Consonants and vowels all together, equally

Friends, I am back! I am typing right now on my new macbook, which arrived about an hour ago. Getting old stuff back on here can wait until later, but for now, whee!

Also, it's snowing outside and is very pretty, though I don't think it's sticking.

I don't really like posting when I'm having an existential crisis, but I'll lay out a few thoughts that have been swirling in my head over the past 24 hours:

1. There's been a spate of LJ hacking, shoebox being the latest. I would rather that my email and LJ not be hacked.
   
2. Later in folk's journal it seemed that what I have to do is memorize 40 strings of random numbers and letters that have no actual meaning to me or anyone else, without ever writing them down, while also memorizing an additional 40 strings of random number, letters, and symbols so that I have alternate answers to the "did you lose your password" questions.
   
3. Problem: I can't memorize random numbers, letters, and symbols. I remember phone numbers as patterns on the keypad. I remember dates because of their place in the continuum of history--it's sort of a multidimensional timeline in my head. I've never been able to memorize formulas; instead I remembered what the formulas meant, so that I could rework them out when I needed the formula. I figure out all percentages using algebra, for example, and geometric formulas have a certain logic. Logic is how I got through calculus, not rote memorization
   
4. Therefore, I'm doomed to be hacked.
   
5. And then on metafandom, I read a horrible story about someone's entire online life being hacked by some real-life stalker who has now spread around fake confessions about being a plagiarist.
   
6. And then I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm frankly not important enough for anyone to hack my LJ; I'm not a big enough target. After all, I've never even been harassed for my unlocked RPS, and that happens to everyone. I am a very small fish.
   
7. And then I feel bad about that, because I have friends who are very popular, and it's not like being hacked is the price of being popular, or anything.
   
8. Still, I've only been mentioned on a hate meme once in the entire time I've been on fandom. Not because I'm so awesome, but because you gain no social advantage by slagging me off--I'm just not important enough.
   
9. I say not because I'm so awesome, because of course awesome people get mentioned on hate memes.
   
10. And that reminded me of crisis I had during the msscribe mess, where people were all, "she must not exist because I can't google her real name." You can't google my real name. The only thing I just found when I googled my real name was my signature on an ecard for John Edwards when he quit the race.
    
11. And since I'm adopted, I don't even know anyone who was present when I was born. I have to trust the state of Maine that my birth certificate is correct, that I was born when and where I say I was.
    
12. True story: when my father and I went to get a copy of my birth certificate, so I could get my first social security card (I was about 12), we didn't realize that all the information had been officially changed when I was adopted. That is, on my birth certificate are my adoptive parents and the name that they gave me. We were trying to get it under my birth name as listed on my adoption papers--which also isn't real, since it was a closed adoption.
    
13. Which means that I don't actually know my real name, because I haven't looked up my birth parents, and my birth certificate, in a sense, isn't real at all.
    
14. So all of this is a fake. There is nothing about me that is verifiable. Some of you have met me, so you know there is a person of my general appearance who answers to my name, and I have a social security number and I've filed taxes and I have a passport, but any or all of those things are easy to fake, right?
    
    
    So how do you know that you even exist?

I'll admit it: I've got the awesome-weekend-letdown-blues. ziggy1278 is on a plane, probably somewhere over the Rockies by now, and I'm back to reality, etc. Much fun was had—I adore road trips hard core, and despite some potential disasters it pretty much came off. We went up to Boston to see C____, then to Northampton for a Sam Phillips concert followed by a visit with theoblack and blackholly. I actually hadn't been to New England since Christmas, and it was fun showing Z my native sod, and the beauty that makes me homesick. Not to mention, of course, Newbury Comics. Z left half sandwiches wherever he went, so both C____ and I had lunches thanks to his largesse.

Nothing much seems to have happened while I was gone, either, though I did manage to finally track down and read vol. 20 of Fruits Basket and I basically am annoyed I have to wait until November for vol. 21 and probably the end of 2009 for the final vol. 23. Other than HIMYM and sort-of BSG, it's the only continuing narrative I'm currently following so the goodbye is definitely bittersweet, even if I do love things that end (so I can read them again!). I also recently read Ironside—I'd been saving it for a plane trip and then never went anywhere. I thought it tied up the Tithe-Valiant storyline incredibly well and highly recommend the trilogy to any of you who like YA urban fantasy with a touch of romance.

I'm going to watch the AMV's that ali_wildgoose posted last night, but anything else I should look into for happy-making?

aside: I wish that writing in all lower case didn't look pretentious and/or plebey; I'd like to do it for a while to counter all the capslocking, which gives me a headache.

