rachels gonna rach

7:12am: state of the rax!
So first of all it is pretty great to start my mornings to wake up at 5:30ish, work for an hour, and then go take a one to two mile walk, and then go back to work. Like, seriously. This lifestyle, I like it, even though it is ludicrously wholesome; it is just too warm for extended walking in the afternoon when I am done with work at 2:30 or so. Well, technically, Rik and I went out a couple of times even though it was in the 90s and did long walks, but we brought a ton of water and also I was kinda zonked afterwards. A mile or two in the morning is refreshing and almost upwaking like a shower would be, which is pretty great. I don't know if I will be able to spare the time for this when I am in school again, but on the other hand going to school gives me structured exercise in the process of biking there, so probably it is okay? And I will still have weekends.

I just got back from Boston, where my schedule looked like this:

• Attend the first day of Steer Roast. (a party thrown by my old dorm every year, which does involve roasting a steer but I completely ignore that part; alums way older than me, as well as a lot of friends of mine from ten years ago, come back into town and we all hang out and it's awesome)
• Skip the second and third days of Steer Roast to work on final papers.
• Attend a conference for work, taking a training for advanced users of a software package I had never seen before; this was both really challenging and really rewarding, in that I mostly caught up enough to get a lot out of the training, even though there would be a lot more work to do if I were going to deploy this thing. But I have books, and a dev environment set up on my machine!
• Spend two days catching up on work, seeing a small fraction of the people I would have liked to see, and having an extremely pleasant Providence double-date with my girlfriend, her wife, and her wife's girlfriend, during which we concluded that the worldBoston is extremely small as we all knew all of the others' friends in like four different ways.
• Spend the greater part of the weekend bridesqueering [0], including both fun parties and a bunch of carrying stuff, and helping to make sure two of my dear friends wed without troubles.
• When I wasn't doing that, three(!!!) people drove in to see me from different states, which was pretty amazing. larky  even did my nails! [1]

Okay so that was the Boston trip. Now I have this whole summer stretching out in front of me where all I have to do is work my job. I have a bunch of things planned, of course, but none of them are for school, and that is amazing. (I'll be talking about school in a different post.) My plans include doing some art, meeting more people in Tucson by actually going to events and doing activities [2], traveling a bunch (another wedding, Anthrocon, Pokémon Nationals, seeing Rik, work might send me to Singapore?), continuing to groove on how awesome living with krinndnz  has been, reading books that are not assigned by a professor, and spending a lot of time out in the desert. This plan is, I argue, pretty awesome.

In a bunch of ways I am still kind of getting back into my own head after the debacle that was my year in Indiana. There were awesome things there --- I met some great people, I learned a lot of things, I feel like some aspects of my lifestyle changed for the better --- but between the breakup and the overwork and the comparative loneliness, I sort of worked my way out of my head to go live somewhere more nebulous, and that's not actually what I want. One of the things I'm trying to do both in my academic practice and in my practice of living is to take myself more seriously as part of the process of taking others more seriously. It's had really interesting effects on how I think about species, which obviously is part of my academic project but at least as importantly affects how I interact with myself on a day to day basis. I'm not quite sure how to express this yet other than it's good. But... it's good? It's good.

Any of y'all have exciting summer plans? :)

[0] Bridesqueering: Like being a bridesmaid, a bridesmatron, a bridesman, or a bridesmotherfucker, but with one's gender or marital status expressed as some combination of "none of the above" and "none of your business." Unrelated to bridequeering, where you try to get the bride to make out queerly at the bachelorette party.

[1] You can see an awful picture here. It looks better in person, but even in this photo you can tell it matches my color scheme, and color scheme trumps gender stereotypes for what I do with my appearance, so I will probably keep doing this.

[2] other than Pokémon ^^;;

This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/102445.html.

6:10pm: not dead, I swear
As of this morning I have no homework left for the semester except for my two final papers. Now that's a pretty major except, but they're not due until May 8th or so and I expect each one to take me maybe 30 hours total, so that's not actually too bad. I feel like I can at least sort of breathe, and that's nice. I even care about both of my final paper topics! I'm writing about the connection between Junot Díaz's Drown and Dubliners for one class, and writing about commissioning furry porn as part of identity work for the other. It's actually super exciting to be writing a paper that (a) isn't about furries, because while I love furries we are not the only important thing in the universe, and (b) will let me take advantage of my background in Joyce studies without being nothing but a deeper and deeper delve into stories that have been around for a hundred years. I am really excited, y'all. This is awesome. ...we'll see if I am still excited when it is May 7th and they kick me out of the Diesel at 11 PM and I am like "WHY AM I STILL WRITING FINAL PAPERS" but for now hooray!

I've been trying to do at least one big desert hike per week when I am in town. It's pretty awesome. I've also done a lot of other long walks lately (5.2mi today, whee!); I can walk like a half-mile north of my house and all of the sudden I can follow a trail along the wash (that's desert for "where a river would be if this weren't a desert," for those playing the home game) for like ten miles in either direction. Sure, sometimes you have to go under a road, and there are buildings along it, but there are still beautiful mountain views and cactus wrens feeding their babies inside a cactus and one time I even saw a coyote. Yesterday Rik and I wandered around the national park for a few hours. We saw a rattlesnake! All of this deserting has me skilled enough to tell a snake from a branch, but not skilled enough to tell what kind of snake; I was like "Ooh look a snake!" and it got startled and was like "Rattle rattle, motherfucker" and well that was some adrenaline! I didn't turn around, but backed up quickly until it turned and bolted and then so did we. I had read about what to do, and had looked at lists of "which snakes are dangerous," but I didn't really internalize it. Probably I should do that. That rattle is pretty terrifying, seriously.

Other than that? Uh. I dunno. I'll be in Boston 5/4 to 5/14, including for Steer Roast, and it looks like I will be at Anthrocon after all. At some point I'll be back in Seattle. I should be at Pokémon Nationals. I still love the desert. I still need more local friends. I just got a joke a friend of mine made like a week ago and it was really clever but I want to keep that cleverness to myself? ...that's not a very good blog story.

How are you all doing? What should I even be talking about here?

This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/102053.html.

9:04pm: oh also, mary's mob, 7 PM thursday
A bunch of people are like "Thursday? What are you doing?" I cannot see you all at the same time. EXCEPT THAT I CAN. 

Therefore, Mary Chung's, Thursday, 7 PM.

let me know if you plan to make it? but also just show up if you want <3

This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/101089.html.

6:09pm: SEITAN. in the FACE
So I am done with all of my homework for the week as well as optional reading and it is only Sunday. I thought about doing next week's homework but for a variety of annoying reasons it's not clear what that _is_ and so instead I am posting my seitan recipe. WITH PICTURES. I took most of the pictures in Indiana so you will be getting pictures from multiple kitchens. How cool is that? I argue: Pretty cool.

Okay so this recipe is based on the Seitan O' Greatness recipe and various versions that flew around the vegan internet in the mid to late oughts. If you can eat nightshades you might even prefer one of those --- they use chili powder and tomato paste and the consistency is a little different, and they work quite well. However, I can't eat those things, so this recipe doesn't include them. Also, while you probably already know this, be warned: While this can be tweaked to fit most sets of allergies or dietary restrictions, the main ingredient is gluten. If you can't eat gluten, DON'T EAT THIS. If you are a little gluten-sensitive but you can manage soy sauce on things just fine or whatever, DON'T EAT THIS. It is basically pure gluten. Uh, sorry. :)

( recipe and images under the cut )
This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/99893.html.

