It's Only A Paper Rose

I'm back from Alaska, and managed to meet my goal of making it through an entire visit with my mother without getting into a flaming row. Hooray for active listening!  Or perhaps we just got the row out of the way beforehand, heh.  On the less-good side, someone in my home state was kind enough to share a cold with me, which I'm still fighting off...and I have two classes to teach tonight. I suspect tonight's focus will be self-directed practice, heh.


What I've just finished reading

An Unsuitable Heir, by KJ Charles. What makes a long flight home with a cold bearable? Pseudoephedrine and a new KJ Charles romance. The former sort of tunnels my awareness, making me tend to hyper-focus on one thing rather than be aware of my surroundings, but in coach class that's not necessarily a bad thing (although I did almost miss the beverage cart a couple of times). And the story of Pen and Mark - a nonbinary Victorian era circus performer suddenly heir to an unwanted earldom, and a one-armed private investigator with a pragmatic outlook and catholic tastes - was a delightful thing to focus upon. The book also finishes the Sins of the Cities plot arc, which is pure Victorian serial melodrama, but elevated by Charles' usual excellent characterization, and given some interesting twists by Pen's nonstandard self-image. I also loved Pen's relationship with twin sister Greta; there are really too few supportive sibling relationships in the fiction I read.


What I'm currently reading

The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, by Ian Mortimer. This book continues to be a fascinating refinement of my perceptions of fourteenth-century England. There haven't been many outright revelations - I've read a fair amount of fiction set in the period, beginning with Karen Cushman's work in elementary school (Catherine, Called Birdy was always a favorite). But there are some minor details I hadn't realized - for instance, while personal cleanliness is more difficult prospect than it is now and standards for cleanliness are somewhat different (a healthy body odor is thought to be a sign of virility, at least among the lower classes), people still wash their hands and face when they get up in the morning, and handwashing is mandatory before and after meals. Most personal washing is done in basins, and thus somewhat more sporadically than we'd consider ideal (especially in the freezing winters), but especially among the more prosperous tradesmen and the nobility, it's considered bad form to go around stinking up the place, so people make do. Household cleanliness is made difficult both by the lack of good detergents and of labor-saving devices, but that doesn't mean it's neglected; cleanliness (or the appearance thereof) is closely linked to purity of spirit, and is thus highly valued in religious medieval England. So perhaps my grousing about how everyone in Galavant looks a little too clean is somewhat misguided.

Another point brought up that I found interesting was that of ignorance vs. misinformation, specifically as regards the medical profession of the time. Physicians were not ignorant; medieval medical texts were chock-full of 'knowledge' on treating illness. Unfortunately, since much of that knowledge came from flawed sources (astrology, humoral theory, superstition, hearsay, a little practical experience with no scientific method applied), it tended to be less-than-helpful at best. It does give you an idea of why Enlightenment principles had something of an uphill battle before them; it's much harder to convince people to change their outlook when there's already an established worldview.

Also, I'm quoting this passage in full, because it made me laugh. From the end of chapter 8, on the perils of taking hospitality in monasteries:

There is an old traveling minstrels' trick which you might want to keep up your sleeve. How guests are treated in a monastery is the decision of the almoner {man in charge of distributing alms}. If he treats you badly, or serves you the most miserly portions of food, or if you get given "a vile and hard bed", go to the abbot and praise him to the skies for the generosity of his house, and emphasize the large amount of money which the almoner must have laid out on your behalf.

As an aside, one of the interesting things about learning Swedish has been the ways in which the construction sometimes resembles medieval speech - the verb is nearly always placed second in the sentence (Hur mår du i kväll?, translates most directly to "How fare you this evening?"); and certain words such as passande (which translates to "suitable" or "appropriate") were used in nearly the same form in medieval English (such as here, in "passing good", which to modern ears sounds like "mediocre" but in fact means "quite excellent").  The language tree is passing fascinating!


What I plan to read next

I need to finish The Hummingbird's Daughter, even though Cat Sebastian's Ruin of a Rake is beckoning me on my Kindle - reformed bad-boy enemies-to-lovers gay Regency romance that won numerous awards?  Did somebody say "catnip"?

Hello again, Chicago! It's good to be back. I was saying to Brian recently that my semi-regular trips home to Anchorage, over the years, have been an excellent indicator of how much I like where I'm living. When we lived in Juneau, it was nice to get somewhere that felt (slightly) less isolated; when I was coming from Arizona, it was such a relief to get out of the heat and see green and open water again. Now, as much as I like visiting my mother, I'm genuinely sorry that it has to come at the expense of a week-plus of things to do in Chicago, hah. But! My mother is all moved in to her new place (if still in the throes of her decorating frenzy), and it's even more gorgeous than the pictures made it look. It's not somewhere I'd want to live permanently - far too isolated, with nothing within walking distance - but it'll be nice to visit her now and then for a change of pace. (Luckily, she feels much the same way about Chicago. Hurrah for complementary family preferences!)

