Fan Girl Wannabe

It turns out that I created this journal to post my fannish stuff, and then promptly quit posting fannish stuff.  I haven't made a DW post since July 29!  Sheesh.

So, TV:  Hell's Kitchen, No Reservations (Anthony Bourdain), Glee (I've always loved musicals, and envy people who can sing and dance), most of season 5 of Weeds (Oh, Nancy!), and I need to catch up with Big Bang Theory,

DVDs:  The last season of Due South (mmm, CKR and Oh, Fraser, you goofball), Suspicion (Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine, and OMG so glad we've been liberated since then), lots of Band of Brothers (DH is rewatching).

Music, Movies: No Report

Books: Nada, except I re"read" Heat by Bill Buford (audio book) and am all inspired by italian cooking again.

Fanfic:  Pretty much rereading all my faves in Due South, SGA, and all of Astolat's Supernatural, plus her new Idol RPF.  Seriously, WTF?  I don't DO RPF/S, except for when Astolat writes it.  And I thought her Cook/Archuleta was sexy and charming last year, but her "Kradam" (Kris Allen/Adam Lambert) is totally smoking.  I must report I have reserved a luxury box in hell. Want to join me? Also enjoying the DW comm:  singularity (Star Trek reboot).

In other fannish news: Last weekend at our annual Oktoberfest, some of the WisCon book club members (you know who you are,  LOL) introduced my co-worker to the concepts of slash in general and Wincest in particular. I was pretty shocked by this turn of events, but he (HE!) is a pretty open minded guy, and he has mostly women in his life (he's a fraternal twin, he's married and has 3 girls). So he rolled with it, and there was much hilarity.  It gets better though.  He shared with the group that his nephew is Eric Szmanda.  That's right, his nephew plays Greg Sanders on CSI!  So awhile later, I hear one of my friends say to co-worker, "gee, I bet there's even been slash written about your nephew..." at which point, 4 faces turn to look at me for confirmation.  And what can I say, but "Oh my god, yes. Yes there is slash written about your nephew." Then I jumped up and ran to the other side of the bonfire, where I confessed to emorog this horrifying truth, "Not only is there slash written about his nephew, but *I've* written some of it!" Of course, I had to follow up with "I've written about the character he plays! Not him personally! ewww!" LOL.

As much as I love all of my friends, I was very glad to have you all finally drift away so that conversation could come to an end.  Except of course, I had to check in with co-worker on Monday morning to see how traumatized he was.  And yay, he wasn't.  He said he had an excellent time and enjoyed hanging out with all y'all.  By then I had learned that my WiPoly friends had also introduced him to the concept of polyamory (reported by DH) and he had rolled with that one too.  There was just a touch of confusion later on, when he turned to emorog and mentioned "your ex-wife." 
emorog:  um, no, she's my current wife.
me:  his *only* wife.
co-worker: But, but, there's that other gentleman, 'W?' (and we didn't realize at the time that W and N had already explained the parentage of the 3 boys).
emorog does not say:  Yes, he took the boys home with N for some quality time, and I stayed here to catch some quality time with my girlfriend. 
co-worker (turns to me): what am I missing? Don't leave me in the dark.
me with deer in the headlights look to emorog: Ummm....
emorog:  Yes, he's our friend from Eau Claire.  He hangs out with us a lot. Any questions?
co-worker: No. I'm good.

And lo, he was good.  He had finally connected the dots from the two earlier conversations, realized the 6 of them were a family unit and didn't need any further details. But I'm really glad no one else from work showed up.  I don't think I would have survived it.

 

Looking back, I see that I have failed to mention that Rupert is now the tallest person living in our house.  He is also the youngest person.  Somehow, that doesn't seem fair.  OTOH, I have no problem calling him into the kitchen to reach stuff for me whenever I need it.

Rupert and Mavis are going off to do teen stuff after school today, so after DH & I do the weekly Dr checkup at 5:00 (what Dr schedules appts at 5 pm on a Friday?), we can go off and do something like a normal adult couple.  But we'll probably just end up at the Dane again, LOL.  

I know a lot of people are wondering where the heck winter is, but this is totally the type of winter I can deal with.  I like not having to wear 3 layers of clothes.  It's too bad we didn't get this winter last year.  It would have totally saved my library project schedule.

The PM I'm helping down in Arlington Heights called me this morning at 6:50!  He needed a schedule update for a 9:00 meeting.  However, I do get to duck out of work at 3 for the aforementioned appt.

Took Ruby to the shop on Wed afternoon for her 105k miles maintenance.  It turns out that the high-pitched squealing noise was the rear brakes after all.  So, all the normal maintenance (except the recommended timing belt replacement) plus the rear brake pads & newly machined rotors for $251.  In another couple of months, I might go ahead and let them do the timing belt, but first I'll check the records I have to see if it has ever been replaced before.

Next week, I'll spend 2.5 days down in Arlington Heights trying to help out on 3 different projects.  Hopefully shortly after that, I'll get to start up one of my own - as Owner Rep for the Houston County Courthouse in MN (right across the river from LaCrosse).  I am so ready to be fully involved in a project again.  The post mortem I'm doing isn't as complete as I thought - I found out yesterday that the PM is still holding onto a good portion of the files, so any conclusions I've drawn so far are likely to be worthless once I get to look at the rest of the stuff. ::sigh::

I feel really out of the poly loop.  I've quit reading the posts in the yahoo lists I belong to, because the people whose posts I enjoyed most seem to have drifted away.  I realize a big part of my disassociation has to do with the issues of the past year.  I didn't need to add any drama to the year, but it's the beginning of a new year and I'm looking around, going, "huh.  what's next?"

