so it's been a while
hello, flist! it's been weeks.
first, happy (late) birthdays to amberdreams (artist, fangirl, overall pretty cool person) and walt whitman (poet and icon). he'd be 200 if he was still alive. :D amber is, uh, younger than that.
in honor of that, have a poem.
I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.
Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly, musical, self-sufficient,
I see that the word of my city is that word from of old,
Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb,
Rich, hemm'd thick all around with sailships and steamships, an island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, strong, light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies,
Tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown,
The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining islands, the heights, the villas,
The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model'd,
The down-town streets, the jobbers' houses of business, the houses of business of the ship-merchants and money-brokers, the river-streets,
Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week,
The carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses, the brown-faced sailors,
The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing clouds aloft,
The winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the broken ice in the river, passing along up or down with the flood-tide or ebb-tide,
The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form'd, beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes,
Trottoirs throng'd, vehicles, Broadway, the women, the shops and shows,
A million people-manners free and superb-open voices-hospitality-the most courageous and friendly young men,
City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts!
City nested in bays! my city!
--"mannahatta"
so i went to hawaii. i've been home a week, like exactly (we got in at 5:15 in the am last monday, and i came home and went right to bed), and i swear it took all last week to readjust. and not just because i left the land of the hot and sunny and humid for the land of the cloudy and ok-fine-i-guess-it-can-be-spring-now. my hair likes hawaii, by the way. not as much as it likes florida (it looooves florida) but a total stranger at the hotel in maui commented on how good the air was for my curls. i had curl! instead of frizz! it was nice.
i went with my sister and we did so much! we saw the kalakua torah and iolani palace (home of the last monarchs of hawaii) and shangri-la (doris duke's hawaii house and repository of her islamic art collection) and a farmer's market and pearl harbor (the uss arizona memorial is closed so we had to take a boat around the harbor instead) and the dole pineapple plantation (with pineapple maze and random wandering hens) and the north shore (beaches! tiny side roads! pie we were too full of lunch to eat!) and the road to hana (which could probably be its own post) and lots of waterfalls and very narrow roads and tiny bridges and random sites of historical interest and tiny towns and a volcano (inactive) and the sunrise (COLD) and a local street fair and we snorkeled and saw sea urchins and coral and fish and turtles, and we zip-lined which was terrifying but so much fun, and we went on a sunset cruise and ate a lot of fruit. and poi, which doesn't taste like much, and poi bread which also doesn't taste like much (well, it tastes like bread) but is purple, and poke hawaiian style (which my sister passed on as she likes her fish cooked) and a plate lunch (a scoop of steamed rice, a scoop of macaroni salad, a protein) and loco moco (two scoops of steamed rice, two hamburger patties, two fried eggs, an inadvisable amount of brown gravy) (so good and so bad for you), and coconut cream pie (yum) and coconut shrimp and a lot of pacific fish i've never had before and kalua pig (shredded and delicious) and laulau (which wasn't super seasoned but was steamed in some leaf that tasted like spinach but wasn't) and, uh, fried rice for breakfast. also portuguese sausage, because sausage. and garlic noodles with chicken and a taro bubble tea. (taro is what they make poi out of and bubble tea actually tastes like something! and that something is sweet. O.O ) we did well with food options. my sister developed a persistent craving for cheeseburgers, which i thought was weird for being on islands, but there's ranches on maui and maui beef is a legitimate thing, so she actually wasn't too off-base. oh, and there's a tiny cowboy town on maui notable partly for being a tiny cowboy town and partly because there's a bakery with stick doughnuts (basically yeast doughnut balls on a stick) and malasadas (portuguese doughnuts) - i had one of each and they were SO GOOD. and i had mochi balls and spam musubi, because spam. that was good too. and fish tacos, because i love me some fish tacos, only these had pacific fish (opah!) instead of, like, grouper. and we went to a luau which was fun and cheesy and the food was good and the couple sitting across the table from us was cute and friendly. we gave them tips for the road to hana. ("get the gypsy guide app." so helpful and entertaining and educational.)
every hotel we stayed in had fantastic water pressure. the second one probably had the best bed, and the third had the best view because we could see the ocean. we ate at a fancy-shmancy restaurant on the beach in waikiki - at the royal hawaiian, which was the second resort hotel built on waikiki beach back in the 20s. it's pink and the mai tai was invented there - so we saw the beach in oahu, but didn't go in it until maui. the ocean is VERY BLUE. and maui is very chill, at least compared to honolulu. also very sunny and very hot. like, our server at the luau told us maui was having a heat wave. (it was like 90º.) i am consequently super tan. still. i'm liking it.