Speaking of things to do in Chicago, last night I some friends and I went to the first of this summer's movies In Millennium Park. (We brought a picnic dinner, but despite arriving almost an hour early, the entire lawn was taken, so we ended up grabbing seats and just passing the fried chicken and salad and wine back and forth.) I actually enjoyed the movie far more than I expected to. Ferris Bueller's Day Off isn't a favorite of mine, exactly - I always found Ferris to be kind of a twerp, which isn't helped by his complete lack of character arc - but there's something undeniably special about getting to see all those gorgeous shots of Chicago while surrounded by that very same skyline and a cheering crowd. The best part, by far, was when damn near the entire pavilion got up and danced and sang to the "Twist & Shout" sequence. (I was lamenting on Facebook that I didn't get any pictures/video, but...that would have meant I'd have to stop dancing and singing. Nah.) Afterward, Lindsay got a picture of Brian and Jamila and me under the Pritzker's frankly amazing architecture, and later on in the evening I got a nice shot of part of the nighttime skyline as seen through the superstructure. This city is far from perfect, but I do love the very real sense of civic pride we have.

Speaking of civic pride, I've gotten on the sucker list for the Lyric Opera's educational outreach programs, and I've got to give their phone fundraisers credit - they know their stuff. They always ask if now's a good time to talk, they're unfailingly gracious, they ask you about your recent experience at whatever performance, talk about the goals and achievements of their programs, and start with an aspirational sell - "These are all the awesome thank-you gifts you get if you donate at this level" - but never come off as less than wholeheartedly grateful if you offer a (sometimes much) smaller donation. I think what's really impressed me, though, is their enthusiasm; they don't come off as hired telemarketers, but people who are genuinely passionate about music and opera and want to share it with the community. Helping give kids in underfunded schools in my community access to art and music education is a pretty easy sell for me already, but way to make people feel good about giving, Lyric. A++ would donate again.

And speaking of...hrmm. Not sure how I can segue into something about biking from opera fundraising. But! I've got my bike all kitted out for pedaling around Chicago. (Bet y'all can't guess what I named it, heh.) I'm still taking baby steps regarding where and how much traffic I'm comfortable dealing with, but as I was telling my mother, I actually feel far safer on the streets in Chicago than I would in someplace suburban like Anchorage. For one thing, the exponential traffic density and unpredictable patterns mean that people are paying much closer attention to the road, as well as by necessity limiting their speed. Plus people here are much more used to cyclists on the road. In Anchorage traffic moves too quickly; you have to ride either on the shoulder, the sidewalk, or a bike path, and cars don't look for you. I nearly got run over a few times crossing streets as a teenager; while driving my mother's car just a few days ago, I was a little saddened to see a woman on a bike slam on her brakes when she saw me about to cross her path to turn into a parking lot. (I would have let her go first!...but you just can't depend on that attitude in suburban environments.) By comparison, I took a fairly busy road to the store during rush hour yesterday, and actually made better time than most of the cars by dint of being able to cruise by in the gap between the parked cars and the flow of traffic. Though I did keep a very close eye out for car doors that might open in my path.

This morning, I got a Facebook message from my mother:

"Hi Ambrosia, Facebook now lets people choose a legacy contact to manage their account if something happens to them. Since you know me well and I trust you, I chose you. Please let me know if you want to talk about this."

Not thinking much of it, I responded with "We can if you want, but it seems pretty straightforward."

This evening, I get a follow-up: "Hi sweetie, that was a canned Facebook message – I would put something like 'hi darling girl – when I kick the bucket you're it!' Love, Mum"

Yup. That's my mum. <3

In the tradition of soon-to-be-godparents everywhere, I've been on the hunt for gifts, especially books to start my goddaughter's collection. Given that her mother and I met in Alaska, I was hoping to find some Alaska-themed illustrated books while I was here, but I ran into a problem I didn't foresee.

Most children's books just aren't that fun to read.

