bloodygranuaile

Today's three-card spread is done with the Medieval Scapini tarot deck, a gift from my friend Josh last summer. I picked this deck because I promised to bring it to Lyndsay's place on Wednesday and I wanted to refamiliarize myself with it, and also maybe break it in a tiny bit, because it's still very stiff and shiny from only being used a few times. I mean, it's also shiny because it's covered in gold-leaf nonsense, but the stiffness is definitely because it hasn't been used enough.

Today I asked about health, or tried to, since I'm doing this reading while simultaneously soaking my foot and hoping I don't need another damn surgery (I had two last summer), but I don't think I managed to focus on that entirely while I was thinking, so this reading might also be in regards to "today, generally" or "the work situation."



The first card, the Past card, is here the Eight of Coins (Pentacles), The Work Card, which symbolizes Apprenticeship. So either my work has somehow been a significant aspect leading up to my foot getting all fucked up again--which is possible, as I think my pointy-toed work flats with no support are bad for my feet, and I really need to find some decent work flats--or I did indeed fuck up the question for this reading and it is about "today, generally," which has been a day devoted to fixing the work situation. As a work card, the Eight of Coins/Pentacles has a lot to say about studying, learning new skills, "A new job. . . . A new field of work," and as an advice card, it exhorts the querent to "learn all you can. . . Do your homework" and that wise money management and acquisition of computer/technology-related skills are important right now. I hope that I do indeed have "the opportunity to enter a phase of apprenticeship to develop your talents," because I am definitely feeling like I don't know enough stuff about stuff right now, and I'd really like to widen my field from all copy-editing all the time.

The second card, the Present card, is here the Three of Cups, Celebration, which in its upright position symbolizes "A time to rejoice. Having fun." In a health reading, it promises "renewed health and recovery," so hopefully that means my poor feets will be OK without surgery. (Not like I'd actually take a Tarot deck's word on that.) In work-related questions, it usually suggests a hobby rather than a career, although I am guessing it here refers to the piecework that NSight has gotten me for this week, which I think is a thing to celebrate. (Maybe it means both, and copy editing is on its way to being less the entirety of my work life.) I think it might be worth noting here that the Three of Cups showed up in my Celtic Cross over the weekend, as one of the three Threes, and another one of the Threes (Pentacles) showed up in yesterday's reading, so I seem to be on a real streak of Threes here. Threes, as I think I mentioned yesterday, embody growth, creativity, expansion, self-expression, that sort of thing. So to have the Threes continue showing up is a heartening sign.

The third card, the Future Possibilities card, is here the Queen of Coins/Pentacles. The Queen represents a focus on emotional/intuitive matters (Water) and the Pentacles suit represents a practical, materially-based approach to such matters (Earth). In addition, the Queen of Pentacles is my personality signifier card. My little book calls the Queen of Pentacles the Practical Manager, representing "A sensible approach," and she "signals success in business and financial matters" and calls for applying "practical, conservative measures to your own affairs," which is interesting compared with some other recent readings' calls for thinking outside the box and adding in extra measures of fire (passion) and the eventual triumph of intellect (air). Putting them all together, I guess I need to think hard and take risks but not take un-sensible risks. Which is kind of true for most things. Or perhaps I just need to be sensible and conservative for the rest of today. Meaning, I suppose, that I should go do my work for Stephen rather than goofing off the rest of the day or going and doing something fun like writing or reading. Le sigh. Work it is. 

I just checked my bank balance and almost had a heart attack. 

When did my rent get to be half my income? Rent is only supposed to be one-quarter of your income; a third at the most. My rent has gone up every year (or twice a year) since I graduated, and my hourly pay rate has also gone up a bit since my first job out of college, but somehow my weekly income has stayed exactly the fucking same.

Am doing the "praying to all the deities I don't believe in that I magically don't get laid off this time" dance again, where by "dance" I mean "having stress headaches."

I have discovered I can get through my freelancing a lot faster if I put a movie on. It stops me from wasting time "multitasking".

Yesterday I watched most of Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring and today I finished it and watched all of Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. I put them on on the basis that they are the longest movies I own, and that I would be less distracted by something 'comfort movie' like that I had already seen a billion times.

This mostly worked, except that I am basically reawakening all my high school fangirliness that I had left behind for the past couple years to wibble about the new nerdy fantasy things. You guys, there are SO MANY AWESOME QUOTES in these movies. So many that I had forgotten most of them! And there are even more terrible in-jokes that I had with all my friends! Many of which were based on shit we found on the Internet!

I think next week I'll watch Notre-Dame de Paris, and then my brain will implode into period/pseudo-period silliness and fandom even worse than it did in April when every premium channel decided to premiere a new medieval costume drama at the same time.