Busier and more productive weekend than I'd thought I'd have, which was pretty awesome. Traipsed all the way out to the craft store with ali_wildgoose and then realized that the thing I thought I could get wasn't what people thought when I said it, and I actually needed something completely different, but I did still get floss and an awesome organizer for the floss including numbered stickers for the colors because I'm anal like that. Yesterday I also cleaned my room and found two things I was vaguely looking for and not something I was actually looking for—because it wasn't missing, which mostly has to do with my inability to count.

I'm sad because I just put idolslash off my default filter on the fan comm filter and I'll just check in on it sometimes. I'm definitely done with the Cookleta flooding my flist; it used to be such a nice, not quiet but regular sort of place. But seeing 3 Cookleta stories a day, if I'm being honest, only makes me more resentful about the entire Cookleta thing, when there's no real reason to be. I mean, it's not like those people would have been writing Rymon, even if they did actually kiss on live television. And then today someone posted "Pairings: Simon Cowell/David Cook, Michael Johns/David Cook. Summary: There would be no Jolene in Simon's life story." And I'm like, no. There you cannot go. I'm somewhat okay with Simon being the big meanie in the background of a Cake story, but I'm too much of an OTP'er for this.

I realized yesterday that I'm lucky enough (since she lives nearby) to have honestys_easy withdrawal! The end of Idol was cushioned by the visit of dreamerren and makemeabeliever, but I've gone an entire week without seeing her! We're in that lull before SYTYCD gets going properly so we can Thursday night with sistermagpie and ali_wildgoose. (By the way, how fantastic are the results shows of SYTYCD compared to the uselessness of Idol results shows!) But I think I've managed to lure her with Top Chef!

Send all your candy this way, it's my 6th LJ-versary! A date I now share with jm_cats, and how awesome is that?

Six years ago I was in the middle of posting Eight Ways from Sunday. HP book 5 wasn't out yet. I hadn't even met a single person in fandom! And now I have met so many of you out there, close friends, whether long distance or nearer to hand. And without all this I might not have come back to academia. So thank you, fandom, thank you live journal, thank you everyone.

In honor of that I shall use my default icon. Good old Seamus and Dean! I'll get back to you two by and by.

And what did I do to celebrate this momentous occasion? Why, I locked myself out of my flat, of course, in a sweater and a nightdress, no phone, no nothing, had to beg someone walking past to use their phone to call the locksmith who'd handily left their card in our outside door, got our bottom lock drilled out (and by the way, how anyone had broken into my apartment some years ago by drilling the lock with no one hearing I do NOT know) and bought a new lock that will not lock automatically thank goodness. And wow, I am living cheap here in Brooklyn, though now all that money has gone to the locksmith. At least in the twenty or so minutes that I was sitting on the stairs in our vestibule I put together a story. So there's that.

I write this to remind myself of what I've done, as I have a tendency to see only what I have yet to do. I moved in last Monday afternoon with 36 boxes and three suitcases in five categories: kitchen, bathroom, clothing, books & media, and electronics, plus one miscellaneous box.

I managed over the course of Monday, Wednesday and Thursday to put every dish and pan that I own into the dishwasher and into some shelf or another, but Thursday evening, after an entire day of unpacking, I had a sort of meltdown of inability to get my things to fit and went to bed completely demoralized. Of course, I was just approaching the entire thing from the wrong direction: I had the mindset of staying with a friend, where you want your things to fit into a small corner and disturb as few of their things as possible. But I live here, I'm paying rent, so it's okay to have my plates in the kitchen.

Saturday we completely rearranged every cabinet in the kitchen, including the fridge, consolidated our staples, and found we had quite a lot of room for what we owned and for the groceries we were ordering, so yay! Monday I conquered the bathroom, finished unpacking clothes and linens, and emptied the suitcases. Tuesday I hung my painting temporarily, got the bookshelves ready, and brought all the boxes save the TV box into my room. And today I unpacked all the books and media.

I have three boxes left to unpack: mail, the TV, and the misc. box. I can't believe I'm almost done!

So the reason I wasn't around much this weekend, other than that the lovely allysonsedai was in town, was that my computer went ack again, and I couldn't bring it back, so it's off to the Land of the Mac for it over the next couple of weeks, and emsariel has been nice enough to loan me his old powerbook for the duration. Hey, it works and it has a wireless card, and that's really all I need. I backed up my harddrive (thank you ziggy1278 for making me get an external drive) and it's all under warranty and I will be able to deal for a couple of weeks.

