I really, really hate being a grownup some days.

Merry Christmas!

We have been having a very nice day, quiet and peaceful and leisurely. I got a Zelda edition gold DS (!!!!!!!) with the Phantom Hourglass game, and a brand new beautiful Global chef's knife with which I promptly sliced off the tip of my finger. That's what you get for being used to cutting food with slightly sharpened sticks.

I also got a beautiful beautiful cutting bowl and mezzaluna from my mom, as well as a badly-needed new wireless router and a nice chunk of change from both my lovely parents. I am tempted to stick all the money together and buy something that I would never be able to afford for myself, because I know it will be all too easy to nickel-and-dime it away on lunch and small purchases that I will not be properly grateful for. So. What would you buy with $400?

Off to cook steak with cognac butter sauce, and hopefully refrain from removing any more appendages.

National Coming Out day. I've never really stopped to think about it before - I don't know anyone who's actually made use of it, although at MHC they used to chalk all over campus, you couldn't miss it. My own personal COD was sometime in mid-May, I think (LJ helpfully informs me that it was May 15th, 2004. Longer ago than it seems, in a way.

( The longest reference to coming out that I can find in my entries back then. Spring 2004 is an interesting read in my LJ, I can tell you that. Looking back is always strange. )

Overall I can say without a doubt that I have been supremely lucky as far as the whole coming out thing goes. Understanding family, supportive environment, loving girlfriend, very accepting workplace. I only have a few horror stories, and I can honestly say that things couldn't have gone much better for me. That time in my life is one that I can look back on with fondness and recall the excitement, the dizziness of the whole thing, and I really can't express how grateful I am for that.

The thing that makes me thoughtful on a day like today is, I suppose, the fact that I know many people who, given the above statement, are confused by the very powerful feelings that I have about growing up queer, even during the years that I didn't necessarily realize it. It's not that I criticize these people for not understanding; I don't know if it's something that's possible to understand without experiencing it, to be honest. It's difficult enough for me to even put into words, never mind to truly communicate it to anyone else.

I guess what it boils down to is the difficulty of being part of an invisible minority. Don't get me wrong, I'd never argue that it's harder to be invisible than not - I'm sure there have been and will be many times in my life where things are made easier for me just because being gay doesn't affect, for instance, the color of my skin. It's that invisibility, though, that makes it difficult to reconcile much of my child- and young adulthood. It's a really hard thing to grow up different - even, as I said, if you don't consciously realize it at the time (I wasn't one of those kids who figures out they're gay at the age of 5, although neither did I have some big revelatory moment - it just sort of *was*, as far as I can remember) - and have absolutely nothing shown to you in which you might discover just a little bit of who you really are. It's honestly the one thing that has made me consistently angry and sad when I stop to think about growing up gay, especially after my experiences at Mount Holyoke.

When I was 13 or thereabouts, my best friends and I discovered (as did so many other young teens in the 90's) "Rent". In retrospect, I see that it was a figurative lightbulb turning on over my head - wait a minute, you mean someone actually wrote about gay people? Gay people falling in love? They kiss onstage? Whaaaaaaat? It was eyeopening in ways I truly didn't understand until years later. As time passed I soaked up everything I could get; books, stories, movies, poem, plays, pictures, anything I could get my hands on. I was captivated. I honestly can't say that there's anything (academically speaking) I've felt as passionate about or as devoted to as queer representation in art and history. And the entire time I had (and have) this absolutely crushing feeling of "well, for god's sake, why didn't anybody tell me?!"

Honest to god, it shocked me when I figured out that there were gay people before 1950. And not only that, but that they'd lived, and loved, and talked about it and wrote about it and sometimes died for it. It just seemed like this huge secret that had been kept for me for the entirety of my conscious life, this whole hidden history that I was just discovering, the stories of people just like me that are ignored and covered up and silenced. It hurt, to read these poets and writers and know that in all the times I'd read them before, in class at times, the fact that they were gay was never important enough to mention - or, more accurately, too important *to* be mentioned. It hurt, and it still does.

I guess that's why being out is so important to me - it's important to be a visible part of an invisible minority. And it's the only way that anything is ever going to change, as far as marriage and discrimination laws go. To be completely honest, though, that's not why I do it; not that marriage equality isn't desperately important to me, because it is, but the thing that's more immediately important in my heart of hearts is the many, many kids growing up in homes across the world - many of them loving, wonderful, supportive homes just like mine - who need someone to show them that they are not alone, different, strange. That we are here, that we've been here, and that we will be here. And no one's going to shut us up.

