I want the time and money to:
Cook more from scratch
Join a vegetable, fruit, meat, andor dairy CSA
Compost
Grow herbs (basil and cilantro for sure)
Get my private pilot's certification
Knit more
Take a sewing course to learn all the basics I am ignorant of
Sew more
Learn quilting
Practice piano
Practice horn
Join a community band/symphony/orchestra
Take a Thai cooking class
Organize my mp3 collection
Keep the sink from becoming full of dirty dishes
Roomba the living room more regularly
Keep my desk area clean
Exercise more
Bellydance
Read more books, both fun (sci-fi/fantasy) and educational (Great Books)
LARP regularly (monthly?)
Write a LARP
Volunteer for cons I like (Arisia, Intercon)
Be more involved in politics/community
Take a vacation out of the country
Take more vacations that aren't cons/meetups
Buy new glasses
Go on a cruise
Go skiing

The Sassafrass Concertino 2009 album "Eclectic" (made up of life tracks recorded at the Club Passim concert as well as a few new studio tracks recorded in usernamenumber's room) is, at least in reference to the three songs I immediately had to listen to ("Somebody Will," "My Brother, My Enemy," and "Sundown"), extremely satisfying. Major props faerieboots et al!

So as far as I can tell, there are a number of people in the Camberville area heading to the shogunhb and shadowravyn 4th of July party tomorrow who don't have transportation.

I can fix this with use of a Zipcar if people are willing to pitch in. $10 each is cheaper than public transit, and more flexible with regard to time. Otherwise, I'll likely take the train or bus or something.

Who's in?

( embedded video behind cut )Amazingly emotive performance.

Song fits a lot of current situations in my part of the world.

I didn't intend to, but I rode almost 10 miles today! (According to gmap-pedometer.com - thank you anitra for introducing me to it.) I rode from my house to the Cambridgeside Galleria, where I had an eye exam, and shopped a little for glasses and other things. While there I got a call from siderea and set up a time to meet her in Davis Square a little later, so I rode there. At some point there I realized that one of my purchases from the mall had fallen out of my tote bag along the way (follow the saga of asking the b0st0n LJ community to find my underwear here.) siderea and I had dinner at Boston Burger Company (excellent), and then I retraced part of my route back through Inman Square before giving up and returning home.

My butt hurts. I'm not certain if I will end up needing a new seat, or if I just wasn't used to it and rode 10 miles on it! My knees and back are a little sore, but only a slight bit. I'm fairly certain I still need to adjust the seat height a little higher, even if it means more discomfort when stopped. Camberville is hilly and I change gears a lot, but the gears available on my bike are good for this and my ride is comfortable! All of which add up to A+++, will ride again. Maybe to work tomorrow, unless my butt is bruised.

Also, endorphins are a nice thing, and I hope you all support my getting hooked on them.

I have a bike!

chaiya and I went to the yard sale we had seen advertise having a bicycle, and lo and behold, it did. A men's mountain bike, but with a smallish frame. They inflated the tires for us (it had been sitting in a garage for years) and I rode it up and down the street several times with the seat at various heights, playing with the shifters, showing chaiya my posture (as a bodyworker, she has valuable insight on these things.) What modifications might need to be done to the bike were discussed. In the end, though, it was priced at TEN DOLLARS which, if you know anything about bikes, is clearly a price put on it by someone who doesn't know any thing about bikes.

The plan we worked out is that I'll buy the ten dollar bike and all the non-specific-to-that-bike accessories that I would need to ride it around a bit: helmet w/ mirro, lights, lock, reflecting pantsleg straps. Then, ride it around a bit, specifically a week or two. If it works out, then I can spend money upgrading that particular bike (new tires, perhaps new handlebars, storage racks, fenders.) If it doesn't work out, I can probably sell it for more than $10!

I avoided the temptation to ride it to Waltham (~10m) yesterday for bleemoo's birthday party, but I'm about to take it down to the Cambridgeside Galleria (where I will get an eye exam to get a prescription that will get me new glasses online!)

I was right: I can at least be happy about my shop-fu. Other aspects of life, not so much. ("Stormy Weather" has been playing in my head too much lately.)