Kids' books, especially those aimed at younger children, are often written in rhyme - which makes sense, as the intended audience is learning about the sounds of words and how they go together. So it seems like it should follow that they'd be written in meter, as well. The bouncy rhythm helps them learn our patterns of speech as much as the individual words, and emphasizes which syllables are stressed and which words go where. Plus, it's way more fun as a parent to read a book aloud when it's got a good rhythm. (There's a reason Dr. Seuss remains so popular - and he made up half his words!) But I came across a lot of books that, while they maybe had a cool concept or nifty illustrations, were just plain lazy in the writing. It looked like the author had gone "Oh, hey, here's a couple of words that rhyme, the lines all look roughly the same length, toss it together, we're good to go." 

Case in point: Sitka Rose, by Shelley Gill and Shannon Cartwright. Great Alaskan-themed illustrations, great concept (how often do you see tall tales about women?), a fun story, and the words even have a sort of folk-song feel to them. But the scansion is terrible:

Rose was raised up grander than the average child
She skied avalanche chutes for fun,
and when her vegetables needed more light
well Rose, she lassoed the sun.

I mean, you've got pretty consistent dactyls in the first line, but after that there's iambs, trochees and anapests all jumbled together. And don't even get me started on how it starts in hexameter and ends in trimeter just in this one stanza.

I realize that children aren't exactly the most discerning audience in the world, and I suppose that explains how most such books got past their respective editors. But think of the poor parents who have to read this book for the ten thousandth time, carefully navigating around the unexpected rhythmic roadblocks and line breaks. I mean, that's just cruel.

Fortunately, with the help of some old memories and a friend of my mother's, I found a few books that were a little more promising:



Mama, Do You Love Me? by Barbara M. Joosse and Barbara Lavallee

Mama, do you love me?

Yes I do, Dear One.

How much?

I love you more than the raven loves his treasure,
more than the dog loves his tail,
more than the whale loves his spout.

This was one of my favorite books to read with my mother when I was a child. It's not written in verse, but the words nonetheless flow beautifully, and the repetition lends it a feel of poetry absent from many such books. Plus the watercolors are completely sweet, portraying the Inupiaq mother and daughter and the Arctic wildlife with real substance. And, bonus - it comes in a board book version, which will hopefully hold up for a while.




Hooray for Fish!, by Lucy Cousins

Hello, hello, hello fish!
Red, blue, and yellow fish.
Spotty fish, stripy fish,
happy fish, gripy fish.

This one is pretty clearly aimed at younger kids, but given that my goddaughter hasn't even been born yet, I suspect that's all right. :) The meter does change in places, but not mid-stanza; the pages are sturdy, and the illustrations are simple and bright-colored and adorable.  (As Brian commented, "It looks like a tasty book to chew on.")  Plus, biodiversity!




Red Sings from Treetops: a year in colors, by Joyce Sidman and Pamela Zagarenski

In SPRING,
Red sings from treetops:
cheer-cheer-cheer,
each note dropping
like a cherry
into my ear.

Red turns
the maples feathery,
sprouts in rhubarb spears;
Red squirms on the road
after rain.

This book reminds me so much of asakiyume it's kind of uncanny.  The words find that same sort of quiet poetry and everyday magic, and the imagery is just gorgeous.  It's also rendered in free verse, the word rhythms and sounds and onomatopoeia and occasional surprising rhymes all blending harmoniously.  I'm frankly envious - free verse is so hard to do well, far harder than something strictly metered like a sonnet.  I realize this one will probably have to wait until my goddaughter's a little older, but given that my expectant friend is an artist, I suspect she'll get lots of enjoyment out of it in the interim.

And in the present moment, Alaska Airlines had a sale, so I booked my tickets to Washington to go meet my goddaughter during the tail end of October.  Which means, between that and this Anchorage trip and Brian's and my vacation to Sweden in August, this will kind of be the Time of All The Traveling.  I guess I'm making up for the seven months being a school-oriented recluse. 

I said earlier this month that I love the transitional seasons, and it's true. But Life, as it tends to do, has taken me at my word. It's been a month of changes: some minor; some major, but distant enough in my social network to be relatively minor in terms of their day-to-day effects on my life; a few pretty profound.

Interestingly, the most personally profound are less changes in external status as they are in internal outlook. For one, I've reached the point in my education where I start to look at people and see them differently; in much the same way Brian looks at a new place and immediately scopes out the places where the wireless access points and cameras and other network equipment all are (or if they aren't, where they should be), I've gotten to the point where I can look at someone's movement and posture and immediately suspect what's going on with their musculature/fascial system - where they're tight, where they're inhibited, where they're probably feeling pain/discomfort. So far it's mostly just generalities, but I'm starting to see those around me way a bodyworker sees them, and it's kind of an awesome ability. Even if it occasionally makes me despair when I pass by the same woman day after day wearing the same unsupportive heels that make her entire foot collapse inward.

