Ruffles Not Diets

Hi Everybody!
The lovely Phantom Cat gave me the "Liebster Award", which, in addition to being incredibly sweet, also gave me something convenient to blog about.

• Each person must post 11 things about themselves
• Answer the questions the tagger has set for you
• Create 11 questions for the people you have tagged to answer
• Choose 11 people and link them in your post
• Go to their page and tell them
• No tag backs

1. Your first goth band? I actually started to listen to a bunch of goth music all at the same time, but the first band I got really into was probably Dead Can Dance
2.  New or early batman movies? I love the new ones.  I am a little trepidatious about Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, but I am going to hold off judgement until I actually see it.  I am really excited about seeing The Dark Knight Rises since I saw bits and pieces of the filming last summer (several scenes were filmed in and around my office building). Pittsburgh is Gotham now!
3. The longest you have ever gone without sleep? There were a few times in college when I stayed up all night (never for a good reason either), but I think probably no more than 24 hours.  I have never been super into not sleeping, and actually sleep a good eight hours through most of college and all of grad school.
4.  What are your phobias? I am very afraid of heights and somewhat of dogs.  I used to be very afraid of dogs because when I was very young a nasty neighbor dog just bit me when I was in the middle of petting it, but now am really only afraid when they are barking at me.
5. Tea or coffee? Tea, I have a whole cupboard of different kinds.
6. The one country in the world you would love to visit?  currently I think Iceland tops the list but I kind of want to go to ALL THE PLACES!
7. Is you hair natural or dyed? Dyed, naturally *wink*
8.  Any body modifications you would never consider getting done? Loads, scarification freaks me way out as does tongue splitting.  I think I am to lazy to commit to the process of ear-stretching.
9.  Your most hated tv show. I don't know.  Since I don't have a TV I don't randomly come across shows, so I only watch things I like.  My most hated TV plot-line is the now standard detective drama thing where the main male character and female character start out hating each other then fall in love then spend like five seasons not dealing with it.  It worked (up to a point) for Mulder and Scully because their characters and plots were reasonably well constructed to explain why they didn't just kiss already, but it is officially played out.
10. What book are you reading at the moment? The Books of Lost Things by John Connolly 
11. What do you do to chill out after a long day? Mostly I dick around on the internet...

1. You can only choose one book to take with you to go live on a deserted island, what is that book? (It can be an anthology, and it can also be a book on how to survive on a desert island but I am going to suspect that no one will pick that because then you’d be bored — with ceviche) 
2. While I am at it, what is the best kind of nail polish and why?
3. Since I already went there, which MLP are you?
4.  Would you rather be respected or generally enjoyed? 
5. Which is the most useless Pokemon?
6.  Cake or Death?
7.  Golden age science fiction predicted that by now we would have jet-packs, but not the internet, is this a good trade or do you want jet-packs? 
8. Speaking of, pretend you are James Tiberius Kirk, which alien species or hybrid is the most fun in bed (feel free to use species from TNT, DS9, or Voyager as well)?
9.  What is the proper way to brew/serve tea? 
10. The “Nevermind” baby is old enough to buy booze legally in the US, does this make you think: a)shit I’m old, or b) what is a nevermind baby?
11.  Best Disney heroine (including but not exclusively princesses)?

Currently I am in a phase where I am bored with all my normal hairstyles and want to learn more new ones.  It happens periodically, but I thought I should turn this impulse into something useful and share some of my favorite resources with all of you.

I am a very visual learner, especially for things I need to do, like hairstyles or crafts, so I have been spending a lot of time on youtube.  Here are some of my favorite channels, in order, from shortest to longest, of how long your hair has to be to do the average style on the channel.  For me a good channel for hair videos is one with clear instructions, decent image quality, interesting an varied styles, with styles that can be done on yourself and don't require a lot of product or heat styling, and that shows what the finished style looks at the beginning so you don't have to watch a nine-minute video and then discover you don't actually like how it looks.

