the thing itself and not the myth

I’ve been carting my wee little queer issues soapbox all over Ravelry lately, so I might as well haul it over here too. There’s an educational meme going around the web this week which I love. It’s a response to one of the questions in Katie Couric’s Vice Presidential Questions series, and it got kind of long and full of sex, so I am sticking it all after a jump. Click through for it, community organizers, and Yet Another Admonition To Vote.
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Last night my bank, teetering on the edge, was eaten by JP Morgan.

It’s weird, though, because I’ve been banking there since I was a kid. I think I opened my account with money I got for 8th grade graduation. They gave me a debit card with a Visa logo when I was in high school.

I’m glad this part is over. I think I can stop worrying for now. I trust that the transfer will be seamless, and if it’s not, I have a safety net in the credit union. It’ll be a pain, but okay.

WaMu was a local bank that exploded. But they were a good place to work for, and a good place to bank with. I had three strange things happen to my account in the 15+ years that I banked with them. Checks were stolen, and they noticed the inconsistency and called me before letting anything hit my account. A weird charge showed up from an online gambling site, and they reversed it immediately. And when a major purchase I made wasn’t delivered before that division of Sears went bankrupt, they reversed that charge as well. They seemed psychic about what was an accurate transaction and what wasn’t. I never had my account frozen during international travel, for example, or had to argue that no, really, I did intend to buy that MacBook.

I’ll be the first to admit that I know nothing about finance. But I know that the customer service in the retail centers was ace, and I thank all those folks on the ground for over fifteen years of worry-free banking. I kick all the executives in the shins for making me do all fifteen years worth of worrying in the past month instead.

Please, enjoy your multi-billion dollar signing bonuses while your underpaid tellers and I fret about if we’ll have access to our rent money or not. No problem. Friends of the family indeed.

I have had a ridiculously busy August. I had dear friends visit, I went to Canada, I knitted a LOT (Ravelympics! Go Team Junkie!) & I worked even more (hello, beginning of event season). I only went to one movie. Please contain your shock. I also only went to one concert, but I’m sneaking in a second on Sunday (the Satellite Riders, an Old 97s ‘cover band’. You’d swear you’re watching the real thing, or so I hear. *cough*)

I do have a whole whack of pictures to edit and upload and spam you with. Next week, maybe. Until then, allow me to vent about a fellow bus patron on Friday night: Read the rest of this entry »

The most interesting thing I’ve done lately is see music. The weekend before last I was up in Vancouver for the folk festival. I got in free because I have a friend who works on the main stage as a sign language interpreter. It is basically awesome.

(Follow me after the jump for Vancouver Folk, the Glitter meet-up, ZooTunes, and more. Image-heavy; click through to embiggen) Read the rest of this entry »

I got back from the east coast and was promptly devoured by the film festival. Sorry! I saw 22 movies, and they’re all discussed in these four letterboxed posts.

It ended on the 15th, so let’s see what I did since then after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Where did we leave off? Rice pudding & teleportation, I think. So Sunday was lunch & roller derby practice (go Bronx!) & then the rain stopped so we could go out to 5 Pointz. YAY. It’s a converted warehouse full of artist lofts, which is awesome already, but then the outside of the building is street art central. You can only paint by permit (which makes sense and is also very strange), and I took ten million pictures. Well, 79 in my Flickr set. Follow me after the jump for some favorites, and the rest of my time in New York. Read the rest of this entry »

The first day in NYC I apparently didn’t take any pictures at all, even though we did lots of stuff. I got to see my friend’s office & one of her volunteer sites, and we went to improv at the UCB theater, and we walked enough that my shoe exploded and I developed a blister on the bottom of my foot. Hot!

I didn’t take any pictures the second day either, when we procured a new pair of shoes and amazing gelato, and went to knitting in Astoria.

The third day… wow. This is getting to be a theme. The third day I didn’t take any pictures until the evening. I was kidnapped by a friend in time for breakfast at a tea shop (which had clearly stolen my ipod, as they were playing Spring Awakening, Rufus Wainright, and Elliott Smith), then off to sight see, particularly to the Morgan Library & Museum, which was very cool! We got lunch at Risotteria (gluten free pizza for the win, as well as v tasty risotto, and my first black-and-white cookie). Nom!

