how did today even happen?
# I did so much today! Way more than planned, even:
- Volunteered in the morning.
- Went to Goodwill and found practically new black suede boots that look quite awesome, a sweater, and a new acrylic paint set complete with nice brushes and a canvas. I love it when I find art supplies at Goodwill!
- Called the unemployment insurance department to get some stuff done and while on hold for 39 minutes I changed my sheets and put away all my clean laundry. (Talking to the person who finally picked up only took about 2 minutes.)
- Cleaned my bathroom. On Saturday night I cleaned the rest of my house, so now the place is pretty darn awesome.
- Snuggled with the cat (I needed break).
- Took my computer to my sister's Starbucks and answered email and searched for jobs. I started an application with a government agency that I can finish pretty easily tomorrow. Also chatted about Birds of Prey and '80s cult classics with my sis and her geeky coworker.
- Stopped at the store on my way home and picked up stuff for dinner.
- Cooked and ate a healthy dinner (fish, steamed veggies, a banana).
Now I am sitting in my tidy apartment catching up on fandom and feeling pretty good and wishing I could feel this way at least most of the time. What gives me hope is that I wasn't in a particularly energetic mood today. I had to drag myself to volunteering, and the unplanned Goodwill trip was kind of in reaction to feeling grumpy after finishing that up (the person I visit is usually pretty delightful, but today she told me she likes Trump and is very suspicious of Syrian refugees, and my thought bubble basically became a giant scribble). I almost called it a day during the cat-snuggle, but somehow I rallied. So I need to remember that energy levels =/= destiny.
# Update on the job interview: The phone interview led to an in-person interview last week, which might lead to something. But I'll be happy if it doesn't, because the pay-to-responsibility ratio is not a good one. It looks like a fabulous job that I'd enjoy doing, just I'd have to negotiate a higher salary and the idea of attempting that makes me want to die a little.
# I have watched so much TV, you guys. Just. So much. A brief rundown:
- Brooklyn 99 [entire series so far]It didn't look like a show I would enjoy, but I kept seeing people nomming it for fic fests, and it turns out to have amazing women chars and the type of humor I like and a progressive take on things, and I adore every single character and basically laugh all the way through every episode.
- Fear the Walking Dead [entire first season]This held my interest through six eps, but the end was a little anticlimactic, and I'm still not sure which character was meant to be the central focus or whom to root for. Or why that one ep was titled "The Dog" or that other one "The Good Man." The depiction of LA was actually what I liked most. The empty aqueduct, the concrete high school, the clever way they meshed the city's police brutality problems with the onset of the disease. (I love LA as a setting.) But overall, I don't think FTWD has the same intensity of characterization as TWD itself. The personal stakes for everyone in TWD also feel much more real than in the spin-off.
- Agent Carter [3 eps in]Go Peggy go! This is as delightful as the first season--and again, also set in LA! I like the noir take, and that they titled the first ep after a Raymond Chandler novel. Peggy's not quite a hard-boiled detective, but the genre theme of corruption underlying the glamorous facades of the city is really doing it for me. I miss Angie terribly, but have to admit I ship Peggy and the scientist guy too and hope it works out for them.
- Birds of Prey [entire series--sadly, just 13 eps or so]This is from 2002 and somewhat before its time as a live-action superhero show. It stars Oracle, Huntress, and Dinah Redmond (who never got a codename but is Black Canary's daughter and has psychic powers), and the show is all about them and somehow I never knew this was out there, that there was an all-woman superhero show made just for me. shadowc44 and I mainlined it just this weekend, so I'm still processing and trying to plot out some fic. P.S. If you watch and are already familiar with DC comics canon, your best bet is to take it for what it is: an adaptation or AU that is full of magic. Also appreciate the ending that tied up all the loose ends. We don't always get that when a show is cancelled.
- The 100 [1.5 seasons in]Everyone I know is all over this, so I decided to give it a try. So glad I did!
There's probably more that I can't recall at the moment. Tell you what, being unemployed really lets you watch a lot of TV, even with job-hunting fairly consistently.
# Fun plans this week: I'm going to see the Met's Turandot with the lady I volunteer with. This will be our 4th televised-to-movie-theater opera together and I'm really looking forward to it. Then Thursday a friend and I are going to a Jewish studies lecture being given by one of my old professors. I plan to say hi to him, but it's been, like, 14 years and I only had him one semester, so I don't expect him to remember me. He was pretty awesome, though: deeply knowledgeable, brought in many of the authors of our texts as guest speakers, and took the approach of helping us understand American Jewish identity through getting to know lots of other American cultural contexts (my term paper was on LDS missionary school). Then this weekend I'm going to game night at a new friend's house. I tutored her a few times last fall, and she took me to a rock and mineral museum nearby that I never knew existed but 1) does and 2) is strangely fascinating.
Time to go to bed. Tomorrow... more job-hunting I guess, though I also want to write some fic.