11:04am: Contact Information, Help Mindanao
Hey all, I'm working on my annual end-of-year email (yes I know it's late) and am asking in advance: Would you like to get a 5000-10000 word email about my life? No is a fine answer, yes is a fine answer, "yes but I probably won't read it" is also a fine answer. If the answer is yes or yes-but-you-won't-read-it, and you don't already know you're on my mailing list, please let me know. The mailing list gets two to four messages a year with things like "I am moving to Arizona" or huge rambles about the state of my life that are too long for LJ/DW. No problem if you don't want to get them! Comments are screened so you can provide your email address if you do. Please actually give me your email address if you do this. :) I hope to have the email done in a couple of days? I'm... on the fourth section of my outline? ^^;; seriously folks these messages are long

Also, I know a lot of people missed the news because it happened while we were all like "AHHHH FINALS" or "AHHHH HOLIDAYS" or both, but there was a horrible typhoon in the Phillipines and relief efforts are ongoing. Here is a list of charities that come recommended by folks who have thought about this more than me (although it sounds like the Red Cross may not always be the best choice); it would be hard to go wrong with any of those. Alternately, if you are the sort to participate in fandom auctions around this stuff, help_mindanao over at this link offers the opportunity to either do things for people and have them donate to charity, or to donate to charity in exchange for people doing things for you. I'm currently in the more-money-than-time camp and haven't been able to look through it much, but if you're not, or want to encourage people who aren't to help out, this is a pretty great way! (Also, these cookies are liable to be great. Just sayin'.)

...it's supposed to be three things that make a post, right? Uh? You don't get a third thing, sorry. :)

This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/98550.html.

10:29am: Homestuck.
 So, because my housemate Nicole has been begging me to for months, once the semester ended I finally gave Homestuck a try. I have strong and mixed feelings! That I will try to keep minimally spoilery but there's no way I can completely avoid it. At the very least probably most of it will mean nothing to you if you have no idea what's going on in the series, so it shouldn't be a big deal.

So, what is Homestuck? It's a web...fiction-comic-thing by Andrew Hussie, which starts here, though don't click that and follow it just yet. The conceit, according to his helpful for-new-readers page, is that you are playing a text-based adventure game by typing commands, and then the comic is what happens when you type those commands. Earlier comics he did like this were based on user input (Pokémon folks will remember the Black Adventures comic which I hadn't realized was based on this but totally is) but Homestuck, especially after the first bits, seems to be mostly a story he is telling and ignoring user input. I don't even see a place on the site to give user input anymore. As far as I am concerned, that is fine; I tried to read one of his earlier things based on user input, Problem Sleuth, and the beginning was so terrible I gave up.

Anyway!

Here are some reasons that you should maybe read this thing:

• It does really interesting things with the medium of storytelling; it uses flash (including game sequences you play), sound, text, animation, and the actual fact of your clicking between panels as crucial parts of the process of what it's doing. I find this really neat and not something I've seen before. If you're interested in playing with media in this way, I do recommend checking this out.
• It's also super meta. Metafiction is not everyone's favorite thing, but if it's one of yours, oh man, you should at least give this a shot.
• Some of the characters will grab you and cause you to have strong feelings about them, and you get to watch pretty much all of them grow and learn, which is pretty great.
• There are all manner of references to video games that I find hilarious. There are also references to movies but I find them neutral because I haven't seen any of them and don't really care, but if you are into pop movies from the 80s, oh man.
• The world-building is clever and way more consistent than I expected it to be.
• There is tons of content and you can catch up gradually if you'd like, or skim everything and them jump around to follow the threads you most care about in more detail.
• Oh my god there are so many building blocks that fit together over time and make you go ohhhhhhhhhh
• The troll relationship structure is so amazing. Spoilers.
• People you genuinely care about will still die when that's what the story demands.

Here are some reasons that you should maybe not read this thing:

• The beginnings of each section are so boringly and blindlingly terrible that if I hadn't promised Nicole I would try seriously to read it I would have given up after ten pages. God the beginnings are awful and crude and boring and slow. The beginnings after the first one are even worse because now you're invested in the story and want it to continue but what is he doing? He's expositing according to a bad formula again auuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuughh. (Maybe the formula works for some people, but I had so much trouble. I still haven't read most of the beginning of act 6 I just don't caaaaaaaaaare)
• Sometimes Homestuck demands more of a reader than you actually want to put into a webcomic. One of the characters (fortunately, a minor one) talks in morse code. No way, man. I am not decoding Morse code for a webcomic, even one I like. I just don't know what that character is saying.
• It will take you 10-20 hours to catch up. Seriously. Low estimate.
• I'm pretty sure the comic is super inaccessible in terms of, say, screenreaders.
• A lot of the story is told in chat logs, and everyone talks in different colors, some harder to read than others, and many of the characters have intentional affectations along leetspeak lines that make their dialogue harder to read. This is occasionally really awesome when clever double meanings arise 8ut far more often is just annnnnnnnoyyyyyyyyinnnnnnnng. ::::(
• Like almost any webcomic, the art starts bad and gets better.
• There are places where it's so meta that you are kind of just tapping your foot waiting for him to get back to telling the fucking story. Some of those places last more than a hundred pages.
• People you genuinely care about will still die when that's what the story demands.

So should you read it? I dunno? I am glad I did and keep thinking about it because I mainlined it all in like two days while sick, but I don't recommend it without reservations because of all the frustrating parts. What I will say is that it's definitely awesome even if it isn't always good, and if you decide to give it a shot but aren't hooked by it at first, just power through for a while and see if you start caring after a while. If you still don't care once you're past the first act or two, well, sorry. But I know I'm not the only person who was like bored bored bored bored HOOKED NOW, so it's worth a shot.
This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/98248.html.

4:23pm: Semester OVER!
okay so I owe y'all updates about eighty gazillion things in my life and I also have a whole lot of things I want to process out in my own head but today let's talk about: ANOTHER SEMESTER OF GRAD SCHOOL. For those playing the home game, this was my 9th semester of grad school: six at UMass Boston getting an MA in English, two at IU working towards a PhD in Gender Studies [0], and one at UA working towards a PhD in Gender and Women's Studies. This semester I only took two classes, both of them required courses, and now my grades are in. I haven't gotten feedback from my professors yet, but here is how they went:

