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As my journal is almost entirely friends-only, an explanatory note is a useful thing.

Hi! I'm Jenett. You can read my profile for a little more information about me. For various reasons, most of my LiveJournal is locked - only people on my friends list can read it. (This is for a wide range of reasons: my privacy, the privacy of people I mention who are part of my life, and the fact I spent about 18 months doing online work that increased my chance of random harassment.)

I am, however, happy to add people to my friends list. If you're interested, leave a comment on this entry. It helps me if you let me know how you know me, or how you got here, and what you're interested in.

If you're Pagan, I have a public Pagan-related blog (which has the bits I'm happy talking about in public) at http://gleewood.org/threshold
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(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.
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So, we have, for the past months, been meeting as individual task forces about elements of upper school culture. I've actually enjoyed mine (integrity) a whole lot - they include parents, students, and faculty, and it's been really intriguing to hear kids talk in a way I rarely get to hear them. They've been really open and direct about where things break down, and they have really good reasons about why.

One of the other groups is the Green Team - unsurprisingly looking for ways to reduce energy use, paper use, etc. etc. in ways that improve environmental things. (We've done some cool stuff already: they have recycling bins far and wide, and the senior class gift two years ago helped put in a rain garden.)

One of their proposals is to have a "Freaky Cold Friday" (for the alliteration): the school is usually set to between 70 and 72, depending on the room, and they'd like to turn it down to 68 or 67. General agreement from the faculty, but they mentioned during their presentation that they'd considered springing it on people and seeing who noticed. (They decided not to do this, which is good.)

However, I felt it good to speak up (to one of the committee members, and sent him email after, so he can pass it along easily) to point out that for people who are temperature sensitive, advance warning is really necessary, so they can make sure to be prepared, and explained some of why. (and my email included that last winter I was keeping my own house at 65ish, and this winter it's at 70-72, or I have major chills, so I'm particularly aware of it.)

He made thoughtful noises, and agreed, but it is also good to be vocal about these thing.
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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 )
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I've been tracking books I read in a single entry, this time, since both individual entries and GoodReads, etc. seem to be failing me. Some comments below, but not for every book - feel free to ask about the ones I didn't have notes for.

Books I read in January with some comments )
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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).
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Actually, better than it might be. I'm still not great, but today I feel like I sort of have a brain and am not meaningless at work. Which is rather nice. (I am still quite tired, and I have a headache and the weird crankiness in my neck, but slight brain is nice.)

I have:
- helped a student find resources on Tokugawa Japan

- found a primary source for students focusing on the Rex v. Bourne case in England (one of the early abortion cases)

- checked out at least 20 books (yay for our circ stats)

- had conversations reassuring nice people that primary source documents for Queen Elizabeth are fairly easy to come by, and please do not worry. (But not going further, because they're still in the 'picking a topic' stage of the process.)

- contemplated finding resources on Kurdistan and the role of Kurds in the history of Iraq (we don't have much, and I should find something to add probably.)

- and need to track down a decent and reliable book about the history of the European witch trials (we have tons on Salem, but not so much on Europe.)

- going through this, had a moment almost every time of going "Well, if I can't track stuff down, I can pick X's brain about it" and then going "Oh, right, this is why they talk about personal learning networks" - because really, dear readers, you are neat people who know tons of interesting things.

On the note of things I have looked up for people, I'm continuing to see a trend that's really noticeable in the last year: people crossing over into doing a major research project on something unfamiliar to their experience. We have two groups doing things on abortion related issues (non-US, as this is their World Cultures class): both are groups of boys. We've got several people from one minority group doing research about a different one. And we have remarkably few doing the Big Obvious topics, which is really lovely.

I am, however, still hoping someone in one of these classes will do a project about Zepplins. (this year's History Day topic is invention and innovation, so they're particularly applicable.)

And finally
... had many people admire my word of the day (We have a white board easel upon which either I or the minion puts up quirky things - sometimes trivia, sometimes brain teasers, sometimes words.)

