Don't be surprised by the fact you can smile.

I've been meaning to post for about a month now and just keep not getting around to it. That initial impetus was getting some alarming news about an ex-coworker, about a year after the fact (I'd been told at the time I didn't want to know, and on the one hand that's true, but on the other hand, I probably said some charitable things about him that I wouldn't have if I'd been on the same page as everyone else). But it's not worth going over, so here we are.

I watched the new Knives Out movie, and I've seen a fair amount of good commentary on how the movie handles religion, but I haven't seen anybody talking about the obvious plothole of ( imagery-related spoilers )

I didn't come out of it wanting to read fic about it, either, which isn't too surprising, but what is surprising is that I came out of it wanting to reread the Donald Strachey mysteries, so that's what I've been rereading, alongside a bunch of old fic. There's still just no current fandoms that have got me wanting to write anything, so it's been Merlin, and Magnificent Seven and even Voyager and I've been desperate enough to drag out some old Torchwood wips -- one was about 95% complete, the other was barely-strung-together fragments that included Jack being stuck with an alien device that had him looking female without actually being a sex-swap fic. On top of it being a time travel fic. I have no idea if I had a reason for doing that, or where I was going with it. Unsurprising that that one never got finished, but the other one was so close to done, I don't know what it was missing that I didn't finish it off. Possibly just the fact that it was going to have to have a lackluster ending, being a fic centered on Tosh and Owen. They're legally obliged to not have a happy ending without a hell of a lot more work than 20k.

I probably won't have time to miss still not creating any fanworks, though. I'm heading up an exhibit the weaving guild is doing this summer, and work on that is going to ramp up in the next few months. I just got piece number one (point five, I have a backup-maybe-unfinished project I did last fall) on the loom right now, with a 70%-completed draft for a doubleweave scarf after that that's going to involve a heinous amount of pickup work, which is why it's piece number two. But if I do it right it'll be much prettier than plain old overshot, so. I expect that'll take up a lot of focus once March hits. Hopefully I'll post again before then.

It's kind of nice having a hobby that gets me away from the internet but still lets me interact with people. The weaving guild I joined last year had a big fundraising sale yesterday, mainly selling previously-owned yarn, equipment, and books, at bargain-basement prices. I helped with setup and cleanup, and came away with a whole slew of new-to-me fiber, and didn't even come close to breaking the bank. And I didn't have time to take a look at any form of social media. I don't have to tell anyone here how glad I am that I never managed to get a job with LC. I'm taking a class with them in another three weeks, so I have several weekends to look forward to of not letting my brain doom scroll. That said, it also means I have two weeks to finish the project currently on the loom (some towels, I'm on the last one but need to fix a broken thread) so I can get it out of the way for the rental loom for the class. Tiiiiiny apartment. At least finishing the project will also mean I can take the clamps off my loom (a makeshift temple to prevent draw-in), I bump into them every time I get into the closet, which I do frequently as it's winter and that's where my coats live.

Wow, I opened the new post window and then opened my DW in another tab to see how long it had been since I'd last posted, and the most recent entry had the exact same title as what I'd originally titled this post. And it's from 21 months ago (with the last real content being from over 2 years ago. Yikes.
This comes down to a couple of factors: 1) depression = no energy for anything, especially after a day at a job that I hate (all the good people have fled in the time I haven't been posting) 2) My laptop basically ceased to function at anything more than a crawl (it's from, like 2009, so it's served its time), and since I was planning on doing a lot of traveling I tried to replace it with an iPad. This was a mistake. iOS apps run differently enough that between that and the lack of tactile keyboard, they just don't work with my brain and I stopped doing pretty much any writing. 3) I didn't really have any fandoms, or much to say about anything since nothing was changing or things were only getting worse, so what was there to say? 4) I'd also stopped reading DW, to the point where even after the tumblr shitfest, I'd be sitting at home, going 'god, I'm bored and there's no fic, I have nothing to read,' then hours later going 'oh right, what about DW?' Moron.

Anyway, that's why I'm typing this at work instead of getting work done. What have I actually been up to?

I finished the MLS. That was May 2017, and I've been desperately searching for jobs since then, and have barely even gotten any interviews. I don't want to do public libraries, and my impression is that job opportunities are at a low, but even so, I'm barely getting any requests for interviews, so I've got to be doing something wrong, but I don't know what. I've had multiple colleagues offer to look over my resume, and others email colleagues elsewhere to ask about upcoming position listings, to basically no avail. I keep looking at our own hiring practices and going 'do I need to get a PhD before anyone will hire me?' because that would be a mistake, for both financial and mental health, I'm sure (just trying to find a program that would be good for anything I'm interested in would be a trial). It's basically a 2-year pit of despair, trying to escape this job. I'm not even going to start on how much I hate this job now.