Being a modern female who just went through some emotional issues and then met with a sudden windfall, I did what was expected: bought new shoes. (Some of you might know that my last favorite pair of sandals are dying a pretty painful death right now, and I have been bemoaning my inability to find a good replacement. These are so far doing the trick.) I got the black. Also, omg, shoes.

chaiya and hakamadare lured me to their house after dinner with promise of food and media and smoffing. Food was eaten (tasty!), media was watched (compelling!), and smoffing was smoffed (intimidating yet enticing! - but that is for another post). While walking home, I passed a pair of plastic storage carts sitting on the street. I stopped. I examined. I looked for people. I saw sign indicating people moving next week. I found a plastic bag with the note "REMOTE for the free TV/VCR that was here earlier," indicating things found on that curb were indeed possibly free stuff. So I dragged them home. Being both a scavengerenvironmentalist and a pack rat, it's hard to pass up a free item in which I can store other items.

Actually, I still had my hands full of my regular daily items, so I dragged one home and upstairs, turned on the AC (it's almost humid enough here to remind me of Oklahoma!), and went back down the street for the other. From a block away, I saw a guy examining it as I had earlier, looking around, and finally he kind of waved his arms and started walking away. So I called out, "Are you going to take it?" He turned around and said, "I'd like to, but" and whatever after that I didn't hear. I got closer, and said that there had been two, I had just finished carrying the other one home, and I was both happy to take this one or happy to let it go since there had been two. His response was, "Well, I live in Dorchester," which (as colin_l just learned is a significant train ride away) indicated he wasn't willing to haul it there, followed by, "Would you like a hand?" Normally my mother's warnings all my life about ditches would hold me back from accepting, but zapf and I recently watched Serendipity and maybe fate can only take you so far, so I said yes. But then he realized he only had a few minutes to get to the train station to get back to Dorchester (or he worried about me causing him to end up in a ditch!) and hightailed it thatway instead, the opposite direction of my house. So I dragged the other home. Yarn storage, yo.

In 9 hours, I'm meeting with chiaya again, and we're going to a yard sale that just might have a cheap bike for me. If that trifecta occurs, I will be something kind of like happy, at least with my shop-fu.

Does anyone have a quick way I can get from Dorchester to Waltham on Saturday around 7? I would like to go from the Buttery birthday party to bleemoo's birthday party with a minimum of social time lost. I know how to do it via public transit, but ew.

If you are looking for something fun to do on Saturday afternoon, by the way, ask me about the Buttery birthday. Especially if you might be going to blee's afterwards. ;)

I am pondering a new rule for myself: no dating until I'm out of debt. I feel like this rule would be healthy for me in multiple ways.

Specifics still being weighed.

A few hours ago I broke up with usernamenumber.

I ask that if you know him, go offer him some hugs. Then, if you have some to spare, I'll take a few too.

I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, generally feeling sad and lonely despite certain folks' best attempts at cheering me up earlier tonight. All of a sudden, plop! Matrix, who 99.99999% of the time sleeps at the foot of the bed, flomps down on the pillow next to my head, her fur just barely covering my face. I stir enough to be comfortable, reach up to pet her, and thank her for reminding me that I'm not sleeping alone.

Of course, now if I could just SLEEP that would be great, since I'd like to make it back to work tomorrow and doing so well-rested would be nice.

I came down sick on Sunday night. In the past 42 hours, I have slept 32 hours. I haven't showered in three days, but I'm about to go fix that part. When awake, I've mostly been lying in bed playing Chrono Trigger on londo's DS that he was so nice to lend me. Oh, and coughing and sneezing and blowing my nose and whining. And reading LJ and following things in Iran.

I am horribly under-socialized and whiny. This (being sick) is the sucky party about living alone.

A few various people have done a "list 15 books you like" meme, but I've been inspired by londo's ponderings over his list to instead list 15 books that are extremely important to me and my growth andor change as a person.

1. Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged. I've never been apologetic about it; Rand is my favorite fantasy author, and I reread her fiction every few years. Finding her books in junior year of high school was monumentally important to my evolution as a person.

2. J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, The Book of the Subgenius. My first look into alternate... anything.

3. Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman, The Dragonlance Chronicles, and if it's necessary to pick one, Dragons of Winter Night. The first fantasy books I ever found. I pick Winter Night because one of my only memories from pre-high-school was ambushing my brother (who was the owner of the books) as he came home one day to rant at him about the "great reveal" of the book.

4. "J", The Sensuous Woman. Honestly, I bought this book off of the 5-cent rack at the library just to shock a classmate. Then, one day, I ended up reading it. And I think I benefited in the long run.

5. Herman Roucher, Ode to Billy Joe. Lent to me by red_ervish in college, one of the first books to ... well, actually, if I tell you what it's about, it spoils the plot.

6. Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Critically important to my curiosity in philosophy and values.

