| Tweet bits |
[Jan. 22nd, 2010|09:36 am] |
I've been following the live-tweeting* of the Prop 8 trial in San Francisco via NCLRights. It's been interesting and informative, but yesterday it was also hilarious. I don't know if it was the witness or the staffer they'd happened to send to the courtroom that day, but there were some gems:
Tam: Don't believe gays are a minority. Boies: What percentage of population are they? Tam: Okay fine. #prop8
-
Flyer: After Netherlands legalized SSM, went on to legalize incest & polygamy. Tam: Yes, true. #prop8
Boies: Who told you that? Where did you get that idea? Tam: The Internet. (lol) #prop8
-
(Good drinking game: every time Tam talks about children's gay fantasies.)
-
Tam: "I was acting independently." (Sounds like a classic fall guy!) #prop8
-
Tam: At break I told my lawyer I felt like a naughty boy put in front of a classroom and being mocked at. #prop8
(actual paragraph-form summary of the day)
*What age do we live in where "live-tweeting" is an actual thing? |
|
|
| Tennis shoes over tights and a copy of the Express |
[Jan. 7th, 2010|11:07 am] |
This morning I got up, got dressed, looked in the mirror and decided my shoes didn’t look right with my outfit, changed my shoes, liked them, then took them off and put them in my backpack. On the way out the door, I grabbed my tennis shoes and laced them on over my tights.
Checking my watch, I realized if I didn’t hurry I’d be late, so I ran out the door. At the top of the metro escalator, I grabbed a copy of the Express and two steps down, realized that the down escalator was going up today.
After going down the (unmoving) up escalator, I passed my SmartTrip card over the sensor, went down onto the platform, and checked the time of my train. I went three benches and one advertisement down the platform – the distance I have calculated that will put me right in front of the escalator at my destination – and waited the forecasted two minutes.
When the train arrives, I can tell it started from the very first station because it is already full of people. I squeeze in, grab a post, and check out the open pages of the Express being read by those around me to see what I can look forward to as I open my own. I hate standing – I only turn pages when the train has stopped, for fear of losing my balance into the black man in a business suit standing behind me – but I know I only have to wait a few stations before seats clear out.
Sure enough, at L’Enfant Plaza masses pile out to make a transfer. I slide into the aisle seat next to another young white woman reading the Express and wearing sensible shoes. I read about frozen iguanas, terrorists in Yemen, and skip over news about the Redskins’ new coach. When the woman next to me arrives at her stop, I have already folded my newspaper and prepared to let her out. Years of metro riding mean I readily recognize the body language of “This next stop is mine, I’m ready to go.”
As I go through this metro ritual – one I have performed a few hundred times, give or take – I get a funny twinge of rightness, of belonging.
I used to have grand nomadic plans. At first, I expected to spend half of college in various study abroad programs, then graduate to a job that paid for annual international relocation. After I actually experienced the upheaval and stress and disorientation of international living, I decided that occasional travel was a better fit for me, but still expected to move out of Washington, DC, shortly after college. After all, five years in one city was surely enough for anyone! Yes, I’d definitely be ready to move someplace else. San Francisco and Boston were at the top of my list, but I kept my options open.
But the longer I live here, the more I feel like I belong and the longer I want to stay. I belong with the big open spaces and the low buildings and the beautiful monuments and museums always free and open just a few miles away. I belong in a place that riots with cherry blossoms in the spring and sweats with heat in the summer and spends fall and winter fitfully swinging back and forth between leaves and snow and pleasantry and bitterness. I want to live in town houses on organized alphabetical numerical quadrant streets, have friends who navigate by metro stops and state names, cross boundaries daily with a job in one state and friends in another while I live in a third.