Dolly-Tube: She creates beautiful unique styles, often incorporating interesting braids, and gives clear easy to follow instructions. I also find it charming how she calls her styles "hair ideas" which I think sort of demystifies the whole process of inventing your own hair styles "oh, this was just idea I had and so I messed around with it". I am actually currently wearing this style:

I bought this dress in a recent raid of the Target online clearance section. I wasn't necessarily expecting much from a 7$ dress, except being comfy and work-appropriate, but this turns out to be one of the most flatteringly-cut dress I own.  The kimono sleeve is surprisingly flattering and the waist actually hits at just the right place for an empire-style.  That's not something that happens very often when you are tall and somewhat busty.  Also, just FYI, a huge amount of Target's plus-sized women's clothes are sold online only (which makes so much sense right, I mean, the average women's size in America is 16, so you clearly can't afford to keep them in stock in all your stores when they are a niche market...of  half of all women..shut up, that's why), so if you never find anything interesting in the stores, check online.  I decided to add red accessories and makeup for Red and Black week (and because I like the look of red accents with a black outfit.

You'll have to excuse the somewhat bedraggled expression.  I thought I was running late because I somehow didn't pay attention to the hour on my clock and rushed to get ready only to show up an hour early for work (which is not good if you are an hourly rather than salaried employee).  I'm still not 100% sure what happened there.  Anyway...





My earrings and necklace are both from the Art of Adornment Sanguine collection, a great source for all your red and black needs.  The bead in the earrings looks dark here, but when it catches the light it is a deep, pure red

For my eye makeup I used Geek Chic's Blood Bond, a semi-matte brick red, in the crease and Shiro Cosmetics' Ganondorf, an iridescent, almost black red along the line and under the lid, with my trusty black creme eyeliner from Sephora, of course.

I recently started dyeing my hair with henna and indigo again after a short absence and had the idea of posting a probably overly detailed tutorial.  I decided to save it for Sophitique Noir's wonderful Red and Black week because you use henna to dye hair red and indigo to dye it black, and I am abstract and a little cheesy like that. I promise there will be outfit posts to follow. I have dyed my hair this way for more than six years, with a short break because I thought I wanted to go back to my natural hair color, and then to make sure I wanted to go back to it (more on that later).

Why or Why not dye with henna and/or indigo:
The benefits are that it is: not just not harmful but actually really good for most hair types, also better for your scalp, less toxic to you and the environment than chemical dyes, and can be fun!  Additionally I have read that these dyes act as mild relaxers on natural African hair (but can't corroborate that from my own experience, obvs.) and are obviously much less damaging than chemical relaxers.
The drawbacks: it really is potentially messy, kind of smelly, way more time consuming, and results are a bit unpredictable (no, you won't turn your hair green unless you have bought something that isn't really henna from an unscrupulous dealer).  Personally, I enjoy the process, it's kind of like turning your hair into an extended science process, and consider it self-care time.  The main thing to consider however, is that neither henna nor indigo can be bleached out and attempting to do so will fundamentally damage the structure of your hair (I had clumps of hair literally melt off in my hands).  They will fade somewhat (indigo more so than henna), and you can always dye over them to get a darker color, but generally the only way to get rid of the color is to cut it out.

I have started dying my hair dark auburn and will explain that process in detail, then will add notes on how to get straight red or pure black hair.
Supplies:

• Enough henna and indigo (2:1 ratio) to cover hair (100 grams will cover the same amount of hair as a box of chemical dye, so guesstimate from there.  I use 250 grams to cover bra-strap length, medium thick hair)
• Lemon juice, purchased,  hand-squeezed provides no benefit and must be carefully strained so in generally more trouble than it's worth for this. 
• A glass or ceramic bowl large enough to hold the mix (preferably glass as ceramic can stain)
• a wooden or plastic utensil for mixing.  I use wooden chopsticks (never use anything metal)
• A truly ridiculous amount of plastic wrap
• Optional add-ins that are worth your time: cocoa butter and/or shea butter, about 1/2 oz per 100 grams of henna to make the mix even more beneficial for your hair (I started using this after trying Lush's henna, which is mostly not worth it but adding cocoa butter was a good idea), and essential oils that blend well with the smell of henna, I like jasmine and ylang-ylang
•  Add-ins that are NOT worth your time: spices such as cloves and ginger which are supposed to intensify the color but do no such thing and can irritate your scalp, some people use many different liquids such as tea, coffee, or wine, in the belief that this effects the color, but they mostly don't.  Wine gives the color a very temporary nudge in the direction of purple, but meh.  Coffee and tea don't seem to do anything and since I leave my henna on overnight and caffeine can be absorbed through the skin....