For another example, I'm actually genuinely excited for my friend Donna - she's the one expecting her very-much-wanted child. (Latest news - it's a girl!) After some discussion, Brian and I have volunteered to be godparents; it'll mean making an effort to visit regularly and remember birthdays and Christmas, but honestly, Donna's practically family anyway, and one of the things I remember most fondly from growing up was the variety of close friends my mother had, from whom I got to learn about many different options in terms of lifestyle and priorities. (It helped me feel less railroaded when I was a teenager, which, growing up in suburbia, felt like a time when the world is simultaneously telling me "You can be anything you want to be!" and "So long as it's going to college and getting a job and getting married and having 2.1 children and buying a house and being a good consumer!") And it feels like the right thing for me; I want to help raise the next generation, but despite my recently-reexamined views on the importance of childrearing, I still am just not feeling any particular desire to have kids of my own. But I'm thoroughly jazzed to be in the helper/supporter role, and am even kind of looking forward to when she gets older and we can take her for a week here and there and give her parents a break.

On a more external front, graduation is coming up fast. I'm definitely going to apply to work at the school clinic, but I've also come up with an idea for a target market that I could build a clientele around - they're both greatly underserved and would likely have need of my services (both in the "needs the work due to physically demanding job" sense and the more nebulous "needs a safe place where they feel cared for" sense). I'm kind of excited because it's the first solid idea I've had that feels right for me. It's still just an idea, of course, and building clientele is as much luck and perseverance as it is ideas, but I'm hopeful. And it gives me something to focus my marketing-class project on.

Less concrete but equally profound has been the continued realization that I have, somewhat unintentionally, become Part Of The Yoga Community here in Chicago. Mostly it's just little things, like meeting someone for the first time and having them comment that they've heard about me from their favorite teacher, or having someone tell me about being at a yoga-related event and having my name come up in the group. (Luckily in a flattering context, at least that time.) I guess it's not terribly surprising; I go to various CorePowers regularly and am unshy and friendly and sort of stand out...but. But.

In all honesty, it's a little bit scary for me. I don't have the greatest experience with community participation; a lot of the traits people initially find attractive about me (forthrightness, confidence, analytical ability, fearlessness in speaking up) tend to read differently in mixed-company scenarios (tactless, arrogant, judgmental, overpoweringly opinionated). In many ways, I still speak Human as a second language; it's difficult for me to read multiple people's reactions in the moment and censor myself accordingly. So I try to make the most effort to spend time with people I know understand me in one-on-one or small-group scenarios. But community links are important, and helpful in one's career as well as one's social life, so I'm making an effort to strengthen those relationships. My marketing class notes actually had an insightful suggestion on that point: "You have: two (2) eyes, two (2) ears, and one (1) mouth. Use them in that order." It's taken me upwards of three decades, but I'm slowly learning when to be quiet and listen.

And this isn't even getting into the more distal-social-network events that're happening - deaths, marriages, pregnancies. Life moves fast! And I feel eminently lucky to be living it somewhere I love that has opportunities for me, even if I'm a bit scared I'll make a hash of them. But to paraphrase Miles Vorkosigan, it's all about the momentum - keep moving, keep learning, or you might as well give up. Things move quickly - let's jump on that train! Onward!

It's been an interesting couple of weeks. I haven't been on social media much, largely because I've been unusually busy, so here's a bit of a retrospective.

My Alaska trip turned out to contain visits with several friends I see far too seldom, which was wonderful. CJ was there for the first part of the trip. I saw Carl, of course, and met his new girlfriend, who I liked quite a bit and who (in true Alaska small-population fashion) turned out to have been a favorite admin of my mother's at her previous job. Robs drove down from Fairbanks and stayed for a few days, and even snuggled with me in my mother's twin guest bed. (We were woken up Thursday morning by a 6.1 earthquake - felt like a carnival ride being given a good shake. Fortunately nothing breakable fell down, even in my mother's glass studio.) And on the way back Sunday, I spent a longish layover in Seattle hanging out at Pike Place Market with John, my sole other high-school-era friend, whom I haven't seen in years.

Monday I had my cleaning shift at the yoga studio, and I was rather thrown by how exhausted I was from the day of travel. Even though almost all I was doing was sitting, and it was a daytime trip so I'd gotten plenty of sleep, my focus was shot for a good two days after. (Is this part of getting older? Because I have to say I do not approve.) Fortunately I have the shift down to a routine at this point, so I just put on some music and bopped along with the mop and it didn't matter that I was only firing on maybe 60% of my usual thrusters. Then I went home and slept some more. Tuesday I had intended on cleaning the house up, but still felt like my brain was full of static, so I ended up sleeping a goodly portion of it too.