And I want to be able to ride the metro almost anywhere I want to go, with sneakers under my professional getup and the Express to update me on the news, finishing with my horoscope and the comics and folding up the paper just as the train pulls into my stop. I’ll get off right at the escalator – just like I planned – and swipe my SmartTrip to let me out into my city. |
|
|
| Government actually being effective! |
[Jan. 5th, 2010|02:52 pm] |
As I usually find NPR to be the most pleasant morning listening station, and I have a bad habit of driving to work more often than I have to (Metro, I love you, I swear! But my car is just so cheap and easy!), I stay fairly up-to-date on the kind of news that NPR reports between 8:30 and 9:00am, EST. A few months ago they reported on some credit card reform bill that Congress was busting through, against the wishes of credit card companies. Now, I have a credit card, but I don't often use it in a way that might incur fees, so I didn't pay much attention, but generally assumed it was a good thing.
I am here today, ladies and gentleman and others, to inform you that it actually worked.
I just got a phone call from my credit card company, from a seemingly-friendly gentleman named Kevin, who just wanted to let me know that as of February 2010, new government regulations meant that my card would automatically no longer allow me to charge over my limit. However, if I wanted to, I could give my credit card company permission to charge past the limit. Kevin very helpfully explained that, though they don't recommend doing so, having that option available is very good if you perhaps need to charge something very expensive in an emergency?
I didn't have to think very much about my answer. My debit card has a similar "protection" that ran me up about $150 in fees freshman year when I kept buying groceries on an empty account. I never would have requested such a "protection" for my credit card had I known it was an option. Plus, even on my expensive traveling plane-ticket-buying months, my credit card bill is about $2,500 below my limit, which is enough money to cover almost any emergency.*
So I asked Kevin to take this "protection" off my account and just not allow me to charge more than my limit.
"Are you very sure you'd like to do that, ma'am?"
"Yeah, definitely. I can't imagine ever needing it."
"But it is a very helpful precaution should you need to use your credit card in an emergency."
"Thanks, but I'd really like you to take it off."
"But I assure you, you're not paying anything for this useful service! The bank will not charge you for having this feature on your account!" As if the bank were doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, because they're worried about me getting stuck in Africa with no means to buy a plane ticket, rather than because they hope I'll accidentally wrack up hundreds of dollars in fees.
"Sorry, I really don't want it. Take it off."
"Are you sure? Very sure?" Kevin is beginning to bully me now, and I am annoyed.
"Kevin. I'm sure. Take the damn thing off."
"Very well, I'll remove that option from your account. Have a nice day."
Dear US Congress: thank you!
*Except perhaps a last-minute plane ticket out of Africa. Should I actually end up going to Africa and finding myself suddenly in an extremely dangerous situation where I NEED a plane ticket, however, I imagine I'll just buy a cheaper one that gets me to someplace safer that's not as far as the US, and figure my way home from there. |
|
|
| SNOW!!! |
[Dec. 5th, 2009|11:35 am] |
This morning, when I woke up, it was grey and rainy and ugly. I puttered about - started a load of laundry, caulked the bathtub, remade my bed - until I was interrupted by John, my roommate's boyfriend, running down the stairs in his fuzzy earflap aviator hat.
"What is it??" I asked.
"SNOW!!!!!"
So I grabbed my own earflap hat (knit and lined with fleece) and followed him out the door to stand on the porch. We could still hear the water of the rain rushing through the gutters and see it dripping off the eaves, but further out, the raindrops had thickened and had begun to drift. I stuck my arm out into the cold air, and when I pulled it back in frozen crystals were melting on my skin.
In sweatpants and Tshirts and earflap hats, John and I stood on the porch and marveled.
Watching the flakes drift down and melt, John told me, "I've never seen snow before." |
|
|
| HELP WANTED |
[Dec. 3rd, 2009|11:28 pm] |
So friends. I have a dilemma.
The Furies' annual Banquet is this weekend, and I don't know what to wear.
These people are some of the only people that I feel totally 100% comfortable with. So on the one hand, this is a great opportunity to totally butch it up and revel in sexy, lesbionic masculinity sans judgment (or "sir").
On the other hand, it's one of the few opportunities I have to go in full-on femme mode without being misinterpreted, just appreciated.
Still recently ex-Ashley, I don't have any desire to go home with anyone - but I'd like everyone there to WANT to take me home.
So which should it be?
