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grammarwoman) wrote2012-03-30 02:35 pm
grammarwoman) wrote2012-03-30 02:35 pm
March on, March
My annual job review yesterday afternoon went excellently. I received many lovely comments, and a RAISE. Woo! I'm almost done coding on my current large project, and the news looks good on the next big thing.
If you'd like to play along with a meme, comment here with AVENGERS ASSEMBLE. I will list seven things I want you to talk about. They might make sense or they might be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.
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mrsdrjackson assigned me seven words for her meme: Emperor, gardening, elections, blue, wolves, libraries, and movies.
Emperor: The Emperor is my nickname for my son, who is in first grade now. After battling through kindergarten, we emerged with an IEP to help him with his ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. Both his classroom and social skills teachers this year have helped him immensely, instructing him on issues like body awareness and knowing that other people have thoughts about you that you can influence, for better or for worse. He tested high on the gifted exams, loves math and science, and is slowly but surely following in our geeky footsteps. His favorite activities are watching TV, navigating both Netflix and On Demand with ridiculous ease; playing videogames on the Wii and Flash games on the computer; and reading.
He makes me laugh every day with the silly and/or wise things he says. He also makes me yell with the utterly dumbass decisions he makes. His worst habit is constantly looking for loopholes and mistakes in the restrictions we give him, pushing his limits and ours as a relentless pettifogger. But at his core, he is an irresistible, lovable sweetheart, thank goodness.
Gardening: When my husband and I were in pre-wedding (premarital makes it sound like something else entirely) classes with the pastor of my parents' church, we had to talk to her about our sense of spirituality and religion. I think I pissed her off when I told her that I felt the most spiritual working in my garden. For me, it doesn't get much better than being in my backyard on a clear spring day, with blue sunny skies, warm enough to work without a jacket but not hot enough to sweat, birds chirping, the smell of damp fertile earth, the gradual return of order from winter's chaos. Gardening catalogs are porn to me, with dozens of tools and plants to play with, new options and old standards. I have so many seed packets, it's silly - I started a bunch of seedlings last February, but none of them survived to be planted in the May safe zone.
Last summer was too hot and muggy to spend much time outside, and then our roof was worked on at the end of August, which tore up a lot of my garden beds. Fall came with swampy wet weather, then winter followed closely behind. Now I'm waiting to have a magic intersection of available time, warm weather, and lack of rain to repair the damage. I can't wait to have my fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, raspberries, herbs, and such again.
Elections: Please, wake me when November is over. Even though I live in a college town, it's mired in Teabagging conservatives, including many of my co-workers. They know I'm a hardcore liberal, so lunch times can be onerous. I hate our election system; it sickens me how much money people are allowed to throw at their candidates to tell lies about their opponents. They scream about paying for health care, and yet they waste millions and millions on ads and appearances. I wish I could personally appeal to every woman in this country to wake up and smell their rights being stripped away left and right. (Have you read ILU-486 yet? It's a brilliant and scary piece that is coming perilously close to fact, not fiction: In the not-so-distant future of Virginia, the Personhood Act has outlawed abortion and chemical birth control. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, though.)
As I said towolfshark, my husband and I have made up our own campaign slogans for some of the Republican contenders. Romney's is "This is why we can't have nice things." Santorum's is "Please don't Google me." Gingrich is "Better the evil you know." If I had the tools and the stomach to look at their faces long enough to make those into posters, I totally would.
Blue : Blue is my favorite color, ever since I was a kid. It makes me very happy to gaze upon a cobalt vase in the window, or a Wedgewood blue paint chip, or the promise of comfort of a worn pair of jeans. I love Siberian irises, violets, hyacinths, clematis, and all flowers that are actually blue.
Wolves: I know that people today enjoy bagging on spirit wolves as a target of ridicule, but since in the "dog-lover versus cat-lover" question, I am forever a dog person, I have always been fascinated by wolves. I love everything from their pack structure to their natural habitats, their predominance in fairy tales, the eeriness of their howls. I love that even in the wild, they wrestle and play fetch like their domesticated offspring. I hate that the US has managed to disrupt and destroy their populations and living spaces, and turned them from fictional to literal bad guys. I hope they can still be preserved as a wild species.
