in dream:

Hanging with the Weasley family, which had somehow become combined with Ginger's, in a house that resembled the networking and cabling of this apartment back in the day. Made popcorn. Shamash nested in the sink. There were bunny-cats outside the house. Ginny Weasley (?) had almost miswired the whole thing, and I sent her to the corner and lectured her on the dangers of doing it improperly, and told her that since she'd tried, I would have to teach her the correct way and no excuses.

My breasts both had little candles as symbolic nipples.

The telepathic library, where I was working away and then suddenly everything began to adjust itself without my willing it to be so. After trying to calm my mind and failing to do so, I called emergency, and they said it was someone running a search on a file that was in my mind, and getting caught in there, and wreaking havoc -- but fortunately it was a junk file and they could catch him that way.

Getting picked up from library by bus; losing bus pass, cards from wallet. Going across street into quarantine/bomb shelter the design of which reveals Bush's paranoia/conviction about a nuclear war.

Darkside was in Ashford and/or Ron's class with me, and we were wandering around. We'd been chatting on a number of IM programs. He'd finally been on. Ron had been wondering which girls were on Darkside's mind, and we were trying to read something in Braille off the school room signs. One of the rooms we were investigating was 110 or 111...

Must remember:

When votania cusses at computers, she's not doing so in the "I love you but right now I'm SO DAMN FRUSTRATED WITH YOU!" that geeks get.

She genuinely hates the things.

(no subject)

votania's new nickname is now Cutey Badass.

(no subject)

Had chat with Darkside about stuff. I can stress to him and he can take it. So good to have an outlet like that.

Continued my conversation with Ron from yesterday. "How are you doing today?" he asked.
"Same as yesterday," I said, indicating my huge grin.
"Good."
"Fire is not the answer!" I said, and snickered.

Ashford's getting it.

There's such a thing as teaching a class well, and then there's just giving out bullshit excuses.

Ashford is quickly about to learn that certain excuses aren't going to cut it, given this class.

One of Ashford's common sayings, towards the beginning of class, was that there were no bad topics, only bad presentations. He has since been ruling out topics (other than your general inappropriate-for-school ones) as not of interest to the class.

Namely: Bob asked if he could do his demonstration speech on how to put together a skateboard. I would have seen the logic in Ashford's declining this on the grounds that Bob's explanatory speech was on the parts of the skateboard, and did cover how to put one together, and that the topic had already been covered in the class. That's what I would have done, if I were going to decline the topic. However.

Ashford told Bob that he could not do his demonstration speech on how to put a skateboard together as the professionals do it, because Joan has no need to know.


Ashford's getting it.

How the hell does Ashford get off on presuming to say that I have no need to know how to put a skateboard together? Because I am female? Because I do not look athletic? Because I am not interested in skateboarding? How does he know I am not interested in skateboarding? And even if I were not interested in skateboarding whatsoever, it is not the job of the speaker to pick a topic that absolutely everyone in the class is going to be interested in. It is the job of the speaker to take whatever topic that they have, and MAKE it interesting enough for the entire class to pay attention to with their presentation. For that matter, how dare Ashford assume that I, or the rest of the class, have a need to know regarding his classic demonstration speech, the baking of cookies? I happen to have worked, professionally, in a bakery. I have no need to know about how the professionals make cookies, because I already know. I happen to have skateboarding on my list of sports that I will begin taking up, or re-begin, when I have the time and energy, and, if Ashford was paying any attention to the class during Bob's last speech on skateboarding, he would have seen that I was enthralled, and that was not, honestly, because of the suberb technical quality of Bob's presentation, but because he made something that I've had a slight interest in ever since reading Snow Crash sound very interesting indeed!


Ashford cancelled class for today. He gets the sharp end of my tongue tomorrow before class gets into session, really.

I seem to be the spokescharacter for the class, when there are rumblings of discontent.

Duckling!

He's a sweetie.

He might be imprinting on me.

Leeks explode?

There are so many cooking hazards that I had no idea about.

If you're not reading Seanan, you should be.

Why I think of Darkside as a duckling

(the process of unpacking begins... this is expanded some from a comment)

Watching ducklings is such fun. When they're in a contained area and/or Mother Duck is standing still, they are all over the place, each one going in a very separate, but very distinct and purposeful, direction. But when Mother Duck goes somewhere, the ducklings alter their course to stay with Mommy, even when they have their adult feathers barely in...

Ducks are primary forces of chaos in action to me, especially ducklings. There is so much seemingly uncontained, uncontainable action going on, yet there's a greater order to it. The forces by which this happen, the ties of unknowable duck familial affection, are along the lines of divine mystery to me. We raised a family of ducks, for a while. It wasn't a very functional family. The mother was neglectful and the father was abusive (by chicken standards, at least) so the geese ended up adopting the babies.