( Birly? Or girly? )
Thoughts? |
|
|
| Yet another Caster Semenya article |
[Nov. 23rd, 2009|05:19 pm] |
As many of you know, I've been following the story of Caster Semenya fairly closely. The combination of gender identity (and identification) issues and sports, two of my favoritest things, is fascinating to me.
This New Yorker article by Ariel Levy is one of my favorite so far. It's long, but here's a few of my favorite sections:
Sports, sex, and the runner
"Semenya is breathtakingly butch. Her torso is like the chest plate on a suit of armor. She has a strong jawline, and a build that slides straight from her ribs to her hips."
"South Africans have been appalled by the idea of a person who thinks she is one thing suddenly being told that she is something else. The classification and reclassification of human beings has a haunted history in this country. Starting with the Population Registration Act of 1950, teams of white people were engaged as census-takers. They usually had no training, but they had the power to decide a person’s race, and race determined where and with whom you could live, whether you could get a decent education, whether you had political representation, whether you were even free to walk in certain areas at certain hours. The categories were fickle. In 1985, according to the census, more than a thousand people somehow changed race: nineteen whites turned Colored (as South Africans call people of mixed heritage); seven hundred and two Coloreds turned white, fifty Indians turned Colored, eleven Colored turned Chinese, and so on. (No blacks turned white, or vice versa.)
Taxonomy is an acutely sensitive subject, and its history is probably one of the reasons that South Africans—particularly black South Africans—have rallied behind their runner with such fervor. The government has decreed that Semenya can continue running with women in her own country, regardless of what the I.A.A.F. decides."
"But, setting aside the issue of gender, there is still no such thing as a level playing field in sports. Different bodies have physical attributes, even abnormalities, that may provide a distinct advantage in one sport or another. The N.B.A., for instance, has had several players with acromegaly—the overproduction of growth hormone. Michael Phelps, who has won fourteen Olympic gold medals, has unusually long arms and is said to have double-jointed elbows, knees, and ankles. Is Caster Semenya’s alleged extra testosterone really so different?
There is much more at stake in organizing sports by gender than just making things fair. If we were to admit that at some level we don’t know the difference between men and women, we might start to wonder about the way we’ve organized our entire world. Who gets to use what bathroom? Who is allowed to get married? (Currently, the United States government recognizes the marriage of a woman to a female-to-male transsexual who has had a double mastectomy and takes testosterone tablets but still has a vagina, but not to a woman who hasn’t done those things.) We depend on gender to make sense of sexuality, society, and ourselves. We do not wish to see it dissolve."
"'If she can’t run in the Olympics, Caster has to continue running with other girls in South Africa. Because, really, that’s what she wants, that’s what she is, that’s what keeps her alive: that’s running.'"
"The sins of A.S.A., as Daniels sees it, are, first, not giving Semenya adequate information about the Pretoria tests—including her right to refuse them—and, second, not pulling her out of the competition in Berlin.
“It’s the day before the championships,” Daniels said. “Eighteen years old, your first World Championships, the greatest race of your life. You can’t focus, because you have to go for gender testing. And you come back and you have to watch on TV: they are explaining the possibilities. I found her in her room, sitting in front of the TV like this,” Daniels put his hand up to his face to show how close she was to the screen. “And they’re talking about her and she’s trying to understand what they’re saying. Because nobody has spoken to her, to tell her, Look, this is what these tests might mean. I felt so ashamed.”
...“Now her life is over,” he said. “Not only as an athlete but as a human being. Even if the I.A.A.F. says there’s nothing wrong with her, people will always look at her twice. There should be hell to pay for those responsible.” He pounded his fist on the table. “I’ve got a daughter. If that was my daughter, what would I have done as a father? Somebody might have been dead by now.”"
"A figure in a black sweatshirt with the hood up walked along the path about thirty yards in front of me. There was something about this person’s build and movements that drew my attention. I got up and followed along the path, until I caught up to the person where he or she was stopped behind the cafeteria, talking to a waiter and a cook, both of whom were much shorter than she was. It was Caster Semenya.