• Feminist Theories 1: I was initially worried that this would mostly be a repeat of things I had already read and talked about. There were a few readings that more or less worked like that, but because so much of my Feminist Theories class at IU was "Butler and Butler Butler with a side of Butlering Butler," actually a lot of this stuff was new for me. Particularly I hadn't really stared down Marx and Marxism in any sustained or structured way. I'm still not quite sure who won that staring contest, if anyone, but I think it was worth doing. Things from this class that I particularly found useful: Althusser's work on ideologies and interpellation, Saidiya Hartman's Scenes of Subjection for thinking about depictions of violence and trauma, Hartman again on the way racialization happens, Derrida although I still don't think I actually get it in any real way. My final paper here was about how furries are constrained by but also rupture capitalism, which took me into the professor's book Against The Romance of Community as well as the work of J. K. Gibson-Graham, both of which I want to follow up on. I'm honestly not super-happy with how the paper turned out even though I spent a lot of time on it; I am not sure if that's because I spent enough time and did enough revision to see how much more there was to do, because I was panicking at that point in the semester, or because it just actually wasn't very good. I got an A in the class, so it can't have been that bad, so I'm guessing it was a little of all three. (There was some of the just not very good. Oh god I struggled to find a coherent voice when I was unwilling to just be like "arglebargle I am the author look at what a furry I am." This is a longer-term thing to think about actually --- some of my work only makes sense with me in it, but for the stuff that doesn't work that way, what should I do? Dunno.)
• Feminism and Related Social Movements: I was super excited about this class and in bits and flashes it even exceeded my expectations but in other places class discussions just didn't really get going. (For a lot of folks it was their last class of the week and you can kinda tell when people haven't done the reading? It's frustrating but them's the breaks. With the way grad students are overworked I cannot blame them. I would not do the reading sometimes, except the horrible pangs of guilt I experience sitting in a classroom unprepared are way worse than just not having fun for however many hours it takes me to do the homework.) I think that I could have approached the readings with a different set of questions in mind from the beginning of the course and gotten more out of them; the way I was thinking wasn't really a good model for dealing with the subject matter I wanted to work with, and I could feel it chafe with a lot of the texts. A couple of them I revisited and got a lot more out of; others maybe I will, maybe I won't. Things from this class that I particularly found useful: Rereading Chela Sandoval's Methodology of the Oppressed with an eye toward the first two chapters instead of the later chapters (that is, considering her actual practical argument rather than crazy Barthes love ramblings, which are basically one of my favorite things), Deborah Gould's Moving Politics for how to write about a movement you are deeply embedded in [1], Jasbir Puar's Terrorist Assemblages which is super helpful even though sometimes it frustrates me through its bleakness, and even though I didn't like it I want to come back to Grace Hong's The Ruptures Of American Capital because even as I was reading I could tell it was doing something on a level I just hadn't figured out yet. A conversation with the professor helped me see it as an alternate avenue to writing about social movements directly, and I thought that was really interesting, but I still don't 100% get it.
• Anyway, my final paper! On a different bullet because that one got super long! I started off with an outline and a bunch of notes and actually I wrote a few pages and then I looked at it on Monday, the day it was due, and said "Rachel, what you are doing here would be exploitative and misrepresentative of yourself and of people dear to you. It's pretty awful frankly. Stop this nonsense at once." At 11 AM on the day the paper was due, I deleted everything I had written and started completely from scratch. ...And got an extension to Thursday morning. I wrote about furries as producing self-knowledge primarily in opposition to what is said about us in the media or on the Internet by trolls, and suggested that furries needed to consider Sandoval's differential consciousness, moving between different methods of knowledge production depending on what is most useful at the time. This is actually really hard for a large group to do! But I think it would be way better than focusing on negative publicity and then trying to fix it through a particular kind of positive publicity. I mean, I am a person who believes very seriously that they are a fox, at least when I do not think I am being completely ridiculous. I don't want to be arguing about whether or not that means I am more likely to be a homosexual, or more interested in sex than the average college student. I want to figure out what it means that I'm a fucking fox, holy shit what is that. We need to try lots of different methods! I don't even know all the methods we should be trying! I'm considering trying to work this into something I can internet-publish for furries because I think it's important but I'm not 100% sure yet. I'm waiting to get feedback from my professor on it before I figure out next steps. Again, I got an A in the class, so the paper can't have been a complete and unmitigated disaster. (Also my advisor smiled when she listened to me talk about it, which only for sure means that I was super enthusiastic as I got into it, but that on its own is a good sign.)

So next semester there are two things I am doing for sure and then other things I may do:

• Feminist Theories 2: THE REVENGE! okay it's not actually called THE REVENGE. But it will be more contemporary feminist theories and I look forward to it. I don't have a particular approach to this. It's a required course. So... I will take it!
• Independent Study with my advisor: I decided to do this. At first I was like "uggghhhhh I don't know if I have time" but I had a super useful conversation with Ruth who was all "Hey, how excited are you?" and I was like "hella excited, I moved to Arizona to work with her, the reading list she put together for a colleague was amazing, I'd be doing a variant of that." We talked about it and yeah it will be a lot of reading but it won't have a final paper and it should be OK. Plus, as described, hella excited.
• Feminist Knowledge Production: As far as I can tell this is the revenge of the methods class I took at IU. I'm hoping to transfer out of it because (a) I've already taken a very similar class and (b) I don't feel like I got a whole lot out of the methods class at IU. Not that it was terrible or anything, just that it was very breadth not depth and I am at the point in my graduate career where I need some depth please thank you very much. I will almost certainly not be taking this unless the chair advises me that there will be no way to transfer this in, since it won't be offered again for two years, and at that point I would like to be either done or verrrrry close to done with classes.
• Chican@ Literatures: I can't get the official title of this class because our scheduling system is down and I don't have a syllabus kicking around. I would be taking this mostly for the requirement, but the professor seems awesome and I have friends taking it and I think overall I would dig it. Plus hooray more use of my actual English skills! ... well disciplinary-English versus language-English. Arguably I'd be better served by language-Spanish. (Is there disciplinary-Spanish?) I'm prrrrobably going to take this, which will put me at three classes, but my schedule will work like it does this semester more or less. I am still waffling slightly. If I get the syllabi and it looks like a disaster I will go down to two classes. Or if the administration won't let me do the independent study because I am deciding too late, then I will just take this and do some of the reading for the independent study not-for-credit.
• Outside chance of some anthropology or geography class instead

Other academic things to do as the semester starts:

• Follow up with the Rhetoric professor and advanced graduate student who were all "dude, your project sounds amazing" and meet up and talk about working together on stuff
• Apply to conferences: this one is due Dec 31 and this one is due Jan 15, though it is a less good fit. ...and they're both on the same weekend. Huh. I hadn't noticed that, which suggests I have been distracted. PERHAPS BY GRADUATE SCHOOL
• Follow up with the costume designer who had the car accident and was thus out of touch
• Follow up with the person who did Second Life classroom work
• Follow up on Geography contacts to talk about research methods
• Send an email to Liz Kennedy I guess?

Yeah so I should be busy. But that's good! I have stuff to do in school that I am excited about. FUCK THE HATERS. RAXOLOTLS GONNA RAX A LOT.
[0] Technically I took reading credits during the summer semester. The end result of this was (a) me reading some books and (b) one part of the university giving a few thousand dollars to another part. Whoop-de-do. Before I was sure I would get into UA, let alone accept their transfer offer, it seemed like a good idea to have the option open. I can't transfer them, so it matters not at all now.

[1] With bonus points for being able to say "also we were all sleeping together" without having tenure yet, and winning awards! Someday that will hopefully be me. ^^;;; This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/97701.html.

11:28pm: pkmncollectors feedback spec
If you don't care about pkmncollectors, you can ignore this post. LJ's fuckage is the impetus for making a new feedback system, but really pkmncollectors needed one anyway. I feel nervous about writing this myself (god I am so fucking rusty it is embarrassing) but I have done things like this many years ago and also Krinn said she would help and she is way better at this stuff sooooo... this should be possible. Basically we want ebay feedback, but not on ebay, and tied to openID. Here's what I think it needs to be able to do. 