Step 1: Mix henna with just enough lemon juice to moisten
add a wee bit of water and allow to sit for a few hours to allow the dye to release.





Step 2: Add indigo and cocoa butter then stir in enough very hot water (just below boiling) for the mixture to have the approximate consistency of sour cream

Step 3: Let cool for about half an hour, but less than an hour.  Stir in any essential oils at this point.

Step 4: Rub petroleum jelly along your hairline, ears, and probably whole neck

I am a cone head

Step 5: Put mix on your head.  Generally just section out your hair and, starting from the bottom/ at the neck squish mixture into your hair.  Make sure all your hair and the roots are well covered and pile your hair on the top of your head and cover with a crazy amount of plastic wrap.  Mild heat helps the process so, if you can stand it, wrap a towel or something around as well.

Step 6: Leave in for as long as you can stand.  Generally if you can't leave it in for at least an hour don't bother.  Fours hours seems to be the sort of max time for really intense color and longer than that doesn't impact the color that much.  I generally leave it on overnight, because that is the most convenient, and I have enough hair that the weight of it covered in henna paste is hard to deal with for any length of time in any position but lying down.

Step 7: wash out.  I find that after an initial rinse out, adding conditioner to my hair makes the rest rinse out actually very easily.  Dry and style as usual

I am modeling this hair with my Applejack Ketylo hairsticks to add something to the Red and Black theme)

I ultimately want it redder than this but just as dark, so I may dye with just henna next time, but not necessarily.  An important thing to know about henna is that the color builds so that the first time you use it, it may be a pretty mild color change, but do it a few times and it will be more intense.  This is a few years of pure henna dyeing, and it was more atomically red in real life.

To dye hair black: If your hair is light (let's say medium brown or lighter) follow the steps to dye with henna (the lemon juice, wait, add more water, put in hair), only leaving henna in for about an hour, rinse out, dry, then dye with indigo (mix indigo with just water, put in hair without letting sit) and let sit for as long another hour.  The pure color or henna is red-orange, and indigo is green-blue.  If you just use indigo on light hair, it will be green-ish (that's probably what happened to Anne of Green Gables, unless she had adulterated dye), so the henna cancels out that unfortunate tint to give a neutral black.  If your hair is darker you may be able to skip the henna step for a dark, blue-black.  Do a test swatch.

To dye hair red: Leave out the indigo (yeah, pretty obvious) otherwise following the above instructions and note what I said above about how the color builds.  Since henna is good for your hair, if you want intense red ASAP there is no reason you can't dye it ever weekend (or day to be honest) until you get it like you like it.

This is my goal color, FYI

I am still trying to get back into regular blogging after my unintentional hiatus.  I had gotten out of the habit of reading/seeing/buying/wearing something and thinking "my blog will hear about this" and am still trying to get back into that in order to have content and such.  I am also starting to get ready to move and all my normal photographing spots are a mess.  Anyway....

Since my office doesn't have a dress code at all we don't actually have casual Friday, but I've noticed everyone seems to informally observe one anyway.  Also, as today is Geek Pride day* it seemed like a good time for one of my work-appropriate geeky t-shirts.

 The skirt is one of a few pieces I got from the relatively new online plus-sized boutique Domino's Dollhouse.  If you haven't heard of them before I recommend checking them out.  The styles are generally pretty gothabilly and punk and some randoms, kind of reminiscent of early Torrid, however totally unlike torrid the clothes are well-made out of decent quality fabrics (I have seen way to many polyester a-line skirts going for 50$+ at Torrid. There is a lot of discussion about the advisability of wearing dark colors in summer, but synthetic fabrics are the real enemy).  I also recently got these grey and black striped tights (thigh highs, actually) which are really great subtle stripy tights.  I included the weirdly moody photo below just because it was the only one where the tights showed up.

Outfit Details:
Shirt: Think Geek
Skirt: Domino's Dollhouse
Tights: Foot Traffic brand via Sock Dreams


I also wore my new favorite hairstyle: a dutch-braid bun.  It makes it look like I have a huge amount of hair and is classic looking but still interesting.





*the combined holiday commemorating Towel Day, the Glorious 25 May, and the release of Star Wars and celebration of all things geeky.  Towel Day may be my favorite but I have yet to figure out how to visibly incorporate a towel into a work appropriate outfit, so that's strictly after hours.