She wore sandals and track pants and kept her hood up. When she shook my hand, I noticed that she had long nails. She didn’t look like an eighteen-year-old girl, or an eighteen-year-old boy. She looked like something else, something magnificent.
I told her I had come from New York City to write about her, and she asked me why.
“Because you’re the champion,” I said.
She snorted and said, “You make me laugh.”
I asked her if she would talk to me, not about the tests or Chuene but about her evolution as an athlete, her progression from Limpopo to the world stage. She shook her head vigorously. “No,” she said. “I can’t talk to you. I can’t talk to anyone. I can’t say to anyone how I feel or what’s in my mind.”
I said I thought that must suck.
“No,” she said, very firmly. Her voice was strong and low. “That doesn’t suck. It sucks when I was running and they were writing those things. That sucked. That is when it sucks. Now I just have to walk away. That’s all I can do.” She smiled a small, bemused smile. “Walk away from all of this, maybe forever. Now I just walk away.” Then she took a few steps backward, turned around, and did." |
|
|
| Bad day solutioneer |
[Nov. 19th, 2009|02:02 pm] |
If you are feeling grumpy, I present the following de-grumpifying exhibits featuring an ORSU rugby player who makes some amazing faces:
One
Two
Three
Four
And, as a bonus:
THIGHS! |
|
|
| Seriously HATE this whole week |
[Nov. 13th, 2009|06:32 pm] |
On top of everything else that has sucked about this week, I just realized that I left my cell phone at work. In Virginia. Where I will have to drive to go get it.
Jeez! Not like I needed that hour of my life or anything EFF MY LIFE. |
|
|
| Sick update |
[Oct. 16th, 2009|07:38 pm] |
Today I took myself to the doctor - or rather, the wonderful and long-suffering girlfriend took me to the doctor while I rather imperfectly served as navigator - and I was officially diagnosed with "yeah, that's probably the H1N1 virus." Also known as, The Swine Flu.
Apparently, they don't actually test anyone for it because 1) the treatment is the same as for "normal" flu and 2) the tests don't really work. But my symptoms, combined with the fact that I fit the "typical profile" ("Young, healthy, normally doesn't get sick but just got completely laid flat by this flu -" "Yeah, that's me!") indicates that yup, I probably got hit with the swine.
On the bright side, today was the first day this week that I haven't had a fever (hurrah!) which means I'm definitely getting better. And to be honest, I haven't felt that awful, provided I kept myself drugged up and horizontal. Got lots of sleeping time in (up to 16 hours a day!), read a few books, watched some TV and movies. It helped a lot that the girlfriend came over two or three evenings to keep me company, so I haven't had that crazy "I've had no human contact for days!" feeling that being bedridden can give you.
So overall, swine flu: not that bad. Yes, my week did have plans other than "sleep excessively" and "make some good headway into my roommate's YA fantasy collection," but when you get down to it, it's not a bad way to spend a feverish week. |
|
|
| Sick |
[Oct. 14th, 2009|09:37 pm] |
I am Sick. The kind of sick where I take four hour naps in the middle of the day.* The kind of sick where spending three days (and counting) in my bedroom isn't make me stir crazy.** The kind of sick where taking my book outside to the porch to read for an hour is pleasant but exhausting. More specifically, it is the kind of sick where I have had a fever for three days, a fever that broke for an hour or two yesterday but has spent all of today climbing higher and higher, despite regular applications of Dayquil occaionsally supplmented by Ibuprofen.
On the bright side, I seem to have graduated from "everything hurts and I'm hacking up a lung" to "everything is fuzzy and my nose is doing its best impression of a glacier in spring."
On another bright side, I have great friends:
Jess: everyone else online right now is gay, so enjoy! http://www.behindthebadge.com/2009/10/photo-of-the-day-the-body-issu.php
you can appreciate a beautiful set of boys
Also Kate bought me juice. Also the wonderful girlfriend came over for a long time to keep me company even though she had an exam. Wonderful!
Would still rather be healthy, though.
*I pretty much never do this.
