tropiavera | Entries tagged with random and sundry

Here is an update! It is in list form, because lo, I am lazy:

*

allchildren and I have been watching The Hour the past couple weeks, and ohhhhhh my fuck, that show! It's been described (and I am guilty of this as well) as "British Mad Men, which isn't really accurate except that they both are period pieces dealing with entrenched social mores and an industry undergoing a revolution, but...that's kind of it. The Hour is also part spy thriller, kind of, where Mad Men wants to focus more on emotional turmoil. Four episodes in, The Hour is super super great, and filled with all of the ridiculously intense faces you could ask for, and ughhhhhh, every week after we watch it I am filled with feelings to the rafters and don't go to sleep for many hours past when I should. This essay on tumblr is a better primer than I could manage, though in the interest of full disclosure, "Guppy" is Burn Gorman, who everyone probably knows from Torchwood but I first saw in Bleak House in which that was his character name. And, uh, there are likely more fitting nicknames out there, but I'm hard pressed to think of them right now. Last night's episode was particularly intense and I'm pretty sure I have still not recovered.

* I am 1.5 weeks away from being finished with this internship (though it's likely going to continue at a very small scale into the fall for a bit), and the start of my with-any-luck LAST SEMESTER of grad school! I've begun the harrowing process of job searching, which has of caused caused my old friend anxiety to stop by with such exciting conversational topics as, BUT WHAT IF YOU HAVE TO LEAVE PITTSBURGH? WHAT IF NO ONE WILL HIRE YOU? THAT WAS A LOT OF MONEY FOR A DEGREE FOR NO ONE TO HIRE YOU!! Shut up, anxiety, no one wants you here.

* We are like 90% of the way to having set a date and booked venues (plural) for the wedding. The closer we get, the more weirded out people seem to be that we aren't going to have rings, and the more people feel the need to sell us on why they have them. I know! It's okay! I get it! Just not to the extent that I want them myself! It's also far enough along that I've started calling friends to tell them, but I never know if I should leave it in a message or whatever. Probably you don't say that in a voicemail, right? Urgh. Call me back, friends! I don't want to send out a mass email!

* I think that's all. Is it? I went to the new Target around here to get a lamp for my desk at long last, and oh my god it was the fanciest Target ever! They very cleverly made it two levels, with the ground level being the parking lot and the top being the actual store, but you enter at the ground level to a staircase, escalator, an elevator, AND SHOPPING CART ESCALATORS, whaaaaaat. It was ridiculous.

* Oh! I remembered the other thing. I am 6% finished with my 101 in 1001, yes!

Current Music: space bass: the xx

I have a feeling I'll be processing everything from my sister's wedding over the weekend for a long time, but I wanted to share an instant classic in the Tropie Family Stories lexicon:

PART ONE:

Scene: during dinner. My cousin A, age 25, stands up from the table. Our grandmother starts in giving him the business about how terrible it looks with his wallet and keys and phone all in his trouser pockets and coerces him into putting everything into his jacket pockets instead. He complies, and she tells him how much better the lines of the pants look. He goes in search of a drink.

MINUTES LATER:

Scene: inside on a staircase Now, I wasn't there for this, but it has been verified by every party involved, so I feel pretty confident about it, but from all reports, my grandmother was going up the stairs when she saw the male figure in front of her looking exactly like my cousin*, she did what any grandmother does: she grabbed the hell out of her grandson's ass.

Of course, then the guy who was IN NO CAPACITY MY COUSIN, but in fact one of the other bridesmaid's boyfriends (who had come down from his training as a Marine just for the wedding), and this dude, this poor, sweet, shy dude responded admirably, and then APOLOGIZED for not being my cousin. And then my cousin and other cousin, A's younger sister A2, came upon my grandmother in the stairs, reacted in not-actually-all-that-surprised horror and immediately ushered Poor Marine Guy away to get him more wine.

THIS MORNING:

Scene: outside a coffee shop

Grandma: Oh, now you see, A has all of this junk in his pockets again, when that's why he was so embarrassed last night in the first place.
A: I'm pretty sure if anyone was in the position to be embarrassed last night, it was not me.
Grandma: [literal kanyeshrug]

FIN.

*Um, also, Poor Marine Guy looks NOTHING LIKE MY COUSIN. PMG has like, four to five inches on him, a marine haircut, holds himself like a marine as opposed to your standard dude slouch, and was wearing a completely different outfit. So, you know. Grandma's got needs, son.

