broken-nosed gods

Portland: surprisingly reminiscent of Kyoto! As far as I've seen on today's short walk, at least. I suppose it's not really that much like Kyoto, but it makes me think of areas like Arashiyama and some of the neighborhoods on the edge of that city. Absolutely gorgeous, loads of plants (everybody gardens, it seems like) nice little shops. I thought it would be like Indianapolis, where everything's really far away from everything else and it's difficult to get around without a car, but I was pleasantly surprised. It seems like the kind of place I'd like to live.

Speaking of tiny shops: I bought books! Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes is one I've been looking for ever since rushthatspeaks posted about it, so I'm super excited to have it now. Other finds include: Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red (which you must read, though it deserves some warnings first which I will give once I've read it again — it is genuinely one of the best things I have ever read), a new translation of Herodotus, and A History of the World in 12 Maps, which looks like decent pop history and is probably a suitable jumping-off point for me to begin taking an interest in cartography.

Today was the first time in a year that a dude said something that could be construed as hitting on me and I was flattered rather than creeped out! (Literally a year, hah, since the only other time that has ever happened to me was at the JLPT last December.) I think it's because I know he's completely unserious. Finally, someone I could potentially have a vaguely-flirtatious friendship with! Like, you do not know how much I have been wanting someone to play-flirt with who gets that we are headed due PLATONIC. He already knows that I am a lesbian (close enough), so this can pretty much only go in a positive direction. :D

As opposed to the last dude who said I was pretty, whom I have had continuously-pushed-back dinner plans with for a while now and then the other day he said something vaguely flirt-y and I got instant DNW feelings. Boo. Maybe I need to wear a sign.

...I'm not sure, but I think someone just offered me a job? The conversation ended with her giving me a business card for RamenPlay with her cellphone number written on it, at least. I think I'm going to call her tomorrow, but I have NO IDEA what to say. because I know nothing about jobs or work or anything. eep.


--relatedly, I seem to have a strange talent for bonding only with people who are not actually from China. I know I need to make friends with native speakers, etc etc, but apparently when people talk to me in Chinese I get super nervous super easily unless I already know them, which is not helpful. I need to find a not-in-English knitting circle or church or something. But this proves it's not just that I only make friends with people in my building! Somehow I just always end up talking to people from Mongolia or Singapore or Japan or Korea, whether it's in English or Chinese.

This is probably not related to my talent for finding good restaurants.

I feel like I should stop attempting to be friendly with the guys in my language classes. First semester of Japanese: talked mostly to awesome older girl, had few awkward moments, everything mostly okay. Second semester of Japanese: talked mostly to this one dude, he apparently thought I was flirting with him and asked me out. Third and fourth semesters: one dude tended to talk my ear off about video games and Wheel of Time but was pretty much okay, other one was Benevolent Sexist. First semester of Chinese: dude I talk to the most comments "That's what happens when you're a whore, nobody likes you" about a single mother in a film we were watching in class.

. . . .Yyyyeah, gonna stick with girls for a while. Sometimes I feel like I should just not talk to guys face-to-face at all. I love the internet; you can tell if someone's a jerk BEFORE you say anything to them.

Next class, going to sit on the other side of the girl I sit next to, because if I don't I'll be twitching at sitting next to that dude again.


(On the other hand, almost all the dudes in this year's Japanese 101 seem perfectly nice. I should visit that class more often.)

AAAAAA THERE IS A GIANT WASP IN MY ROOM AAAAAAAAAAAA *RUNHIDE*

Okay, the door is closed and I am safely hidden downstairs! But all my books and homework and, um, EVERYTHING is in there, including my ipod. Annoying.

Not annoying enough, however, for me to venture back in there until I get someone else to go in and kill it. SCARY WASP AAAAAAAGH.


I dread the day I become An Adult and have to deal with things like this all by myself. I will probably end up asking a stranger off the street to come in and do it for me.