On a related note, it's still just an idea, but I'm thinking about going back to school for my masters in clinical social work, specializing in working with teens and families dealing with sexuality issues. I don't know how serious I am about it, but it feels important to me - more so than any other career I've considered in the past couple of years. We'll see.

(One more thing: it's been heartwarming to me to see the amount of really worthwhile young adult fiction coming out that's aimed at the queer market. If you're at all interested, Hero by Perry Moore is a great read and well worth picking up, especially if you're into the superhero thing as well. I wish that Moore and his ilk had been around when I was the target age, but better now than never!)

It has begun.

Please, please, all you Harry Potter fans out there in LJ-land, please be kind to your neighborhood booksellers today. We know you're excited - we're excited too! And we want to make tonight as much fun as possible for you. But we need just a little patience, kindness and understanding. Considering the rate of employee turnover in the book world and the fact that these books come out at least two years apart, most of us have never done this before. We're doing the best we can, and the most important thing to remember is that at the end of the night tonight, everyone who wants a book will have one. Until then, let's just all try to have as much fun as possible and avoid the inevitable headaches that will come with a release this massive.

(This is after popping into the bookstore this morning just to see how opening went, in completely non-work clothes, off the clock, and ending up fielding half an hour of irate customers, both in person and on the phone. If it's this bad at 9:30 in the morning, I don't think I want to see what it's going to be like at 11:45 pm tonight.

Pray that I escape with my life.)

The power's gone out on our side of the mall. I'm sitting in the dark breakroom, on the second half of my break (which was interrupted by the outage), watching BSG on my laptop. At least tonight's not boring!

(And at least it's not Harry Potter night. What a nightmare that would be.)

This is wicked cool, and from the new movie - I've been pimping these books at work every chance I get.

( Golden Compass daemon meme )

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows hits your local bookstore on July 21. You heard it here first.

(Borders's promo campaign centers around the question "is Snape friend or foe?". Apparently, there will be stickers.)

Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl, January 1st - January 8th
The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris, January 8th - January 10th

*hangs up "Busy till mid-2007" sign*

I love days off.

Today has been a surprisingly nice day - not because I expected it to be unpleasant, but just because I didn't expect it to be as relaxing and nice as it has been.

I drop my sweetie off at her work at 8 AM every morning. Today, unlike the last two weeks, I wasn't being called in to work on my day off, so I stopped in there briefly to check my email and make sure everything had gone well over the weekend, and then I took off. I had grabbed the DVDs we watched last week on my way out the door this morning, and so I decided to stop at Blockbuster before I went back home. Unfortunately, at this point it was 8:15 am and Blockbuster doesn't open until 10:00. So I decided to while away some time until Blockbuster opened and I headed home.

I spent the next couple of hours shopping; mostly window, although I did pick up a few things. At the grocery store I bought some of the things that I like to have around but don't always stop to think of when we're looking for dinner stuff; a big loaf of their good crusty tuscan bread, more eggs, green olives, that kind of stuff. Then I decided to walk around Target, see what they had on clearance - every so often you can find something really cute that's been marked way down. Well, I did find something really cute, although it was admittedly full-price... my only defense is that I hadn't yet spent my bonus from last week's paycheck! These were way too cute to say no to.

Anyway, for the rest of my shopping trip I locked my debit card in the car so I wouldn't do any more damage - which is a good thing, because I really don't need any more alpaca yarn or doublepointed needles. Finally, it was 10, so I went over to Blockbuster and picked up the next two discs of Arrested Development. While I was there the manager explained the newest feature of the Blockbuster Online program - apparently now when you are done watching the movies they sent to you, instead of sending them back through the mail you can take them in to the actual Blockbuster store and get a free rental for each movie you bring in. Plus, they immediately mail out the next movies in your queue. This finally pushed me over the edge - I already have Netflix, but we watch a lot of movies in our house and I'm too much of a fan of instant gratification to not end up in Blockbuster once or twice a week anyway. This way, it seems like for the same price I've been paying Netflix, I'll be able to get one free in-store rental for every movie sent me. Hopefully this will both cut down on the $$ I'm spending at Blockbuster and the lag between getting movies from Netflix and actually sending them back.