Current Music: the air that i breathe: the hollies

* I have been full of so many miscellaneous aches and pains this week and I do not care for it! I was supposed to compete in an open water swim this weekend (MY FIRST :( ) but I did something to my rotator cuff and the chronic swimming injury I have thereabouts flared up, so I have spend most of Friday through today icing it and being sad. Ugh! It is just super disappointing, and a little bit embarrassing. I was really excited to do this! I put it on my 101 in 1001! DDDD: It's not like there is all this wasted training, at least, because other than a few extra heads-up drills (for buoy spotting!) I didn't alter my usual swimming routine that much - the race was 1.2 miles (~1950 m), and I usually swim between 2000m and 2500m. GRUMBLES, basically.

* As a side effect of all the icing, I have been mainlining tv like nobody's business. I finished season one + season two of Luther (ksdjfdsafhkjddfksads), Sherlock (my oncoming Martin Freeman's Face problem :( ), and started Downton Abbey. I want moar Luther for forever, though, even if its villains are always the creepiest motherfuckers ever. *curls into a ball*

* My sister's wedding (for which I am the maid-of-honor, or as my sister called it when she asked me, "the girl person") is in under two weeks, eek. I still need to find shoes + write a toast to give in front of like a hundred and fifty people, NBD.

Current Music: are you satisfied?: marina & the diamonds

- Last weekend I drove many miles and acted as chauffeur in order to meet up with many internet ladies, and it was super rad!! I am kind of still in shock that a) it happened, b) it was a week ago, and c) Tumblr managed to go an entire weekend without crashing its server and forcing us all to be 100% social. I'm still in the process of mentally processing the whole weekend, so I keep randomly remembering more things that happened, like, wait, we DID see Nikita playing in the diner that first night, and I'm pretty sure I DID spend a lot of time shouting over Skype. <333 NERDS.

(I never said I was a role model.)

- I am three episodes into The Shadow Line and oh my gosh, you guys. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Christopher Eccleston are fantastic, as anticipated, but it's also a really great show! Super tightly plotted and original, so far. Between this and Luther, it looks like UK crime dramas are where my shit is going to be at for much of the summer. SURE, WHY NOT.

- We are rapidly approaching July, the busiest month of my summer, and yiiikes. Two out of states weddings and my first open water race, eesh. I still need to get a dress for one of those weddings, which has proved to be difficult as it turns out the venn diagram of AWESOME DRESSES and NOT UNGODLY EXPENSIVE is more theoretical than anticipated. Also: in the month of July I'm pretty sure I'll be able to cross off no fewer than eight items from my 101 in 1001. It's going to be that kind of month.

- I have knitted 75% of my first ever mitten, and it's pretty exciting! It was much, much easier than I expected it to be, all my family should expect mittens as Christmas gifts this year.

- There is no five.

Current Music: back to the start: lily allen

I have been so tired since finishing the semester, it's actually a little worrisome. I'm pretty much unable to get out of bed unless I've slept for twelve hours, which is working out pretty well for me so far on my break. I'm supposed to start an internship in the next week or two, but in the meanwhile it's just sleep. Here are other updates!

+ Second-time half-marathon this Sunday. I think I'm in pretty good shape for it, despite the end of the semester wrecking my training just like last year, but unlike last year, the marathon isn't A WEEK AFTER THE SEMESTER ENDS.

+ I've started watching Luther and The Shadow Line; apparently this is going to be a summer for British police dramas.

+ The only thing I have to say about the Fringe finale is LUTHER LEE BOGGS, WILL YOU EVER NOT BE CREEPY? SPOILER ALERT: NOPE!

+ My sister is getting married this summer, have I mentioned that? She is! In like, three months. It's a little, what's the word I want...hectic? She and her fiancé set the date in, like, March, for a July wedding, and they're having a big wedding. Good thing I'm not the maid of honor or anything! Oh wait. It's going to be really lovely and they're very happy, but if I can get to July without another argument between my sister and mother about how to word the RSVPs, I will be...happy, but surprised.

+ I just finished Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde (author of the Thursday Next series, WHICH I LOVED), and I am kind of ambivalent about it! The whole structure is essentially an elaborate class analogy/satire in a fascist society and the nascent resistance movement, which is interesting and also it's about color perception (as in Munsell) because it's Jasper Fforde, but it was also annoyingly typical in a lot of ways (member of the privileged class becomes the resistance's champion!), but there were a decent number interesting twists on established plot elements, and I think this sentence has gone on long enough.

+ I'm registered for my last semester of graduate school for the fall! I said this when I finished undergrad, but holy shit, I am not going back to school again.

+ I should probably go to bed, I have to go to a meeting early tomorrow. That's right! I am now the kind of person who goes to meetings! This is an escalator that only goes up, baby.

You know, as opposed to all those other kinds of escalators.

Current Music: america: simon & garfunkel

So we're coming up on that magical time when long-distant deadlines are starting to loom horrifyingly close, exhibits a-f in "where I have been". (Exhibit g is tumblr.) Two of said deadlines are this week, and since I'm living by myself for the week, I would like recs from you! Because I find imagining ways to spend all the spare time I don't have to be relaxing for some reason.

