheers on your Grad Student-dom! Hopefully it is a swift and relatively painless process of transitioning to the Doctorhood. Certainly less Daleks, anyway.
Congratulations for the new home, and glad the cats got themselves sorted out!
I've been researching both 13th centrury clothing (for the 1250 nunnery LARP) and 15th century footsoldier's clothing for my own things, which include making new! more authentic! doublet and trying to steer aside from the ridiculous late 15th century doublets with poofy shoulder joints. (The construction of the jack is limited to the use of pieces of a sleeveles surcote, so it's already a bit fiddly.) And I collected lichen from the branches of the trees that were felled in the nearby park - they should give a orange-brown colour. I hope. When I get to the dyeing. Which may take a while, since I plan to use that yarn for my next weaving process, which may be something to do in a year or so.
Rakka, reading that post filled me with complete awe of your Coolth Quotient.
Thanks, everybody! I basically feel like I've pulled a fast one on the university - they're actually going to pay me to go to school and do research! HAHA suckers! The workload is serious the first year, but the benefit of years of working full-time plus classes (and then a couple terms of doing independent research on top of that) is that it actually seems like a break. (Although I'm still trying to see my way clear to a couple months where I can lie in a hammock with a glass of iced tea and a stack of novels*, just to prep for the slog.)
The dull bored incomprehension of freshmen . . . well, the worst part is that I'm probably going to volunteer. Our program doesn't require any teaching at all, but I am at least considering being a prof** one day, so I'm planning on doing the teaching training program.
* An actual novel. With fiction in it. With no redeeming or literary value beyond being something I want to read.
**Given the state of monies, it is actually much more likely that I will wind up in industry, doing the job I could have done with a master's. We're basically one step away from Hunger-Games style death matches for grant money. In fact, I think that's how botany gets its funding now.
Disqus is still doing that. WTF is your problem, Disqus?
We're basically one step away from Hunger-Games style death matches for grant money.
Don't be silly -- the death matches are just for show. Grant money is *really* allocated on the a complex formula including the number of letters in your name and whether a novelty cthulhu dice comes up on tentacle or not.
whether a novelty cthulhu dice comes up on tentacle or not.
I want one, but only if it won't cause my brain to melt out my ears.
I wrote a short story which explicitly compared the allocation of funds in acamedia to various mating strategies in evolutionary biology. Unfortunately, when my protagonists tried manipulating their grant applications accordingly, they accidentally made SCIENCE! go extinct.
(When hapaxspouse read it, he commented that "Evolution doesn't work quite like that, but academics sure does.)
Don't worry, brain melting only comes standard on the fuzzy cthulhu dice. The smooth-sided one just makes your eyes bleed the blood of a thousand dying souls.
But do they come in eldritch colours of aetherial waves beyond the powers of the human retina, such that they can be described only by analogy?
Man, why does Cthulhu get all the press? Nyarly actually likes people! Granted, he likes us the way dogs like rawhide, but still.
Because Cthulhu is cute and cuddly. Does Ny even have tentacles?
*googles*
Ok, see, having tentacles in only some forms but not others is way less cute.
More cheers for Dav!
In terms of adorable eldritch horrors, I like the King In Yellow as a woobie. Maybe he really likes people and he's very lonely out there in Carcosa, and he just wants to make interplanar friends! He even wrote us a story as a gift to say hello! Which has unfortunate effects on minds and inspires questionable levels of atrocities. He's quite sheepish about that. Words do not work the same way in our spacetime.
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