By Wednesday I felt much better, which was good, because I had one of two make-up shifts I was doing this week, and a lecture to attend at the opera house. As it happens, when you're a season subscriber, even a bare-minimum four-show seats-in-the-rafters one, they invite you to all sorts of preview concerts and lectures and whatnot; anything to drum up enthusiasm and (hopefully, eventually) donations. I'd missed a number of such events by being in Alaska at the end of September, but was here for this one, a talk from Ana María Martínez, who's playing Donna Elvira in this season's production of Don Giovanni. She turned out to be very warm and personable, and while I don't think I learned anything I hadn't already known or guessed about the life of an opera diva, it was neat to meet her up close. Plus afterward we got a tour of the backstage area, and it was thoroughly impressive seeing the sheer scale of the sets and curtains and flyspace, and the detail work that went into the props and dressings. (Brian, who always likes technical stuff and used to run tech with his high school theatre group, was completely fascinated and wowed.) Our tickets for Don Giovanni are for the 14th; I'm really looking forward to it.

Thursday was a busy day; I went to Helen's extra-intense yoga class, then was cleaning at home and then at the studio, and finally we had Raven over for a long-overdue thank-you-for-getting-us-this-Chicago-opportunity dinner. Brian got to show off his amazing fried catfish recipe, and we all watched one of my favorite films. I swear, even though I remember distinctly my first emotional response to it, I've seen it so many times now that I forget how thoroughly dark (and, frankly, almost traumatizing) it is when you see it the first time. But the screenplay is so smart, the acting so believable, the dialogue (for all its coal-black timbre) so hilarious and the characters so real and true in the way they cling to their objectively-insane worldviews that it's become one of my all-time favorite films. I was excited to share it with Raven, because I thought she'd appreciate all that about it too; but seeing her initial reaction made me remember and sort of cringe and apologize; it's probably a bit heavy of a story to drop on someone after a long day of work in a city far from their home. Fortunately she was gracious about it, as always. And the catfish was a hit, so hurray.

Today I'm finally getting to relax, which is awesome. I'm going to wander downtown to have lunch with Brian, and over to Banana Republic. (In Alaska, I found the amazing-looking suit jacket I'd been drooling over all summer for half-off plus no tax. Score! They didn't have the matching pants in my size, but I was able to order them and have them shipped to me....but the shop that shipped them forgot to take the inventory control tag off. Oops. Still, they fit beautifully, for all of that, so I'm now in possession of a heck of a sharp-looking suit. Now to figure out what to wear it to. Maybe the opera? I do look rather more genderqueer with my hair super short.) I know I need to do laundry at some point. I may make the monthly pilgrimage to Costco and Trader Joe's. We'll see how the day shakes out.

Back when we first moved in to our Chicago apartment and finally invested in some proper (albeit IKEA) tall hardwood bookshelves, Leo, in his ever-present quest to explore every possible surface in the house, managed to use his impressive jumping abilities to get to the top of one of them. He had not, however, considered how he was going to get down, and spent a good few minutes making increasingly distressed murfling noises until Brian took a chair over, climbed up, and got him down. I remember being a little amused by this, asking "Don't you think if he got up there himself, he could probably get down?" But Brian insisted that it was more important to him that Leo know his Dadcat would always be there to get him down off the bookshelf.

Needless to say, when he came to pick me up from the airport at 8:30 AM on a Saturday a full week ahead of when I'd planned to be back, I felt more than a little like Leo on the bookshelf. I must be awfully lucky to have someone who'll always come get me.

Two nap-filled days later, I'm much more sanguine about my mental state. Saturday night was book group, which I'd originally been sort of bummed about missing (the group had taken my suggestion of Anansi Boys, one of my favorite books), so I slept a lot that day and got to show up looking only a little hangdog. No one made fun of me for having had a proximity-to-family freakout; Megan (of the Alternative Yoga Practice) even encouraged me to "Practice a little controlled comfort-eating. It's okay, you're among friends." <3 (Our host this time around was Heidi, who in addition to having just moved into our neighborhood, is apparently known in the group for providing Martha Stewart-level spreads. I'm afraid she kind of blew Brian's and my mini-cupcake-and-tartlet offering from our turn hosting out of the water. But it was some damn fine comfort eating.) Sunday I went to my friend Elyse's yoga class, which turned out to be thoroughly appropriate - not only was it a less-intensive-and-more-meditative practice than she usually does, but it was based around the story of Ganesh getting angry at the moon and slaying it with one of his tusks, thus trapping the Earth in eternal daylight and leaving its denizens unable to sleep until the other gods came down and insisted he fix things. Synchronicity! And then, after yet another nap on my part, Brian and I had a lovely twilit walk watching for fireflies before getting ice cream from our neighborhood's amazing shop.

