Spotted at last night’s Halloween party:
“The center of the universe” — she had taken an umbrella apart and stuck styrofoam balls (planets) on the ends of the spokes. A Christmas tree — she had wrapped a green towel around a witch’s hat and decorated that with origami stars. Lots of the usual ghosts and witches and devils and monsters and people from various decades. My roommate was adorable in a dress her mom had made in college in the ’70s. By the end of the evening, she was wearing a sticker that read “Impeach Dick!” And her boyfriend covered his clothes in nametags to be MPD guy. Marilyn Monroe was there, as were Maverick and Goose. Priest, fire chief, art teacher. One guy had on chunky glasses, sweatpants, wore lots of convention badges, and carried a D&D Players’ Handbook (awwww). Another guy was a pimp with lots of thick necklaces and chains around his neck…one of which was a chalice necklace. We passed each other in the very crowded kitchen and I said I liked the chalice. “Yeah,” he said, “I’m one of those swingin’ seventies UUs.” I laughed and he added that the world needed “a little ‘chalic’ imagery” now and then. Very punny, but I think it’s hilarious.

I was able to reuse the gray dress I bought at Salvation Army last spring (the final paragraph) to play Lady Anne. (It wound up here by virtue of being packed in the bottom of a box of sweaters that stayed in the Greenville storage unit over the summer.) I wore that and attempted freaky eye makeup and said I was a ghost. “I was pushed off the balcony,” I told people. “It wasn’t my fault.” That was fun. Pictures to come later.

As you can see, pictures are now here. “Freaky eye makeup” looked a lot freakier in the mirror than it does in the photos, sorry to get your hopes up (’cause I know you were holding your breath on that one). Oh well, at least I managed to startle Jack when he came to the door. It was really the best reaction I got all night — I should thank him.

Categories: life in the big city
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(First, this NASA photo is gorgeous and needs to be on a poster.)

Public transportation is such an amazing place for people-watching. I got on the subway last Thursday and sat down to find that across from me were a young man and an older woman conversing in an Asian language. It went something like “languagelanguagelanguageJesusChristlanguagelanguage-” (he reaches into his messenger bag and pulls out a zipper case, out of which he pulls two books) “languagelanguageBookofMormon languagelanguagelanguage…” And sure enough, his nametag reads “Elder Chung, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.”

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Categories: life in the big city
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No, I’m not going to talk about Vista. Which I plan never to own. My next machine is going to be a Mac.

The excitement of the week is that we’re getting new windows in the apartment. Not that there was anything wrong with the old ones, naturally. The people who own the building think that it should be made into fashoinable condos, so there has been cosmetic construction on the outside of the building since well before I moved in. Now, understand, the apartment is nice on the inside (mostly because we’ve made it that way), but the outside looks like a 1960s motel of the sort where you get to your front door via an outside balcony. I can’t imagine how fresh paint and hardwood floors will make one of these units worth half a million dollars, even in the inflated housing market up here. But there it is — we get to live around it for a while and come May, we’re out.

Anyway, powers that be decided that new windows should be put in sooner rather than later, so that started this morning.

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Categories: grad school, life in the big city
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Check these out:

Alan Tudyk reads a fan-written elegy for Wash.

Alan and Summer Glau play with dinosaurs.

And of course there are more where those came from.

Actual real-life logistics aside…guys, I think it is possible that we picked the wrong year to go to DragonCon.

Categories: Firefly
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Today’s Foxtrot:

Categories: comics
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(since I/we seem to have scarred her in the last post)

Go read today’s Get Fuzzy.

Up to the penultimate panel, I found it only amusing. But Bucky’s parting shot has me in hysterics!

Mendel was a monk. Mendel was a monk-monk. Just a regular monk. Later, he was an administrative monk.

For those who haven’t heard the story, that bit of classic eloquence entered the world courtesy of a biology instructor whose (supposedly) bimonthly lectures were supposed to earn our IB Biology class college credit, courtesy of Troy State University. He was utterly worthless and I cannot express how thankful we were that he only graced us with his presence on very rare occaisions.

However, Carmen had the presence of mind to write down certain gems as he lectured as a means of keeping her sanity, and “Mendel was a monk,” is the one I will never forget.

Categories: comics, home
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I’m going to be employed again.

I had two job interviews last week. The first was for a job I really wanted, as a guide at a local museum (a colonial house), and though I thought it went quite well, it apparently did not go quite well enough. Got the official rejection yesterday morning.

The second was an office assistant job in the payroll office at the college and consisted mainly of the interviewer talking at me for thirty or forty minutes (nice fellow, don’t get me wrong, but definately a talker). I was at the low point of a brush with a cold that day, and I thought I hadn’t come off as well as I might have – hard to get a word in at the best of times, and it was not the best of times. But he got back to me this morning and offered me the job and could I start Friday? Since it’s Payroll, part of my job would be delivering timecards all over campus every other Friday. It’s not much, but I’m feeling insecure about turning anything down right now and I’m leaning toward the idea of working two part-time jobs – especially since this seems so minimal. So I accepted the offer.

Coursework has been pretty light thus far, but it’s starting to pick up. I have two courses: a requisite overview of magazine publishing and a course in magazine design. Design started in earnest on Tuesday, as we had to present our first rough drafts of layouts for pages of mock-magazines. The overview will, I hope, finally kick into gear next week as we start work on the big project of the course (also revolving around a made-up magazine).

In lighter news, I’ve discovered television this month, partly due to Courtney’s influence, partly due to my having too much time on my hands, and partly due to the fact that I have a tv in my room. I’m not sure which is more is more novel, owning a television or having such a thing in my bedroom. Shockingly decadant. So I’ve discovered DS9, the new Doctor Who, Heroes, Gilmore Girls, and those are just the ones I’ve decided I like. Plus I’ve been going through Courtney’s collection of Buffy and Angel DVDs - after all, it is Joss Whedon…

Categories: Doctor Who, Star Trek, grad school, life in the big city, television
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