OPENING PAGE:

• "this is the pkmncollectors feedback system, blah blah text"
• form: enter openid username, get list of feedback for them on new page
• form: go to "insert feedback" page using openID login

FEEDBACK DISPLAY PAGE:

• provide the total number of positive, negative, and neutral feedbacks at a glance
• display a table of all of the feedback that exists for that user

INSERT FEEDBACK PAGE:

• your openID should already be determined
• you enter a username
• radio buttons: positive, neutral, negative
• comments section (optional)
• link to transaction (optional)

CONFIRMATION PAGE:

• it says "yup, your feedback worked!"
• maybe just do the feedback display for that user so you can confirm it yourself with your very own eyes and/or screenreader and/or perl script

FEEDBACK DATABASE:

• feedback giver openID
• feedback receiver openID
• positive/neutral/negative status
• edited to add once I started working: buy/sell/trade!
• comments for transaction
• link to transaction
• edited to add once I started working: date!

BACKEND:

• for now, just run this on autumnfox.akrasiac.org
• probably this can be done in sqlite, it's like one table, oh look python and sqlite are already friends
• have someone make sure I wasn't a complete idiot about security
• like every language has openID modules but probably I only care about python and/or apache

THINGS TO CONSIDER FOR FUTURE VERSIONS:

• banned users
• what if someone is lj user rax but twitter user rax also uses pkmncollectors?
• some way to delete feedback without having database access (maybe a separate beefier mod interface)
• spin off onto its own VM or just onto sunyshore
• pretty pictures of plush pokemon
• other stuff

This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/97035.html.

9:45am: Official Rax Pronouns 3.0 Release Notes
This document describes the proper procedures for referring to rax using third-person pronouns. It supersedes all previous such documentation.

The correct pronoun for referring to rax is now "they." This is true whether you are referring to them as rax , Rax, Rachel, Rach, Kitty-Fox, or any other approved appellation. The pronoun "she" from pronoun release 2.0 is deprecated but still supported; there are not currenly plans to cease supporting this pronoun because the tech industry vertical maintains support for the 2.0 reference API as a requirement. Calls to the 2.0 system may occasionally produce warning messages encouraging you to update your pronoun usage, depending on the context of your statement. Use of the 1.0 pronoun API is explicitly unsupported and may lead to erratic and unexpected results; it is not recommended. If you find old documentation or legacy code that refers to rax with legacy pronouns, please inform them so that the situation may be remedied.

rax offers limited support for other gender-neutral pronoun calls; while "ey" and "xie" are not explicitly supported, these pronouns have been successful in limited field testing. If there is interest, a patch release may be offered in the future supporting these alternate pronoun sets. Please contact your sales representative for more information.

This change to the pronoun API does not constitute a change in the core rax gender identities module; no such changes are planned, although all things are possible. For more information about the core gender identities module, please contact Customer Support.

This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/95333.html.

9:11am: Life update
I am not just a machine that does tasklists, I promise. Of course this post is also a list, but it's not a tasklist, so at least it's something?

• School: Is going better, overall, at least for me. I'm excited about my final projects even if they weren't what I initially hoped to be doing, and I'm seeing people on campus I can build alliances with. I'm also getting excited about theory again, which is never a bad thing. Occasionally I say things that make me sound a little crazy: "Yes, but I want to be interpellated as an animal by the state," but I'm actually being challeged in really productive ways by one professor and I appreciate that a lot.
• Work: Remains... workly? Distance is beting harder these past couple of weeks than normal but after this weekend I will be less of a stressball and have some plans for trying to work on that. I'm getting some longer-term stuff done and that always feels a little more distancing because I am not talking to people about it every day. That doesn't mean it's not important.
• Pokémon: I'll be in Providence playing competitive Pokémon this weekend. A: This is awesome. B: How is this my life. I don't actually think I'll do very well, because I've been putting my free time into school, work, and relationships rather than obsessively testing things in a card game. I am OK with this. It should still be fun.
• Relationships: I got to see Ruth recently, which was great and amazingly stress-reducing and involved a lot of exciting cookery. (Getting together with people I am involved with or attracted to almost always results in our producing lots of food. I ... do not know what to make of this? Except mmmmm, seitan.) It looks like I will get to see her more often in a few months, which is even more exciting! Also, we're coming up on three years. Holy crap. Also, I got to have Rik over for like eleven days which just... wow. At first having both Rik and Krinn here was super confusing, but once I figured it out, that was really nice. It's amazing to feel so supported and to spend time with people who I love dearly. Also Rik made me a cake when I turned 27 again. <3 Clearly I need to trick everyone into moving to the same city in five years. The distance is hard, and having Rik leave Monday and then tomorrow leaving Krinn (who is amazing and wonderful to live with and I am sad when she leaves for work in the morning which is not to say that I'm unhappy that she has a job but that I would like to be sufficiently spoiled as to have someone to lean on at all times) to go to Boston is currently feeling way harder than I expected it to. It's kind of a crash. But Boston is Boston, so I think I will be OK.
• Real estate: Pending extreme fuckery, the house in Bloomington will be sold as of tomorrow. That was an expensive mistake. Live and learn? Or maybe "make sure your advisor is happy somewhere before you buy real estate there?" I don't know. I'm not sure what the moral of this story was other than "ha ha sometimes you get fucked over by things that have nothing to do with you." I already knew that lesson, life. Why the repeats? Lucky for me, I am in a good enough state that getting fucked over only makes me sad, not in any sort of serious danger. Go team Nokia bought my startup I guess. When it's all over and done with, I am ritually washing my hands of Indiana.
• Pronouns: I'll be writing another post about this soon, but my preferred pronoun is now "they." I'd appreciate it if you used that pronoun when referring to me. If you could hold your questions until the pronoun post, which I hope to write right after this one if work stays quiet, I'd appreciate it.
• Overall: I am happier in Tucson than I was in Bloomington; I feel safer in Tuscon than I did in Bloomington; I am glad that I moved here. I still need to develop more of a local social group, but I feel better equipped to do that here and I've made some progress. I have friends. Who are not students. This rocks. Living in multiple time zones is still weird --- half of my clocks are set to Eastern time for work and half are set to local --- but it's producing interesting shifts in my thinking that I don't know how to express yet. I'm a huge stressball right now but I foresee things getting better; I have all of my hard assignments done except final papers and those are fun because I get to pick the topic and write about the stuff I've been thinking all semester, and I have some vacation days to actually use and have my time in California in December be calming. And some projects for fun that I am working on that are silly but fulfilling. So: Yay!

This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/95024.html.

6:52pm: identified.com: Likely not worth your time
So identified.com came to my attention today because it is sending email, gradually, to every email address and mailing list at MIT. I am still on a number of mailing lists at MIT, including some that haven't been used in many years, and they are all getting email in alphabetical order. (Does anyone know what sh-leech-wrestling@mit.edu was even for?? I am pretty sure I never wrestled any leeches.) Now, most likely what happened is that they set up an automatic mailer, and set up a webform so that people could invite their friends to the service over the web just by sending some sort of automated HTTP request, and then some "clever" MIT undergraduate who just discovered that you could get a list of every mailing list on campus [0] bashed together some sort of script in order to send requests to all of them in turn. Nice, nice, good for you kidlet, you have a bright future in being a dick.

I found the company on twitter and sent them a message saying "Hey, you probably want to turn that off." Now, this company brands itself on experts on social networking, and their blog is all about how to not screw up on social networking and thereby not be able to get a job. This is hilarious, because according to gossip this service is apparently their product launch. To add insult to injury, when I tweeted at them, I didn't get any real response --- not super unsurprising, business hours are over on the east coast and almost over in California --- but I got an automated email to the email address associated with my twitter account, with the subject "Rachel, when companies search for you, what do they find?" It was HTML email (not multipart! Just HTML!) and was an invite for me to join them so they could help me because "Companies and professionals are evaluating you on Facebook." So they run a spam gateway, mentioning them on Twitter gets you added to a marketing database, and they're trying to tell me how to come across professionally?