SO, what media would you recommend me for all of my hypothetical viewings? What have I been totally ignoring as a massive oversight until now?* I'm currently watching (for various values of "currently" and "watching") The Wire (season two! for the first time! no spoilers! lol mcnulty, i'm sorry your life is so bad all the time!), Shameless (I hate like 75% of the things this show chooses to be), Pretty Little Liars (finale tomoz woe), Parks and Recreation (:DDDDDDDDDDD), Nikita (:DDDDDDDDDDD), The Vampire Diaries (we're in a fight right now), and Sexy Tudors (this show is terrible, but it's a warm-up for when Sexy Popes aka The Borgias starts up whenever Showtime decides we are prepared for those levels of historical sexiness).

OR ALTERNATELY: So, drabble prompts! Those are a way to get into the momentum of writing memos, yes? Yes.

So this isn't an entire waste of a post: last week I babysat for a friend (daughter, 3; son, 1) and it was the cutest thing that has happened to me in a long time. She is in the process of learning her numbers so counting is VERY EXCITING and it kind of blew her mind when I showed her how many fingers old I am (my hands + her hands + one of her brother's). "So, so, when you were a baby, the dinosaurs were still alive!" Yes, they only died out super recently, you just missed them.

* With the exception of DS9. I know. I know.

Current Music: welcome home: radical face

For certain values of "spring", natch. (It's like 30F in Chicago right now.)

My to-do list is as follows:

- watch the first season of Fringe
- catch up on Nikita
- finish Secret Garden which I keep calling My Princess for no real reason
- finish my list of the dead for The Vampire Diaries
- ~~watch some friggin movies~~
- ~~finish my outline for Gender and Development~~
- ~~research for Housing Policy~~
- ~~memo for Housing Policy~~
- ~~be a good daughter and spend time with my parents~~
- help plan my sister's wedding
- ~~go swimming at the nice pool a whole bunch~~
- ~~buy some new jeans and maybe a shirt or two~~

I think that's it. Oh, except for driving for nine hours tomorrow, I forgot that part.

Current Music: graceland: the tallest man on earth

Gosh, it's been a while, hasn't it. In no particular order:

+ Did you know hulu has a massive cache of kdramas? I didn't! I'm two episodes into Secret Garden, my first kdrama, and it's interesting! I can very much feel that there are a lot of stylistic and storytelling conventions that are stretching away from how I feel the story "should" go, but that's part of the point! Broadening horizons cultural norms etc etc etc. Hulu doesn't have a specific category for kdramas in the way they do, like, anime, but if there's one you've been looking for, it seems like they have a pretty extensive covering of the newer ones.

+ I'm taking a Gender and Development class this semester and it is the greatest thing I could have imagined, I just love it. My professor used to work for the World Bank, which isn't the level I want to go into, but she still has so much practical experience, it's amazing. Out of around twenty students, there are zero male students (and a lifetime history of one, out of four semesters of it), which is pretty depressing. She joked at the beginning that if she really wanted male students, she'd change the title of the class to "Sex and Development", but that she's not ready to sell out yet, which, heh.

+ My resolutions for the year are going pretty well so far, I think. I haven't bought any new clothes, but I'm trying to ignore my non-grey clothes less.

+ I tried making cornbread for the first time yesterday, but it mostly turned out weird. More doughy than it's meant to be. Oh, shit! I just realized I forgot the baking power. Well, that'll do it. It is a continual goal of mine to cook more new recipes so it's not just all dhal all the time, but uh, I am not the best at reading new recipes. After I've done it a couple times (or if someone has shown me how to) I am a pretty decent cook, but the problem is I continually fuck up the first batch and then don't want to go back to it because my memory of it is as this bizarre concoction. Fail better next time, I guess.

+ I found this mashup on Tumblr the other day and have been listening to it basically nonstop since then. It's called "Lovegame vs Ghostbusters" and it is exactly what it sounds like, which is to say amazeballs.

So there's that.

Current Music: cannibal telephone: ke$ha vs lady gaga

It's a new year, and a new season of television! As with the last one, this is at least half a reminder for me of when things are, since there are a bunch of half-season shows that are starting up (again) soon.

The Borgias (aka "The Sexy Popes Show") - whenever the fuck that starts
Community - R (January 20th)
Nikita - R (January 27th)*
Parks and Recreation - R (January 20th)
Pretty Little Liars - M (actually one of K's shows, but I'm sure I'll get sucked in)
The Vampire Diaries - R (January 27th)

* As soon as

pathstotread.livejournal.com and I are actually caught up, that is. My "currently watching" list has already been halved from what I thought I would watch at the beginning of the fall, whoops. That's what school and being incredibly picky will do to you, I guess!