Fannish-wise, I have actually ( watched a few things this year. )
The main thing I've been watching for the past year has been Critical Role -- and I fell deep for the content, but not so much for the fandom? ( It's kind of weird. )
So there's that -- another fandom to watch, but a lot of fans with Incorrect Opinions (I haven't seen any critical reactions to the revelations in the episode just before the break, for example, which is disappointing but unsurprising). But it does mean that I've gotten back into D&D some -- I'd played in high school but we got hung up on the mechanics and moved on to other things. So now I'm doing some online playing and some in-person playing, which at least gets me out of the house?

So there you go -- work life is awful, and the little I can do to change that is being ineffectual, and fannish life is relatively insular, and I'm not sure how much that will change. Woo.

Guys, I am in desperate need of a place to crash next week. I will be in NYC from Monday til the 6th, and all the usual suspects are not available. If you can host me for even part of that time, so I don't have to spend millions on a hostel, please let me know!

The end times are definitely nigh, I'm not regularly reading my DW/LJ any more. Really need to fix that.

Uh, in other news, I'll be in NYC again this weekend? And I might need a place to stay? My couch plans look to be falling through. I get into NY at about 10:30 tomorrow night, so I know this is late notice, but I'm trying really hard to minimize my money spending right now, so I can guarantee being able to pay tuition in a couple months. (ETA: All sorted!)

Also, anyone want to hang out, in general? I have Saturday and Sunday mornings free right now.

Long time, no complain about every aspect of my life! I was going to post yesterday, but then I spent half the workday suffering from a killer headache, and went straight to bed when I got home.

Anyway, what's up: with any luck I'll be in New York for part of the week after next? It's like pulling teeth to get any details from the people in charge, and I still haven't heard anything from the HR department, but there's theoretically a kickoff event that they'd like me to be at, if we can actually get this field study thing off the ground. That's literally all the details I have, but heads up for anybody who offered to potentially host me for a bit. I'll let you know when I have actual information. Which will hopefully be soon?

Other places I'm going: Ohio! Super exciting, I know. I got a paper accepted to a library (pre)conference session for an international conference that's someplace I can actually afford to go to (even if the job will pay for some of it), so I'll be in Columbus Ohio in mid-August. That'll be interesting - my first paper. It'll be easy to write, but I'm a little wary of the whole 'question' section - hopefully it'll be like most other conferences I've gone to, and everyone will talk just slightly too long and there won't actually be time for questions.

Otherwise my summer's still up in the air - I'm on the waitlist for one interesting class in Philly, and I should really try to save some money, but I'm going to go nuts if I'm not doing stuff, either. Still. What are other people doing?

I am *so great* at posting. I meant to post two weeks ago, when I went to see Star Wars. It was good, though I could have done with a lot less fanwanky Star Wars references. Which, I know, it's a Star Wars movie. But hopefully the next movie will be more of a 'movie set in the Star Wars universe' and less of what this one was? Otherwise I mostly watched it for the threesome aspects, which were very enjoyable. Please know that this is the only Star Wars movie I have seen in theatres or without being dragged, so still high praise for someone who is not a Star Wars fan (sorry).

In the meantime, I also have a brainstorming/inspiration question for everyone, but especially arts people, academic people, digital humanities people, etc. One of the courses I'm taking this spring for my MLS is Digital Arts Curation, and the overarcing project for the semester is to create a plan for 'acquiring and preserving a born digital work or a collection of born digital works,' with a potential (but not requirement) for archiving it to the Internet Archive. The syllabus (which is at dighist.org / syllabus) (not really interested in leaving a link trail) and has some example works, some if not all of which I'm pretty damn sure are already archived on the IA, so hopefully I will get more details about what the professor is after once classes start (I should also read back on the blog above and see what students did last year, but that can wait 'til I'm at work), but I'm looking for suggestions of stuff I could do.

I'd really like to do something with theatre, but a. theatre people are intellectual-property-possessive, and b. only bits and pieces are born digital. So in case I can't get the theatre option to cohere, I'm looking for other ideas. Not necessarily fannish, but I probably wouldn't mind if they were, to a minor degree (hmm, maybe amv.org...). One week of the syllabus is covering fanworks to some degree (including two articles from TWC), so people would be at least passing familiar if I did something like that, but of course, I am on the privacy end of the fandom pool. Still. Ideas would be really helpful!

I am really glad that I get along with my roommate for this trip. The group dynamics have been really strange and at times awkward. I think I'm also nearing my limits on social time with relative strangers, and will be glad to go back to low-interaction mode for the rest of the trip. I still have to figure out plans for the last couple days in London. I haven't contacted the people from the theatre department, and I'm not sure now if I will, or if I'll chicken out.

