This is the sound of one voice

(or possibly those coming into town early for 4th Street....)

The MPR news quiz show Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me is coming to the State Theater in St. Paul on 6/24. Tickets for MPR members (which I am) go on sale on 2/22, and for everyone else on 3/17. I'm definitely interested in going, but I'd love company.

In other Wait Wait news, they discovered the fanfic I linked earlier, and (like sensible people) loved it. http://www.npr.org/blogs/waitwait/2010/02/_we_have_inspired_ghoulishness.html is the story.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about what it would take to provide actual meaningful support for real health needs and issues, rather than just theoretical 'if you did this, you'd be healthier!' that tends to crop up in the news over and over again.

Discussion below is obviously more focused on my own health issues because I know those best (though there's some thinking about other issues and ways that things might be supported), but I'm also interested in general discussion from other perspectives. In particular, feel free to link this (in either its LJ or DW versions) elsewhere if that would be appropriate for the elsewhere: both entries are public for once to make that easier.

( My background, thoughts, and ideas that don't seem to be in common practice )

So, Google Voice finally got to the point of being able to link an existing phone number with their service. I have set it up so that if someone calls my cell phone number, Google Voice sends me an email with what the voice mail message says (the transcriptions can be amusing, but the ones I've gotten so far, I can at least figure out what the call's about.) I can also play it online if I'd rather.

Since this is me, and I hate being disturbed by the phone ringing, this is lovely - I'm almost always near email if I'm awake, and this way I don't have to dig the phone out, listen to the message, and then call someone back: I can just look at my email, decide if it needs an immediate response or what, and get on with my life. Also really handy during the workday, when I don't answer my cell phone.

(This is, incidentally, how I knew the doctor's office called this morning and could call them back promptly.)

There are also options to send a transcript of the phone to SMS, or to have different messages play depending on who calls you. (I intend to play with this one sometime, so that people who know me through Pagan stuff get the "Hi, this is Jenett" rather than "Hi, this is [legal name]" The accessibility benefits are also pretty substantial.

I've got a couple of Google Voice invites if anyone wants them. (Two, I think).

(This is the third round of hiring interviews I've done for hiring other people in the last year or so. You'd think by now I'd remember how long the process takes in terms of getting the entire department to talk about it.)

This new addition, though, is going to make us a particularly religiously diverse group. I don't know about our AV specialist, but we have me (active Pagan), another person who's very active in the Jewish community. And both of our potential hires have recent work experience at either Bible colleges or something pretty similar. (One was a youth pastor, the other has been working at the Bible college he graduated from.)

So, it's going to be a little intriguing to see how that works out. (I think both of them will be okay with it: we've had clear conversations about the school's commitment to diversity, the GSA group, etc. etc. etc.) but it's the first time this particular one has come up for me since I've started being more open about being Pagan at work.

(Also on that front: I had great conversations with our comparative religion teachers about next semester, and they're both looking forward to have me come in and talk about a) minority religious experience in general and b) Paganism in more specific. I really need to come up with a better pre-class reading for them, or maybe just give in and write one.)

... so that's where they were hiding.

By which you might surmise that I made it to the Y, and went swimming, and it was good. Ok, it was also pitiful, because I managed 4 lengths (2 breaststroke, one backstroke, one sculling and kicking on my back) before my body went "Ok, done now." But that's better than nothing, and next time I go, I can aim for 6 or 8 lengths. (And I then went and trod water for 10 minutes, which is also not nothing.)

After which, there was sitting in the whirlpool for a bit. (And, I also have access to a steam room and a sauna there and look forward to trying them out.) I can already feel the post-exercise stiffness in the back of my shoulders, but in a "Hey, worked out these muscles" not in a "agonising pain" sort of way.

( A digression into my swimming history )

Still extremely low stamina, and not a lot of brain, but about the same as last week. Still no Celexa side effects (am now up to 40mg dose, as while I don't see any significant difference from 30, they come in 20mg and 40mg, so 30 is a complicated dose to stay at.) Still seeing other stuff that doesn't seem to be depression linked (the internal thermostat issues, skin issues, stamina issues.)

That said, it's been a productive couple of days.

Monday
I ran around and did bunches of errands that are a pain to do while working, or just needed doing. I got the YWCA membership, after getting a very nice and thoughtful tour (one of the things that delighted me was that I got asked if I wanted stairs or elevator going up. Also, they split the locker rooms into women and youth - they share some of the space, but it means you don't need to dodge small children while changing.)

I also went to Target and acquired a crock pot and a toaster oven, on the theory that it's easier to eat better if one has methods to do so. (My plan for this afternoon is to rearrange the kitchen table to have somewhere to put them.)

Tuesday
I went to see the Titanic exhibit at the Science Museum. It was fascinating to see the actual artifacts, and they had a bunch of cool learning tables (making rope, telegraph codes) but I was already very familiar with a lot of the basic content.

I then went off to Trader Joe's to do food shopping (especially since we're expecting storm systems tonight through Friday), where apparently the rest of the universe decided to do the same thing. (At 2pm in the afternoon, no less.) Survived, fortunately.

