Melian42's Xanga

Friday, November 06, 2009

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:15:03 GMT

Hello everyone, or what passes for "everyone" these days. I just wanted to check in to tell you that I'm still around, still kicking, and haven't entirely abandoned my Xanga responsibility. I've actually fully committed to doing NaNoWriMo this year, surprisingly enough, so be assured that while my attentions may not be focused here right now, they are being focused somewhere, and in a more productive, fun, and almost soothing manner than I had originally hoped. It's been a long, long time since I worked seriously on a significant piece of fiction, and I'm glad to say that it's going pretty well, for now.

Not much is new on the home front, although with the holidays gearing up that's bound to change quickly enough. Work is going the way it usually does, in all its infinite variety of petty frustrations. The rest of my life is basically the same, And that, I guess, is pretty much it for now. I'm still promising an eventual return to my formal glory here at Jen Central, but you'll have to bear with me as I figure out when that will be. Until then, à plus tard, mes amis.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:45:26 GMT

No, I am not done with Xanga. I'm just working on a few things at the moment and it could be said that I might be taking an extended hiatus. I can't really make myself get into the whole sharing-my-feelings business right now, and since the only interesting thing that's happened in the past month and a half is that I finished reading a book, I just don't think it's worth the effort to be continually saying, "I'm so bored; nothing is happening; I have nothing to write; I'm sorry I haven't been writing" even though all of those things are true. There's a lot on my mind, but they're things that I'd rather keep shoved into a back corner and locked securely away, and every time I get introspective enough to feel like writing an entry, they leap out and threaten to take over everything and stop me from doing even the bare minimum of things I have to do. I can't be having that.

I don't think I've ever, in the five or six years since I started this thing, taken more than a week without writing at least something (except in the case of vacations, I guess), and I'm sorry to disappoint the one or two of you who still look forward to what I have to say, for some unfathomable reason. When I'm more capable of being lighthearted an interesting, or if something important enough to be able to come up with a few paragraphs about occurs, or if I just miss being able to type out what I'm thinking (which I do) too much, I will be sure to check in. Until then, I'm afraid you might have to get used to longer gaps between entries than I have typically provided for you.

I will be back in a more official capacity, so don't write me off yet. I just need some time and space to myself right now. If you really, truly, desperately can't stand to be deprived of my ineffable wisdom for more than a few days at a time, I can always be contacted through various other means, the information for which is probably on the side there.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 01:26:17 GMT

It's terrible of me not to be writing here at all lately, isn't it? I'm sorry. Things have been about as mundane as they can get this week, and while I'm not complaining, it certainly doesn't make for interesting reading. This weekend, however, my dad and Emily came up to see me - well, to see the fall foliage and use me as a place to stay - and we had a good time. On Saturday we went to Quincy and Hull, the first of which was one of the most bizarre places I've been in Massachusetts, and the second of which was only really interesting because it had two wind turbines, one of which you could walk right up to and touch.

Quincy (the locals absolutely insist you pronounce it "kwin-zee" on pain of pain) is where John Adams was born, raised and lived, when he wasn't in London or being president. You'd think it would be a quaint little colonial town with a focus on preservation and the accompanying federal funding, but it's just another south Boston suburb complete with luxury condo towers, yacht clubs, Dunkin' Donuts with gold-tone signs in faux-Tudor storefronts, and an absurdly disproportionate number of mothers who let their young children scream their heads off inside the visitor's center and out on the street. The tourists, aside from the loudmouth children, were mostly middle aged couples of the kind who probably wear socks with their sandals and fanny packs, which was fine, but all the attractions are really far-flung, so they have a trolley tour that takes you between Peacefield, which is the main house, and the houses where both Adamses (John and John Quincy) were born.