So, to probably the surprise of no one who knows me, I am basically incapable of moderation. After only catnapping on the plane, I crashed early Thursday, which meant I was able to wake up at 4:30 am on Friday and spend a whole day up near Newcastle Upon Tyne exploring Hadrian's Wall. I missed a bus (or it never showed or was actually on time unlike the other 2 trips) so I didn't have time for one of the sites, but I still got in two and... lots of photos of weathered stone-cut walls. Sorry, but once you hit about 200 years old (if not earlier) all weathered rock walls really look the same. And then I didn't get back until after midnight. Then I stayed up even later looking up stuff for the next day since my phone doesn't like roaming internationally, so the moral of the story is I'm on my way to Leicester with only four hours of sleep? Go me? Hopefully tomorrow will be not as bad, as I probably won't be gone as long today (I'd like to also hit York, but it probably won't happen) (ETA: nope - another missed connection, but that's OK, as it looks like the minster would have been closed anyway). Plus tomorrow I only have to go to Canterbury, and maybe Dover or Ramsgate if I have time to do that and drop my luggage off before going to the required class dinner.

And, uh, I should probably do more reading for the class? I need to look at the websites for the cathedral libraries again, and prep for whatever I'm supposed to be asking questions about.

That said, after class, other than maybe going to Cardiff, I'm pretty much planning to just hang around in London. So if anyone wants to meet up, the 4th-7th is when I should be free.

Whoop, it's been a while again. But I did have two big papers to do (ok, not actually big, but whatever) for classes, but now I am done and have the plague! Woo. Not quite post-tech levels of stress-relief plague, I think it's more due to the sudden and rapid changes in temperature/humidity/pollen levels we've been having; but Thursday afternoon I realized my throat was feeling that specific not-so-great, and that night was fevery and disgusting, but it was better enough just in time that I couldn't convince myself not to go to work on Friday, so now I'm just left feeling stuffy and with an occasional awful-sounding cough. I hate that I always manage to get just sick enough to feel gross, but never enough that I can justify staying home. If the Thursday night feeling had continued I would have, but you can't stay home because of a stuffy nose and sore throat, so. *sigh* *wracking cough*

Anyway, I wanted to say that a. I have not seen the AoU move yet and probably won't; I don't see the need to pay money to see character development torn to shreds. b. I do want to see Mad Max, though, that looks amazing. c. I have been watching Parks and Rec (finally) on Netflix (it's not all there, is the rest available streaming somewhere?). I'm nearly done with season 4, and I have to say, I deeply, deeply need more depressed Ben Wyatt crying. I don't know if it was because of the Batman costume or what, but it hit that same 'men doing something that normally would involve shaming them for participating in an act stereotyped as female for no good reason' that I like in the best of crossdressing imagery. Normally you don't get men crying without someone being dead or whatever, but Ben had to break up with a girl he loves and so he's depressed and crying! And people are uncomfortable, but they're not shaming him, and basically I want fic with Ben and depression and Leslie doesn't know what to do and is frantically texting Ann to ask for help and whatever, I don't know. Don't make me write it, that won't end well for anyone. Also, separately, wow, you can really tell when Chris Pratt started getting hired for other things and had to get in shape.

I am trying to get ready for my trip to England, which is now only a month away (ack!) - I'm not too confident about the instructors, I have to say. We're supposedly looking at cathedral libraries, for a library science class, yet all our readings are about cathedral architecture and a little bit of info about the cathedrals as cathedrals, but there has been no readings on cathedral libraries (I found several good introductory ones which are, granted, a couple decades old, but still better than nothing), and no introduction to Anglican church or even the Reformation. Which, considering it gets mentioned fairly often in the readings because of all the books being removed. I'm relying on my Catholic school education, which kind of skims over what happens after groups leave the RC Church, and a quick skim of the most relevant Wikipedia articles. I haven't had time to look for better sources yet. But anyway - I also asked the professor about which meals are already paid for so I can price things better, and she doesn't know. Ugh. Just - thoroughly unimpressed, and it's making it very difficult to plan.

Speaking of planning, I am a. looking for people who want to meet up while I'm in London before and after the class part of the trip, and also, um, looking for anyone who has a free couch? The class portion is hella expensive, and I'm trying to save money where I can. I'll get about half the tuition (but not expenses like airfare) paid back by my employer (yaaay unions, boooo monetary limits), but that won't happen 'til nearly September, and of course the university doesn't tell you you're admitted to the program until most scholarship deadlines have passed, and they don't offer travel scholarships for grad students. But still. Kind of a once-in-a-lifetime chance, this, if the class is actually any good. So yeah, if anyone knows anyone in London (anywhere near the Tube, or I guess the bus - or another city by train, as I need an excuse to see Hadrian's Wall and a couple other places, but my flights are in London) with a spare couch, please feel free to send them my way! I'm looking for housing June 18-20 (21st I'm off to Canterbury), and July 3-7 (after coming back from Bristol) with a flight out on the 8th.

God, I hope my Oyster card still works however many years after I last used it. I should check that.