I apparently didn’t take pictures until the We’re About 9 show, so let’s continue with that after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

So! Earlier this month I visited friends on the east coast. I flew into NYC & took the train to Springfield, MA. The train, by the way, was basically the best idea ever. So much more comfortable than the bus. And prettier! And with legroom! And food! Basically, it was awesome.

In Massachusetts we did lots of outdoorsy things. After the jump, more pictures than you could possibly ever want to see. As always, click through to Flickr to embiggen. Read the rest of this entry »

I hope you all had a groovy weekend. I feel like I was wicked busy and didn’t actually get anything done. I spent all of Saturday on the bus running two errands on opposite sides of the county. Yay. I passed a RickRollin’ Scientology protest while transferring buses downtown.

There was also an Anonymous there offering free hugs, but I failed to get a good picture. Woe.

The second errand was the more interesting of the two, as it was a trip to get the supplies to turn this:

into this:

I think I will name it Edith. The laptop is named Adrienne. Edith isn’t after anyone, but it seems to fit. A few more shots of the process live on my Flickr under the tag laptop case.

Finally, I got into the office this morning and found this, the most perfect tshirt, on my desk, a gift from a coworker.

Speaking of socks, I bound off two pairs this weekend (Gred & Forge & Toe-up Embossed Leaves.) All praise Grumperina’s stretchy bind-off, which I found vastly simpler than EZ’s sewn bind-off, and so neat and stretchy! I am going to weave in ends at knitting tonight, and then maybe there will be pictures later this week. Maybe.

I did stuff lately that I didn’t really take pictures of, or, if I did, I took crap pictures. Let’s talk about them anyway!

Earlier this month I went up to Vancouver, a whirlwind weekend trip that included sushi the size of my head, gelato, knitting, sunshine, friends, and roller derby, which was the excuse for going up at that particular time. Terminal City is a really young league (this is only their second season), but they already deliver awesome derby action. I opted to cheer for the Riot Girls, using the time honored pick-the-best-uniform method of allegiance, and they took an early and commanding lead, but I was happy to root for the Faster Pussycats at the end, when they got in some awesome jams. I hope to be able to come up for more derby action this year! Hint, hint, Vancouver friends.

The next weekend, since the new hangar meant that the Rat City bout sold out CRAZY EARLY, I went to see Ellis Paul out at Youngstown. (I was maybe a little grateful that derby sold out, so I didn’t have to make that decision myself. I am possibly ridiculously fond of Ellis.) Antje Duvekot opened, and was lovely, and of course Ellis was great. He had just got a new guitar in Oregon, and he was maybe a little infatuated.

The coolest bit, though, was when he took requests, and someone asked for “Trolley Car”. He admitted right off that he couldn’t remember it well enough to do on his own, and asked for audience support. Eventually, he wound up calling a guy from the front row to help him out. Between them they could woodshed about 75% of the song, which was really great, actually. But what makes this particularly awesome, is that I am pretty damn sure that this fellow’s girlfriend/wife/partner-person is the same woman who got called up several years ago, when Ellis played Phinney Ridge, to take the Patty Griffin part of “Conversation with a Ghost”, and was amazing. I also have a feeling that they drive from Spokane/Idaho/some great distance to see Ellis in the first place. So. That is all just wicked cool, so far as I am concerned.

Finally, I trekked up to Lake Forest Park Town Center (the name that means nothing) to see the Yarn Harlot and a bunch of knitters at Third Place Books. Where I did not buy her book, but I did finally buy Tam Lin, and I also scored a copy of Once Upon a Time in the North, a pre-His Dark Materials story featuring Lee Scoresby and Iorek Byrnison. I am enjoying it much more than Lyra’s Oxford. Plus, it comes with a game! Sweet.

After the jump, a few things I *did* take pictures of. Read the rest of this entry »