my baby's in the white fluffy clouds

Return of Weekly Posts!

Sat, 07 May 2011 16:38:49 GMT

I am currently in the Seattle airport; in 20 minutes or so I get on a plane to Portland, and fly to Houston, and then fly to Indianapolis. Then I take a 90-minute bus ride home. Ah, my life. <3
Early this morning, I packed out of the furry commune where I was doing ethnographic research for the last three days. I decided my motto was "Take nothing but fieldnotes, leave nothing but consent forms." (I also took some vegan corn muffins, though.) It is also true that I spent the last three days at my boyfriend's house, but it is a furry commune and I did do ethnographic research and that sounds so much cooler. The process of having my boyfriend being one of my ins into this community is really interesting; I mean, yes, I'm a furry myself, but my practices are very different from many of the people I've been talking to, and I wouldn't have had the ability to talk to them if it weren't for the specifics of my being embedded in the community through romantic relationships. It will be an interesting thing to write about at some point, although right now I am trying not to do too much "me-search" in my research, and the stuff I am finding that has nothing to do with me is way more interesting anyway.
I am done with all of my classes for the semester. YESSSSSSSSSSSSS. I am not as thrilled with my final projects as I would have liked to be; one paper in particular I know that if I had read books X, Y, and Z I would have been able to make it even better, but I got up to book W and was exhausted and decided "You know what? I think this will be OK." I may read book Y on the plane, so this is still something I can work on. it's just... I like to hand in things that are perfect, you know? Not that this ever happens, and this tendency totally prevents me from ever submitting anything anywhere. So I need to get over it.
Conveniently, the paper resulting from my ethnographic research is getting submitted to a conference next week. I am not sure how to spin it yet; it's a conference about queer fashion. I guess I play up the fursuit angle a bit more? But I have a draft, and I am already thinking about how to integrate the seven interviews I did this week, and it's awesome, and I'm hoping to get it to a journal after that too. I hope. I think. Miao.
In what may or may not be my gradual descent into fandom, I had to sign out of twitter yesterday to avoid spoilers for the new My Little Pony episode, which I'm not going to get to watch until tomorrow. I sort of looked at myself, and went, "Really?" Then I realized I was interviewing folks in a furry commune, said "Yes, really," and moved on with my life. <3 I'm really looking forward to the episode, though! I am hoping it ties up some loose ends. (Don't tell me.)
Speaking of which, hi new friends from the My Little Pony LJ community! I unfortunately don't have any sort of introduction post, and I have to get on a plane in five minutes, but hopefully this gives you a general sense of what I do: Mostly academia, a bunch of job work that I usually don't talk to, some ponies or Pokemon or what have you. Oh and cats!!

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Weekly Post!

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 14:31:29 GMT

I pre-ordered Pokemon Black and White through Amazon, so I won't get them until tomorrow evening. I really really should get all of my homework for this week done before they get here, because I know when they get here I am just going to start playing them (unless maybe I have a social thing on Tuesday?) and keep playing them until I get to Seattle, basically. I have three main things I have to get done, and some ancillary things I really should, but I feel like I am thinking through mush. Ugggggh. Is it unreasonable to take a nap at 9 AM on a Sunday? I might try that.
My laptop is fixed! All I really lost was the one album and my notes from class on Wednesday. That's pretty amazing. And just in time, too, my wrists were already getting sore using my spare. Hooray for Applecare!
I'm going to be in Ohio for work tonight and tomorrow; I'm hoping that if I can't restart my brain here, the drive will at least kick it into gear and I can get some homework done at the hotel before I go to sleep. There won't be anything to distract me, at least! Though I always miss my cats when I have to sleep in hotels.
Speaking of cats, both cats now spend at least a little time on every floor of the house. This is amazing! I was in the basement watching ponies and Leo was on my lap and Selene was sitting on the floor and I was kind of speechless. Basically, CATS. <3
So looking forward to travel --- so looking forward to Pokemon --- so looking forward to the work I'm going to do on final projects this semester, even --- it's really, really hard to keep my brain focused on today and what I need to be doing right now. Usually I can just flip over to my tasklist and say "Oh OK, I can get to those things I am excited about if I just do these things," and that works. This weekend --- and to a lesser extent last weekend, come to think of it --- not so much. I can do the minor things, but stuff like "read a bunch of essays and write a paper," there's this whiny voice in my brain that goes "whyyyyyyyy?" Shut up, whiny voice. You get to play Pokemon in like two days. For some reason it's easier to do the things that aren't directly homework, so I am doing all of those first. Hopefully this won't lead to me having a completely clean house and alphabetized spices and neatly filed paperwork but desperately working on a paper Tuesday night at 11. ...although who am I kidding, my spices are already alphabetized. ^^;; But I could alphabetize the overflow spices in the kitchen island!
Another thing I am looking forward to: Spending like all of my non-scheduled time in the Boston area just sitting in the Diesel. Because oh my god. Diiiiiiieselllllllllllllllllllll.
...yeah this post is an accurate representation of my brain right now.

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Oh yeah there was a week

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 14:19:57 GMT

I am enplagued. I woke up yesterday morning and felt kind of woozy but thought it might just be because I was hanging around with smokers on Friday? But then it got worse and worse and when I felt too out of it to play Pokémon at 9:30 PM I knew I was doomed. I slept for like ten hours although I had bizarro fever dreams? And woke up and was like maybe this will work and stood up and was super lightheaded and was like "...Nope!" I took some medicine and a long hot shower and am drinking tea and hopefully I will have enough brain to get through some of my homework, but my weekend tasklist is... not gonna get done. Eit.
The whole fever thing explains why I somehow felt obligated to spend an hour yesterday looking for and uploading My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic icons for my LJ/DW. ^^;; Don't get me wrong, the fever isn't why I like the show, I like it because it's smart and fun and full of little references to older ponies and other animated works and different bits of itself, and because the characters are real people I'd really like to hang out with (if I were a pony or some such) although they would occasionally drive me insane, and because it's exciting to think that as a culture we are producing television shows for kids that are actually good. WIth the big caveat that reasonable depictions of masculinity are few and far between, I strongly recommend it. Anyway, expect to see ponies next to "rax" in comments about half the time instead of Pokémon characters now. and yes I bought more LJ icons in order to do this don't judge me
The class that didn't have a set syllabus before now has a set syllabus. Hooray! ...and the final project proposal is due Wednesday. I've done some work on it, and I really hope my brain wakes all the way up before then so I can finish.
For those of you excited about the Rachel's Cats Show, Leo has started spending some time up in the kitchen and dining room, but Selene hasn't stopped; he comes up when she's asleep on my bed, and she chases him off when she wants to sit on my lap while I'm working. I'm gonna go ahead and call this progress. Also, and less awesomely, Leo appears to be able to open the garage door, and wreak havoc in the garage. I may have to get a different latch or something; I still don't know what he knocked down this most recent time.
I was gonna call a bunch of people today but I kind of have no voice? So that probably won't happen.
If I'm still sick by Tuesday and Wednesday, should I go to school? Opinions on this seem to be mixed across professors and departments. I don't want to get other people sick, but I also don't want to miss class discussion, since honestly that's most of the point of being in these classes. If I don't feel up for even walking to the class from the bus stop (which is how I feel today) it's pretty clear I shouldn't leave the house. Rrf. We'll see how I'm doing in two days I guess.
...wow I am tempted to go back to bed already.

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