Libraries: I'm sure I'm not alone in having a highly introverted childhood, where books were my best friends. I spent hundreds of happy hours in my town's library, biking a mile each way to load up my backpack with books once I was old enough to go on my own. I could burn through a summer reading program's list with one visit. Overdue books were the bane of my existence, as I had crappy organization skills and a mess of a room. I managed to upgrade my child's library card to an adult one when I was in my tweens so I could plunder the sci-fi/fantasy stacks, as well as read every Agatha Christie I could get my hands on.
Some of my happiest childhood memories are browsing through the town library. I learned early on that it serves a person well to make friends with the librarians, because they are the gateways to information.
Movies: My mom labored with me through the Academy Awards; the medical team watched along with her. Once the show was over, they finally got down to the business of bringing me into the world. I've always felt fated, then, to love movies. (Plus arriving late and putting things off to watch TV.)
The first movies I remember seeing in the movie theater were "Grease" and "Star Wars". Those may be completely constructed memories - I'll have to ask my parents. We didn't have a lot of money, so going to the movie theater was a very rare treat when I was a little kid. A few years later, I'd spend countless hours in the summer while my parents were at work watching movies on cable over and over. This was when it cost a lot of money to buy a videotape, so I'd try to tape them myself on our crummy VCR. Oh, Grease 2, how I loved you so.
We were also lucky enough to have a restored vintage movie theater in town that hosted second-run movies for $1 admission. The summer of 1985, I must have seen "Back to the Future" at least five or six times.
Nowadays, movies have returned to being a rare treat, what with the Emperor putting a crimp on my free time and my husband being somewhat of a curmudgeon about ticket prices. It says a lot that I saw the rebooted "Star Trek" twice in the theater, and "Serenity" three times. I am looking forward to the Avengers like CRAZY.
I suppose that's enough babbling for a Friday afternoon. I hope you all have an enjoyable weekend.
If you'd like to play along with a meme, comment here with AVENGERS ASSEMBLE. I will list seven things I want you to talk about. They might make sense or they might be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.
mrsdrjackson assigned me seven words for her meme: Emperor, gardening, elections, blue, wolves, libraries, and movies.Emperor: The Emperor is my nickname for my son, who is in first grade now. After battling through kindergarten, we emerged with an IEP to help him with his ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. Both his classroom and social skills teachers this year have helped him immensely, instructing him on issues like body awareness and knowing that other people have thoughts about you that you can influence, for better or for worse. He tested high on the gifted exams, loves math and science, and is slowly but surely following in our geeky footsteps. His favorite activities are watching TV, navigating both Netflix and On Demand with ridiculous ease; playing videogames on the Wii and Flash games on the computer; and reading.
He makes me laugh every day with the silly and/or wise things he says. He also makes me yell with the utterly dumbass decisions he makes. His worst habit is constantly looking for loopholes and mistakes in the restrictions we give him, pushing his limits and ours as a relentless pettifogger. But at his core, he is an irresistible, lovable sweetheart, thank goodness.
Gardening: When my husband and I were in pre-wedding (premarital makes it sound like something else entirely) classes with the pastor of my parents' church, we had to talk to her about our sense of spirituality and religion. I think I pissed her off when I told her that I felt the most spiritual working in my garden. For me, it doesn't get much better than being in my backyard on a clear spring day, with blue sunny skies, warm enough to work without a jacket but not hot enough to sweat, birds chirping, the smell of damp fertile earth, the gradual return of order from winter's chaos. Gardening catalogs are porn to me, with dozens of tools and plants to play with, new options and old standards. I have so many seed packets, it's silly - I started a bunch of seedlings last February, but none of them survived to be planted in the May safe zone.
