eruthros

Me: Hey, here's a neat apartment. Might be too far up the hill, though.
thingswithwings: Oh, but look at the picture of the cabinets!
Me: Well, and maybe it's worth living too far up the hill for $950 rent, including utilities. And OSP. Whatever OSP is, this apartment INCLUDES it.
thingswithwings, googling: Oregon State Police? Outside Plant Magazine? Office of State Personnel?
Me, looking over her shoulder: oooh, orange smoothie productions! If it comes with free orange smoothies, I'm SOLD.
thingswithwings continues googling; I wikipedia.
Me: omg, Oral Service Provider!
thingswithwings, laughing: No, seriously?
Me: SERIOUSLY!
thingswithwings: Wait, how about Online Sexual Problems?
Me: Or, or, Oblate Sisters of Providence?
thingswithwings: Off street parking.
Me: What?
thingswithwings: It's totally off street parking.
Both: pause. Oh.

For your information, all possible things OSP can stand for, from the freedictionary's acronym page.

I go to the cafe around the corner to read and drink some coffee on Wednesdays. I have a seven pm class, and it's really hard to leave the apartment at six thirty. Much easier to meander to the cafe at one or two, read for a while there, meander up the hill at five, read for a while or print things out in the library, and get the uphill part over with while it's still light and warm and going to campus seems like a (moderately) reasonable idea.

Only today, today that backfired. There I was, calmly and innocently sitting and doing my reading, when a group of three middle-aged folks walked up to the counter and began making extremely specific demands of the barrista. (They do food, but it's counter service, so usually you just, you know, order something and wait for them to call.) They wanted the barrista to run out to the store and get blueberry jam when she told them she only had strawberry, they wanted her to wash new water glasses rather than taking them from the shelf because otherwise they couldn't be "sure" that they were clean, they wanted all three of their drinks immediately after the omlettes were served "not before! not during! IMMEDIATELY AFTER! ALL THREE OF THEM!" So I noticed them early, is what I'm saying.

And then they came over and sat down immediately in my line of sight. And one of the women picked up a toothpick and, sitting there complaining vociferously, began to skritch the toothpick around her ear canal. Skritch, skritch, skrtich, she didn't even seem to notice she was doing it, but nonetheless kept at it for five minutes before switching to the other ear. Skritch, skritch, skritch, went the toothpick.

Then she stuck the toothpick in her mouth, licked it clean, and returned to ear number one.

So I came home to do my reading, is what I'm saying.

So, you know, I've been crap at updating LJ. And the thing about not updating for weeks is that then you go "omg! but there is so much to say!" And that sounds like a) work and b) a really long, boring post, so you don't say any of it. ON THAT NOTE: forget the last couple weeks! Probably they were mostly boring, except for Doppelporner. (Dopornganger? Pornelganger? graycastle and I can't decide which is correct.) And my family was here this weekend. That was cool.

So! Onward, we find ... look, guys, it's Tom Lehrer in his youthful misanthropy! Before his full-blown misanthropy!



Aaand? The guy who uploaded that to youtube? Also uploaded a bunch of other songs from the live performance! Awesomeness!

AND and... apparently Tom Lehrer is on myspace. I have hope that it's entirely an impersonation. Remember: he liked that people thought he was dead! So it had better be an impersonator.

Otherwise, fiatlouis and I have no excuse for not being on myspace.

***

Other news: I now have a purple, white, and gold striped flag with purple and gold stars hanging in my office. It commemorates the nineteenth amendment in the US (women's right to vote) and comes from the Seneca Falls museum, which I visited on Friday with the family. I am quite happy with the placement above my desk, because it makes me slightly less cranky about articles like the one apple_pi talks about here.

I'm also cranky, speaking of cranky, about the whole Dumbledore thing. Once again, other folks have said it way better than me: toft_froggy, here, and marythefan, here. Suffice it to say that "Celluloid closeting" appeared as a verb when I sputtered at m_shell about this. I mean. GOD. Hey guys! I've decided that Dumbledore is gay, had a big tragic gay affair that blinded him to Grindelwald's faults, and never loved again, and then died! That's novel and innovative and freeing and will lead to the acceptance of gay people, especially the part where I didn't put it in the book!

In short, I am wearing my crankypants.