Can I go to grad school for "becoming Tolkien"? Is that an option? Can I make my own program? It would involve linguistics, learning nine languages, medieval literature study, calligraphy, medieval history study, world religion and mythology, language construction, and creative writing. Final project is to translate, adapt and film a version of Beowulf (or another ancient epic) that doesn't suck.

How is it this weekend already? Last weekend, I had an epic weekend, and was all like "I should definitely write about my epic weekend so I don't forget about it," and boom, now it's THIS weekend already. Wow.

Anyway. Last Friday, I went out to Worcester, rather late in the evening, where I watched the second half of Mirrormask at Josh & Keen & co's apartment, which is the one right above Bones & Flowers, the awesome pink occult shop. Then I slept over at Liz and Emily's apartment. Spider, a.k.a. Captain Underfoot, did not seem to care. Saturday morning, Liz and Josh and I got up early (like, same-time-as-we-get-up-during-the-week early) to don our garb. I was thrilled for an excuse to wear my Bride of Dracula nightgown again, and my beautiful red leather corset with the Kevlar panel, and all my other fun stuff that I have spent a somewhat unjustifiable amount of money on over the years considering how little of it I can wear on a regular basis. (In high school, this sometimes didn't stop me wearing it anyway, but alas, I am a grown-up now with a strict Business Casual dress code most of the time.) I also had what was intended to be a medieval-timesy sort of manicure:



Apologies if it is le blurry; it's an iPhone pic.

We did the fun ritual of going to a normal people establishment for breakfast and getting funny looks, then Liz got in her Cube and Josh and I got in the Black Pearl (I let Josh drive because I still hate having passengers for long rides) and we drove to Ansonia, Connecticut, of all places. My dad's family is from that Valley. Some of the family still lives in that Valley, namely, the ones I haven't spoken to in the longest. So I was all like "Ahhh I'm weirded out" because of voluntarily spending time in southern Connecticut, and then we found out that Liz was also going all "Ahhh I'm weirded out" because she used to perform at the other Ren Faire (that has since closed, but was trying to shut down Midsummer Fantasy anyway, and whoa is THAT a funny story) that used to be at Warsaw Park, when she was part of Phoenix Swords like eight years ago.

Pat let us in for free, since it is his Ren Faire and he can do that, so that was pretty awesome. And then pretty much the first thing that happened when we got inside the Faire was that I ran into Jacques ze Whippeur, whom I have not seen since we were in high school. Then we looked at all the shiny things the vendors were selling and starting spending unconscionable amounts of money, and ate unhealthy Faire food, and watched some (generally bawdy) performances, and were huge dorks, and general Ren Faire stuff. Jack's whip act has gotten a lot more sophisticated since MHS' talent show; it now involves fire. A bunch of other acts involved fire, too, and after the day Faire was over, all the fire-related acts got together and put on an evening show, which was an Improvisational Fire Show, which is one of the most unsafe things I have witnessed people do on stage (er, on chessboard?) in my life, but was also ten different kinds of AWESOME. (I counted.) Sadly, Liz had to leave before the improv fire show, but not before buying a chainmail thingy that goes around the shoulders but isn't a hauberk or a cowl (I can't remember the term). Josh bought a red-and-black leather pauldron with gorgeous ornate steel studding. Pat bought badass bracers from Lusty Leather, which is apparently his first step towards having real garb, which is weird since he owns a damn Renaissance Faire (which means he gets DISCOUNTS, the bastard). I bought... oh my goddess, I decided I wasn't going to buy any more articles of clothing, so I didn't; I just bought an ungodly amount of accessories--black and red, leather and iron, lots of skull patterns. A black and red leather beltpouch with skull-and-crossbones embossed into the leather. A Viking-style iron dragon ring and an iron dragon hairpiece to match my iron Thorshamar from Sweden (I also had a really awesome conversation with the blacksmith about Thorshamars [Thorshamaren?] and blacksmithing). A black-and-red-beribboned steel tiara with a skull pendant on it (to match my silver hair twist from the last Faire I went to). A boot dagger, now that I am a grown-up and no longer prohibited from spending my own money on pointy things. Between buying unnecessary shinies, food & drink, and tipping the entertainers (I tip generously to anyone willing to set themselves on fire for my amusement), I must have spent nearly two hundred dollars on Saturday. (I figure I can afford to do that... uhh... once every year or three.)

Speaking of drinks, I learned a new recipe at the pub. It's called a Beesting, and it's a shot of mead dropped in a glass of cider. It is hardcore delicious.