Anyway, I came home, and have spent a relaxing day watching DVDs, breaking in my new shoes, and eating a one-egg omelette with Cotswold cheese. (Highly recommended, by the way - Cotswold is an English, cheddary cheese with green onions. It goes wonderfully with eggs or even just for eating.)

I hope everyone else's Monday has been similarly refreshing!

As of 4 pm this afternoon, I had worked approximately 25 of the past 33 hours.

It's been a long week.

A little over 24 hours with my new BlackBerry pearl and oh, I am so utterly in love. How did I ever do without it?

It's the newest model in the line, and RIM has definitely escaped the trap of sacrificing style for function with this phone. It's tiny and sleek and shiny and gorgeous. They did give up a full qwerty keyboard in order to make it so small, but it's not nearly as annoying as I was afraid it would be. Once you learn to let go and start trusting the suretype program, it's basically as fast as typing on a full blackberry keyboard.

The apps that it comes with are great, too. Gtalk, googlemaps, aim, they're all free and all awesome. The push email is convenient too - the phone alerts me when they arrive, I don't have to check or anything.

Anyway, sales spiel over. They are wicked cheap at amazon right now, though, and tmobile phone and data plans are really reasonable. If you're in the market for a new phone, you could definitely do worse.

Now I know why they call them crackberries. Oy.

Signing a lease this afternoon for my first apartment.

I'm fucking terrified.

So there are HP7 spoilers floating around, presumably from JKR's thingy with Stephen King and John Irving in NYC last night, which if it hadn't been at the most inconvenient time possible, I would've killed a man (or several) to attend.

Anyway, my reaction doesn't really relate to any of the spoilers I've heard, because they're all pretty vague; it's really just a feeling on my part, but I'll cut it anyway just to be safe.

( Read more... )

At Panera and bored as crap for the next couple of hours!

Give me something to do. Want an icon, something written, a question answered? Request here, I'm begging you. (If you want an icon or graphic or something, give me an idea of the subject.)

Just for my own keeping track/count down purposes:

30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

The people that work at this Panera are going to think I'm homeless, I swear. Which, I guess, at least for the moment, I kind of am. Really, it's not that I don't have anywhere to go, it's just that I don't want to drive all the way back to Schenectady when this place is two minutes from Linds's work, air conditioned, with free wifi and coffee refills. Dunno what more I could ask for.

Anyway, we're currently in Albany, having arrived Sunday night. Linds started her job yesterday, 8-5, so while she's working I'm burning time in Panera. My job starts on Friday. We're currently staying with an MHC alum who very kindly offered to let us stay. It's been working out pretty well; we bought a cheap air mattress (in retrospect, I should've sprung for the electric air pump rather than the manual, but oh well) and have been waking up veeerrry early in order for Linds to grab a cup of coffee and a bagel before she gets to work.

First bit of good news is that the landlord accepted us for the apartment we wanted! Although we'd originally wanted something in the city itself, we never really found anything that appealed to us, so this apartment is in Troy, just over the bridge. It's a brownstone, built in the 1880's, and has twelve foot ceilings and two (albeit non-operational) fireplaces. There are three bedrooms, which are all very small, but we'll be able to make do; we're thinking about using one of them as a large walk-in closet/guest room, so that our bedrooms don't feel too cramped. Best of all, the kitchen and bathroom have been completely redone, with all new appliances, including a washer and dryer! I'm so excited to not have to worry about going to a laundromat. We're signing the lease on Thursday, and I'm not sure when our move in date will be; the lease is for September 1st, but he's offered to let us move in earlier and charge us on a per diem basis. Ideally, I'd like to move in the weekend of the 12th and 13th, if it's all ready by that time.

All in all, things are looking up. I'm relieved that all this is working out and that it looks like by Thursday, everything will be pretty well set. We're spending this weekend in Noho with Em, and then back to the city for another week (this is actually the only thing I'm a little nervous about; I don't know where we'll be staying yet, although we have a few offers, and it's possible that we may be able just to stay with Claire for another week), and then hopefully into our new place! I'm so ready for real life to start, I can't even really think about it right now.