My sweet mother has been sending me pictures from the Homer trip, which has been lovely to see, if a little bittersweet at times. On the upside, with all the flying I've been doing, I have enough miles to be within $300 of a (coach-class, but still) ticket up there again. I have some ideas for a make-up trip later this year, but due to the potential readership of this post I don't think I'm going to go into them in detail yet. I am, however, once more pleased to find myself living near a major airport; trying to get anywhere from Tucson on mileage was just Not Happening.

One last tidbit for the folks who don't read my Facebook: Before (and during) this trip, Mum and I had been joking about how the Grumpy Cat gene ran her side the family (she doesn't have it, being a Pollyanna of the highest degree, but my grandmother and I sure do at times, and my brother practically lives to be grumpy). So I was thoroughly entertained, as I was drifting to my airport gate in my sleep-deprived and weepy/overemotional state, to find my spirit animal at the airport bookstore waiting for me:




She kept me company all through the long flight back, and now sits on the bookshelf in our bedroom, where the cats are occasionally eyeing her warily and generally giving her a wide berth.

So!  My truncated vacation has ended well enough, with hope for the future, which is about the best I could ask for from it.  I did write a short story while in the throes of sleep deprivation (my mother:  "It's only 8 AM.  Weren't you going to sleep some more in my bedroom?"  Me, typing and sounding more and more like Grumpy Cat:  "Can't sleep, muse will eat me."  Mother:  "Want some coffee?"  Me:  "YES."); I think, now that I've recovered, I'm going to poke at revising it.  Sleep deprivation may not be a great state for a lot of things, but when your emotions are all bubbling that close to the surface, it's rather easier to find a story's emotional core.  Odd how that works...

Recently, I was considering my overflowing to-read shelves, the product of that all-too-common mixture of a fondness for buying books and not enough time spent reading them. At the time, I had a Good Idea: perhaps I should institute a rule for the next year or so, where I only get to buy one book for every two or three that I finish reading. That way I could simultaneously cull the herd a bit and motivate myself to spend more time reading. As with so many Good Ideas that I have, I decided to mull it over a bit, which was, in truth, mostly an excuse to stick it on the back burner without seriously thinking about instituting it.

Just today, I got a package in the mail containing a Kindle and a pretty pink cover - a birthday present from my mother.

Did I mention I had a whole list of inexpensive indie titles people had recommended to me that I'd been intending to purchase when I had a Kindle to read them on?

And that I'd just gotten my first newsletter from Smart Bitches, pointing out titles they recommended that were on sale?

Needless to say, my Good Idea is looking pretty stillborn at this point.

On the upside though, I have a Kindle Paperwhite! And I'm slightly chagrined to acknowledge that it is, in fact, superior to the equivalent-product-niche Nook in every way. Better quality screen, better light, Whispernet, Goodreads integration, vocabulary function, better-quality case, et cetera, et cetera...sigh. You win this round, Bezos.

Somewhat entertainingly, when I was adding it to my wishlist a couple months back, I was slightly torn on the cover color - they had the fuchsia pink, and also a very nice royal purple. Eventually I decided on the pink because it was brighter...and in the interim between putting it on my list and actually receiving it, I've acquired a purse in what's turned out to be precisely the same shade of pink. So I look just a touch matchy-matchy now. Ah well.

(Yay! I have a Kindle!)

Well, "Anchorage, ho!" three days ago, anyway. First class on Alaska Airlines, too - thanks, Mum! Eight-plus hours of flying is so much less stressful when you have enough room to move about in your seat. And proper food. And free drinks. (Though I cut myself off after two, and was glad I did - when I hit my layover after the first four-hour flight, I felt slightly nauseous and hungover, likely due to the combination of alcohol with drastic altitude/pressure changes.) I even, for the first time since I was a kid, managed to doze a little on the second flight - normally I can never sleep without being properly curled up on my side, but the seat was just big enough for me to make an approximation of it. And wi-fi on planes, ridiculously overpriced as it is ($21 for a day pass? Seriously, Gogo?) still may be one of the world's greatest inventions. As studies have repeatedly shown (usually in the context of trying to multitask whilst texting or talking on the phone), electronic communications are nearly as good as narcotics (and far more predictable/healthy/legal) for removing our minds from our surroundings. Which, when you're talking about cramped confines and recycled air and enforced sedentariness for hours at a time, is precisely what you need to make it bearable.

