Damn I'm good!
In the last two days, I have
- Written up two resumes from scratch
- Applied at three temp companies
- Advertised for tutoring
- Put out traps to kill all the ants in my apartment
- Done my laundry and cleaned the kitchen
- Set up my now-working desktop and caught up on all my record-keeping from the last three months
- Finished a book and started another
- Gone grocery shopping and made really good Mexican food
- Ran several errands
- Gone swing dancing
and STILL had time to watch massive amounts of TV, read fic, play BioShock and Portal, pass some more songs on Guitar Hero, go shopping, have a fun board-game party night, and sleep.
I win at life. Take that, Unproductive-Funk-I-Have-Been-In!
On the downside, I have just inputted "(my current address), WA, 90094" into three different online forms. Why is it so easy to mentally change my address and zip code, but IMPOSSIBLE to enter "CA"?
Also, I have promised several people pictures of various things, and there are more people who I wanted to give pictures but haven't yet.
So, first is the Turkey trip gallery. Mom and Constance, you have seen most but not all of these.
Then comes the apartment gallery.
Enjoy!
The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood
I love the basic concept of this book, pretty much summed up in the title. It is apparently part of a series of re-workings of great myths. In this case, it is a feminist (Atwood, duh) reworking centered on the 12 maids hung by Odysseus. The 12 maids are always an issue, in studying the Odyssey- kind of gruesome and random when you first encounter them, then more and more bothersome the more you think about them. Atwood sums it up pretty bluntly, in her diagnosis of "being hanged for being raped without permission." But the book is not only about the injustice of the maids- it works a whole story of Penelope's life, her perceptions of her role as a wife and a diametric opposite to Helen, how much she really planned and knew which has been eclipsed in the tellings. It includes Robert-Graves style speculations about the return of Odysseus as the triumph of patriarchal society over the ancient goddess mother-cult, refusing to be the sacrificial Year-King and instead slaughtering the priestesses and marrying the Great Mother. It's complete and total bull, massive claptrap (which I yet always find massively entertaining) and Atwood both indulges in it and dismisses it as yet another way to try to elide the horror, to avoid the injustice done to the maids.
There are problems in the execution, mostly that it ends up WAY too twee. Once Penelope starts making sarcastic cracks about silicone implants and big screen TVs... but I love the basic concept far too much to write it off for cutesiness of execution.
- Written up two resumes from scratch
- Applied at three temp companies
- Advertised for tutoring
- Put out traps to kill all the ants in my apartment
- Done my laundry and cleaned the kitchen
- Set up my now-working desktop and caught up on all my record-keeping from the last three months
- Finished a book and started another
- Gone grocery shopping and made really good Mexican food
- Ran several errands
- Gone swing dancing
and STILL had time to watch massive amounts of TV, read fic, play BioShock and Portal, pass some more songs on Guitar Hero, go shopping, have a fun board-game party night, and sleep.
I win at life. Take that, Unproductive-Funk-I-Have-Been-In!
On the downside, I have just inputted "(my current address), WA, 90094" into three different online forms. Why is it so easy to mentally change my address and zip code, but IMPOSSIBLE to enter "CA"?
Also, I have promised several people pictures of various things, and there are more people who I wanted to give pictures but haven't yet.
So, first is the Turkey trip gallery. Mom and Constance, you have seen most but not all of these.
Then comes the apartment gallery.
Enjoy!
The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood
I love the basic concept of this book, pretty much summed up in the title. It is apparently part of a series of re-workings of great myths. In this case, it is a feminist (Atwood, duh) reworking centered on the 12 maids hung by Odysseus. The 12 maids are always an issue, in studying the Odyssey- kind of gruesome and random when you first encounter them, then more and more bothersome the more you think about them. Atwood sums it up pretty bluntly, in her diagnosis of "being hanged for being raped without permission." But the book is not only about the injustice of the maids- it works a whole story of Penelope's life, her perceptions of her role as a wife and a diametric opposite to Helen, how much she really planned and knew which has been eclipsed in the tellings. It includes Robert-Graves style speculations about the return of Odysseus as the triumph of patriarchal society over the ancient goddess mother-cult, refusing to be the sacrificial Year-King and instead slaughtering the priestesses and marrying the Great Mother. It's complete and total bull, massive claptrap (which I yet always find massively entertaining) and Atwood both indulges in it and dismisses it as yet another way to try to elide the horror, to avoid the injustice done to the maids.
There are problems in the execution, mostly that it ends up WAY too twee. Once Penelope starts making sarcastic cracks about silicone implants and big screen TVs... but I love the basic concept far too much to write it off for cutesiness of execution.