Geese are very loving and caring parents. The goose and the gander took care of the ducks as if they were their own biological babies. When Friendly heard the ducklings peeping for the first time, in fact, she walked into her goose-house with the most hopeful look in her brown eyes, then came back out, honking mournfully. The geese herded the ducklings and kept them supervised (Dabble let them run off and get in trouble; good mother ducks keep their babies close), and defended them against their violent and sexually abusive father (Tad was a very randy drake and would attempt to mate with anything approaching the right color, shape, and size -- the little round brown hen was one of his favorite birds to chase) and were all-around good parents. I was impressed with the contrast between the parenting styles of Toulouse and Friendly versus Dabble and Tad. The ducklings seemed to like their goose-parents better, but --

One of the things that stuck with me unshakably was the way that when Dabble quacked, her babies would come up and follow behind her. No matter how old they got, as long as they were with us, they'd follow when Mommy quacked. Though it's the pathetic fallacy, I choose to believe that the ducklings followed Dabble out of love. She was, after all, their mother...

When I speak of Darkside as a duckling, my visualization is that of a nearly-grown duck. The nearly-grown ducks wandered all over the place on their own. They were adults, really, just as soon as they realized it. Watching bitty ducklings zoom across the ground with intent is engrossing, but nothing compared to the complexity of watching the same number of near-adult ducks do the same. Unsure of themselves and their wings, and clinging to comfortable patterns, but close to fully grown.

The near-adult ducklings had plenty of volition of their own, and so with Darkside. But Darkside has spent nearly the past two years walking everywhere in the school with me. We walk together to class. I walk with him to his car. When we walk back to the cafeteria from the computer lab, and I'm lagging behind, he pauses and waits for me until I'm caught up. When he gets up to go somewhere, if I am doing nothing critical, I go with him. He waits for me to save my work; I wait for him to put his game books back in his backpack.

I am his closest adult female friend, and one of his first friends as an adult. I am one of his few friends as an adult. He learned sex and high-school dating from someone else. I don't regret not teaching him those. I don't think he regrets not learning those from me, either. He will learn adult relationships from me, whether he and I ever date or not. The women in his life are: his mother, votania, Dawn, and me. His relationship with Votania, though it was good while it lasted, is filed with the rest of the things he's tried that haven't worked. His mother is his mother. Dawn is a friend, but far more of a maternal influence. Whether I like it or not, every interaction between us is being filed away in that delightfully analytical mind of his as how one does interact with women. It's not only him imprinting on me, but a sacred responsibility on my part to provide him with good habits.

When he walks somewhere at school, it has become natural to him to stay close to me, to look for me, to wait for me, to walk with me, adjust our paces to match. When I gently edge off to go my own direction, not intending him to follow but not bidding him to leave, he sticks with me until it dawns on him that the direction I am walking was not the direction he was intending. When he comes to this realization, he does not blindly follow; he either goes the direction of his original intent, or willingly matches pace with me.

It takes hours and hours of observation to even begin to know a duck. Even a duckling. Fuzzy and tiny and evocative of maternal feelings are just barely touching on the surface of it.

Late-breaking News

Last night, I asked votania if she would do me the supreme honor of marrying me.

She said .... yes!

( Details )

I told Darkside this morning, in just that fashion. He flipped. ( Details... )

Darkside rarely blibbers like that.

To do:

Drag out Inanna's manual and find battery specs
Get batteries (AAA and little round)
Replace batteries
Sync

Make dentist appointment
Keep dentist appointment

Find papers on that one job
Get that job

Hug Darkside

more...

Get icky chocolate powder gunk
Get plane ticket for Dawn's wedding
Give Darkside updated contact info cardlet
Clean room
Vacuum
Dishes
phone
clean altar
clean out collection boxes
Get poster board for presentation
Make example cards
Make layout poster
Summarize the article for UML class
Schedule next tri
put away laundry
Invite Darkside over whenever, open invite
Ask Votania regarding key ( ... )

Clean off nail polish
Work with GUDS some
Finish designing witchy database and implement and populate it

(no subject)

270. Worked out this evening: not much, just a few stretches and a few reps of the usual arm exercises, but enough so I felt it. I'm just going to have to do it on the run. I don't have the attention span to do something long and time-consuming; I must operate on the hummingbird-meal theory of exercise: get it while I can, and often.

The 270 of a few days ago was running on empty. Tonight's 270 is after a good solid meal, feeling happy and warm and full.

Darkside did challenge me to arm-wrestling this morning, and I did lose on the right hand. He called it a draw on the left, though.

If I don't reach first, he'll reach out to me, and then I may reach back. Dawn walked into the cafeteria this morning and noticed that we were both glowing. She always notices me glowing around Darkside, but this was greater than usual. She doesn't notice him glowing around me; today he was glowing.