I came up to help my mother while she underwent a minor surgical procedure, and I'm glad to say that that part of it has gone very well - she's recovered quickly and is mostly off even the low-grade Vicodin they prescribed her. Really, the hardest part was sitting with her in the recovery room, which was just a little bit emotional. At one point I was singing to her, and she was helping me remember the words to "Feed The Birds" (from Mary Poppins, which she used to sing to me when I was young), but she kept drifting in and out from the drugs, and what with the resemblance to a death scene in a movie, I ended up a bit verklempt with the weepies. Still, she came out of it fine, and so did I.

On a happier note, my mother's yoga studio has been kind enough to let me use her subscription while she's recovering. They practice a lot of core-strengthening vinyasa yoga, which I'd never tried before, but holy crap - during the first session I went to, I could practically hear my body howling "YES! THIS! THIS IS WHAT I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL YOU I NEED!" I'm not even exaggerating. It was challenging, but not overwhelming, and felt goddamn good - I've been to two sessions now and have regained almost all the lung capacity I've lost from not having the staircase at the end of our street to climb every day. And I feel like I'm two inches taller. I've known for a while that I need to improve my core muscle strength, both to help posture and to keep my back from tweaking, but (as with so many other things) I don't do so great when I'm solely self-directed. I'll do a bit here and there, but if I have a class to go to or someone expecting me, I'm much much more likely to keep with it. So having someone direct a whole series of exercises for precisely what my body needed was a fantastic experience. Even if I'm sore in places I didn't know I had muscles.

The downside is that, if I want to keep doing classes, I'm basically going to need to join a studio, which is expensive in Chicago. CorePower Yoga (which has a studio right in Uptown, about a mile from my house - easy to get to via walking or transit) is running a Groupon for a month's subscription for slightly less than half-price; it's still $70, but Mum bought me one, and offered to help with the cost if I like the place and want to keep going there. I hope I do like it, because I think it might be good for me psychologically, too; if I have a class to go to, I'm much less likely to plop down on the couch with my coffee early in the morning and not move again until mid-afternoon. Which I've been known to do. Occasionally.

Meanwhile, after hearing rave reviews from both press and friends, I've been playing with Duolingo. I do like the "gamification of learning" concept (achievements and in-game currency that unlocks silly extras works just as well for reinforcing good habits!), and when I read about how the inventor funds the program (rather than selling ad space or people's personal information, he sells the individual translations people do in aggregate as a translation service for websites with multilingual branches. How ingenious is that?) I decided I'd give it a go. From both an app and a game standpoint, it's remarkably well designed; the interface is clean and easy to use, and the rewards come often enough to be an encouragement but not so often that they lose any sense of intrinsic worth. As to language-learning, I can't really speak to its efficacy vs. other methods (since I've always been too intimidated by the work involved to try learning another language - which, I guess, makes this method infinitely more efficacious than any other!), but I really like that it's geared toward encouraging consistency rather than intensity of study. It never scolds you for failing a lesson, or for failing to progress quickly enough - in fact, it has a feature where, when you finish a particular section, it encourages you to review it regularly to strengthen your knowledge. Rather than reward you solely for progressing along the tree, it also gives you XP for successfully-completed lessons, and when you do a lesson over (which you'll almost certainly have to do unless you're crazy-good at picking up terms and syntax), it doesn't give you a reduced XP award - and, in fact, if you manage to get through a lesson with a perfect score, it gives you a significant bonus. My favorite moment so far, however, was when it got to be 3:30 in the afternoon today and I hadn't logged any time, and I got a cheerful email going "Hey, check out this five-day streak you've got going! Want to see it get to six?" Seriously, it does a great job exploiting all the same triggers that MMORPGs and advertisers do while encouraging people to do something useful.

My goal is modest - I just want to get to where I can read books in a given language, since most of my multilingual friends say reading in a different language regularly is the next best thing to constantly speaking it around you. Though, since I picked Italian, I may have to settle for listening to opera. Or maybe I can read The Name of the Rose in the original? I suppose Umberto Eco might seem slightly less pompous that way...

I miss Brian a lot. I've been reading to him via Skype or Facetime or just the phone (whichever we can get to work at the time), and he's been showing/telling me all about the delicious things he's been cooking. I'd almost think he was doing it to spite me, since he's cooking more now than he has in the past couple weeks combined, but I know it's more that it fills his time and he finds it soothing. Maybe if he eats enough I'll be able to convince him to come to one of the beginning vinyasa yoga classes with me. One hour burns 238 calories, according to my tracker!