Thank you all for your sympathy and well-wishes on my last post. It was a shock, but everything is really coming together in spite of that. If nothing else, I'm glad it happened because the way people have responded to it and gone out of their way to help us out has been absolutely amazing, and has completely restored my faith in humanity.

I have been incredibly lucky so far in my out gay life to have encountered really very little out and out homophobia. Yeah, you get weird looks walking around the mall arm in arm with your girlfriend, some more hostile than others, but that's pretty easy to shrug off. You get "dyke" shouted at you a few times, mostly from passing cars (cause people are too scared of two teenage girls to say it in person, you see) and that's a little harder to shake, but still not too bad.

Today was different. Lindsay and I are moving to Albany very, very soon - in fact, our jobs start next week, Monday for hers and Friday for mine. We'd been arranging to sublet a room from a woman for about two weeks, until our apartment is available on August 15th. Everything seemed perfect - the price was right, and while it wasn't an ideal place, it was good enough for a couple of weeks. We went today to meet the woman and see the room, and it quickly became evident that while Linds's email to her had said "my partner and I", she was expecting.... I don't know, something else.

She asked us if by partners we meant a couple, and we looked at each other a bit confusedly, and said yes. After a few moments of staring at her shoes, she sighed. "As a person," she said, "I don't have a problem with it, but as a practicing Christian..." It didn't take long for the conversation to be over. I barely made it out to the sidewalk before I burst into tears.

The worst part is that on top of that, we're now abso-fucking-lutely screwed, if we want to keep these jobs and by extension, our apartment-to-be. Anyone know of a (really) cheap place to stay for about two weeks in the Albany area?

Grrr. The guy at the Apple Store was nice, but said he couldn't do anything for me. Apparently a 50% reduction in battery capacity over the course of six weeks isn't bad enough to fix; they don't want to give me a new battery in case it's "just the way [I am] using the machine." He said to keep an eye on it, and bring it back in four weeks if it's gotten worse. I'm taking it back in two.

Oh, and he offered no fix for the fact that when I get down to 20%/30 min of battery life, the laptop will just shut off - no low battery warning, no Safe Sleep, nothing. Nope, apparently there's nothing I can do about that either except to keep track of it.

I don't really blame that guy - I understand that he gets a lot of clueless n00bs in there, and that they can't just replace everything everyone has a problem with, especially since (as House says) everybody lies, but when someone who clearly knows what they're talking about comes in, having done everything that they could to fix it on their own (calibrating, resetting pmu, reinstalling OS, etc), can't the Apple store say "okay, this probably is an equipment malfunction" and just exchange the damn thing?

Well, anyway. coconutBattery will help me keep a log of my battery capacity, so that when I go in there in a couple of weeks, I can show them exactly how bad it's gotten. And if they're still balking... well, I will just have to harrass them until they give in. And they will give in. It's just a matter of time.

Off to the Apple store today!

My Macbook has had a few small issues since I received it about a month ago. None of them were huge, but some more annoying than others; the fact that it would, once in a while, reboot completely randomly after waking from sleep was much more annoying than the fact that the volume keys didn't always work reliably. But neither was something that one should have to deal with in a new laptop (though there are those who would say that when you're buying rev A hardware, that's what you're going to get.)

A couple days ago I did an archive and reinstall of the operating system, cause something had gotten fudged up during a software update and the computer was afterwards very reluctant to boot. The reinstall seems to have fixed most of the little things that were going wrong; the volume keys work perfectly now, and while I'm not sure that the rebooting problem has been solved, since it happened so sporadically, it hasn't happened since.

The one thing that I continue to be frustrated with is the battery on this thing. According to both cocoBattery and the Terminal command, this battery has lost 35% of its capacity in the five or six weeks that I've been using the computer. It gets about 2 hours and 20 minutes under the Best Battery Life setting, when it should have a capacity of at least 3 hours. Additionally, when I run the computer off of battery power, once it gets down to about 30 minutes capacity, the computer will just shut off. No warning, no initial sleep, nothing. Macbooks are supposed to have this feature called Safe Sleep, where if the computer shuts off because of battery failure, all your data will be preserved and restored on the next startup. Doesn't happen with this. I've tried calibrating the battery several times, I've tried resetting the PMU. I think I just got a dud. So, I'm taking it in to the Apple store today. Hopefully they'll have me run it down to 25% or so and see that it shuts off way before it should, and give me a new one.