i'd say pics to follow, but let's be honest, the best i can do is probably a pic of the poi bread, because it was purple and who doesn't like purple bread?
i'm almost all caught up on the tv i missed - just missing the blacklist and one izombie - the end of killing eve was very wtf?? izombie continues to not be quite as dark as previously, or maybe i'm just used to it. ravi is still the cutest, major might be in over his head, and liv on zombie brain is fun. the 100 is likewise not as dark as previously, altho that could be that we've already had cannibalism, and i don't know how you go darker than that.
yesterday i went over to my sister's house to watch pearl harbor (because we were there) and order chinese food (because we're us). the movie was so cheesy we needed wine and crackers, but the scenes of the actual attack and the various dogfights were all really good. and saturday we saw rocketman, which i liked but didn't love, altho i really liked all the singing and the dance numbers were fun, and it had surprise!jamie bell. who can sing! we saw previews for the next men in black, the next terminator, the lion king remake, something called the goldfinch which is adapted from a book (the trailer for which was very arty and told you approximately nothing about the movie), and i think just one totally new idea (ie, it's not a sequel, a remake, or an adaptation) - yesterday, which looks cute.
artist's claims for spn-j2-bigbang went up while i was in hawaii, but i had to check to see who claimed me anyway, and now that they've been revealed i can share. :D
Jensen and Jared are smugglers, traveling the back lanes of settled space in Jensen's ship the Tombaugh. Then one of their friends comes to them with a job - help a fellow criminal get a girl off a frozen moon and return her to her father. It seems like a simple thing for a lot of money, but it turns out the girl has a secret and she's convinced her dad wants her dead because of it. Jared wants the girl to live. Jensen wants to keep his ship. Their decision to do both will lead them to space stations, far-flung settlements, and the edge of galactic nowhere, and pit them against cops, cultists, other criminals, and ultimately their own desperate decisions.
aka the spacebang. :D i think there's only one ridiculous cameo that's there just to make me giggle, and a couple random cameos that i thought were fun. cassiopeia7 picked my summary for the second year in a row, and i'm excited to see what she comes up with. now i just have to edit.
did i forget something? this is what happens when it takes you a week to post. >.< how are you all?
first, happy (late) birthdays to amberdreams (artist, fangirl, overall pretty cool person) and walt whitman (poet and icon). he'd be 200 if he was still alive. :D amber is, uh, younger than that.
in honor of that, have a poem.
I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.
Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly, musical, self-sufficient,
I see that the word of my city is that word from of old,
Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb,
Rich, hemm'd thick all around with sailships and steamships, an island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, strong, light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies,
Tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown,
The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining islands, the heights, the villas,
The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model'd,
The down-town streets, the jobbers' houses of business, the houses of business of the ship-merchants and money-brokers, the river-streets,
Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week,
The carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses, the brown-faced sailors,
The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing clouds aloft,
The winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the broken ice in the river, passing along up or down with the flood-tide or ebb-tide,
The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form'd, beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes,
Trottoirs throng'd, vehicles, Broadway, the women, the shops and shows,
A million people-manners free and superb-open voices-hospitality-the most courageous and friendly young men,
City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts!
City nested in bays! my city!
--"mannahatta"
so i went to hawaii. i've been home a week, like exactly (we got in at 5:15 in the am last monday, and i came home and went right to bed), and i swear it took all last week to readjust. and not just because i left the land of the hot and sunny and humid for the land of the cloudy and ok-fine-i-guess-it-can-be-spring-now. my hair likes hawaii, by the way. not as much as it likes florida (it looooves florida) but a total stranger at the hotel in maui commented on how good the air was for my curls. i had curl! instead of frizz! it was nice.