Today's is colubrine, which is a word for things of, relating to, or referring to snakes, and is one I'd never heard before. (I was familiar with the two other ones of that kind: serpentine and ophidian). It meant I got to draw a nice picture of a snake on the white board. (And next time I'm by an office supply store, I need to buy markers in more colors. My artistic range is limited by the black/blue/green/red ones work stocks currently.)
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(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.)
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- There has been more swimming (6 laps, 10 minutes treading water, and 5 minutes walking in shoulder deep water. Also 10 minutes in the whirlpool, because *bliss*) I continue to be deeply impressed with the facilty, and intend to write up a post about that sometime sooner than later.

- I am deeply fond of the NPR news quiz show "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me", which is my check on how much I've been paying attention to the news recently, but also very funny.

Anyway, one of this year's Yuletide fics is a Wait Wait story. With zombies. For your amusement, go have a look at Wait Wait Don't Eat Me.

If you're not familiar with the show, there are three panelists (usually humorists of some kind or another: there are a bunch of regulars, and then sometimes people who don't do it very often.) It's a combination of them competing for points, and of callers answering questions (there's a "Which one of these really improbable news stories is accurate", and a limerick challenge). There's also a segment of a famous person answering questions about something they know nothing about ("Not My Job") - this week was George Takei, who was lovely, but my favorite is still Madeline Albright, who was amazingly funny and dryly witty.

The prize, for people calling in, is Carl Kassel's voice on your answering machine/voice mail/etc. message. (For those who aren't NPR listeners, he's the main news anchor for NPR national news in the mornings: regrettably retiring very shortly, but he's going to continue doing Wait Wait.) He also does impressions of famous people in the news every so often, which are hilarious.

And I mentioned the limericks.

Anyway, the fic is very true to the show's question structure (though condensed: the show is an hour.) There are also musical interludes that hinge on a recent question, and the author picked the perfect one for this.
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... 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 )

Yay, Salt

Dec. 28th, 2009 10:55 am
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Application of salt got me enough traction to get moving. (Yay)

Am now going to go do errands, including acquiring more salt to de-ice the alleyway with. (Though I'm going to park on the street tonight, on principle.)
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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.
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I now get a lovely 2 weeks (and the weekend following, naturally) off. First time I've had more than a week without checking in/being in at work in ages. (I think it was slightly more than a week when I went to Boston last summer, but not by much.)

- I have come home with a small candleholder, and the most garlicky bagels ever in existence (our gift from our division head, who is New York Jewish and believes firmly in the need for good bagels.) You could smell them from 10 feet outside the office door when they were in the back office with me. (A good 20+ feet)

- Earlier this week, I opened a gift from one of my homeroom advisees, to discover this year's World of Warcraft calendar. (He's also a gamer. I'm trying to decide where to hang it, but I'm delighted.)

- Tonight, I need to eventually work on cleaning. And tomorrow, I need to do some errands, prep for ritual in the evening, and cook.

- Sunday, I am being a citizen judge for the debate tournament [school] runs every year - public forum format uses non-debate-trained judges, and I'll be there for 3-4 rounds in the morning. Then I'm taking myself off to a Solstice party.

- The answer to the question 'what work appropriate gift do you give people at work when you are Pagan, and want to give them something they'll use, but that is relevant to multiple religious traditions' is, in my case, to give them beeswax star-shaped candles. (from http://www.etsy.com/shop/madchandler, though she's taking a break until New Year's). They got lovely compliments, btw. I put them in little green bags with a tied on tag and a few cinnamon sticks, so that the wrapping is reusable, and the cinnamon is for both the scent and a well-being and prosperity aid. People seemed to like them.
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(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 [livejournal.com profile] 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?]

[personal profile] synecdochic has a lengthy post about the basics here: http://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/366609.html and [personal profile] 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 )
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[snagged from various people: the text before the cut is all standard for this one]

Step One - Make a post (public, friendslocked, filtered...whatever you're comfortable with) to your LJ. The post should contain your list of 10 holiday wishes. The wishes can be anything at all, from simple and fun ("I'd love a [fandom] icon that's just for me") to medium ("I wish for _____ on DVD") to really big ("All I want for Christmas is a new car/computer/house/TV.") The important thing is to make sure these wishes are things you really, truly want.