Had a great time with Allyson and Ari, went to cool places, and it is very cold. I find I don't have much more to say than that.

Sent as a series of texts to half the people in my phone at around 5pm last night:

Mom and I are sitting at the bar of a local restaurant waiting for a table. I'm drinking a pint sized Maker's Mark and ginger that cost $5. Some guy at the bar said that watching xmas specials might be childish but they have a new meaning when you have a buzz on.
The bartender is cute in that Maine way. One TV has Santa Claus Is Coming to Town on and another has some Fox News special about One Nation Under God and we've already run into some cousin of Mom's. Gotta love Maine. Merry Christmas!
PS: Mom says the bartender is more than cute and if she were 50 years younger, WOW.

Meanwhile, the combination of Windows ME, IE6 that will display cached copies of pages unless you reload, and dialup that sometimes randomly disconnects (like when I was in the middle of my comment on my Yuletide gift fic and had to write it all over again) means that my mother's internets are slower than slow. If you want me, texting is the best way to reach me, since cell reception is also dicey.

There's something about getting up early in the morning to cook that means Thanksgiving to me. When I was a child we had the holiday dinner in the mid-afternoon so everyone could get home before the roads started to ice after the sun set, so the turkey needed to get into the oven in the morning. My job was to make a giant loaf of bread into toast cubes for stuffing, so I would stand in the kitchen on a chair toasting bread and then cutting it with a bread knife and throwing it into our largest bowl. Later my job became peeling onions (my super power—I rarely cry) for boiling and for the stuffing.

While yesterday I made up the brine and got the turkey steeping, I left everything else until this morning: a pumpkin pie, cornbread and then dressing made from it, and some compound butter and turkey stock for roasting the turkey. Then soupkills came by with help to take me and the food up to his and calloocallay's place for the big meal. 10 of us at table, everyone brought something fantastic like cheesy bread or spinach casserole or buns with marzapan inside or chocolate mousse or apple pie or cranberry sauce with port. Before and after stuffing ourselves was much playing of Rock Band and talking about all manner of things. Just a fantastic day.

The turkey came out great, but I've been making that particular recipe for seven or eight years now and it's tried and true. What I'm really excited about is that I managed to pull off the gravy, which doesn't always work for me because I just can't seem to get the hang of it for some reason.

Recipes:

Turkey, from New York magazine. It's an incredibly reliable recipe that results in a moist breast every time. And the leftover compound butter makes for great sandwiches the next day because the herbs make the bread taste like stuffing. Also, putting the turkey on a bed of veggies makes for super easy clean up.

Pumpkin pie (filling). Last year I really wanted a pie that didn't call for canned milk, and this recipe is as easy as the one on the can, but calls for half-and-half. and so has much better flavor and texture. Instead of a pastry crust, I make a crust of gingersnap crumbs—use any graham cracker crust recipe, just don't add sugar in with the cookie crumbs.

I hope everyone had a great day, whether they were celebrating a holiday or not, and don't get crushed by the holiday shopping crowds!

One of the funniest things I've heard in a while, Robyn Hitchcock on Syd Barrett:

It wasn't until [the album] Barrett that it just seemed so real. This imploded middle-class mother's boy from Cambridge was speaking absolutely to me as an little imploding middle-class mother's boy from Winchester. Now, I know that the official orthodoxy is that Barrett made this one brilliant album with the Pink Floyd and then never lived up to his potential, and it's been the subject of these great "what-if" debates. You know: "Well of course if he'd stayed off the acid and stayed on an even keel, he could have been doing, y'know, like, Emerson Lake and Palmer!"

Blake's single was released to radio on Tuesday so the Cake fandom is predictably a-twitter. The single is everything it should be—don't ask me if I like it as I frequently do not like singles, but I do like very much other songs from the record that have leaked and look forward to purchasing the CD. In the meantime, the new Kenna CD must be purchased because I have nearly worn out my copy of his previous one.

I spent yesterday afternoon and evening with mistful, so saying that was the funniest thing I'd heard is really saying something. We had a lovely dinner of margaritas and burritos with sistermagpie followed by dessert and tea, and bookended by errand running. Then I came home and changed my journal style, and retired all the Crowded House references for a while.

In addition, if you like Sherlock Holmes and are intrigued by slash thereof, run, do not walk, to dana_kujan's A Study in Sherlock because it is fantabulous.