I hosted guests for a week...and survived. I guess that means we're officially moved in.

Granted, our guests - my dear friend CJ and my mother - were lovely people. And we had a fine time together. Friday CJ took us to the Matt Nathanson concert, where I discovered that [a] concerts at venues within a mile of your home are awesome, and [b] to his credit, Mr. Nathanson plays just as hard to a small college-town crowd as he does to a big-city sold out one. (Personally, I kind of preferred our experience in Tempe - less crowding, more intimate, and the opening act was rather better - but I know a sold-out crowd is far better financially/reputation-wise for the performer, so I can't really complain too much. And it was sure nice to be able to just walk the half-mile home afterward rather than having to book a hotel/drive four hours the next day.) Saturday Mum came in, and CJ and I took her coat-shopping; somewhat amusingly, she couldn't find anything she liked but I found one I quite liked for $165 that goes rather well with my new look (more on that in a moment). Sunday we had early-Thanksgiving dinner. And Monday Mum and I took the train up to Evanston to see the Ba'ha'i House of Worship.

That last was an experience I'd almost describe as "surreal", except that has negative overtones that are completely inappropriate. The building itself is architecturally stunning, but what the pictures don't quite get across is the sheer...well, glory of it. Some of it is the size - looking at it on Google Maps gives an idea, though it's entirely different seeing it in person. The presentation, too, is amazing; even with the reflecting pools and fountains drained and garden pruned back for winter, the afternoon sun hitting the white-quartz concrete exterior is enough to make it painful to look at without sunglasses. And the interior...I don't have pictures of my own as they disallow photography, but frankly I wouldn't want to post them anyway, because they can't do it justice. It's not just that the decorations and calligraphed stonework are visually amazing, but the use of light, the symmetry of the design, and the amazing acoustics (we arrived during the 12:30 prayers and could hear each of the readers perfectly from the back to the front)...even for a not-particularly-religious pragmatist like me, it's the sort of place that induces a sense of elevation. Though I think my favorite thing about it is that, unlike certain analogues from other religions I've been to, they have signs everywhere saying "All Are Welcome", and it truly feels that way - there's no cliquish sense of "oh, well, you're not a member of the club, you can't come inside, but here watch a video about how awesome our club is and if you join maybe we'll think about letting you in". It's a truly beautiful manifestation of what human dedication and love can do, and the people who built it want to share that sense of joy with everyone.

The surreal part kicked in on the way back, realizing that this place - this place that felt like it was not of this earth - was all of a forty-minute train ride away from my new home. The woman running the bookshop mentioned that the House of Worship Choir doesn't require you to be Baha'i in order to join; after seeing their venue I may well audition, just for the chance to sing there.

On a more earthly note, I've cut my hair short-short for the first time since early college, a good twelve years ago (gack). I never thought I'd go back to a pixie cut, as the one I had then made me look like a lollipop, but after seeing so many girls in the area it looked great on I thought I'd see what a real stylist (as opposed to the Supercuts one I had back then) would suggest. She came up with a great longish-on-top/layered look that works far better and helps balance out my cheekbones. (Though there was one stage partway through, before she started the thinning/layering, where my hair was sort of in a helmet shape that looked fabulously 60s mod. All I needed was a geometric-print or silver lamé minidress and white go-go boots and I would've been a perfect pink-haired Star Trek alien love interest.) I don't know if it's the skill of the stylist or the fact that I'm older and my face has more definition now (or both), but I look far less round-faced this time.

Similarly, the coat I mentioned earlier is a Kenneth Cole A-line black wool number with silver studs on the shoulders - a very 80s asexual silhouette, so it goes rather well with the hair. I find this fairly entertaining, since up until now I've been pretty unabashedly girly (even my t-shirts are form-fitting), but with this particular combination, walking through Boystown (the local gayborhood) the other day, I noticed a dude start to check me out until he got to my face. I guess it was time for a change. Though I've been joking with Brian that we can't move again, since every time we move my hair gets shorter and at this point I'd have to buzz it all off.

And on a more pragmatic note, now that I've gotten settled in, today is the day I start up HabitRPG and tracking my daily goals like yoga and guitar that I've been slacking off on (the former more than the latter, but still, my consistency's taken a hit). So it's off to go start correcting that. And possibly call the trapeze school about classes, and write a bit of the short story that's been bouncing around my head, and take other steps to start accomplishing things. I would say "wish me luck", but this is all entirely under my own purview, so instead...wish me motivation!