Well, Identified, if anyone's trying to evaluate me on Facebook, they won't have much luck, since I don't have a facebook. But if someone's trying to evaluate you, now they'll find this blog post. Cheers. Luckily for you, I don't care about SEO.


Edited to add: They responded as follows: "@raxvulpine It seems a single MIT email address was synced and our software wasn't written for MIT's list serve system. Emails are off." On the one hand, it's nice of them to apologize, on the other hand, blaming it on "MIT's list serve system" demonstrates either that they don't understand what's going on or that they don't think that I understand what's going on. It's hard to tell in 140 characters; hopefully they get it fixed. And then I never hear from them again.

Edited again to add: I heard privately about what happened; it's not quite what I expected but it's also not "MIT's list serve system." It's super embarrassing for them, but it's not public information, so I will leave it at that. On the plus side, it's definitely fixed.

[0] Pretty sure there's a qy invocation for this; you might even just be able to do it with stella. I think it's stella? It's been a long time.
This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/94261.html.

8:37am: State of the Rax

• Realized this morning while talking to Krinn that I am simultaneously very stressed and not depressed at all, which is unusual for me. It's kind of amazing, because I am not depressed, fuck yes. But in the past when I've been super stressed the depression was kind of a coping mechanism around not caring that much because, you know, nothing really matters. (Anyone can see.) And so why bother engaging with the stress? Right now, I care, dammit. I want to do well in my classes. I want to do well in my job. I want to support my friends and loved ones. And daaaaaang that's a lot of work. I will take it over the alternative, although I really want to reduce the stress, because I can feel it weighing on me (and I'm grinding my teeth in my sleep a lot, ugh --- this is something that has happened intermittently to me since I was small, and tends to go away when I get my stress levels back down to manageable, although apparently it has been pretty consistent lately; at one point I tried a mouthguard and it stopped the grinding but also caused me to wake up all the time, which was not worth it). 
• Grad school: Classes are getting better, which is pretty great, and I am enjoying the majority of my readings a fair bit, even though occasionally I look at something like Descartes and think "While I understand that I should have read this in order to get a PhD in something humanitiesy, this is so fucking dumb." [0] I've also been spending time meeting faculty from other departments and traversing the academy in order to find people to work with on my research. I'm not quite sure where this process will end up yet but if nothing else the conversations are really exciting and fun. I actually found someone in academia who knew what a furry was! That was pretty awesome. There is also stupid departmental drama but it does not merit my or your attention to discuss further. [1] Overall I am feeling more excited and motivated, which was good, because I was at a really low point like a month ago.
• Work: Has been slow this week, which is nice because I had a paper due yesterday. This working 6-2 or 6:30-2:30 thing is a little crazy, but ultimately works out. In general work is pretty awesome. I need to figure out when I next go and visit them; sometimes the phone can be a little tough. On the plus side, I am actually helping customers do real work of value, which is a hard feeling to beat. And I have metrics! And I do well at them! Oh, if only gender studies had metrics.
• Pokemon: This is sort of my main leisure-time activity? I played in some tournaments, came away with one Championship Point (if you get enough, you get an invite to the World Championships), and most importantly had a lot of fun. I got a little down at one event where I made a stupid mistake and lost a chance at a very high place because of it, but what can you do? ... If you are me the answer is apparently "play a bunch of games of speed chess afterward to calm your nerves." One of the people I played with said "It's cool, dude, this is just for fun" and my response was "This is how I have fun." He gave me a look, which was fair, but I wasn't joking. I will be going to a Regionals tournament, which should be much bigger and allow me to meet lots of new people. It's sort of like meeting new people through chess, except everyone isn't either a middle-aged man or a nine-year-old prodigy. [2]
• Tucson: Making friends is slow but proceeds apace; feeling enmeshed in the community will take some more work, which I hope to put in over time. But oh my god the climate, the geography, the materiality of this place are so perfect for me. I love the mountains. I love the sky. I love the air, I love the bike lanes, I love the plant life, I even love the terrifying peccaries who show up in packs and hold my house under siege. (Seriously. Pigs the size of small wolves.) I wish I had more time to engage with it all. I need to prioritize engaging with it all. I, just, it's mid-October and the high today is 93. HOW DID I EVER LIVE ANYWHERE ELSE.
• House in Bloomington: Is pending a sale with a signed offer. I am not counting my chickens until they hit puberty, but this is promising. I will be losing a ton of money but I am just, barely, by a finger, in the range of acceptable losses.
• Friends and loved ones: A lot of people very dear to me are going through some really bad shit right now, and that is part of why I am so stressed. There's not so much I can do about it, but I do what I can; if there's something I can do for you that I don't realize, please drop me a line. I don't have a lot of temporal resources, but I have many other kinds. And I care. <3
• In conclusion: I'm a stressball (oh god am I a stressball, fur flying everywhere) but I am nonetheless happy. Reducing stress levels is probably important longterm, but I prefer this situation to a whole lot of recent alternatives.

[0] Terrifying thought: Do other people think this about the authors I like??
[1] It is based on real issues and has real effects on people I care about, and thus is worth mentioning, but the way to deal with that is not to rehash it all on LJ.
[2] This is sort of an unfair characterization --- in particular there were a couple of awesome women who were also very strong players in the Boston chess scene --- but it's how it feels at large events especially. And I'm being nice to Pokemon; while there are a lot more women in the game overall, the top levels are still mostly male, and a lot of the online community is awfully... representative of structural gender inequalities and biases. So far though tournaments and leagues have been super pleasant, and the only person I've seen do something obviously sexist was a twelve-year-old who shat a brick when I called him on it.
This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/94159.html.

9:50am: all the weekends in 2011
Here is my weekend schedule for the rest of the year:

• OCT 7-9: saturday organizing pokemon tournament, sunday playing in one
• OCT 14-16: paper due, maybe a pokemon tournament if I have time
• OCT 21-23: visit Ruth! <3
• OCT 28-30: Rik in town! <3
• NOV 4-6: Rik still in town! <3 <3 <3
• NOV 11-13: either pokemon regionals in LA or maybe Anna visit? need to collapse this waveform --- or bonus secret plan! EDIT: Doing bonus secret plan
• NOV 18-20: currently empty, waffling about flying to Boston EDIT: doing homework
• NOV 25-27: in Wisconsin for thanksgiving
• DEC 2-4: work on final papers EDIT: and pkmncollectors meetup!
• DEC 9-11: probably not catgirl goth rave, work on last final paper if not done EDIT: Anna visiting!
• DEC 16-18: probably catgirl goth rave, need to pin this down EDIT: Catgirl Goth Rave for sure
• DEC 23-25: Christmas with Krinn's family
• DEC 30-JAN 1: no idea yet, tempted to come back home because I will have been in SF for so long EDIT: definitely coming back home, have to judge the Tucson Pokemon City Championships!

There will probably be some Pokemon city championships in there too, but of course those aren't scheduled yet because THAT WOULD BE HELPFUL. It's almost like they know that I will probably adjust my schedule to go and grumble about it no matter what they do. ;) ...I may, though, have too much of a life to be the very best like no one ever was.