Mostly how I am not sure how to do it.  The world of job searching is full of all sorts of random, seemingly magical, and often contradictory advice, leaving a poor random recent graduate like me with no idea what is true.  It is also largely geared towards the business world, which is not really my field.  I've recently been able to cut out a lot of the noise with the site Hiring Librarians, which is fantastic and simply a series of interviewers with the actual people who make hiring decisions at libraries.  I know since I started reading it regularly my cover letters and resume have dramatically improved, but the question of how to dress for an interview hass, if anything, gotten more confusing.  A huge number of the interviewees list dressing "too casually" as a common mistake, but what does that mean? Should I wear a suit?  Crap, I don't actually own a suit.  Then I will read someone saying a common mistake is "dressing too casually, like some people show up in flip-flops".  Right, I wasn't really ever considering showing up to an interview in flip-flops. The most formal library staff I have ever seen still only dress in "business casual" wear, so I figure, slightly nicer/more conservative than that should be fine.  I do however, have a pretty weak grasp on what normal people consider normal clothes.  So, here are the outfits I am most strongly considering, your feedback and general comments are very much appreciated.




This is my personal top pick.  It is dressy, but interesting and not at all revealing.  On the left I wear it with a sweater since I may soon be interviewing in Maine where it is usually in the 50's this time of year. I'm wearing it with some earrings that have a bit of vellum from a medieval copy of the Justitnian Code.  I don't know if the print is a bit too funky or the whole thing is too casual.

Silly thing the First:
For many years I have been studiously hiding the dark secret that I am actually blond.  After layers of dye and integrating root touch-ups as part of my life I can almost forget this shameful fact.....  Except those moments when I don't have any makeup and want to just put on pants and run the store for ice cream at 10 at night and realize that my eyebrows are several shades lighter than my hair and look decidedly weird.  I could either take two minutes to apply brow gel or decide I don't care if the Giant Eagle stock boy knows my terrible secret.  Not anymore!
I spent a few hours like that yesterday to dye my eyebrows with henna.  Normal dye is both more runny and toxic so, you know, you can go blind (even I am not so lazy at 10 at night to think it is worth it).  The chance of going blind doing this seemed pretty low, but I am not a doctor, so you probably shouldn't try this at home.  I ordered samples of Twilight henna and indigo from mehandi.com, mixed them up together into a fairly thick paste and left them sit while I was at work, then applied petroleum jelly around my eyebrows, applies the henna/indigo paste on the brows, and covered with saran wrap for a few hours.  Apparently I killed the indigo by mixing it up to far before applying it, so they came out lighter than they should have.
before on left and after on right

I don't think any objective assessment would allow me to conclude that it was worth the trouble, but I will probably still do it again, because I am stubborn and want to get the indigo thing right


Silly thing the second:
I made a dress with no pattern and a sort of vague notion of how I should go about it.  I think it turned out fine, but I had to remake several parts and keep adjusting the fit.  Honestly, a really simple maxi dress really shouldn't have been this much trouble, and wouldn't have been had I spent ten minutes on google looking up maxi dress tutorials.  Still, Gorey print maxi-dress:

and with a sweater!

So I haven't seen the movie yet.  As per usual I am waiting until it has been out for two weeks so I can get really cheap tickets.  I did finish the books a few weeks ago, and between that and reading a lot of commentary I have found I have a lot of thoughts.  Spoilers for probably the whole series, skip to the video to avoid.

Based on the hype and press surrounding the series, going in I thought I had a good understanding of what I was going to be reading: a post-apocalyptic novel with a scrappy girl hero who, after many trials, would overthrow her oppressive government (maybe with the help of a band of scrappy teen freedom fighters) and revolutionize the world!  That's pretty much, more or less, the template for these novels.  I was really unprepared for what actually happened (and actively fought it while reading, "No!  Katniss is the plucky girl hero!  She will not be a puppet for any government" {spoiler alert: yeah, she totally will}).which was actually a story about how incredibly hard that peppy post-apocalyptic YA story-line actually is; how those who try to change the world will find themselves co-opted, sold out, and having to make deals with the devil.  Also, PTSD, and super creepy coerced romance.  The Hunger Games series is not about a plucky girl hero saving the world, but about an admirably surly would be girl hero relentlessly ground down by the oppressive system, about surviving that system, and maybe managing to scrap together a slightly better life for you and yours.  It possibly has the most depressing happy ending in Young Adult fiction.  Once I gave into the fact that this is what the series is about, I was pretty impressed with the whole thing.  Really it subverts so much we have come to expect from YA genre fiction (including having the least interesting or relevant love triangle in fiction.  Pretty much every fan of the series is Team who-gives-a-crap).