- If you wish for real possible things, make sure you include some sort of contact info in your post, whether it's your address or just your email address where Santa (or one of his elves) could get in touch with you.

- Also, make sure you post some version of these guidelines in your LJ so that the holiday joy will spread.

Step Two - Surf around your friendslist (or friendsfriends, or just random journals) to see who has posted their list. And now here's the important part:

- If you see a wish you can grant, and it's in your heart to do so, make someone's wish come true. Sometimes someone's trash is another's treasure, and if you have a leather jacket you don't want or a gift certificate you won't use -- or even know where you could get someone's dream purebred Basset Hound for free, do it.

You needn't spend money on these wishes unless you want to. The point isn't to put people out, it's to provide everyone a chance to be someone else's holiday elf -- to spread the joy. Gifts can be made anonymously or not -- it's your call.

There are no rules with this project, no guarantees, and no strings attached. Just... wish, and it might come true. Give, and you might receive. And you'll have the joy of knowing you made someone's holiday special.

My list )
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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.)
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Friday
Went off to Elise's to catch up for the first time in weeks, as I was avoiding giving her the nasty ick. Wanted to make it to the fall play, but was pretty sure by the end of work that it'd be a bad idea (and it was, because I got home at 7 and was asleep by 8.)

Saturday
Get up. Putter. Go off to fetch J, and drive up to the monthly Ravelry spinning gathering that Marie hosts (for the first time in months for me, because they've kept falling on weekends I had other places I needed to be.) Had a very nice time, got J started spinning (for lo, we are good at enabling.) and got a bunch of stuff spun myself.

(Current project is carding and spinning the fleece that Marie and I went in on last May - I've got a small ball of it plyed now, and am very happy with the texture. I'd been going for something much bulkier than my usual, and Marie got the friend who makes spindles to do me a heavyweight one for the purpose, which is working very nicely.)

Got a very random phone call from my mother in the middle of this (my mother *never* calls me unless it's a birthday or urgent) saying that she'd gotten a piece published in the paper my brother writes for, which amused me greatly.

Afterwards, took J off to go Thanksgiving shopping: she wants to host and cook (yay), but is retired and money is tight, so I made "Y'know, I can fix that" noises. We went to Trader Joe's, and have a very nice turkey, plus makings for all sorts of other things.

Sunday
More puttering in the morning, then went off from just before 1 to about 5:30, as it turns out, to be in the building while our newspaper editor worked on this edition. (She is frustrated because three of the pages were not totally done yet, but we're pretty close to ready.) I did not get as much other work done as I might have, as she snagged me to proofread and check on things for her for most of the last couple of hours.

Today
Got to aim at work by 7, so she can finish up, and then have two presentations to classes, some materials to get together for a class the Monday after Thanksgiving, and a big project of catching up on where we are with Title funds spent by the end of the day.

I *didn't* manage bread baking yesterday (because I was pretty sure I wouldn't be upright long enough after I got home to do a loaf: really should have set it out to do the first rise before I left to go to work) so need to pick some up on the way home, and am then having discussion with L2 this evening. (Which I'm looking forward to.)
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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.
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I think I'm going to see how many days in a row this month I can manage harp playing and practicing. I did about 25 minutes tonight, which is about as much as my shoulder would take, given various aches from last night.

I did various finger exercises (One of the things about harp is that the same structure changes slightly depending on where it is on the harp: for example, a C-E-G-C-G-E-C arpeggio feels slightly different than G-B-D-G-D-B-G does, just because the distance from your body to the strings changes.)

But I started very slowly, with my metronome on 60, and did various exercises, a little sight reading, and then a bit of improving around on the chant "Ancient Mother" on the theory that of all the musical stuff I do, being able to improv on Pagan chants is probably the most useful in practical terms, and besides, that's fun.
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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 [livejournal.com profile] 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 )

February 2010

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