EDIT: Bonus secret plan: NOV 11-13 also has a Pokemon Regional in Rhode Island. I could get everything except the seeing Anna step done if I did that. Hmmmmmm.

This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/93342.html.

8:55am: catgirl goth rave: when?
Not crossposted because of polls. CGR Six (holy wow) will almost
certainly be in San Francisco this December; the question is which
weekend.

Poll #1782624 Catgirl Goth Rave: When?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 15

When should Catgirl Goth Rave be?

12:55pm: Silicon Dawn and Graduate School
So I got my copy of the Silicon Dawn Tarot today. (You should all go buy one.) Because I'm having angst over this lately, I decided to ask it about graduate school --- how it was going, why am I here, what am I getting out of it. I realized that rather than traditional tarot spreads, most of which other than three-card draw I've never really liked, I should use an arrangement of cards that meant something to me personally, a means of organizing information that felt natural to me.

Thus, the Pokemon Spread was born.
( cut for huge image and tons of text )

This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/92448.html.

1:33pm: Reading Notes: Fraser, "Rethinking The Public Sphere"
( the official bourgeois public sphere is the institutional vehicle for a major historical transformation in the nature of political domination )
This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/91382.html.

12:01pm: Notes on Habermas, "Political Functions of the Public Sphere"
Hey all, remember how I used to post notes on readings I did? I'm gonna try to do that sometimes again for things I am doing notes-aside on rather than notes-annotated. Don't expect quite as many as last fall, but hopefully these are still interesting to a few of you!

( Critics occupy a position both inside and outside of the public. )

This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/91079.html.

8:08am: Things I Am Grooving On
Here's some stuff I am enjoying right now.

• Salads. Man, until recently, I was not such a big fan of salad. And if I haven't had a large meal in a day yet, I will still sort of look at the salad and say "That's nice, where is my tofu or seitan." But getting fresh vegetables, finding accessories you actually like, picking a good dressing? These things make salad better. Also I think Krinn just has a magic touch or something, because it doesn't turn out that good when I make it. (Except that one I made in a wrap a couple of weeks ago. That was pretty astounding. I think I just got lucky, though.)
• Camper Van Beethoven's New Roman Times. This comes to me by way of circuit_four via Rik, I'm pretty sure, and while Pitchfork thought it was kind of heavy-handed I don't agree with them for the most part. (Ok maybe the Might Makes Right track is a bit too heavy-handed.) It's really musically interesting in places (I would like to find more of what they call "math rock") and there's more subtlety to it than is apparent at first listen, both lyrically and musically. The main beef I have with is is that it's really best appreciated having Rik or someone else who really knows the album in the car with you on like hour 20 of a road trip explaining all of the references and the coherent story behind everything, and you're listening to everything he says and really taking it in because what else are you going to do as you drive through a town named Yellow in freaking Texas? And by the end you are like "Oh man all of this is so clever" but if someone had just handed you the album you would be like "What in the hells are they talking about why is the Unabomber working for Texas what what what." So this is a cautious recommendation, unless you like concept albums or can make Rik explain it to you, in which case oh my god go check this out right now. (They're playing in Arizona on the 13th. I am somewhat tempted.)
• Jennifer Chung's debut novel Terroryaki!. Full disclosure: The author is a good friend of mine. This novel was the winner of last year's Three-Day Novel Contest, which by the way starts tomorrow if any of you have more free time than me. There are moments where you can tell that the first draft was written in three days, but despite this and even in part because of this it is a hilarious read, and an absolutely wonderful airplane antidote to spending hours and hours reading Marx and Marxists. It's fluffy, sure, but if it's a fluff sandwich, it's made with real bread, not the bleached-out stuff that rips all over when you try to sink your teeth in it. The main characters feel like real people, and make real decisions, and I found myself rooting for them and hoping for good things to happen to them, rather than for everyone's life to descend back into the misery that is the stuff of post/modern existence. And then, because it was fluff and not, like, Dubliners, everyone wasn't miserable at the end! And I smiled a lot and was energized to go read more Marxists! (Wendy Brown's States of Injury, while I don't agree with everything she says? Actually really good.) So if you're into that sort of thing, check it out. (Especially if you know Jen --- the characters very much aren't her but sometimes you can hear her voice coming through and it's awesome.)
• pkmncollectors . I know, I know, this is a terrible habit --- and it is. But not only is pkmncollectors a great place to get playable cards at lower than market price, but it's a really friendly community and I've enjoyed all of my interactions with folks there. I... may start collecting Shaymins, and not (just) the cards. They're so cute! And someone was selling a mini-collection I could start from at absolutely super cheap! And... oh dear. Yeah. The community's really great, though, and I enjoy helping people there with card pricing the same way I enjoy helping people make fair trades at league.
• Biking! Sure, it's 110F out or something, but you know what? I don't care. Tucson is an awesome town to bike in, and biking is awesome. I'm usually out three or four times a week --- as it cools down a little more and I get back in shape I will do some longer rides, too. Have I mentioned here yet that like half the roads in Tucson have bike lanes and don't have parking to the right of the bike lane? I am going to be so horribly spoiled when I move somewhere else. I mean sure I've seen a couple of nutty drivers but even biking on the roads people said were "super crowded and dangerous" feels lackadaisical compared to Boston or Bloomington. (Which everyone said was such a great bike town, and I guess it sort of was, but it wasn't really a bike commuting town so much as a bike racing town, which is less my thing. I don't want to go 100 miles or go ultra-stupid-fast around a track. I want to get to work without having to burn fossil fuels or sit on a bus full of strangers. Bonus points if I get exercise.)
• Seattle. It's kind of too cold there (I only say this because I am acclimating to a desert) but beyond that it has good transit, it's a vegan paradise, it has Rik, it has a number of other friends, many of whom I think would be closer friends if I lived there... It's a place I feel like I could live. And might, when I'm done with graduate school. I would complain about the hills all the time because some of them are unpleasant just to walk up and I can't imagine they would be comfortable on a bike, and things are kind of spread out and I would have to do a lot of bike-bus chaining rather than being a five mile ride from everything like in Boston or at least a ten mile mostly flat ride from everything like here... but man the stuff would be worth going to, and I would already have something like one and a half or two social groups to spend time with on day one, and at least there's not much snow. Although if I lived in Seattle, where would I fly to when I wanted to go have fun for a weekend?

Hopefully y'all also have good things going on! I'd love to hear about them!
This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/90555.html.

8:04am: Postfurries, Twitter, and "After Dark"
( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

9:08pm: A Post That Isn't A Tasklist!
OK. So.