The next tour was over an hour away, and we couldn't face being cooped up for an hour and a half with the screamers, so we decided to skip it. That was probably a mistake, since we couldn't get inside any of the houses without being in a tour group - and in fact it and all the subsequent tours for the day were sold out soon after we made our decision - but c'est la vie. We did get to go into the church and the crypt where John and Abigail and John Quincy and his wife Louisa Catherine are buried, which was interesting. My dad tells me this makes five dead presidents I've visited (Washington, two Adamses, Kennedy, and FDR), and two of the oldest rose bushes in America (one planted by Abigail at Peacefield and the one at the Moffit-Ladd house in New Hampshire), which is quite a collection if I do say so myself.

After a visit to the cemetery, laid out in 1640 and full of quirky monuments, we declared ourselves finished. I don't know what in particular struck me as so odd about the town. I guess it felt like the history there was more of a nuisance than something to be embraced. There were no historical markers on the street, the visitor's center was in the lobby of an office building across from a convenience store, there were no signs directing you to anything important once you more or less reached the town center, and it was all so built up you could hardly really get into the spirit of the thing. It's a shame, really, because Adams is one of my favorite guys. Joe Ellis' books were prominently displayed in the gift shop, though, so I guess they were doing something right. It was just not quite what I envisioned.

It was only 4:00 when we left, and we had plans to go to dinner at a restaurant in Dedham, so we journeyed on to Hull, which I only thought would be neat because it's on this tiny spit of land jutting out into the bay, and I thought it might be good for pictures, just to kill time. We drove all the way out to the point, where there was a peewee football game going on, and stood right up against the giant wind turbine which was spinning furiously as it had become an extraordinarily windy day. Three or four foot seas at least, and that was just in a little stretch between us and a fairly large island half a mile away. I felt bad for the planes coming in to Logan right overhead with that breeze. We didn't stay long because it was getting cold, and there wasn't much to see or do. Time was successfully killed, and we went and had dinner.

The next day, today, dawned bright and sunny and cool, perfect for what we ended up doing, which was having breakfast at our little cafe, stopping to see the horses on Hill Road, then driving to the farm stand in Nagog Park and getting apples. We didn't go pick them ourselves, since my dad wasn't interested in it and none of us actually need that many apples, but I got some cider and a pumpkin and an assortment of freshly picked fruit. On the way back into town we stopped by the lake and just stood in the woods by the water's edge for a while, soaking in all that is best about autumn in New England: the smell of fallen leaves, the sunshine on the water, the colors of the trees, the clear, cool breeze, the projectile acorns...there's nothing quite like it anywhere else.

Then, after stopping at a yard sale in Acton and buying a really nice coffee table for the house, it was time for my dad to go home. Em stayed another hour or so after starting to play Wii and being unable to stop, but soon she was on her way as well and I was left to pick up the shattered pieces. It was a really nice weekend, and I'm glad they came and got to spend some time in rural land when it's at its absolute best.

So that's that. Otherwise, not too much going on, like I said (or didn't say) before. Life goes on. I'm still working on history stuff at work, which has been keeping me quietly busy and not too unsatisfied, even though I still think it's a ridiculous and inaccurate way to do what we're trying to do. I've stated my objections very clearly multiple times, and they've gone unheard, which is no less than I expected, so I'm just going to do what they want me to do and forget about it. It's easy enough to do what I'm doing. But yeah. If I'm going to have any chance of doing it even halfway decently tomorrow, I'm going to have to go to sleep. So good night, Xangans, and I suppose I'll see y'all soon.

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 01:20:07 GMT

So like I said, I did have a really nice weekend. I've been pretty on edge the past week or so after an upsetting phone call with my mom - I don't want to talk about it; everything's fine, I was just taken off guard - and the weekend I got was exactly the one that I needed. I should take three-and-a-half-day weekends more often. It always seems like a lot longer.

But speaking of weekends, I think my dad and maybe Emily are coming here this coming Saturday, even though I was just home. It's leaf-looking season (I'm sorry, I sort of hate saying "leaf-peeping") and if they wait much longer it'll be too late. Plus my mom is going to Em's in a few weeks, which limits things. We might go to Quincy, which is a place I almost never remember exists, even though John and Abigail Adams are two of my favorite people ever. Plus, there's nothing prettier than a New England town in the fall.