Last summer was too hot and muggy to spend much time outside, and then our roof was worked on at the end of August, which tore up a lot of my garden beds. Fall came with swampy wet weather, then winter followed closely behind. Now I'm waiting to have a magic intersection of available time, warm weather, and lack of rain to repair the damage. I can't wait to have my fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, raspberries, herbs, and such again.
Elections: Please, wake me when November is over. Even though I live in a college town, it's mired in Teabagging conservatives, including many of my co-workers. They know I'm a hardcore liberal, so lunch times can be onerous. I hate our election system; it sickens me how much money people are allowed to throw at their candidates to tell lies about their opponents. They scream about paying for health care, and yet they waste millions and millions on ads and appearances. I wish I could personally appeal to every woman in this country to wake up and smell their rights being stripped away left and right. (Have you read ILU-486 yet? It's a brilliant and scary piece that is coming perilously close to fact, not fiction: In the not-so-distant future of Virginia, the Personhood Act has outlawed abortion and chemical birth control. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, though.)
As I said to
wolfshark, my husband and I have made up our own campaign slogans for some of the Republican contenders. Romney's is "This is why we can't have nice things." Santorum's is "Please don't Google me." Gingrich is "Better the evil you know." If I had the tools and the stomach to look at their faces long enough to make those into posters, I totally would.Blue : Blue is my favorite color, ever since I was a kid. It makes me very happy to gaze upon a cobalt vase in the window, or a Wedgewood blue paint chip, or the promise of comfort of a worn pair of jeans. I love Siberian irises, violets, hyacinths, clematis, and all flowers that are actually blue.
Wolves: I know that people today enjoy bagging on spirit wolves as a target of ridicule, but since in the "dog-lover versus cat-lover" question, I am forever a dog person, I have always been fascinated by wolves. I love everything from their pack structure to their natural habitats, their predominance in fairy tales, the eeriness of their howls. I love that even in the wild, they wrestle and play fetch like their domesticated offspring. I hate that the US has managed to disrupt and destroy their populations and living spaces, and turned them from fictional to literal bad guys. I hope they can still be preserved as a wild species.
Libraries: I'm sure I'm not alone in having a highly introverted childhood, where books were my best friends. I spent hundreds of happy hours in my town's library, biking a mile each way to load up my backpack with books once I was old enough to go on my own. I could burn through a summer reading program's list with one visit. Overdue books were the bane of my existence, as I had crappy organization skills and a mess of a room. I managed to upgrade my child's library card to an adult one when I was in my tweens so I could plunder the sci-fi/fantasy stacks, as well as read every Agatha Christie I could get my hands on.
Some of my happiest childhood memories are browsing through the town library. I learned early on that it serves a person well to make friends with the librarians, because they are the gateways to information.
Movies: My mom labored with me through the Academy Awards; the medical team watched along with her. Once the show was over, they finally got down to the business of bringing me into the world. I've always felt fated, then, to love movies. (Plus arriving late and putting things off to watch TV.)
The first movies I remember seeing in the movie theater were "Grease" and "Star Wars". Those may be completely constructed memories - I'll have to ask my parents. We didn't have a lot of money, so going to the movie theater was a very rare treat when I was a little kid. A few years later, I'd spend countless hours in the summer while my parents were at work watching movies on cable over and over. This was when it cost a lot of money to buy a videotape, so I'd try to tape them myself on our crummy VCR. Oh, Grease 2, how I loved you so.
We were also lucky enough to have a restored vintage movie theater in town that hosted second-run movies for $1 admission. The summer of 1985, I must have seen "Back to the Future" at least five or six times.
Nowadays, movies have returned to being a rare treat, what with the Emperor putting a crimp on my free time and my husband being somewhat of a curmudgeon about ticket prices. It says a lot that I saw the rebooted "Star Trek" twice in the theater, and "Serenity" three times. I am looking forward to the Avengers like CRAZY.
I suppose that's enough babbling for a Friday afternoon. I hope you all have an enjoyable weekend.
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Also, hooray for blue and libraries!
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If computer programming hadn't worked out, I think I would have tried to be a librarian. Because they're awesome and get to work in libraries every day! :)
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