• Moved to Arizona. Oh god it's warm, and I'm not biking much yet because I need to find a store and get them to put cleats on my shoes because my old right bike shoe is doing something terrible to my knee and oh god that needs to stop right now. But it's beautiful and the fruit trees (avocado!!!) and little lizards everywhere and cacti don't trigger my plant phobia and maybe it was just that I hated grass? The dirt here doesn't read as dirt, it's amazing. There are, like the song says, little fluffy clouds everywhere. It's weird --- driving with Krinn from SF to LA, arriving in Los Angeles suddenly felt like home. I lived there, what, nine months? And only sort of liked it? But rolling through downtown on the highway with the mountains looming felt really right, and it was really freaky that Happy Family Vegetarian Restaurant was back in its old location but there's a mall there now instead of a wasteland, and leaving LA I cried a little and am still not quite sure why. Tucson triggers a bunch of the same feelings for me on a purely geographic level, plus it's more bikable and less expensive. As much as it's not San Francisco or Seattle, I think I am going to enjoy living here for a while.
• Moved in with Krinn. So far, so good. She's awesome and we cook food for each other and between her and the desert I am eating a lot more salad. (Although today's dinner was a bunch of natto on rice with soy sauce, because we'd had salad between lunch and dinner because we were hungry, and dammit I wanted natto.) It's weird adjusting to sharing living space so closely again --- I switch between "my" and "our" a lot on things and we're still tripping over each other a little bit. Though part of that is the boxes. Also it is nice to have a Race for the Galaxy partner who pushes me to perform at my best. Also, have I mentioned that Krinn is wonderful, and wonderful for me? I'm pretty sure I have, but just in case. It's going to take me a long time not to be leery of long-term commitments but I can see this working out for quite a while, and I hope we make it work, and make it awesome, and, just, meow.
• Pokemon. Surprisingly, the TCG has sort of become my main hobby. Did I mention here that I went to Nationals and came out with a winning record? I'm not, like, good good but I've been one of the better players at most leagues I've attended. Also, I passed the Professor test --- yes, the Pokemon Organized Play allows you to test into "Professor" status --- so now I can help organize league play, run tournaments, and that kind of thing. There are two leagues in Tucson, and I'm already helping out! The main organizers will all be at the World Championships next week, so I'm in charge. Eeeeeeeek! [0] It's a cool way to interact with folks who aren't graduate students or software engineers, which I need more of in my life, and in particular to do something involving kids that does not involve having to deal with them for more than a few hours a week. Since I think people here might have good suggestions: If I wanted to commission art for a custom playmat, most likely of a Vulpix and an Oshawott doing something adorable, who should I ask? [1]
• Graduate school. Dealing with administrivia is kinda frustrating me right now, and it looks like I may not get to take the classes that are my first choice. But I like the people I've met from the department so far, and I am really excited about getting back into DEEP THOUGHT. At the moment I'm sort of looking at my time and saying "Augh this is going to be my fifth year of graduate school? And I need twelve more classes before I can even take quals?" The transfer rules here are frustrating. But what can you do, other than take the classes, tailor the projects in the classes toward your dissertation, and get a head start on research? Not much. So that's what I'm going to do.
• Work. Actually still pretty awesome. I've been working like 6:30-2:30 or something, since I have to have 7:30 meetings most days, which is a little annoying. But it means that the afternoon starts and I can do things during business hours and if I need to take an hour off from work in the morning to do some household thing or whatever, it's really easy to make up the time. It also means my class schedule and my work schedule will fit together with minimal difficulty. So that's pretty awesome. I kind of want to go back to the office --- when I'm there I miss the flexibility of working at home and being able to take cat breaks or work from a couch, but I also really enjoy easy access to ask folks questions. I'm getting better, still, about just calling when I really want to talk to someone. They can always just not answer the phone. I should also meet up with the other work-from-home coworker in Seattle when I'm there in August. Or September. Which leads me to:
• Travel. My only planned travel right now is August to Seattle and September to Seattle! The September trip is technically for Rainfurrest but realistically it's a trip to Seattle and Rainfurrest happens to also be there. In this fall I'd like to also hit Boston, Texas, maybe SF, probably Seattle again [2]. Oh and I'm still waiting to hear back from a conference in LA, cross your fingers for me. Is there anywhere else I should go before January? (Rhode Island, but that'll get combined with Boston.)
• Catgirl Goth Rave: I'm thinking San Francisco again, ideally after my semester is over, so sometime in December. Would love to see you all there.
• Oh, I still own a house in Indiana. Anyone want to buy it? Please? I'm probably going to end up taking a decent loss on it. That's sort of OK because I could really use that taxwise this year, but it's not like it's a win. It's just a mitigated loss. Ah well. My new house is so much cooler anyway.

( footnotes )
This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/89202.html.

5:56pm: gender frustration
So, gender!

For a while now I've been mumbling about maybe using gender-neutral pronouns or something because I have this discomfort with gender. My name is Rachel, and I present myself as female, and you might think I'd be reasonably happy about both of those because I picked them. And in some ways I am! Because damn, are they better than the alternative.

Except that "the alternative" is a false choice; I don't have to choose either or. I could pick preferred pronouns of "they" or "ey" or "hir" or "xyzzy" and most of you would respect it and a lot of you would even use it most or all of the time. That's pretty awesome! I could say that my gender was "neuter" or "other" or "awesome" and that would be great. It's something I appreciate about my friends and even some of my family that this is true. I appreciate it a lot, and I work to extend the same courtesy to everyone, though particularly those folks who ask me for it.

Problem is: I can't get that from strangers, and that's who I actually want it from. I don't care that much if my friends treat me as female, because I think it has way less impact on how they treat me overall; sure, there's some amount of ingrained gender bias and I did notice people treating me differently before and after transition, but people who know me well think of me as more than a gender, even though they do think of me as having a gender. And I am OK with that. I did pick it, after all, even though I picked it from fewer options than I realize now that I might have had.

What really bothers me is when strangers and acquaintances and use gendered language for me. I don't want to be Mrs. Dillon (which I've been called like ten times today) and I don't want to be Ms. Dillon either. Mx. Dillon is tolerable, at least; I'd rather not have a title at all, but if I have to I would like it to not be dependent on my vagina. [0] I feel similarly about pronouns and social expectations and all manner of things. But at the moment I don't really have any desire to declare my gender other or change my pronouns or change much about my presentation, because I don't think it would change the situations I really care about. I want people on the phone who I will never talk to again to not use sir or ma'am, because it shouldn't matter, and they make it matter and I don't like it. I don't care if people I know well use that kind of language, though. Usually. [1]

I don't really have a point here, other than this is more formed than my usual pointing at gender and going "Urgh! Meh!" and so I figured I would write it down. I realize that I could ask random people on the phone to not use gendered language, and I could enforce that in all social situations, but it isn't worth it for me right now; the effort threshhold of saying "I prefer you not refer to me as ma'am or sir" to the clerk at the store is higher, to me, than just dealing with it. I recognize that not to be the case for some people and I totally support that! It's just not me, right now.

This comes up in part because I've had people in my new department ask me pronoun preference and I said "she or they, whichever" and they were like "...whichever?" and I was like "Yeah, basically." Because that's where I'm at, right now? It's a moving target, who knows where if anywhere it is going. If you wanna call me "they" and "Mx." I am neutral to vaguely positive on that. "male pronouns are still wrong, thanks"

[0] Or more correctly the social expectation that I have a vagina, and thus a particular set of social obligations, based on the way I am presented and present myself.

[1] There's one coworker who calls me darling, who does not accept correction on this (when I asked him not to, he started calling me sir, which is worse). In basically all other ways I really like working with him. I'm mostly used to it, but it's kinda frustrating.

This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/88374.html.

12:55am: ALIVE IN TUCSON
Made it.

Everyone is in one piece.

Selene and Leo are sufficiently not-hating us that they are in the bedroom with me while I write this.

No real internet yet, but hooray for phone tethering.

THERE IS AN AVOCADO TREE WITH TONS OF FRUIT I WIN THE FRUIT TREE GAME, also there are figs and pumpkins (what?) and maybe some kind of citron and maybe just possibly but probably not but possibly mango?

