on syrup: while grocery shopping the other day we went to get maple syrup, which i have not personally owned ever before. i was torn between the cheaper aunt jemimah's and the expensive gorgeous 100% pure maple syrup. i like to thoroughly douse things in maple syrup, but i wouldn't be able to bring myself to just puddle away the precious 100% stuff. in fact, i would feel compelled to greviously under-syrup everything, and all pancakes and french toast would seem dry and tough and lacking sweetness as a result. with the aunt jemima's, on the other hand, i would be free to puddle as much as i liked but, given the comparative taste of the syrup, it would be an empty luxury.
solved the problem by comparing the ingredients - was surprised to learn that the aunt jemima's in fact contains no real maple syrup at all. impostor! ruled that out decidedly. the happy compromise: bought the log cabin syrup, which does contain real maple syrup (it is, i think, third on the list of ingedients) and was the next cheapest to jemima's in price. we are now one step closer to french toast!
on the dawning: i am getting stronger. only got to be at the dawning for two hours on saturday cause we had many friends staying the night, but i was able to dance practically the entire time. broke one of my shoes, in fact - my right boot now has a nail-head sticking about a half-inch up into the place where my heel ought to be. yeah yeah, i know i shouldn't have been balancing on my heels while dancing, but it's fun to do once in a while... anyway, am gonna take em to the cobbler's to be fixed. (the cobbler's! the very idea of it feels so very quaint.) my boots only cost me nine bucks to begin with and have served me beautifully thus far, so i have no regrets. will attempt to refrain from balancing on my heels in the future, though. *sigh*
danced in stocking feet for the remainder of the night - it's always such a different feel to actually be able to go up on one's toes rather than always being halfway up on one's toes to begin with. did not step on any lit cigarettes, or get stepped upon, or wick up too much spilled alcohol with my socks - yay! was drenched in sweat by the end of it all, but oi it was fantastic to be all stamina-esque and danceish.
there's this guy who comes to the dawning with cameras, and he seems kinda creepy. i definitely saw him taking videos of some rather young girls, and he definitely seemed to be crounching down to shoot at butt level... eh. he got a few shots of me as well, but at least those were more normalish.
on exercise: if nothing else, my sit-ups are making my neck stronger. dunno why i can't seem to increase my number of repetions - i used to do a good number more in a set. when it comes my time to hang upside-down firing guns at people, i'm gonna be hard pressed not to droop. but with my uber-strong neck, at least i'll be able to maintain my o-so-intimidating eye contact.
am so happy to be back into working out regularly.
on people being over: people are really, really cool, and we like them. and wise & otherwise is an awesome game. p and b and k and a all hung out with us on saturday and slept over - we ate wonderful little cheesecakes, courtesy of fatespawn, and played games late into the night, then left b and k and a to play smash brothers and soul caliber ii while we went to goth night. yum. good times.
on grrrr: realized while i was walking over to the gym that lately, when i sit down at the computer to do stuff and keep up with people, i often start feeling a bit melancholy... it's not because i'm lonely - i have more people i want to spend time with than i have time, and i enjoy being with them. but i want to create things, i want to find myself some consuming project, and in that i feel very alone. it's not that other people don't have their own consuming projects, it's just that i don't want to pursue my projects on my own - i want to find a person or people to join up with me to create something fantastic, and all of share the same obsession in the making of it. and i truly want the kind of project that inspires obsession - some large (but attainable) grand undertaking. i miss the bouncing of ideas and the division of labor and the continual feedback and the drive to do better so everyone contributes awesomeness and the mutual admiration as the thing unfolds until you end up with something no one in the group could have quite predicted at the start. sometimes better than you'd thought, sometimes not quite all you'd hoped for, but i miss the process and the feeling so very much. it's what all my individual projects are missing, and why i get so very frustrated with them.
the thing that daunts me horribly is the trouble of finding collaborators, approaching them in such a way as to get us to work on a project together, and somehow keeping the whole thing motivated and organized. how do i find people who will care passionately about what we're doing who won't simply want to take over the outfit? i'm one of those who wants a true collaboration - i'd feel strange to simply work with people who implement my ideas - i'd want both the conceptualization and implementation to be a joint undertaking - but that involves a social dynamic that so far as i can tell tends to be emergant rather than constructed. and organization is not my strong suit, to boot. this is why i want to find an established setup like this (ideally paying, because this is the sort of thing that is in demand in places) and slip my way in, rather than trying to create it... if i can't find passionate people it'll be a charade, and if i do find passionate people and the thing should go sour - ouch. but it's a long while to wait, so i may stir myself up to make an attempt. i dunno, i just find people hard to deal with outside of a comforting web of shared and branching ideas... i don't like trying to guess. most people would call me shy. bleech.
if nothing else, i'm forcing myself to start doing more independent projects, and that's good both in itself and as a warm-up for working with other folks. and at work, the problem of portraying the math visualization in 3D is proving fairly engrossing for me, and a couple of people have been impressed at the amount and level of work i'm doing for it. i just wish it wasn't a one-person job.