My twelve-year-old brother just came up to my room with a mostly-finished kite and asked me to write some kanji on it. Any kanji! Your favorite! Whatever!

*sigh*

I explained that no, I would not write some random words in a language he doesn't understand just to make his kite look 'cool', and asked him to at least come up with a reason other than 'I couldn't think of anything else.'

The postman recognizes me! I guess I've been sitting on the front porch when he comes often enough that he recognized me walking down the sidewalk back to my house and handed me our mail. Thank you, Mr Regular Mail Guy! <3 Someday I shall give you cookies or a scarf or something.

I think I might be starting to understand how cooking works! What spices go with what legumes go with what vegetables and all that. Hooray! \o/

My Hello Kitty notebook, which I am saving for Chinese this fall. It has an embossed cover with Hello Kittys and bows and pink on it, and a ribbon bookmark with a little plastic slightly squishy Hello Kitty on the end. And all the pages have at least one Hello Kitty on them. SO CUTE. It totally makes up for the lack of a ring binding!

I've started plotting out bits of Knife & Ink again! More specifically, the one where Yue and Zuko adopt a toddler.

So far, I'm two for three on 750words! Must try and get an earlier start on that, I've ended up going to bed half an hour late each time.

I kind of want adorable Hello Kitty everything.

I'm finding it hard to believe that I actually have muscles now. Not big ones, but the side of my calf goes in a bit when I stand on tip-toe, and I actually have a tiny bit of a bicep now. I finally found exercises that can be done in reasonably fancy clothes (i.e. an underwire bra and non-T shirts), without tying up my hair (unless it's hot out), and while watching Japanese television on my computer (if it's nearby). They actually feel good. It's amazing! Does anyone have recommendations for more?

It's just kind of a pity that, while my body really enjoys moving and wants to do lots of it, my brain is still kind of stuck in its mode from a few years back, when I would sit in front of my computer for hours and hours at a time. And my brain tends to be louder. :( But I've gotten to the point where I can just kick myself out of the house to go for a walk if I'm not feeling okay, so that's good.


You know what shoe I'm in love with right now? This one. I love the pink one, but that is a bright bright candy blue. <3 I'm sure it would slide off my heel the minute I stood up, but at least I can dream.


And I finally decided not to sign the paperwork to join the Central Illinois Concert Orchestra. Because I have to drive kind of far to get there, it's on Thursday nights, and I would have to pay them $375 in addition to everything else. Also they were going to make me bring my own music stand, which. No. I have one of those little wire-ish stands that doesn't go up nearly tall enough, and it's a pain to carry around, collapsible or not. (I want one of those big heavy black stands all the universities have.) Instead I will probably join the local orchestra, whose conductor lives like a block away. So yay for that, I guess?

So now I am home! My last evening in Kansas was spent in the house of a very nice lady I may or may not be distantly related to (she lives across the street from my great-aunt and -uncle, and she was only ever referred to by her name) where I was given a very nice spare bedroom and bathroom all to myself, free run of the kitchen, and REAL FOOD. By this I mean hummus and crackers and carrots and celery, but that makes it no less REAL to someone who has been living off protein bars and carbohydrates for four days. The spare bedroom helped quite a bit too, I think, given that all the forced proximity to my dear family (she says without a trace of sarcasm) had been and still rather is making me angry and snappish about tiny things. I like people! I love people! Just not the same ones for long periods of time without being able to go away and cool off when I need to. *twitchy twitchy twitchy*

Also, related to this, I discovered a lot of my boundary issues, and my opinions of hotels/non-vegetarian restaurants/people who don't cook, and my feelings about + desires for the 'perfect girl' mould (nail polish, makeup, cool clothes, high heels, loud pop music) as armor against mood downswings/fucking up/little things that annoy past the point of tolerance/other stuff that makes me cry. (Having it on won't always work, but maybe it helps, and putting it on usually works. I can blame its not working on not having access to all the things on the list at any given feeling-shitty time.)