I don't start class for another couple days, but that still leaves me plenty of time to procrastinate on writing thank you cards and finding room for moar books in overburdened bookshelves.

Current Music: underwear: the magnetic fields

I am returned from a frozen land to another frozen land! I managed to escape all of the travel delays currently facing much of Europe, thank god, and found out this afternoon that I failed zero classes! Here are some other things I have done this week:

- went to several mid-size Scandanavian countries where I don't speak the language
- wore at least two layers of pants every day
- pondered the age old question when visiting dudes: should I borrow his Old Spice deodorant, or go without?
- remembered that vegetarianism in Europe is really never an easy task
- boggled continuously at Scandanavia's obsession with Texas (no, but seriously)
- didn't fall once on the ice despite zero roads and sidewalks being plowed
- watched some truly terrible subbed American television
- was, despite being in a country with six hours of daylight right now, by far the palest person I encountered
- wandered in an ill-advised fashion through a prison yard, an abandoned train yard, and a barracks (in my defense, we were lost [not a real defense])
- deeply regretted my choice in face soap
- took by far the nicest ferry I have ever encountered and felt like an enormous tourist since everyone else was like, "Ugh, I know, the commuter ferry is so terrible, want another beer?"
- arrived home and slept for seventeen hours

And that was most of my week! I realized I have forgotten what I do with my hands when I'm not under the thumb of school stress, so despite making vague plans to watch Nikita, Fringe, and Secret Garden, I have mostly been sitting around eating cookies, or which I now realize I have run out, so peace!

Current Music: jump on stage: girl talk

* Skooooooool, almost finished! The presentation for my Hideous Class of Emotional Trauma went fine, and it is now CONCLUDED. My professor sent out a passive-aggressive email the following morning, because why go out on a high note, but I replied in a professional manner, so I WIN. I will not be baited into your ridiculous mind games, woman!

* I have been commenting on all of the holiday meme posts I've seen, because I am really extremely good at describing my affection for people anonymously, and less so on a day-to-day basis.

* I had a stress dream last night about packing. I have them semi-frequently (usually it's based on realizing I forgot my passport while at the airport), but more often when I am actually going to be traveling. Since I'm leaving on Monday for a week, I'm surprised they didn't start sooner.

* Yes, Monday! K and I are going to visit a friend in Europe for a week. In all likelihood I will be radio silent for the duration, but I will still be on vacation when I return, so I will be all over your flist, I'm sure.

* There was another thing, but I forgot. Oh, yes! My comment thread is here, if you are so inclined!

* HAPPY WEEKEND.

Current Music: that was the worst christmas ever!: sufjan stevens

So after a summer working in the suburbs, I am finally back in sunny Pennsylvania. It was a good summer! I mean, of course I left juuuuust as it was starting to cool off a little bit and arrived straight into some hot as balls mess.

It was profoundly surreal living in my hometown again for the summer. I spent significant portions of high school feeling claustrophobic and profoundly unhappy and left for the city as soon as college came, and then: three months of the same restaurants, the same shops, the same movie theaters. But: now I can drink, so. It was actually nice in some ways, now that I have some emotional distance from the whole situation. Also, now that I have "The Suburbs" to provide a soundtrack to long walks by the lake. Mixed bag, basically, I guess is my point, but I am super happy to be back. A friend of K's from college is in the process of moving out here and crashing with us for a little bit while he finds a place, so the past three days have already been like exponentially more social than like my entire summer. I was joking with K earlier today that I am going to mother the shit out of our current lodger, and thusfar: FULFILLED. He's a skinny hipster, I am compelled to feed him, I don't know.

And now: I sleep the sleep of the night before classes.

Current Music: fuck you: cee lo green

+ After some delightful shenanigans with the aforementioned ridiculous antibiotic, the nurse recommended I stop taking it! SO HOPEFULLY I DON'T GET BRONCHITIS, AT THIS POINT. But at least I can go swimming?

+ I go back to Pittsburgh in a week, thank goodness. The summer has gone by almost appallingly quickly, but it still feels like a year since I have been there.

+ It was one of the other girls' last day today, and she gave me a really sweet thank you card for a great summer, and giving her rides to the train station after work, and it was just, aww, kiddo! She's like, twenty, which has somehow already started to seem young and far away to me, because the distance between me at twenty and twenty-four is pretty vast, even just in terms of like, self-assurance! So that was very sweet, even though people who are just genuinely really sweet and nice all the time make me a little bit nervous because I am a caramel filling of niceness with a delicious candy coating of mean, and I don't want to accidentally be legitimately mean! Uh, see above re: self-assurance. Definitely.

+ HAPPY FRIDAY. Yesterday I caught my finger on the edge of some aluminum on almost the exact spot where I cut it with a knife a year ago. SORRY INDEX FINGER, YOU ARE THE LEAST FAVORITE.