But perhaps the highlight of the day was the Crime & Punishment show, where I was accused of singing off-key and informed that I was to be put in the Iron Maiden until I confessed. The dungeonmaster (I honest to gods almost just wrote "dungeon maester") helpfully decided to show me how to properly get into the Iron Maiden by making the Sheriff demonstrate. Once the Sheriff was strapped down onto the one bed of nails and the other was laid on top of him, I was made to stand on top of the lot, so that I could understand exactly what was going to happen to me, but at that point the Sheriff retracted his accusation. (I suspect they picked me for this demonstration because I was one of the smaller people in the audience at that time. Sadly, I am still underweight, despite attempting to bulk up. The pictures Josh took at the Faire actually kind of worry me; I cannot tell if I have actually gotten that waifish or if the effect is exaggerated because Faire garb is so bulky, but I look like a twelve-year-old boy in my corset, and it's supposed to be a powerful corset.)

Anyway, here is an awesome picture of me standing on a dude in a portable Iron Maiden:



Yeah, so that was awesome.

Sunday I spent most of the afternoon proofreading, because I had taken work home due to the holiday, but it was actually pretty awesome, because I went down to the coffeeshop my new roomie Ellen works at and worked there while drinking chai lattes and feeling like a pretty hip artsy sort of hourly wage slave/pedantic punctuation minion, in my long black dress and iron jewelry. (I now feel compelled to wear ALL my iron jewelry ALL the time, because IRON JEWELRY.)

Monday was the 4th of July! I went back to Ellen's coffeeshop, where I actually got several pages of writing done for the story Liz and I outlined a while back, so that was productive. Then I hung out with a bunch of Ellen's friends and we ate hot dogs and drank gin and tonic before heading down to the river to see fireworks. We founds a good spot on a footbridge under the main bridge over the river by BU (sorry for the preposition overload). The rest of the group eventually split to try and find a better spot, but it's damn crowded by the river in Boston on the 4th of July before fireworks, so Ellen and I stayed where we were a drank more gin and tonic out of the tonic bottle ('cos we're classy). Fireworks didn't start til a ridiculously late 10:30 (what. the. HELL, Boston), so we ended up only staying for like the first twenty minutes, because tired and work in the morning.

Then it was back to regular work week. This week is apparently the busiest week of the year for real this time (as opposed to two weeks ago, which was also supposed to be the busiest week of the year), which is fine with me, because that means they bribe us to work overtime by giving us dinner.

I did do a very stupid thing this week, though: I ventured back onto the Internet long enough to learn that a large proportion of Like Totally Super Smart Rational Better-Than-Everybody Atheist Dudes (including, sadly, Richard Dawkins) cannot for the life of them figure out what could POSSIBLY be at all creepy or disrespectful about ignoring a woman for several hours of designated social time in a social space, waiting until she says that she is done socializing and is going to bed now, and then cornering her in a small windowless room whose doors only open at certain intervals at four in the morning and asking her back to your room for coffee. Seriously, what ISN'T creepy and disrespectful about that? Even if by coffee he actually meant coffee--can you simultaneously go back to your own hotel room and somebody else's? No. Can you simultaneously go to sleep and drink coffee? No. Ergo, SHE ALREADY ANSWERED THE QUESTION. People who continue to ask questions AFTER you've answered them are generally not my top choice of people to hold conversations with, since "able to follow speech" is my number one requirement for conversing, and I do not think I am alone in this. Anyway, apparently pointing out that this is not the #1 guaranteed Most Effective Strategy Ever for getting more girls to voluntarily decide to expend time, effort and money to attend your parties is HUGELY MEAN AND OPPRESSIVE AND IF I WANTED TO BE TOLD HOW TO TALK TO WOMEN I'D MOVE TO IRAN. (No, someone actually said that.) Like, dudes, pick a goal and stick with it. You have every legal right to be a raging douchebag. However, good fucking luck attracting anybody to your movement with "Atheism: It's Not Iran" as your fucking sales pitch. I grew up in the Catholic Church, which is one fucked-up institution, but it's not Iran EITHER. In fact, everyone who lives in the US is already living not-in-Iran! Richard Dawkins pulled some whiny "why-are-you-talking-about-X-when-Y-is-happening" concern troll move (and by the way, Mr. Super Brilliant Scientist, she was talking about this because THAT IS WHAT THEY ASKED HER TO TALK ABOUT, go bitch at the panel booker if you think it's not an appropriate topic) about how Western women should just shut up and be grateful--and, presumably, expend time and effort and energy and money actively physically attending atheist conferences and supporting the movement, since THAT WAS THE FUCKING TOPIC--because women in other countries have to suffer FGM. Of course, by that logic, I should ALSO shut up and be grateful and make sure I get my ass to Mass every single Sunday and donate to the collection plate at Church, because after all, the Catholic Church only told me I couldn't hold their most important job because I was a girl, they didn't actually mutilate me, which is the only thing that counts. But somehow, I do not think that is what Dawkins was advising me to do. Seriously, sometimes I wish I didn't have the Internet just so I didn't get sucked into hearing about this shit. (On the other hand, the Internet also provided me welcome brain and faith-in-humanity relief in the form of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which involves actual rationality and not just semimystical intonations of "SCIENCE! RATIONAL! BIOLOGY! GENETICS! EVOLUTION! SSSSSCCCCCCCIIIIIIIEEEEEEENNNNNNNCCCCCCCCCCCCCEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" like they're magic argument-winning incantations that will strike your enemies dumb and allow you to control their minds. If it doesn't work, chant louder!)