However, I have been moderately successful thus far at plotting out the Hermione/Dean acefic! It is kind of big and serious and tackles some of the same wizarding-world issues as the Hufflepuffs-and-Slytherins fic (still on the stove, though back-burner for now), but without the happy escape theme. Well, that'll be there a little bit because it is kind of a Thing for me, but running away into the Muggle world will not fix things even just for them. It sucks and they can't get out because there is no out and things aren't just going to get better and leaving it to other people is not going to fix anything either. And it's going to take them a long time just to find out everything that's wrong and deal with it being that way, never mind fixing it.

. . . it feels like the only longfic I'm capable of producing is Dealing With Canon Issues fic. Eh, that's okay.

Anyway, I wrote a Tracey Davis poem! I think I like this 'writing poetry' thing, though it always feels like NOTHING WILL EVER BE EDITED ENOUGH. This one punctuation choice/line break/word feels a teensy bit off, AAAAAGH IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD. :|

I have lots of THOUGHTS and FEELINGS about everything, and have been torn between "You should post them! Get them out of your head and into the interwebs where someone else could be entertained!" and "No, definitely not! Your thoughts and feelings suck, self. Keep them quiet at least until they're coherent, srsly." But tomorrow I am packing for the NINE-HOUR DRIVE TO KANSAS and FOUR AND A HALF DAYS OF NO COOKING AND NO VIOLIN. Which I forwent practicing today in favour of making dinner, oops. So, since I refuse to depend on crappy hotel wifi unless I really have to, here are some of them.

I hate long car trips. Hatehatehate. I can barely sit still long enough to watch a movie most of the time, and I get a general bleeeeaaagh feeling if I'm confined too long even in a big house with my own room where I don't have to share anything or put up with people if I really don't want to. And this one does not even contain any cousins at the end of it. (Plus I'm skipping my weekly-ish friends meet-up that is the teen library group.) NO FUN, WORLD. NO FUN.

On the other hand, it will force me to focus on novels and history and languages, things which I can have on hand when there's no internet, for at least nine hours total and probably more. Yay, learning things! I've been having sort of a block on novels lately, so maybe this will break that a bit.

Knowing some Japanese is kind of frustrating right now. It's like, I know stuff! But not enough to understand the things I want to read! :| Oh well, it'll get better if I keep practicing. And it's kind of interesting when I'm just starting Latin and Chinese, because with Chinese you get the fun of "Hey, I recognize that hanzi! But I know it's absolutely not pronounced jou." And with Latin, you get the fun of "Yay, easy pronunciation! No extra alphabets! Wait what conjugating nouns WHAT IS THIS MADNESS."

I am going to end up packing All The Language Books tomorrow, I just know it.


Okay, pretty sure Keima (of The World God Only Knows) is asexual. SO MANY NAKED GIRLS. SO MUCH LACK OF SECOND GLANCES. I can't think of any fic to write for this manga, but I'm sure it would be amazing. (Possible KHR crossover?)

I wanted to talk about Utopia of Homosexuality, but it looks like that'll have to wait until I have more sleep and mental distance. I have mixed feelings, by which I mean the manhwa's premise is cool but the execution made me acerage. (Finally, a chance to use this Azula icon! Sorry, lj-ers.)


Lady Gaga's new album has been growing on me. I don't quite know how I feel about it, but I think overall it's better than The Fame Monster. The lyrics are pretty good, and it's all so catchy! I think it was worth the extra money for the deluxe edition just for the Born This Way remix (despite my problems with that song).


I am utterly failing to find Korean counterparts of things like Nurarihyon no Mago or Pandemonium and Parade. This is probably because I'm not looking hard enough, but dammit I could really use some. And I need to go look at that map of the Avatar world so I can figure out where to put alter!Korea. And what to call it.

Ho hum.