Things are moving along at work, I guess. Nothing too exciting happening there. I feel like I don't get very much of anything done, since three days a week I lose almost an hour driving back and forth to the train station. It's 16.3 miles every day to do a full day's run (train-house, house-office, office-house, house-office), plus traffic and waiting for the train. They hired someone else without a car, but I won't have to deal with him, thankfully, since he's coming on Thursday and someone else is available to get him. It's such a waste of my time. I've been really focused when I'm actually doing work, though, which I guess is something. Fancast doesn't work because the video size is way too big to have other stuff on the screen at the same time. It would be more annoying if it actually buffered past the commercial so I could watch anything, which I never can. So much for that.

I should probably get going. I didn't realize it was so late, probably because I went food shopping tonight and took an hour to make dinner, although I still don't know how that happened. Last time I made the recipe (curried chicken with vegetables and rice), it only took half that. I do love Indian food, though, if it isn't really spicy. It's also getting dark really early now, which I absolutely hate. As my dislike for short winter evenings is well documented, I'll just leave it at that. But grrr.

Sunday, October 04, 2009

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:46:58 GMT

Just stopping by quickly to say I had a really great, calming, low-key weekend full of fun, good bargains, and kitten cuddling. I'm absolutely falling asleep on my feet right now - well, in my computer chair - so I think I'm going to vamoose. I'll be back in full swing later in the week.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 19:42:38 GMT

Okay, mission accomplished for the GRE. I got a 580 on math, which yeah, is still basically average and won't be winning me any awards, but it's more than a hundred points better than I did last time, and it's a nice solid score that won't actively detract from my application, which is all I was going for. I was sort of freaking out at one point because the questions seemed so easy, but I guess that's okay. I think I did better on the essays, too, but I can never tell with that. I thought I did all right last time, too. I got a somewhat lower verbal score this time, but I'm not so concerned, since my first one was pretty good. There were more reading comprehension questions than all the other types combined, which is probably why I did worse. I always disagree with those. But if I'm only in the 94th percentile this time, so be it. Not really complaining.

Basically, I'm never thinking about the GRE ever again, unless I don't go to grad school in the next five years. You never know. But I may have taken my last standardized test ever, and I'm pretty stoked about that. So now it's time to sit back and relax for the rest of the weekend, as much as I am able, and tuck the review books away in some dark corner, never to be seen again.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:32:22 GMT

Well, all hope is not lost for the GRE. I've been doing a little work on it, and I took another practice test today and got about the same score on math as I did on my previous practice tests. "But Jen," you say, "if you got the same score in practice, won't you get the same unacceptable score in real life?" "Well," I say, a little testily, "I'm going to say no, I won't. I screwed up on the real test last time, and I'm not planning to do that again." And that's the end of that conversation. But really, I think it's good that I haven't actually lost any ability between then and now, even though I feel a little more rusty, and I still finished the section with oodles of time so I know I can take an extra few seconds if I'm really stuck on something. I'm much more relaxed this time, and I think with another run through of the essays and a quick brush up on the most-tested-words list, I should be in halfway decent shape. Famous last words. If I bomb it again, I'm going to be totally peeved.

Not too much else going on here at the moment. I had to stop doing the bad history I was doing at work and start doing even worse history (just because two random internet sources [who may just have copied off each other] agree about what day the Netherlands introduced paid postage stamps doesn't mean you can reliably say that they're correct just so you can finish faster), but it's quick to do and there's almost no typing, and I don't really have a say in the matter. Unfortunately, we're supposed to be quoted as a primary source for academic citations (the hubris!), so if we put something wrong we lose even more credibility than if it's very clear we gathered it from another source, which it isn't, even when we put our sources. It's terrible. And I mean, nobody brushes off the hard science stuff like this. I could go on in the same general vein of indignation and social-science-major frustration, but I won't. You're all science nerds anyway.