- Volunteered in the morning.
- Went to Goodwill and found practically new black suede boots that look quite awesome, a sweater, and a new acrylic paint set complete with nice brushes and a canvas. I love it when I find art supplies at Goodwill!
- Called the unemployment insurance department to get some stuff done and while on hold for 39 minutes I changed my sheets and put away all my clean laundry. (Talking to the person who finally picked up only took about 2 minutes.)
- Cleaned my bathroom. On Saturday night I cleaned the rest of my house, so now the place is pretty darn awesome.
- Snuggled with the cat (I needed break).
- Took my computer to my sister's Starbucks and answered email and searched for jobs. I started an application with a government agency that I can finish pretty easily tomorrow. Also chatted about Birds of Prey and '80s cult classics with my sis and her geeky coworker.
- Stopped at the store on my way home and picked up stuff for dinner.
- Cooked and ate a healthy dinner (fish, steamed veggies, a banana).
Now I am sitting in my tidy apartment catching up on fandom and feeling pretty good and wishing I could feel this way at least most of the time. What gives me hope is that I wasn't in a particularly energetic mood today. I had to drag myself to volunteering, and the unplanned Goodwill trip was kind of in reaction to feeling grumpy after finishing that up (the person I visit is usually pretty delightful, but today she told me she likes Trump and is very suspicious of Syrian refugees, and my thought bubble basically became a giant scribble). I almost called it a day during the cat-snuggle, but somehow I rallied. So I need to remember that energy levels =/= destiny.
# Update on the job interview: The phone interview led to an in-person interview last week, which might lead to something. But I'll be happy if it doesn't, because the pay-to-responsibility ratio is not a good one. It looks like a fabulous job that I'd enjoy doing, just I'd have to negotiate a higher salary and the idea of attempting that makes me want to die a little.
# I have watched so much TV, you guys. Just. So much. A brief rundown:
- Brooklyn 99 [entire series so far]It didn't look like a show I would enjoy, but I kept seeing people nomming it for fic fests, and it turns out to have amazing women chars and the type of humor I like and a progressive take on things, and I adore every single character and basically laugh all the way through every episode.
- Fear the Walking Dead [entire first season]This held my interest through six eps, but the end was a little anticlimactic, and I'm still not sure which character was meant to be the central focus or whom to root for. Or why that one ep was titled "The Dog" or that other one "The Good Man." The depiction of LA was actually what I liked most. The empty aqueduct, the concrete high school, the clever way they meshed the city's police brutality problems with the onset of the disease. (I love LA as a setting.) But overall, I don't think FTWD has the same intensity of characterization as TWD itself. The personal stakes for everyone in TWD also feel much more real than in the spin-off.
- Agent Carter [3 eps in]Go Peggy go! This is as delightful as the first season--and again, also set in LA! I like the noir take, and that they titled the first ep after a Raymond Chandler novel. Peggy's not quite a hard-boiled detective, but the genre theme of corruption underlying the glamorous facades of the city is really doing it for me. I miss Angie terribly, but have to admit I ship Peggy and the scientist guy too and hope it works out for them.
- Birds of Prey [entire series--sadly, just 13 eps or so]This is from 2002 and somewhat before its time as a live-action superhero show. It stars Oracle, Huntress, and Dinah Redmond (who never got a codename but is Black Canary's daughter and has psychic powers), and the show is all about them and somehow I never knew this was out there, that there was an all-woman superhero show made just for me. shadowc44 and I mainlined it just this weekend, so I'm still processing and trying to plot out some fic. P.S. If you watch and are already familiar with DC comics canon, your best bet is to take it for what it is: an adaptation or AU that is full of magic. Also appreciate the ending that tied up all the loose ends. We don't always get that when a show is cancelled.
- The 100 [1.5 seasons in]Everyone I know is all over this, so I decided to give it a try. So glad I did!
There's probably more that I can't recall at the moment. Tell you what, being unemployed really lets you watch a lot of TV, even with job-hunting fairly consistently.
# Fun plans this week: I'm going to see the Met's Turandot with the lady I volunteer with. This will be our 4th televised-to-movie-theater opera together and I'm really looking forward to it. Then Thursday a friend and I are going to a Jewish studies lecture being given by one of my old professors. I plan to say hi to him, but it's been, like, 14 years and I only had him one semester, so I don't expect him to remember me. He was pretty awesome, though: deeply knowledgeable, brought in many of the authors of our texts as guest speakers, and took the approach of helping us understand American Jewish identity through getting to know lots of other American cultural contexts (my term paper was on LDS missionary school). Then this weekend I'm going to game night at a new friend's house. I tutored her a few times last fall, and she took me to a rock and mineral museum nearby that I never knew existed but 1) does and 2) is strangely fascinating.
Time to go to bed. Tomorrow... more job-hunting I guess, though I also want to write some fic.