7. Willo Davis Roberts, The Girl with the Silver Eyes. Okay, so maybe THIS was the first fantasy I ever read - Dragonlance was just the first sword and dragons fantasy. This is a YA book about a girl with ESP powers due to her mother having been pregnant and working at a drug factory, and the girl's attempts to find the six other kids in the world who had also been born with these powers. It still sticks with me.

8. Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching. First Eastern philosophy/religion book I ever read, in high school.

9. Carl Sagan, Contact. Because there's so much out there, and we - I - need to keep looking.

10. John T. Molloy, The New Women's Dress for Success. I read this after college, and while I don't follow all of the rules (short women should apparently never, ever wear long skirts, and hair as long as mine is RIGHT out), I feel like it did inform me about businesswear when I didn't have a clue before.

...and now I'm getting kicked out of contradictacat's living room, so I'll have to finish later.

I watched and felt it.

Someday someone will make a sitcom about corps-style marching band, and I will die of fandom.

(Side note: I was reminded to check for Glee on Hulu after seeing this Star Trek XI fanvid linked by laura47. It's very well put together.

Also cracktastic: LJ usericons that feature Simon Pegg's Scotty and the line, "I love this ship!" (Think: shippers))

Because I keep wondering and I looked it up today: Matrix was born ~3/99, and Pixel was born ~11/99, I think. So my cats are only just now reaching 10 years old.

I got Pixel in January 2001, after red_ervish moved out with Sondheim and Morrison and I needed a new catfriend to fill the void (and Pixel needed to not be dumped outside of the Happiness Hotel by her previous owner >:| ) I got Matrix on April 27 - there's photographic proof of that date!

According to my rough scale calculations, Pixel is currently 8.5 pounds and Matrix is a fatty-fat 11.5.

I go through cycles in my LJ. One part of the cycle involves posting regularly, with posts ranging from the introspective to the trivial. The other involves going a week without posting, then a single post that's the textual equivalent of, "AAAAHHHHHH!" Sorry, but we're somewhere in the second phase right now. ;)

I believe the next unscheduled time I have is tonight at 1am, when I would like to schedule sleep but am holding off because I STILL haven't unpacked from my trip and there's a week's worth of emails unreplied-to (no, seriously.)

I guess there are worse things in life to complain about.

Now, off to take a shower, grab some food, and head to D&D.

I need a scholarship to the School of Life. Because time management would be easier if I didn't have to work, right?

Spoons needed.

Things I'm in the middle of and need to finish:
* Twin Peaks
* Spaced (with usernamenumber)
* Discworld
* mailing Sara's mended purse
* knitting Sara's new purse
* knitting bunnies for Lily
* unpacking
* paying off debt
* various relationship negotiations
* this list? ;)

I need a camera that can do long exposures: Roomba art.

It's hard to figure out how to start this post. So I'll go with the trite and simple: today something momentous happened to me. It was a fairly normal day as far as actual events go, but as far as me internally, this day needs a big black X on the calendar. I don't know if relating it will make sense to anyone else, but here we go:

My Sunday D&D game ended early, meaning I could show up to faerieboots's a cappella group's concert only a little bit late instead of missing most if not all of it. I got there about 30-45 minutes in. There was a song or two, and then two of the members, the lead female and the only male, stood up front and announced, "This song is about the future," and began singing.

It's hard to describe the next few minutes. At some point early on I realized there were tears running down my face. Someone took me and who I am and my hopes and dreams and worldview and understood it all and wrote it into a song. I write and erase over and over here, and maybe I should just stop there with that description and link you to the song.

http://adapalmer.com/sassafrass/somebodywill.html

When the song ended and I had dried off my tears, I turned to usernamenumber and said, "Well, I'm done." I consider the $14 I paid to get into that concert to solely to be paid for that song. (I still stayed for the rest of the concert, and it was pretty awesome stuff, but I had been put through the wringer by that track and nothing else got as close.) When the show ended, I checked their CD's tracklist, saw the song on it, and ran out of the venue to find an ATM so that I could have cash to purchase the CD. After I returned, I found out from faerieboots that the female vocalist of that performance was the one who wrote the song. I approached her. I told her that the nearly-$30 I had just spent I considered solely for the purpose of that song, and that it was not nearly enough in comparison to what that song existing means to me. She responded immediately with, "Would you like the sheet music?" So now I have the arrangement for alto and tenor. Just... bampf.

I am sad to find that the album cut is a solo version and not as powerful as the live duet, but I can still sing along to it, and with the music and Ada's blessing I can take it and make it my own, and I am a different person for having this opportunity.

So that's what happened to me today.