ANYWAY.

This weekend, I am going to relax and not spend hundred of dollars. My goals for this weekend are to get at least halfway through rereading A Feast for Crows, to go to the gym, and possibly to get some writing done.

This morning, I tried an Experiment!

My Experiment was to see if I can utilize some of the time I spend on the train each day to more productive ends than just reading, because as much as I like having three hours a day to read, it is resulting in getting through a LOT of reading and having no time left to review them, or do my freelance assignments, and also I end up checking my email in the evening and then whoops, all my time is gone and I didn't do anything else I was planning to do. So this morning I brought along my netbook to see if this trial they are running of free wi-fi in the train cars is any good.

For the record: I adore the notion of free wi-fi in train cars. For some reason I always associate train use with being somewhat old-fashioned, probably because most of the rail systems in the US were built like a hundred years ago and I think most of the train cars are at least as old as I am. Trains have become sort of a second-teir mode of travel since their golden age, and the commuter rail systems very clearly reflect last century's urban-and-suburban job structure, so I always associate trains with being in some odd way historical curiosities. Even though they are still being used. But anyway, trains with wireless Internet just seem sort of weirdly steampunky to me. Perhaps I am just completely bananas, though.

Anyway. I got online successfully this morning, answered some emails, and opened up LJ to do my review of Desert Queen. I wrote the whole thing, and then, in a moment of thoughtlessness, hit the “tags” button to add tags, which causes a pop-up box these days, and the MBTA's wi-fi is basic enough that that was a really bad idea. Attempting to open the fancy pop-up window took about ten minutes, during which time the tag window never loaded, I was just unable to access the regular posting. Had to shut the window and hope I could auto-recover before getting into Back Bay; alas, it only auto-recovered the first paragraph or so. So I decided I should probably just write the things in OpenOffice and copy-paste from now on. So I started draft #2 during lunch, and finished it on the train ride home, which is where I am now. I'll post it and add the links and tags and stuff when I get back to Worcester, I suppose.

But at least I know I can do some basic Internetting before and after work!

In other news, I looked at a sublet today, and I will look at another one tomorrow, and I think I may bring my regular laptop on the train for that so I can do some of my Elance reformatting work on that trip. I am trying to talk myself into finding it possible to go to the gym first things in the morning, too. Tonight, I am going to read silly fantasy and brainstorm my Brilliant Business Idea with Liz (I am not telling you what it is) and maybe even get some Elance work done if not being Busy for ten minutes starts to wig me out, which it might. I am sorry about yesterday's stress-bomb; I got to the bank this morning so I am sure it will all work itself out. I just need to keep busy and keep writing.

Also in the past few weeks, I read a book about ambition, read two vampire books, went to see Jane Eyre, and watched the first two episodes of Game of Thrones. I will review Game of Thrones eventually, I promise. Perhaps after the third episode.

Happy Friday!

P.S. I refuse to either rant about being sick of the Royal Wedding or make a joke about not being invited to it. I will only say this: Where was our media when Kronprinsesse Victoria of Sweden got married last summer? I had to go to Sweden to hear about it. I mean, do we like fancy princess weddings or don't we? Or would having subtitles on the TV give Americans hives?

Had interview today. Have two interviews tomorrow, one on Friday, and one on Monday. Also, I had two last week.

Now just for one of these to result in getting hired... *crosses fingers*

Apparently the reason I can't log into ET's staffmate program is because they are closed until March. Apparently this is a habitual thing, despite the fact that I was hired in February last year.

They couldn't have told me this before I quit my job at Hanover because I thought I'd only have time for one? Or, y'know, at all?

Job-hunting sucks. Job-hunting in this economy, in January, without a car, is going to be a bloody nightmare.

Am super not happy about this.