i went with my sister and we did so much! we saw the kalakua torah and iolani palace (home of the last monarchs of hawaii) and shangri-la (doris duke's hawaii house and repository of her islamic art collection) and a farmer's market and pearl harbor (the uss arizona memorial is closed so we had to take a boat around the harbor instead) and the dole pineapple plantation (with pineapple maze and random wandering hens) and the north shore (beaches! tiny side roads! pie we were too full of lunch to eat!) and the road to hana (which could probably be its own post) and lots of waterfalls and very narrow roads and tiny bridges and random sites of historical interest and tiny towns and a volcano (inactive) and the sunrise (COLD) and a local street fair and we snorkeled and saw sea urchins and coral and fish and turtles, and we zip-lined which was terrifying but so much fun, and we went on a sunset cruise and ate a lot of fruit. and poi, which doesn't taste like much, and poi bread which also doesn't taste like much (well, it tastes like bread) but is purple, and poke hawaiian style (which my sister passed on as she likes her fish cooked) and a plate lunch (a scoop of steamed rice, a scoop of macaroni salad, a protein) and loco moco (two scoops of steamed rice, two hamburger patties, two fried eggs, an inadvisable amount of brown gravy) (so good and so bad for you), and coconut cream pie (yum) and coconut shrimp and a lot of pacific fish i've never had before and kalua pig (shredded and delicious) and laulau (which wasn't super seasoned but was steamed in some leaf that tasted like spinach but wasn't) and, uh, fried rice for breakfast. also portuguese sausage, because sausage. and garlic noodles with chicken and a taro bubble tea. (taro is what they make poi out of and bubble tea actually tastes like something! and that something is sweet. O.O ) we did well with food options. my sister developed a persistent craving for cheeseburgers, which i thought was weird for being on islands, but there's ranches on maui and maui beef is a legitimate thing, so she actually wasn't too off-base. oh, and there's a tiny cowboy town on maui notable partly for being a tiny cowboy town and partly because there's a bakery with stick doughnuts (basically yeast doughnut balls on a stick) and malasadas (portuguese doughnuts) - i had one of each and they were SO GOOD. and i had mochi balls and spam musubi, because spam. that was good too. and fish tacos, because i love me some fish tacos, only these had pacific fish (opah!) instead of, like, grouper. and we went to a luau which was fun and cheesy and the food was good and the couple sitting across the table from us was cute and friendly. we gave them tips for the road to hana. ("get the gypsy guide app." so helpful and entertaining and educational.)
every hotel we stayed in had fantastic water pressure. the second one probably had the best bed, and the third had the best view because we could see the ocean. we ate at a fancy-shmancy restaurant on the beach in waikiki - at the royal hawaiian, which was the second resort hotel built on waikiki beach back in the 20s. it's pink and the mai tai was invented there - so we saw the beach in oahu, but didn't go in it until maui. the ocean is VERY BLUE. and maui is very chill, at least compared to honolulu. also very sunny and very hot. like, our server at the luau told us maui was having a heat wave. (it was like 90º.) i am consequently super tan. still. i'm liking it.
i'd say pics to follow, but let's be honest, the best i can do is probably a pic of the poi bread, because it was purple and who doesn't like purple bread?
i'm almost all caught up on the tv i missed - just missing the blacklist and one izombie - the end of killing eve was very wtf?? izombie continues to not be quite as dark as previously, or maybe i'm just used to it. ravi is still the cutest, major might be in over his head, and liv on zombie brain is fun. the 100 is likewise not as dark as previously, altho that could be that we've already had cannibalism, and i don't know how you go darker than that.
yesterday i went over to my sister's house to watch pearl harbor (because we were there) and order chinese food (because we're us). the movie was so cheesy we needed wine and crackers, but the scenes of the actual attack and the various dogfights were all really good. and saturday we saw rocketman, which i liked but didn't love, altho i really liked all the singing and the dance numbers were fun, and it had surprise!jamie bell. who can sing! we saw previews for the next men in black, the next terminator, the lion king remake, something called the goldfinch which is adapted from a book (the trailer for which was very arty and told you approximately nothing about the movie), and i think just one totally new idea (ie, it's not a sequel, a remake, or an adaptation) - yesterday, which looks cute.
artist's claims for spn-j2-bigbang went up while i was in hawaii, but i had to check to see who claimed me anyway, and now that they've been revealed i can share. :D
Jensen and Jared are smugglers, traveling the back lanes of settled space in Jensen's ship the Tombaugh. Then one of their friends comes to them with a job - help a fellow criminal get a girl off a frozen moon and return her to her father. It seems like a simple thing for a lot of money, but it turns out the girl has a secret and she's convinced her dad wants her dead because of it. Jared wants the girl to live. Jensen wants to keep his ship. Their decision to do both will lead them to space stations, far-flung settlements, and the edge of galactic nowhere, and pit them against cops, cultists, other criminals, and ultimately their own desperate decisions.
aka the spacebang. :D i think there's only one ridiculous cameo that's there just to make me giggle, and a couple random cameos that i thought were fun. cassiopeia7 picked my summary for the second year in a row, and i'm excited to see what she comes up with. now i just have to edit.
did i forget something? this is what happens when it takes you a week to post. >.< how are you all?