V-day weekend
With all due apologies to those who hate the whole idea of Valentine's Day, I had a pretty good one. This was mostly due to the fact that lgbtech came up for the weekend, which is always a good thing. :-)
- Saturday we were intending to go to a 40s-themed party, so we spent the afternoon acquiring appropriate clothing at Kensington Market vintage shops.
I am astonished to report I actually found something awesome that fit me. I am not used to the idea that this possible in vintage shops - even back in my 20s when I was approximately the weight I am now (i.e. before having gained a lot over the course of my 30s), I had trouble fitting into a lot of vintage clothing due to height, shoulders and bustline, none of which are apparently on par with what women in earlier generations had. Yes, I am somewhat Amazonian. And of course, once I'd gotten heavier it was even harder. And now that I am thinner again, I guess I'm still not used to the fact that it is at least theoretically possible for me to occasionally fit into vintage clothes.
I initially passed right over this gorgeous black taffeta dress when I looked through the rack of black dresses, because while I stopped to admire it, I assumed it couldn't possibly fit me. But later when we had the proprietor helping us find stuff, he looked me over, flipped through the rack for about 30 seconds, and pulled out three dresses he thought might work - one of which was that one. My heart pretty much skipped a beat, but I figured I shouldn't get my hopes up until I actually tried it on. It did take a little bit of careful wiggling to get it down over my shoulders and chest, but once I did, it settled into place like it had been made for me. It has a sort of V-shaped wrap top, a VERY form-fitting midsection, and a somewhat poofy knee-length skirt, all of which adds up to a very, very hourglassy shape, and it is possibly the single most awesome piece of clothing I have ever owned. He was also able to find a pair of authentically 40s black pumps with bows on them, in a size 9 1/2 (who wore that back then? drag queens?), which are actually surprisingly comfortable.
lgbtech also scored big at the same store (King of Kensington, for the record), with a really cool navy officer's coat (which looks to me like it could handily double as some sort of steampunk airship officer's coat), and at another store, she found some nice vintage ties and suspenders, which all added up to an excellent 40s butch outfit to complement my uber-femme one.
Here, have a picture:
Sadly, we discovered - once we were all dressed up and ready to go - that the party had been cancelled due to illness, so, not wanting to waste our fabulousness, we went out to Volo to enjoy assorted really interesting beers. I think my favourites were one called Bogwater that was flavoured with some kind of bog myrtle, and Dieu du Ciel's Aphrodisiaque, which is a cocoa/vanilla stout with a name that seemed highly appropriate for V-day weekend.
- V-day itself was partly taken up with collecting and putting up some nice shelves that kettunainen and optimystik were getting rid of. optimystik came along to help us put them up, since it's really a three-person job, and as we were working on it, it occurred to me that happily putting up shelves with one's current partner and ex-partner, and everyone getting along, was probably not exactly the most common way to spend Valentine's Day, but it was certainly a pretty good one.
The hallway looks a million times better now, and people are no longer attacked by random kamikaze books every time they pass through it. Later in the evening we put most of my mass-market-size paperbacks up there, and later still, after lgbtech had gone home on Monday, I was inspired enough by all this to actually start sorting and organizing books. Paperback fiction is now handily separated from everything else, and alphabetized. Also, I unpacked two (2) more boxes. Miracles can happen.
- Next up was visit time with the Lynxcub, which also enabled Kettu and Optimystik to have their own V-day outing. We took him to the sushi place around the corner from me, after some prolonged negotiation that went a bit like this:
Me: "Honey, are you hungry? What would you like to eat?"
Lynxcub: "Cookies!"
"Er... Cookies are full of sugar, which is not so good for you..."
"Jus' a little bit of a cookie?"
"What about some kind of real food? Maybe with a cookie afterwards?"
"No, jus' cookies!"
"How about pakoras?"
"Cookies!"
"Sushi?"
"Cookies!"
"Pakoras and then cookies?"
"Jus' cookies!"
(about 30 more variations on this theme, to an extent that began to resemble the Monty Python spam sketch, then eventually:)
Me: "Sushi and cookies?"
Lynxcub: (faint, distracted nod)
Me: (tone of great relief) "OK, sushi and cookies it is!"
Lynxcub: (tone of world-weary, I-am-so-done-with-this-conversation endurance) "Sussi... an' cookies."
Thankfully, we were able to keep the cookie component to a minimum, and he actually did eat a lot of sushi and edamame. But the most awesome thing was that he finally got the hang of using chopsticks! Granted, they were the kids' training-chopsticks that are hinged and have little finger-loops on them, but he's never managed to use them before as anything other than a projectile weapon, and this time he actually managed to successfully pick up bits of cookie food with them and transport them to his mouth with only a few accidents. Better than some adults I've seen try to use chopsticks, really. And pretty damn good for two and a half!
- After dropping the Lynxcub off, we went to see Sherlock Holmes, which was a lot of fun. Movie theatre popcorn is tastier than it has any right to be considering how horribly unhealthy it is. It's probably a good thing that I don't get out to movie theatres very often.
- Sadly, LGBTech was only here for the weekend and had to leave yesterday. But we have resolved that there will be less time between this visit and the next than there was between this one and the last. But all in all it was an excellent visit, even if she did end up catching my cold (or "Moose flu", as her American co-workers dubbed it the last time she came back from Canada sick).
- And what with all the shelf-putting-up and subsequent organizing, I am feeling highly productive. Enough that tonight I decided to finally try installing Ubuntu Linux on my little red netbook.
The first half of the process was hell and the second half was pretty much bliss. Ironically, given their respective reputations for ease of use and the lack thereof, the homicidal-fury-inducing part was the part dealing with Windows (specifically, trying to make a bootable USB drive from an ISO file, and then induce the machine to actually boot from it), and the oh-hey-this-is-really-easy part was the Linux part. Yes, really. Installing Ubuntu - including partitioning the drive to make it dual-boot, and create an extra partition on which I'm going to attempt to install OS X - was on a par with most Mac software installations: pretty to look at it, and requiring virtually no conscious thought. I knew Ubuntu had a reputation for being a much more user-friendly Linux distribution than most, but wow! My grandmother could have done it.
And the graphic interface of the "Netbook Remix" is really gorgeous. Colour me impressed. I'm not about to give up my iMac, but I'm pretty sure Ubuntu will be the primary OS for the netbook. It makes the Windows XP installation it came with look like something designed by the Spanish inquisition as a test of character by comparison.
Most surreal moment: at one point during the installation, it briefly flashed the following message: "Preparing to completely remove ubiquity". I have no idea what that meant, but I can only assume that from now on, nothing will be ubiquitous.