**This? Also never true. |
|
|
| The National Equality March |
[Oct. 12th, 2009|08:18 pm] |
Sunday morning I woke up in a bit of a funk, as sometimes happens when one is stressed out and tired and in the early stages of a nasty cold caught from one's girlfriend. As I was brooding over an uninspiring bowl of oatmeal, roommate Kate suggested, "You know what would make you feel better? Thousands of gay people with rainbows!"
And so it did.
We didn't start out with the march at the beginning, but walked to Freedom Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue to meet it partway. The marchers hadn't made it that far yet, but we were waiting for a scant few minutes before we saw the Harbinger of the Gay - a delightful young man with a rainbow flag in each hand who danced enthusiastically to music on his headphones.
And then, everyone arrived in force.
Kate and I stood on a raised planter on the Plaza for half an hour watching hundreds and hundreds of people march by. Scores of people carrying signs or rainbow flags or simply lending their presence to show that they believed in equal rights for everyone. Great, huge, happy, delightful masses of people marching their way down Pennsylvania Avenue, more people that I can properly comprehend, all of them People Like Me.
Kate and I laughed and took photos and pointed out people and read interesting signs to each other. And I'll admit it, there were several times when my voice got caught in my throat and my vision got blurry and I almost cried, right there on my big hunk of marble, as I watched the great ocean of people and rainbows wash past me.
After countless people had passed us, and with countless more still to come, we joined some of Kate's teammates who had taken an overnight bus down from Brown to be a part of it all. We continued to march down Pennsylvania, past the Newseum's ten story copy of the First Amendment, and on towards the gleaming white Capitol building. And maybe also - I know it's corny - but I'm sure we were also marching towards a more equal future, where the love and acceptance that flowed down Pennsylvania Avenue on a bright Sunday in Washington, DC has kept going and infused the whole country with love and acceptance.
And by golly, by the time we got to the Capitol, I felt not just better, but great.
My photos of the march are on Facebook here. |
|
|
| Coolest bookshelf ever |
[Sep. 22nd, 2009|05:22 pm] |
|
If you only knew how much of my childhood was spent sitting on the steps reading (hands-down one of the most comfortable places in a house to sit!), you'd understand why I want this so badly. |
|
|
| Minutia |
[Sep. 21st, 2009|03:13 pm] |
Today, two different people sent me this link, suggesting that both my preference for cute things and my problem with aggressively air conditioned offices are widely known.
I had been planning on fingerless gloves, but handwarmers shaped like bears would suffice, as well. |
|
|
| A Quick Life Update (in list form) |
[Sep. 17th, 2009|02:45 pm] |
In no particular order:
Things That Are Brilliant
- index-card sized heating pads that can be shoved down the front of my pants to relieve menstrual cramps
- finished painting my bedroom
- my new roommates, including: communal food policies, moral support, and decorating plans
- getting voted B-side Vice Captain of my rugby club (!!!)
- have home games for the next month, after having to go to Philadelphia three weeks in a row
- happy-lovey girlfriendom, including officially passing the "longer than any previous relationships" landmark
Things That Are Not So Brilliant
- deciding that it would be fun to mix a can of paint by shaking it without checking to see that the lid is firmly in place
Overall, life is pretty damn good. |
|
|
| Things that are prettty awesome |
[Aug. 31st, 2009|02:41 pm] |
Guess who, as of today, has officially been in a functional relationship for a month?
I'll give you a hint: this same person has successfully painted her ceiling white (from mint green) and one wall a beautiful "Twilight Blue", and is planning on painting her trim white (from forest green) and her walls "Avalanche" (from old ugly marked up white paint) in her new bedroom. Which is in the same house as she previously occupied, but with completely different roommates and increasingly new paint.
She has also just begun the competitive (and therefore intensive) rugby season, and between this and the above activities, plus the whole "having to go to work every day to earn money" thing (who invented that concept, anyways?), has been super busy and not much on Livejournal.
But aten't dead. Just busy. |
|
|
| Photos! |
[Aug. 7th, 2009|03:29 am] |
I've uploaded my photos from the trip so far to Facebook, for those of you who are interested. I have this intention to do a "highlight" post with just a few photos that I love best, but I also have a feeling that I won't actually get around to doing it. And I'm kind of sleep-drunk (walking around for hours = tiring), so I think the commentary on the Facebook photos is pretty entertaining.
