Ho ho huh
The DSL at my parents' house was having issues. Suffice it to say that I wish a pox on all the houses of BellSouth. I wasn't able to get online on my own machine at all, which meant being an extremely sucky beta, and was only able to get online for a few scattered minutes on hers. So I have very late, but very sincere, happy birthday wishes for swsa and _jems_.
I'm trying to catch up on LJ, and am glad that so many of you had pleasant holidays. I had a nice time with my family. There aren't any small children involved, and we are all very low drama people, so there was an exchange of appropriate gifts, a nice meal, and that was about it. My brother broke with tradition (we always get each other gift certificates) and gave me Serenity--and a gift certificate. Heh. It was a very nice surprise. And then we sat down and watched it, and my brother and my father, who are extremely short-attention-span viewers, were both caught up in the action and interested in the plot. I also got a silicon heat-proof handle holder for my cast iron pans; last year, my mother gave me an allegedly flame-proof cloth one that I have set on fire approximately fifty times. Believe it or not, I am very excited about this, because the smell of burning handle holder is not at all pleasant. I took home two knitting projects and couldn't do either of them because when I started working on them, it was apparent that I needed different needle sizes, but that was pretty much the most annoying part of my trip (aside from having to walk approximately 42 miles between gates at the Houston airport, that is).
I have a very complicated relationship with the place where I grew up, Birmingham, Alabama. Part of it comes from the fact that my parents aren't Southern, and I never was either. I am also not a particularly girly girl, and growing up in a place where women inveterately put on elaborate makeup and do up their hair just to go out to the store, I was confused by that; it took moving away to a place that was more in tune to my inherent sensibilities for me to discover that I was not somehow indefinably odd, that I was just in the wrong place. But when I go back there, I reenter a landscape of orderly, cookie-cutter subdivisions and shopping centers filled with identical chain stores and an omnipresent homogenous complacency and self-satisfaction that may be particular to Birmingham or may be more universal--there are a lot of people in Alabama who genuinely believe that there is no reason to ever go anywhere else or see anything else, especially now that they've got Pottery Barn too. I'm being overly simple here, and ignoring the parts of Birmingham filled with beautiful old homes and interesting little neighborhood downtowns; there are a few wealthy older areas like that, though the Birmingham sense of progress and growth is all about cheering on the McMansion and strip mall sprawl. I am also ignoring the parts that are poorer and maybe more imbued with interesting traditions, because there is so little mixing of different economic classes in the South I know. Since leaving home I have, without consciously thinking about it, always chosen (and been fortunate enough to be able to choose) to live in older houses, in areas with public transit and small, local shops in walking distance, in places where I didn't need a car to do everything. People who meet me now are always astonished to find out that I was born and raised in the South, and I sometimes wonder how where I grew up could have left so few marks on me. But then again, I have a jar of Talk of Texas hot okra pickles in my fridge at all times, and a deep and abiding love for Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, and an enormously complicated set of emotions about the Civil War, so there is that.
* * * * *
Meme! Tell me of a fandom you know I know of and I'll tell you:
1. The first character I first fell in love with:
2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now:
3. The character everyone else loves that I don't:
4. The character I love that everyone else hates:
5. The character I used to love but don't any longer:
6. The character I would shag anytime:
7. The character I'd want to be like:
8. The character I'd slap:
9. A pairing that I love:
10. A pairing that I despise:
I rewatched the Battlestar Galactica miniseries on the plane yesterday. Trying to rewatch the entire show up through 2.10 by next Friday would be insane, and yet I suspect I'm going to try to do it. Eight days! Eeeeee!
I'm trying to catch up on LJ, and am glad that so many of you had pleasant holidays. I had a nice time with my family. There aren't any small children involved, and we are all very low drama people, so there was an exchange of appropriate gifts, a nice meal, and that was about it. My brother broke with tradition (we always get each other gift certificates) and gave me Serenity--and a gift certificate. Heh. It was a very nice surprise. And then we sat down and watched it, and my brother and my father, who are extremely short-attention-span viewers, were both caught up in the action and interested in the plot. I also got a silicon heat-proof handle holder for my cast iron pans; last year, my mother gave me an allegedly flame-proof cloth one that I have set on fire approximately fifty times. Believe it or not, I am very excited about this, because the smell of burning handle holder is not at all pleasant. I took home two knitting projects and couldn't do either of them because when I started working on them, it was apparent that I needed different needle sizes, but that was pretty much the most annoying part of my trip (aside from having to walk approximately 42 miles between gates at the Houston airport, that is).
I have a very complicated relationship with the place where I grew up, Birmingham, Alabama. Part of it comes from the fact that my parents aren't Southern, and I never was either. I am also not a particularly girly girl, and growing up in a place where women inveterately put on elaborate makeup and do up their hair just to go out to the store, I was confused by that; it took moving away to a place that was more in tune to my inherent sensibilities for me to discover that I was not somehow indefinably odd, that I was just in the wrong place. But when I go back there, I reenter a landscape of orderly, cookie-cutter subdivisions and shopping centers filled with identical chain stores and an omnipresent homogenous complacency and self-satisfaction that may be particular to Birmingham or may be more universal--there are a lot of people in Alabama who genuinely believe that there is no reason to ever go anywhere else or see anything else, especially now that they've got Pottery Barn too. I'm being overly simple here, and ignoring the parts of Birmingham filled with beautiful old homes and interesting little neighborhood downtowns; there are a few wealthy older areas like that, though the Birmingham sense of progress and growth is all about cheering on the McMansion and strip mall sprawl. I am also ignoring the parts that are poorer and maybe more imbued with interesting traditions, because there is so little mixing of different economic classes in the South I know. Since leaving home I have, without consciously thinking about it, always chosen (and been fortunate enough to be able to choose) to live in older houses, in areas with public transit and small, local shops in walking distance, in places where I didn't need a car to do everything. People who meet me now are always astonished to find out that I was born and raised in the South, and I sometimes wonder how where I grew up could have left so few marks on me. But then again, I have a jar of Talk of Texas hot okra pickles in my fridge at all times, and a deep and abiding love for Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, and an enormously complicated set of emotions about the Civil War, so there is that.
* * * * *
Meme! Tell me of a fandom you know I know of and I'll tell you:
1. The first character I first fell in love with:
2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now:
3. The character everyone else loves that I don't:
4. The character I love that everyone else hates:
5. The character I used to love but don't any longer:
6. The character I would shag anytime:
7. The character I'd want to be like:
8. The character I'd slap:
9. A pairing that I love:
10. A pairing that I despise:
I rewatched the Battlestar Galactica miniseries on the plane yesterday. Trying to rewatch the entire show up through 2.10 by next Friday would be insane, and yet I suspect I'm going to try to do it. Eight days! Eeeeee!