That probably means I shouldn't start talking about chicken stock again either, but I just made a chicken this week and it's on my mind. I have so many chicken bones in my freezer, it's sort of not even funny. Bones and vegetable ends and a tupperware full of drippings with all the fat risen to the top and scraped off. TJ Maxx has this big, beautiful stockpot on sale for like $20 bucks, and if I had somewhere to keep it, I would make it mine. It's too big to fit in the bottom of my kitchen cart, and it is only once or twice a winter that I make stock anyway. My kingdom for a pantry. But the point is, I think I'm going to make stock on Sunday, because it'll be three hours when I'm trapped in the house anyway and it's a perfect excuse to do some real good cleaning. I'm sorry, I just really enjoy making stock. I think I just missed the last of the good summer fruit, but next year I'd also really love to try canning. I am a 1950's homemaker.

One who promised herself she'd go to bed really, really early tonight to build up some rest for the weekend. Like most homemakers, I constantly lie to myself.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:34:05 GMT

So I had a good time yesterday in the city. Stacey's film was really good, and the shorts program before it was interesting as well. There was one animated film that was beautifully done with chalk, and if the voice over had been just slightly less exaggeratedly imagery-heavy, it would have been really amazing. This one was pretty good, too. Stacey's was a really good mix of humor and insight, and proof that you actually can take a more or less overdone concept like standing out on the street with a sign and turn it into something worth watching.

Afterward, we went to a restaurant/craft brewery thing and sat around with like a million of her film partner's friends, which was fun. I rarely get a chance to meet new people, so it was pretty neat. Doug was there, and we sat near Stacey, so I had people to talk to, and I even had a glass of wine, because I'm so adventurous and cool these days. We left the restaurant (which I have to say was very accommodating to a group of 27 people right off the street) around 7:30, and made it home by 9. All in all, a satisfying and fun way to spend the day, even though I really should have been studying.

Which is also what I should be doing now, but instead I'm going to make a quick run to the mall, go food shopping, do some housework, and schedule some breaks during which I'll do some practice sets and try to feel motivated. I had another awful allergy night as soon as I stepped into the house yesterday, which is weird, because I'm not really allergic to anything here. I think. I can handle a stuffy nose with the best of them, since usually there are things I can do to unstuff it at least temporarily, but when I get these huge, long sneezing fits that completely disable my nasal passages and I'm gasping like a fish through my mouth for hours on end (pleasant visual there, I know), that's when I start having real issues.

But anyway. Moving quickly on. I'm going to go out to the mall and see if I can pick up a few things on sale, then I'm going to get down to business. It's so stupid that it's almost 1:00 already. That'll teach me to sleep late.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 03:12:44 GMT

When we were in Maine, we stopped at a thrift store in Freeport that turned out to be a bust, except for the bin of free books by the door. I never pass up a bin of free books, and I have a six-foot tall shelf in my room at home stuffed with out-of-print novels from the 1930's that I've never read to prove it. Anyway, the book I collected this time was the Anglo-Saxon Poetry installment from the Everyman's Library (from the 60's). It's all in modern English, of course, and the translation is sort of iffy at best, but it contains a lot of stuff we never got to cover in class, and it's a bit more readable than the heavily academic translations that sacrifice flow for accuracy. I'm enjoying reading a few pages here and there before going to sleep, which is a dangerous habit because it means I never go to sleep.

Reading that, though, has finally inspired me to start reading The Children of Hurin, an edited version of a previously-unpublished Tolkien work that was released to minor fanfare over a year and a half ago now. It's no secret that I used to be a fairly obsessive Tolkien fan - my second copy of The Silmarilion is worn ragged; the cover on the first one fell off - so all the names of places and people are extraordinarily familiar to me. But I've forgotten how they all connect: who is related to whom, where they come from, who died doing which extraordinary deed, so reading it feels like some misguided attempt to recapture the magic of my impressionable youth. It does promise to stand up to a more critical read, though, and I think the angle he took on the whole good versus evil, fate and doom and destiny thing is pretty interesting. I'll be sure not to let you know what I think about it, because I'm sure it's boring you to tears already.