That having been said, the quality of the writing takes a nose-dive between each book.  The third book is just rushed and poorly written.  See, by this book Katniss is supposed to be slightly unhinged, having constant flashbacks and barely able to keep it together.  Unfortunately it's written in the first person, so she can't just say "yeah, I'm totes unhinged".  If you can see into a character's mental processes they should probably not be so coherent if the character is supposed to be mentally disturbed.

Anyway, ever though it is kind of massively ironic, I am looking forward to the movie.  I just have to find someone to come with me who will put up with the inevitable gross sobbing that is going to happen when Rue dies.  I am also really excited about the soundtrack.  I am a fan of alternative country and was hoping, since the book is set in Appalachian coal country, for some good music, only to have it show up from the most unlikely source.  Taylor Swift, who has a troubled past with regards to writing songs about literature, wrote and preforms (along with The Civil Wars, who are awesome usually) a song that is actually completely perfect, appropriate to the narrative, dark and down tempo, with wisps of traditional Appalachian folk music.  The video's really beautiful too.


Also, for fans of dark YA genre fiction, my favorite series in pretty much ever, the Chaos Walking trilogy, is on sale for 99 cents each today only at amazon.
The Knife of Never Letting Go
The Ask and the Answer
Monsters of Men

I am so sorry to have taken so long to write this up.  I keep getting eaten by the job application process which, combined with the fact that I recently bruised my tailbone falling down the stairs and have had limited sitting upright time, has eaten all of my normal blogging time.  Anyway, I was nominated for the "Lovely Blog" award from both Sal Kaye at Still Dark @ Heart and Siouxsie Law.  Thanks so much!  The rules are that an awardee must post 7 facts about themselves and nominate 15 more people.  I believe everyone I would otherwise name has already been so honored so I will skip that part.  I have tried to make my random facts the most interesting I could remember in order to make up for my tardiness.

1. I can say "where are my pants" in seven languages despite not generally wearing pants, or losing clothing in random foreign countries (or ancient Rome, since classical Latin is one of the languages).
2. I used to be a inveterate liar, making up elaborate stories about my past or strange incidents because in my youth I became fascinated by the fact that people would believe things you told them just because and because I seem to have never fully absorbed the idea that lying is bad.  It was a fairly difficult habit to break, as lying is sometimes terribly convenient, but I do much better these days.  I still have friends who beleive some fairly strange things about me.
3. The strangest thing that anyone believes about me is that I am a secret agent for the Chinese government.  I am not myself actually responsible for that one.
4. I am not actually sure what my natural hair color is anymore.  It's statistically unlikely that it is still growing out blond, as neither of my parents were blond as adults, but it's so much lighter than the colors I have dyed it that it's not really possible to tell.  My eyebrows are light brown/dark blond, so probably that.
5. At last count I have moved around 2 dozen times and can fully unpack my apartment in under six hours.
6. I have 2 Garth Brooks songs on my mp3 player, and secretly love them.
7. I was obsessed with the Little House on the Prairie books as a girl but I was perhaps most captured by the chapters on pig slaughter and secretly wanted to roast a pig tail most of all.

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile.  I have had a nasty case of writer's block/ennui that just of course got worse as time spent not posting went on.  Hopefully this quick note will jump-start my writing again.

Today is International Women's day, a holiday which has been used widely to celebrate women's achievements and highlight continuing inequalities.  The International Women's Day website theme for 2012 is "Connecting Girls: Inspiring Futures" which I think is a pretty awesome theme.  Since getting two fantastic nieces I have started thinking more and more about how to help bring up girls to be strong, confident, and full of self-worth in a society full of so many negative messages.  I don't have any great answers (although I think buying a lot of Girl Scout cookies can't hurt) and sometimes it can be pretty demoralizing.  Sometimes feminism can be just exhausting. Sometimes though, I try remember why I fight for gender equality:

Because I want to see what these fierce girls can make of themselves in a world without limits.