I think I'm ready to verbalize a resolution for 2007 also:  I'm going to strengthen my friendships with my women friends.  Actually talk to them on the phone and go do stuff with them that doesn't involve all of our partners and children.  I realized that the only time I seem to see most of my friends anymore is at parties.  I think that's kind of weird.

Well, less than 3 hours left in the workweek :)  Maybe this weekend, I'll update my journal theme too.  If I'm not too busy undecorating the house.

I was talking to my project superintendent yesterday about engineering and such, and he said that he decided to get out of engineering and into the trades because he had such a hard time with trigonometry.  He had finally managed to grasp some calculus, but couldn’t hack the trig.  Now the funny thing about this is that what helped him get a working use of calculus was his physics courses.  Why is this funny?  Because he loved the physics, was so fascinated and challenged by it, that he had to learn the math to keep learning the physics.  This is exactly how I became an “A” student in calculus.  I was really frustrated by everything mathematic beyond geometry.  I couldn’t figure out why I needed to know this stuff until my first physics class (senior year of HS), and then I started seeing the connections.  The physics was really interesting, so I signed up for more of it in college, and that meant more math too. ::sigh::  I never did learn to love the math for itself, but it became much easier to get through the classes when I could recognize a new concept or tool as being directly useful in helping me to describe something physical.

Sometime late in my sophomore year, or maybe early in my junior year, I actually did the research to see what it would take to pick up a physics minor along with my major.  As it turned out, it wouldn’t really take all that much, except that it would extend my stay at Chico State by a full year. Now this was the period of time when it started to be common to take 5 yrs to get your undergrad degree, so I totally could have gotten away with it.  In fact, my best friend and roommate did.  But I was the first in my family to even attend a 4-yr college, and I really really wanted to get out into the world. So the prospect of tacking on another year was just totally unappealing. I went back and forth on it for a month or so, and finally, wistfully, I gave that idea a pass. This is what I was remembering as I drove home from the site last night.  I never had the temperament to be an engineer, but I definitely had the scholarly temperament.  I could easily have double-majored or done that exotic physics minor, if I had been more willing to stay on campus.  And I know that the one extra year would have extended even further eventually.

I have to wonder what I’m doing now in the universe where I stayed in school.  For sure I did not move to SC to be with my then fiancé.  Which means I never met DH, or had Mavis and Rupert in my life.  Although there is at least one kid.  I never considered not having kids.  I probably don’t live in Wisconsin, which means I never met probably 90% of my flist.  However, it’s highly possible that I still managed to meet cfxjosh  and leathermines .  It’s just that we met at a sci-fi convention instead of a polyamory support group.  I can see me with two geeky boyfriends, and taking much longer to acknowledge that a geeky girlfriend would also float my boat (if I ever caught that particular clue-bus).  If I never left CA, I can totally see me working at SLAC.  The funniest part about that would be that I’d be the 2^nd generation female in my family to work there!  My mom serviced the DEC mini-computers in the tunnel in the late 70s.  As for hobbies, I might well have kept playing violin (I quit in college to take up weight lifting with the afore-mentioned fiancé).  I’m probably more of a wine snob and less of a beer snob.  I probably would have still found my way to slash fiction, but it would have been through the sci-fi connection again instead of poly.  In fact, look at my fandoms:  X-files, Star Trek, CSI, SG1, SGA, Firefly, LOTR, Harry Potter.  Sci-fi and fantasy all the way, LOL, except for my first love, SportsNight.  How weird is that?

Let’s see.  I’m still living somewhat near my mom, and she’s probably spending more holidays with me than with my sister (not all the imagined differences are better…).  I probably make more money, but have a lower standard of living.  The Bay Area is expensive!  Hmmm… I assume I would have been living there during the major earthquake of ’89.  My friend Suzy was working in SF at the time of the quake and she said getting home that night was straight out of “Escape from New York.”  If I don’t have a technical job, I’m probably living and teaching in Chico.  I almost stayed there anyway, with a certain red-head named Randy that, hey!  I didn’t list as my favorite red-head in that meme a few days ago.  Hmm.  He was a poly-wired guy, back before we knew what poly was.  So maybe I’d have to amend my romantic life to include one geeky guy and one pretty cool and macho guy (who was also quite smart).  But I don’t think his then girl-friend would have survived the arrangement.  I probably spend as much time as possible hanging out with Helena and Bob, up near Paradise.  In fact, they’re also part of my chosen family, instead of long-distance friends that stay in touch once a year.  They’re that universe’s version of bzdchris  and busman1994 .  I can’t decide what I look like though.  Staying in CA, I’d probably have clung to the long, blonde and tan look.  But I’m pretty practical, and I hated touching up my roots when it finally came to that, which is>why I’m no longer so blonde in this universe.  I don’t know though.  I don’t seem to have enough imagination to flesh out this AU version of Goldy, who isn’t even called Goldy.  She might still be called ‘Ski’ by a very few, and also ‘Robbie.’  But not ‘Baby.’  heh.  Hated that even before the universe branched off.

Well.  It was interesting to think about, but don’t get me wrong.  I’m happy with the path I chose in this universe.  It’d be cool to meet alternate-goldy, but I don’t really want to be her.