***

My family was here this last weekend; we went out to dinner rather too many times, really. And we ran around a lot. And looked at fall color, and went to ABC, and went to the farmer's market, and walked at Taughannock Falls and Buttermilk Falls, and went to Seneca Falls and the Erie Canal and I took redphotoframe out to the awesome espresso that is Gimme! Coffee. (She was like "okay, so, how can we get their coffee again tomorrow?") Also, my dad and sister took many photos of campus and of downtown and of fall color and waterfalls and things, which I hope they will post so I can continue lazy.

We also discovered, in the process of driving the two extra miles north of Seneca Falls that you need to drive to see the Erie Canal? That there is an amazing wildlife preserve up there! It's called the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge (no, really). It's this amazing, huge wetlands restoration and protection project, through which the NY Thruway and the Erie Canal run (weird!). We saw a ridiculous number of birds, including a pair of extremely well-fed hawks. (They looked kinda kestrely, but it was a long way off.) And apparently in the spring they have ospreys, and bobolinks, and tons of other cool things like muskrats. And they have islands! And canals! I am charmed by marshes, if not by mosquitoes.

... now updated!. Not as fun as the Mayor's proclamation regarding sundaes, but still amusing. Oh, Ithaca.

***

Ithaca in the summer is not the same as Ithaca in the winter. I mean, basically the people who are left are adults and hippies (obviously those two categories overlap) and ten undergrads. Recently, I have seen...

... a round-shouldered man named Rodney with extremely poor social skills. graycastle asked me, how did you know his name was Rodney? And I said, well, remember how I said, with extremely poor social skills? Yes. He walked up to me and immediately began asking me about my groceries. Did I like ginger beer? What was the best ginger beer? What was in my ginger beer? Was there anything bad for people in ginger beer? What if I made stirfry? What did I put in stirfry? What if I was having a party? Think Rodney McKay if he worked the prepared-foods section.

... Ithaca's (apparent) official Don't Get Heatstroke man. Me: walking from Gimme Coffee to downtown, hot day, a bit red-faced (stupid complexion). Middle-aged man approaches. "Hello!" he says. "Don't get heatsroke!" "... I won't," I say. "Excellent!" he says, pats me on the shoulder, and walks on by. I say "official" because he, or someone very like him, did the exact same thing to graycastle the week before.

... nine teenagers hanging out on the commons. Possibly buskers, possibly runaways, possibly just hangin' out. One of them had a guitar, and in front of the case he'd placed a sign: "Parents killed by ninjas. Need money to learn kungfu." As I walked past, he started to play "Kung Fu Fighting" on his guitar.

... a woman wearing a sarong in that "please god don't" way. You know, they wrap around twice, right? Not for this woman, oh no, she'd tied a loose slipknot on her hip and was nearly falling out of the sarong. I noticed her because she was stopped on the side of the street across from me, shouting at a woman in a car. Who I hope was a friend of hers, because what she was shouting was... "I have poison ivy on my crotch! CROTCH RASH! And on my ASS! I have poison ivy IN MY ASSHOLE!" I hope this was, you know, an oversharey answer to "how are you?" rather than just ... random oversharing.

Five random things about me: fannish, personal, ridiculous, serious, all of the above

1. ( why reality tv is scarier than doctor who )

2. ( my flist and fandom analysis )

3. ( typing )

4. ( now redacted )

5. ( earworms )

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Random links:
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence have a new motto on their website: "defining San Francisco values since 1979." Ha! Also they are having an Easter party.
Other ways of updating Jane Austen: someone has vidded two versions of P&P to a Justin Timberlake song.
The most hilarious election day story of all time.
Apparently we make the gorges safe by ... rappelling down the sides and knocking off loose rocks. AHHH.
Geraldo Rivera doesn't take Bill O'Reilly's shit.
Commentary on the Sun op-ed suggesting Cheney should run for president.
A three minute preview for tomorrow's Doctor Who.

I have stolen this random links idea from svendra, because if I don't stick unrelated things at the bottom of my posts, I fail to share the awesomeness that is Alanis Morissette doing "my humps" with everyone. I mean, I feel like all my random links don't deserve single posts, so then the only people who see them are the people who are on IM when I find them. (If you still haven't seen the Alanis video, it's here. Also awesome. SERIOUSLY.)