Today
I puttered this morning, and then went to the Y for my first official "Look, working out!" Said hi to one of my co-workers, walked for 15 minutes on a treadmill, and another lap of the indoor track, and called it good. (Also acquired a swim cap, so tomorrow, I intend to go try swimming, assuming the roads are okay for driving.) Taking it very easy, because see above lack of stamina.

My plans for the rest of the day involve putting laundry away, rearranging the kitchen corner, and cooking something.

(I suggest reading the whole sequence before deciding what you want to do about it.)

The basic issue
New updates to LJ code are posted to the changelog community. A recent addition would have forced new users to pick a gender (male or female, no 'unspecified' option as currently available.) and a subsequent commit would have forced a choice of male or female if the user profile were edited at a later date. They've pulled the code for now, but there's more worth talking about - namely how code gets pushed live in the first place, and a particular aspect of the response from LJ's US general manager.

[I am assuming that my reading list gets why forcing binary gender is Not Cool, and why I think it's a damn stupid move, even though I personally am perfectly comfortable self-IDing as female without me going into that bit, right?]

synecdochic has a lengthy post about the basics here: http://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/366609.html and elf has linkspam at http://elf.dreamwidth.org/288498.html .

There's fairly good reason to believe that the motivation for this change is better advertising targetting - obviously, not easy to prove, but it's about the only logical motivation for making this particular kind of change in this particular way.

( How this works, why I'm particularly irritated, etc )

Had a nice discussion with L2 last night, in which we did a lot of "Let's cover stuff you probably know at least half of, to make sure we're on the same page about what we're calling it".

One of the things we talked about, as part of some of my theories about community and what sustains it, was that I've got a really strong preference for yeast bread and wine or beer or mead for the cakes and ale portion of ritual - the idea being that they're foods that are specifically transformed by living beings.

And she noted that wouldn't that mean that some kind of yogurt or equivalent drink (kefir, for example) be a good option for someone who can't drink alcohol?

Which I think is brillant. Not that it's necessarily suitable for all uses, but it solves a particular problem very nicely.

(I'll note that I feel strongly that the bread and wine be part of the offering/food consumed by the priestess, if at all possible: I'm cheerfully willing to do juice, fruit, etc. to handle food allergies for everyone else. But this idea might make that a lot easier to do.)

I came back from filling in one of my colleagues about our administrative meeting yesterday (much disgruntled wrangling about scheduling, not much time for me to talk about laptop initiative).

Anyway, came back to my desk to discover that my computer had acquired a very large pomegranate, from one of our Spanish teachers. I have sent her email going "I am delighted, but puzzled?" .

Just thought y'all might be amused.

I spent last night at a house concert by Heather Dale, and I want to write about it here, because it was fabulous. I'm pretty sure I first stumbled across her music via iTunes (one of the very few times that's been this successful, in fact.)

Heather is a musician who started performing (and still does so extensively) via the Society for Creative Anachronism [1] about 15 years ago. For the last 8 years, she's been making a living as a travelling musician: she and her partner Ben are on the road about 8 months of the year. (She's also way sensible about the business side of it: she's got a blog on LJ at zen_indie where she talks about that.)

First off, she's a fabulous performer in person - for those of you who've seen S.J. Tucker, they remind me a lot of each other, but Heather Dale is perhaps more quietly intense. There were multiple places last night where I had tears in my eyes, or my skin was crawling. Many of her pieces come out of SCA experiences and events, but in a way that remains powerful even if you don't know the people/stories/culture there (other than some very basic concepts, like the ideals of fealty and honor and such.) But many of her other pieces come out of myth and legend.

Arthurian: As many of you know, I have Opinions about Arthurian legend. Not surprising, given that one of my undergrad majors was Medieval/Renaissance Studies. A lot of modern Arthuriana drives me absolutely batty, and music even more so. Heather Dale's doesn't. There's places where she goes to a different take on a story than I would have thought of - but even with that, they're glorious and poignant, and the people in them are people, struggling and wishing and wanting, and sometimes failing.

I particularly like her "Tristan and Iseult" (a story I've long adored), and she did a chilling "Mordred's Lullaby" last night. And her "Holly, Ivy, and Yew" is a lovely story of Guinivere as wise queen (a part of the story a lot of retellings forget.) And there's "Culhwch and Owen", though without the long lists of names, which is probably a good thing in a song.

Myth: She also does a fabulous job with various myths and tales. She told the story of how she wrote her "Sedna" (which tells that myth) - her father was working up in the far north of Canada for a short time, and spent his evenings visiting with the elders of the village, so he could bring her back a treasury of stories. I also adore her "Medusa" which is a very different twist on the tale. Last night she sang "The Maiden and the Selkie", which is off her new album, and which was one of the 'chills up my back and tears in my eyes' songs for me.

There's lots of other good stuff, too. "Road to Santiago" reminds me of my mother (who has walked the entire route on foot now, over the time my grandmother was dying, she'd go spend a month with my grandmother, two weeks or so walking (picking up from the spot she'd left off in), fly back to the US for another month or six weeks, and then repeat.) "Joan", which is an incredibly powerful song about Joan of Arc. "One of Us", which she sang last night (which is on the one album I don't own yet).

All in all fabulous, and if/when she makes it through here again, I intend to be there.

( More about the house concert and my SCA history )