on anticipation: xie is coming to visit on tuesday and we're going up to dc to see the burlesque show... i can't wait!
solved the problem by comparing the ingredients - was surprised to learn that the aunt jemima's in fact contains no real maple syrup at all. impostor! ruled that out decidedly. the happy compromise: bought the log cabin syrup, which does contain real maple syrup (it is, i think, third on the list of ingedients) and was the next cheapest to jemima's in price. we are now one step closer to french toast!
on the dawning: i am getting stronger. only got to be at the dawning for two hours on saturday cause we had many friends staying the night, but i was able to dance practically the entire time. broke one of my shoes, in fact - my right boot now has a nail-head sticking about a half-inch up into the place where my heel ought to be. yeah yeah, i know i shouldn't have been balancing on my heels while dancing, but it's fun to do once in a while... anyway, am gonna take em to the cobbler's to be fixed. (the cobbler's! the very idea of it feels so very quaint.) my boots only cost me nine bucks to begin with and have served me beautifully thus far, so i have no regrets. will attempt to refrain from balancing on my heels in the future, though. *sigh*
danced in stocking feet for the remainder of the night - it's always such a different feel to actually be able to go up on one's toes rather than always being halfway up on one's toes to begin with. did not step on any lit cigarettes, or get stepped upon, or wick up too much spilled alcohol with my socks - yay! was drenched in sweat by the end of it all, but oi it was fantastic to be all stamina-esque and danceish.
there's this guy who comes to the dawning with cameras, and he seems kinda creepy. i definitely saw him taking videos of some rather young girls, and he definitely seemed to be crounching down to shoot at butt level... eh. he got a few shots of me as well, but at least those were more normalish.
on exercise: if nothing else, my sit-ups are making my neck stronger. dunno why i can't seem to increase my number of repetions - i used to do a good number more in a set. when it comes my time to hang upside-down firing guns at people, i'm gonna be hard pressed not to droop. but with my uber-strong neck, at least i'll be able to maintain my o-so-intimidating eye contact.
am so happy to be back into working out regularly.
on people being over: people are really, really cool, and we like them. and wise & otherwise is an awesome game. p and b and k and a all hung out with us on saturday and slept over - we ate wonderful little cheesecakes, courtesy of fatespawn, and played games late into the night, then left b and k and a to play smash brothers and soul caliber ii while we went to goth night. yum. good times.
on grrrr: realized while i was walking over to the gym that lately, when i sit down at the computer to do stuff and keep up with people, i often start feeling a bit melancholy... it's not because i'm lonely - i have more people i want to spend time with than i have time, and i enjoy being with them. but i want to create things, i want to find myself some consuming project, and in that i feel very alone. it's not that other people don't have their own consuming projects, it's just that i don't want to pursue my projects on my own - i want to find a person or people to join up with me to create something fantastic, and all of share the same obsession in the making of it. and i truly want the kind of project that inspires obsession - some large (but attainable) grand undertaking. i miss the bouncing of ideas and the division of labor and the continual feedback and the drive to do better so everyone contributes awesomeness and the mutual admiration as the thing unfolds until you end up with something no one in the group could have quite predicted at the start. sometimes better than you'd thought, sometimes not quite all you'd hoped for, but i miss the process and the feeling so very much. it's what all my individual projects are missing, and why i get so very frustrated with them.
the thing that daunts me horribly is the trouble of finding collaborators, approaching them in such a way as to get us to work on a project together, and somehow keeping the whole thing motivated and organized. how do i find people who will care passionately about what we're doing who won't simply want to take over the outfit? i'm one of those who wants a true collaboration - i'd feel strange to simply work with people who implement my ideas - i'd want both the conceptualization and implementation to be a joint undertaking - but that involves a social dynamic that so far as i can tell tends to be emergant rather than constructed. and organization is not my strong suit, to boot. this is why i want to find an established setup like this (ideally paying, because this is the sort of thing that is in demand in places) and slip my way in, rather than trying to create it... if i can't find passionate people it'll be a charade, and if i do find passionate people and the thing should go sour - ouch. but it's a long while to wait, so i may stir myself up to make an attempt. i dunno, i just find people hard to deal with outside of a comforting web of shared and branching ideas... i don't like trying to guess. most people would call me shy. bleech.
if nothing else, i'm forcing myself to start doing more independent projects, and that's good both in itself and as a warm-up for working with other folks. and at work, the problem of portraying the math visualization in 3D is proving fairly engrossing for me, and a couple of people have been impressed at the amount and level of work i'm doing for it. i just wish it wasn't a one-person job.
on anticipation: xie is coming to visit on tuesday and we're going up to dc to see the burlesque show... i can't wait!
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
Did you look, do you remember?
2: Do you only like Goth Dancing?
What about Square dancing or Freak Nasty dancing?
3: I think my neck is strong from sit-ups, also.
Which is good
because I have a very large and heavy head.
4: I know what you mean about the collaborators.
Only my problem is that I just want to do it myself
in the end when I realize
that's the only way it will get done right.
Plus, I pretty much hate everyone.