Cleaning is needed and figuring out which light switches go to what and which bulbs are burnt out and also the frog sculpture in the shower HAS TO GO but overall this house is amazing and I am excited to be living here and Tucson has bike lanes like everywhere and only taking two classes will hopefully mean I get to have a teeny tiny bit of a life outside of work and school.

...and soon the patches on the air mattress will have settled and I can go to sleep. Probably no more posts from me until after I get back from Wisconsin, but who knows. also in 24 hours I will be on an airplane what

This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/87708.html.

10:16am: Really? Really? *sigh*
I spent this early morning in urgent care! Now I'm on doctor's orders not to do physical activity for seven days. You've probably noticed I am moving this week. This is hilarious. The doctor was like "You should avoid all physical activity for seven days!" and I was like "Uhhh, I'm moving, so not so much" and he was like "Would you rather not move or be in the hospital" and I'm like "would it be a hospital in Tucson?" and that's apparently not the correct answer to that question.

Soooooo I'm going to get help from friends as much as I can and cook food for them and handle all of the paperwork and logistics and errand-running and... yeah. I'll probably still end up lifting some things, but I will try to minimize it at least. And if Rik catches me doing hard work he will probably make me stop. ^^;; On the plus side I will hopefully be clear to lift things by the time the truck actually shows up in Tucson. Otherwise uhhhhhhhhhhh I dunno. I will use magic. Or something. I am going to assume the problem will be solved by then and deal with it then if it isn't.

Also, don't ask what my medical ailment is, I will not tell you and then proceed to be irritated with you for asking. <3

This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/86339.html.

10:16am: Moving logistics largely determined!
OK! So, not that you all necessarily care, but I have the move mostly planned out now. It will go something like this:

• Ongoing: PAAAAAAACK
• Ongoing: Make list of things to bring in van
• Before Jul 20: Get one or two air mattresses
• Jul 15: Rik arrives
• Jul 18: Trailer arrives
• Jul 18-20: Fill trailer with most things I own
• Jul 20: Trailer leaves
• In between: Prep food for travel for me, since I can't eat truck stop food at all
• Jul... 21? 22? 23?: Start drive to Tucson, caravanning with Rik and me in my car and zanazibar and N. in their car. (There's a possibility we'll have another driver; we don't need to fly in like four people anymore, though, thank god.)
• Next day: Arrive at house, unpack cats, crash
• Jul 25: Trailer arrives
• Jul 25-27: Unpack trailer
• Jul 28: Rik flies to Seattle, I fly to San Francisco
• Jul 29: Sit at Wicked Grounds or something and work all day
• Jul 30: Wander SF with Krinn, maybe some social time
• Jul 31: Drive from SF to Tucson with Krinn and her things
• Aug 1: unpack Krinn's things

Yes, I am moving across the country and then immediately flying a thousand miles to help someone else move. Given the choice between awesome and reasonable, I will generally pick awesome.
This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/85463.html.

7:49pm: Fried Rice!
I haven't shared a recipe here in a while, so here's the fried rice I've been making in variations for the last while. I started making friend rice a couple of years ago as a thing to do with extra rice and such, and then when I lost a lot of my diet because of picking up a nighshade allergy, it became a bit more of a go-to for me. After recently visiting Beatrix (bossgoji ), whose fried rice is seriously hardcore awesome, I've been tweaking her recipe and learning how to make it well and make it with the things I like to eat. I can successfully feed this to my omnivorous housemates unless I put natto in it (they'll even tolerate tempeh!) and postrodent liked it so much he asked for the recipe. Therefore, here you go:

FRIED RICE, YO.

(warning: I don't measure ingredients. If that bothers you, you may want different recipes from mine. Sorry! I'm compulsive about a lot of things, and weirdly one of them is not measuring ingredients, rather than getting precise quantities.)

Rice: I usually use jasmine rice because that's what I get 25lb bags of. It's best to have day-old rice --- I make fried rice when I've had leftover rice in the rice cooker for a day or two, but if you don't have a Neuro Fuzzy you should buy one right now you can just store leftover rice in the fridge for a day.

Sauce:

• a splash of lime juice (lemon also works)
• a larger splash of rice wine vinegar
• some soy sauce
• one or two diced cloves of garlic
• some grated or diced ginger (powder works in a pinch but isn't as good)
• maybe a spoonful of sugar --- this is important, it helps things caramelize
• something to thicken it a bit: Bea uses store-bought "stir fry sauce;" this worked really well. Unfortunately, her random store stir fry sauce was safe for me to eat, but the ones near me aren't. I've tried corn starch, peanut butter, and nothing, and my favorite was honestly nothing, although the peanut butter seemed like it would be really cool if I had a slightly different flavor mixture, so I may try it again. I kind of want to try tahini, too.

You can make the sauce in advance, or you can try to put it together while you are frying the other things and almost forget the sugar and dump it in at the last minute without stirring and then most of it will stick to the bowl but then you can pull it up with your finger and lick it up so it's not a total loss. But make the sauce in advance, it's easier. Or have a minion do it! <3

So for me, the base of basically any food made in a skillet is going to be some combination of garlic, scallions, and onion in oil. I usually throw in spices (here: a touch of cinnamon and cumin), and the type of oil you use really does matter. Interestingly, and I picked this up from Bea, for fried rice I've been using a mixture of sesame oil and olive oil. I'm not sure why, but it works.

Once the garlic is starting to brown, I throw in other things that want to cook for a whilish. This most recent batch was seitan [0] and a chopped-up carrot; Trader Joe's has this great broccoli/carrot slaw that is cheap and convenient, or you can just use fresh broccoli, or really most vegetables work. I've also used tofu and tempeh for protein sources and those are tasty too; soft tofu is actually really nice if you miss the texture of egg in fried rice from before you were vegan even though you mostly didn't like egg and it kind of made you sick. Hypothetically. ANYWAY. You put stuff in like you are making a stirfry and, uh, I think sautee is the technical term.

Then, once it's mostly but not entirely done, you take it all out, re-oil the skillet, and throw in the rice. Stir it around in the oil and cook it for a minute, and then if there are precooked things you want to add, toss them in for a minute or two --- I put in natto [1] or frozen peas here. Then you add in the sauce and the other stuff! Here's the part I have trouble with: Don't stir it for a few minutes. You have to let it caramelize and crisp up a bit on the bottom. I have so much trouble with stirring it too much, because it's sizzling and that means I should stir it! But no! It means you should let it go. Go clean some dishes. Realphabetize the spice rack because your housemates screwed up cinnamon and coriander. Go look at the internet even (but set a timer for three minutes so you don't get wrapped up in an argument about Deleuze and forget you are cooking). And then, once you stir, let it sit again. For another two or three minutes. And then one more time.

Then eat it! Because oh man it's really tasty.

[0] For seitan I use a modified nightshade-free version of the Seitan O'Greatness recipe. You probably just want to google "seitan o'greatness" and use one of those, because I think it's better with nightshades, but one of these days I will post a Rachel-safe seitan recipe for folks who care.

[1] I LOVE NATTO. I am not sure whether it is a vegan dietary deficiency thing --- I've read conflicting things about that --- or if I just love natto. But man. Natto. Sometimes I feel sort of weirdly body awful, and then I eat natto, and then I feel better. I dunno if it's psychosomatic, but I totally recommend it if you have similar issues ever. Also Selene (one of my cats) likes it. So it must be good!
This entry was originally posted at http://rax.dreamwidth.org/84572.html.