I was looking through photos when I noticed this outfit, which I wore, oh sometime in mid-november and never got around to posting.

This sweater was not meant to be cropped, and I kind of don't understand why it is, but I decided I really like it.  It looks a bit strange left open though, and once closed I realized it opened at the top in almost the exact shape/space of a lace insert on the top of this cami.  

Since I have always loved the look of green with purple I decided to stifle my tendancy to do incredibly matchy-matchy makeup and use purple in my makeup.

Outfit Details
Cami and tights: Torrid
Skirt: In the Starlight
Sweater: Handmade
Pin: Jujube Pins
Earrings: Art of Adornment
Lipstick: Sephora
Eyeshadow: Geek Chic Cosmetics, "Ambassador"

Of course I believe few enough things, but one thing is sure, that you can't open Christmas presents in anything but pajamas.  That would be wrong.  I even have a special Christmas morning shirt:

However, this Christmas being a Sunday, I did have to get properly dressed for church and all.
Slightly lousy picture, but I couldn't figure out the lighting in a new location. Anyway, at church I seemed to catch a fairly surprising amount of hostility. I slipped out to the bathroom in the middle of services between musical numbers and was given a couple of full body scans and scowls from the women standing in the back with irritated children. My sister goes to a Mormon church, but I was raised Mormon and am fully able to dress myself appropriately for church (and I had the shawl fully covering my shoulder actually in church).  I don't know if standards have changed or if hopeless spinsters like myself are expected to be more mild and, I don't know, pastel.  Perhaps the rumors we always heard about Utah mormons being more cliquish and judgy than the rest of the world, but that seems a little unfair of me to conclude with so little data.  Oh well, I think I was fabulous.

Of course I had loud bright green eyeshadow (which lots almost subtle in this picture compared to the real-life equivalent) and red lipstick.

Outfit details:
Dress: Target, a million years ago
Shawl: shady-looking Pashmina market outside the West Nanjing Road metro station in Shanghai
Shoes: Target, this season
Jewelry: Art of Adornment
Lipstick: Revlon, Certainly Red
Eyeshadow: Shiro cosmetics: Link around eye and in crease, Bulbasaur below crease, and Outright Fabrication (white with subtle but fun specks of red glitter) above.

Anyway, have a happy New Year!  I have exciting plans involving a bottle of Cupcake Vineyards Prosseco and a large bowl of shrimp and grits

I just* got back from Christmas in Salt Lake City.  It was mostly a good time.  There were pretty mountains

Mt. Olympus, which is apparently in Utah.  No word on what the Greek gods think about that.

and pretty lights:


It might have even been the perfect trip except, as happens nearly every time we visit my sister, everyone came down with some horrible illness contracted fro the small people:

The Plague rats enjoy their Christmas carnage.

*for certain quantities of "just"

Image from: IMDB

How is everyone's holiday season going?  I am in Salt Lake City having Chirstmas with my sister and having the unique Antropological experience of observing Mormons in their natural habitat (fun fact: even in Utah, you can buy beer at the grocery store, take that Pennsylvania!, but the tea selection is crap).
Christmas is pretty much my favorite holiday: I love presents, getting as much as giving, peppermint-chocolate flavored things*, light displays, and gaudily combining red and green in my outfits (currently I have black nail polish covered with green glitter on one hand and red glitter on the other). 
I've been thinking lately about how all the winter holidays (Christmas, Hanukkah, Eid, and most overtly Yule) are about the ultimate triumph of light over darkness.  While that may not inherantly seem like a very Goth-y sort of message; I would disagree.  To me, the ultimate point of gothic subculture is to acknowledge that life isn't always sunshiney and bright, but to embrace the darkness in our lives and see the beauty therein.  I think ultimately, that fits in with the winter holidays and the idea that while we may be in the darkest time of the year, that isn't permenent and within the darkness is beauty and a promise of light to come. 

So tonight, I"ll be going to see the lights in Temple Square (which promise to be appropriately stunning) and tommorow I'll be woken up too early by a horde of enthusiastic children to open presents in my silly bat pyjamas.

I hope you all will of have had an excellent holiday and (in case I don't get back here before then) a wonderful new year!