Tomorrow I'm going to a screening of short films in the Boston Film Festival. Stacey, my former co-worker, had a film accepted into it, which is pretty darn cool, and I've been invited. I sure hope I didn't have to buy tickets in advance or anything, cause I didn't. I guess I could have planned on sort of going with Doug instead of vaguely hoping to meet him there unless he's bringing other friends or doesn't want to hang out with me and it being really awkward if I do see him and that's the case, but I didn't do that either. He didn't say anything about it when I saw him on Wednesday, so I guess I'm on my own, which is fine. I wonder if I'll see famous people.

I had to train another new kid today, which has become a sort of frustrating process. Everyone seems to pick it up so quickly, now that there are few major changes being made and things are working closer to optimum efficiency. I had to learn all this crap on the fly, while it was being created and tested and developed. It was really hard to keep track of all the changes people were making remotely, learning the new syntax, working without the accuracy checks and nicely color-coded grids that are standard now. It takes me ten minutes to explain how to do my job to people now, and it's frustrating that it seems so straightforward and minimum wage. I feel like a dinosaur. An entry-level dinosaur. I think I'm going to keep thinking about it like the game of Othello: a minute to learn, a lifetime to master (registered trademark?), cause otherwise I might just go mad. It doesn't help that the last few people have had previous experience with the program.

How do you inhale a spoon? Into your lungs? I can see swallowing it if you're really oblivious and scarfing down your food, but enough of the handle for the logo to be visible getting in your lungs? How wacky is that.

Anyway. It's about time I scurried off to bed. I foresee myself getting lost tomorrow, which is going to be a problem because I'm not wearing flat shoes. Or on second thought, maybe I am, since the freaking bus service doesn't run on the weekends. I'm having trouble making sense of such a thing. I guess I'll have to walk. I just hope there's parking at Alewife, though, because if there isn't, I'm screwed. Ah well. It'll be an adventure.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:20:06 GMT

I am making some changes to my blogging habits. I just finished going through all of the entries from the past two years and making private certain things that may have been a little too liberal. Well, not private but protected.

So if you want to continue to hear all the juicy details of my life (i.e. random complaints about stupid stuff), all you have to do is make a Xanga account (free and they don't send you junk mail like ever) and send me a note, through Xanga or through AIM, asking me to add you to the special people's list. There will still be public entries, of course, and most of them probably still will be, but I think in light of recent events (which you could read about if you add yourself to my list), it pays to be a little more careful.

In other news, and speaking of being paid, I got my raise today. A giant raise, in fact. A raise so large, even the head of HR who told me about it seemed a little surprised. A little over 8%. I was flabbergasted, to be honest, but now that it's sunk in, I think it's no more than I deserve, right? All the crap I go through. I got Thai food for dinner to celebrate. Neither of the people I talked to about the UK thing have had a chance to pursue it yet, but just think about what that extra money is going to do for me. I might even be able to get a half-way decent one bedroom apartment, which would be fabulous.

It feels weird to have deserved a good raise, though. Last year's seemed sort of obligatory, but this one must mean that I'm doing something worthwhile, right? There's such a big disconnect between what I think is happening and what management thinks is happening, but I guess that just makes me an overachiever. Hah. Either way, I'm feeling both a worryingly new sense of responsibility to do a good job and the sense that my pay is really just now matching the emotional commitment (and what I'm sure other people are making) I've been making for the past two years. Neither of which are mutually exclusive, but they seem a bit at odds to me. Oh well. It doesn't kick in until my first check in October, so I have a while to mull over it if I so choose. In any case, the Thai food was delicious.