San Francisco the First
Pier 39
If we're not friends on Facebook yet and you'd like us to be, feel free to friend away! |
|
|
| San Francisco vacation, part 1 |
[Aug. 3rd, 2009|03:44 pm] |
Subtitle: SWEETEST VACATION EVER
I mean, come on. I flew in first class, for practically free (using up the frequent flyer miles that have been accumulating since I was [literally] three weeks old). I boarded the plane first. I was served a drink to compensate for the time I spent waiting for those poor souls in Coach to slog on and find their seats. My breakfast - cheese omelette, seasoned potato wedges, fresh fruit, crossaint - was served on REAL china plates with REAL metal silverware. They came around with a basket of snacks and I got to take AS MANY AS I WANTED (chips! granola bars!! biscuits!!!). And then when I got to San Francisco, my bag was the FIRST one on the belt!!
And then Carmen came to pick me up and I was so excited to see my wife for the first time in MONTHS and took me to her lovely house and fed me and introduced me to Oliver, the adorablest puppy ever, and we talked and talked and talked like we haven't been able to do for aaaaaaaages, and then Krsna came over and Carmen dropped us both at the house where I'm house-sitting, and, oh man.
This house is SO sweet! It's a little one-floor bungalow, crammed full of bookcases and shelving and everywhere you look is something else fun and interesting that surely has a story to it, and there's a cute little garden in the back with tomato plants and one big lemon plant, and it's exactly the kind of place I'd want to live in if I lived by myself, and for a whole week it's MY house, just me and the sweet little kitten I'm in charge of feeding.
And after Krsna meditated and I took a nap (because of course I was up all night with the girlfriend, and then had to get up at 5 am for my flight), and then we went to a delicious all-vegetarian restaurant called Herbivore and I had a wonderful blueberry banana milkshake and a giant bowl of sweet and sour soup, and then I went home and crashed early.
Day 2 was just as relaxing. I woke up, curled up on the couch and read for awhile, and then finally succumbed to my complaining stomach and went to Trader Joe's - just around the corner! - to stock up on tasty foods. Then I read some more, took a nap, and went out to Berkley to meet up with Carmen. We walked around, she pointing out interesting stores and eateries, we wandered through a gallery with some great art and delightful dragon figures, and finally, when I was getting hungry, I got take-out crepes and we went and sat on a grassy knoll on the UC Berkley campus. I ate and read a book, Carmen napped, and every so often I stopped reading just to watch the clouds go by.
So far, I haven't done an ounce of planning. I haven't bought a guide book or even a map. But I have already read four or five books, taken three or four naps, and slept for hours and hours and hours. I am SO relaxed and happy and this is exactly the kind of vacation I wanted! |
|
|
| In which the morning starts out bad and gets suddenly better |
[Jul. 30th, 2009|09:41 am] |
This morning started off not well at all. First, I was grumpy because I hadn't gotten enough sleep (through no fault but my own - I'd been watching an episode of Angel while I did my shoulder PT, and then I had to fold my laundry so I started watching a second episode, and that ended on a serious cliffhanger so I had to watch a third episode, and by that point it was already way past my bedtime, but when I went to get in bed I found the fantasy book I've been reading [Deep Wizardry] so I just had to read one or two or five chapters of that, to help me get to sleep, of course.)
But despite all that, I actually got up on time, which means I actually got out of the house early since my alarm is calibrated to account for at least fifteen minutes of snoozing. And I was excited because this meant I'd get to work early, so I could take extra time out of my lunch break to go deposit everyone's rent checks, so I could get a check to our landlords before I leave from San Francisco! And I was so excited by this plan that I LEFT THE ENVELOPE WITH ALL THE CHECKS ON MY DESK. AT HOME.
So there I am - tired, grumpy, really pissed off at myself - when the internet gives me this beauty.
....
(moment of muscular mediation)
Aaaaaand I feel better! |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