* Here is my super-secret recipie for gluten-free chocolate mint M&M cookies

 
This month's homework assignment from our dearest professor is to talk about what we do to relax and seek comfort during the stress of the holidays and whatnot.  Personally, I don't find the holidays stressful.  I looove Christmas and all the Christmas-y business, but that "whatnot", well there's a real grade-A bitch.
As a grad student I don't usually have finals, but instead final projects, which I find personally take a lot more time.  Maybe I am too much of a perfectionist (when it comes to my writing anyway, not really anything else, really), maybe I procrastinate too much, probably both.  Regardless I have been working on said projects pretty much constantly for the past month.  I have a few rules to stay sane: if it doesn't get done before midnight it doesn't get done, always get a real night's sleep, eat three actual meals every day and take at least a half hour break to do so.  The other rule is to occasionally (usually after finishing a project, regardless of how many are left) take actual, notable amounts of time to relax.  So, what do I do during those times:
1. Read: but here's the important part (I read all the time, obviously), read for fun.  I always have something on the go that I am reading for fun.  I usually only manage 10-20 pages a day, but it gets read.  Currently I am reading The Eyre Affair; a delightful book of such insanity I wan't even try to describe it, but suffice it to say it has enough literature in-jokes to keep me giggling.

2. Knit: I tend to retreat into selfish knitting at these times.  Don't get me wrong, I am a selfish knitter most of the time, but it's right before Christmas when most knitters are working full tilt on gift knitting and I ...well I have a stocking on the needles, it's nearly done and all, but what I have been spending most of my time on are heavyweight kicking around the house socks for meeeeee!
Wool socks are an important part of my barely turning on the heater survival strategy, but these are especially satisfying because socks usually take me a 4-6 weeks but because these are thick yarn I should have them done in 2-3 with much less knitting time than usual.  While I am knitting I like to:

3. Watch TV shows (on Netflix, usually.  I don't have a TV) or random youtubery.  I can't talk myself into setting aside enough time to watch a movie, but a 45 minute break or two in the middle of a 16 hour day of writing is acceptable. My current favorite thing is Rebecca Watson explaining how lying to children is fun and makes them smarter, also how awesome and messed up Iceland is, great, neglected Christmas traditions like Krampus and the Yule Lads, and the murderous Feline fashion police.  It is hilarious (if you are somewhat twisted) and very NSFW
4. If all else fails:

Wow has it really been nearly three weeks?  It has.  I have been thoroughly in the weeds getting ready for final projects, studying, and keeping up with the stupid f*%$#@*ing class discussion board of my most annoying class.  I am popping my head up because I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, and just because.  Expect normal blogging to resume after the 17th.

I just got my first tattoo tonight to celebrate/commemorate my impending graduation from Library school.  I wanted a quote so I started looking for quotes on libraries, reading, and information.  I found a few great ones, which I still may get, but I also discovered that when it came to quotes about reading and books, when the reader was male or gender unspecific they were all exceedingly positive, but if the reader was female then they were quite negative.  There was this sense that books, especially novels, will ruin a girl for any sort of "decent" life.  Perhaps the best expression of this sense is in Charles Warnke's essay "You should date an illiterate girl", which says, among other things: "The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am.", and in this helpful Victorian infographic:

It is the end of the semester and that means deadlines all coming together in a rush, so I have been too busy to post anything or comment much in y'all's lovely blogs, but I thought I would quickly add a post for Movie Monday.  I just had time to collect some screenshots from the internets and add commentary, so I thought this month I would feature my current favorite costume drama.
I really love costume dramas; the more repressed and British the better.  Of course there are all sorts of great reasons for loving British costume drams: the inevitable sweeping, subtly expressed romance, the thoroughly polite but venomously bitchy matriarch, servant drama!, and beautiful scenery, but its pretty obviously mostly about the costumes.  The best costume drama I have seen in ages is Downton Abbey.  It has everything you want in a costume drama, and is executed perfectly.  There are even two bitchy/polite matriarchs and they are at war with each other!  The costumes are gorgeous.  The first episode of the first series has them all in mourning so there are elaborately jet-beaded gowns as far as the eye can see:

No one wants to kiss these girls, obvs.

Don't you want to reach into the screen and snatch that necklace right off. I need a necklace like that.

As is historically appropriate the older women, especially Maggie Smith's character, the Dowager Countess, dress more late Victorian than Edwardian

Also the hats!  All the hats!

Finally, more jet-beading! And the meeting of the warring old Ladies!