Yvi

I'm almost done with grad school. Less than three months to go!

Trying to go a little easy on fandom in the meantime, since I've also moved and am working full time. The only thing I'm signing up for is Yuletide, unless I magically end up with enough free time and enough delusions of capability to decide I can crank out something else on any kind of schedule. That Teen Wolf cosmetology AU ain't gonna appear out of nowhere.

In lieu of actually posting fic, I guess I'll just tap dance or try and fool everyone into thinking I'm actually doing cool things. OH HEY, LOOK! It's this thing from Bina's kink fest that I never actually finished!

(It's the one where Eames forges a centaur. I couldn't go through with actually making Arthur fuck a horse. And some of the places my research took me were pretty weird. The things I do for fandom. If I were a Lannister, I would shove it out a window.)

Um, I also miss everyone and I'm sorry for not being more interesting. I've been more active on Twitter and Tumblr, since they take less energy and the future of this world is one of instant gratification and I am totally, unabashedly part of the problem. Call me maybe.

AND IF ANYONE ELSE THINKS THE CALL ME MAYBE MUSIC VID IS PRIME YULETIDE FANDOM FODDER, I WILL BAKE RAINBOW MUFFINS. AND TAP DANCE. AT THE SAME TIME.

Wow, how about that DDOS attack, eh?

I have to say, considering how long LJ's been around (which is pretty impressive in terms of blogging sites) and considering how many folks use it, they do a decent job at getting shit done. Yeah, it was kind of a pain being unable to feed my LJ addiction whenever the mood was on me, but in the grand scheme of things that isn't even a drop in the bucket. I've been crossposting everything from DW for...God, like a year now? And I love having that extra security, but I'm still attached to LJ since I've been there much longer and it really is where all the action happens.

I do, however, wish LJ had been a little more upfront about what in the world was going on.

So! Remember how I had a couple interviews for actualfax teaching positions? Yeah, the county says that's not gonna fly because they can't hire me until I'm completely done with classes and eligible for student teaching. And since that won't happen until I knock out my last three classes this fall, I'm back to subbing at least for fall semester--however, there's a chance I'll score a long-term gig or that I'll get hired anyway in the spring.

And, additional silver lining, if two schools are keen on hiring me even thought I'm technically not eligible yet, that seems favorable enough to me. So I'm not exactly pleased with things, but I'm familiar with nothing if not bureaucracy. Also, there's a nifty tutoring place hiring part-time tutors to do remote work, so if I can bring in some spare cash working a few extra hours from home, fine by me.

Finally, and most importantly, remember 50/50? That movie where JGL plays a cancer patient? The one that doesn't come out for another two months? Thanks to Tumblr, I won tickets to an advance screening and got to see it last Thursday with the lovely chibi_lurrel. LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT IT. JUST LOOK AT HIS WEE LITTLE HEAD AND DORKY LITTLE EARS.



This entry doesn't give away the end, but I make no promises about the comments, just for the record.

( this is my slightly flaily post-50/50 response thing )

Tomorrow, I take my assessment for placement with this tutoring company I'm going to work with, then the next day I have two interviews and a university open house, and I'm going to spend the next couple weeks polishing grad school applications to a high shine. Maybe more fic, for when I get overwhelmed. Whew.

This past weekend was pretty rad. I got to hang out with hannahrorlove, deelaundry, and ayalesca, and narrowly missed bumping into bironic (and, by association, BILL NYE THE SCIENCE GUY). There was ice-cream eating and book-perusing and sculpture-garden wandering and, of course, we talked smack about every single one of you. &hearts

And now for something completely different, soda_and_capes has selected seven of my, admittedly rather vague, interests, which I will now elucidate. I use my interests field as more of a commonplace book for things that have stood out for me at some point in my life, so this is a nice trip down memory lane.

dreaming only geese
This is a reference to a book of Inuit folktales called The Girl Who Dreamed Only Geese, which I loved when I was younger. Also, the illustrations are by Leo and Diane Dillon, whose work will never not amaze me.

heautontimoroumenos
A poem by Charles Baudelaire, who was a BFF of mine during my emo phase and a harbinger of my obsession with French lit. It means "The Self-Tormentor" and, imho, Roy Campbell's translation is the best.

marrying tomorrow
This one can be taken two ways. One, I think of it as the act of flinging yourself forward and making the next day as awesome as you can, which is something I should try to do more often. And two, when the main character in Maurice (great book, great movie) admits to being "an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort," he undergoes a quick physical and is told he could "marry tomorrow" if he wanted to, BECAUSE THAT'S ALL THAT MATTERS AND NOT THE FACT THAT HE'S ACTUALLY GAYER THAN GAY.

uli saying thank you
Uli Herzner was a contestant on season three of Project Runway. She was so talented and sweet and had perfect manners and more people should be like that, myself included.

three chartreuse buzzards
A song I learned at Girl Scout camp that no one else has ever heard of. It kicks ass, I swear.

speaking seventeen languages badly
Representative of my own linguistic foibles and also a quote from The Last Unicorn, one of my favorite books and movies.

marinating in liminality
My default status! I love liminality (the process of transferring between two states without belonging to either) because it's the antithesis of pigeonholing. Victor Turner, another BFF from back when I was an anthropology major, sold me on it.

If you'd like me to pick seven of yours, just say the word.

I am walking on eggshells and nibbling my nails waiting to find out what happens next. My documents should make it to Korea by Friday at the latest. Then they take up to another week to get processed, then I get my visa information, then I go to the consulate to have everything certified, and finally I find out my flight information.

Honestly, I'm excited, but I'm also a little terrified. I've been reading up on the part of Korea where my school is located and the consensus seems to be that it is what you make of it. Which is all well and good, but I want as many specifics as I can if I'm going to be living in a foreign country for a year. I'm infinitely grateful for my month in Egypt, since I can only imagine how badly I'd be freaking out if I had no experience whatsoever teaching abroad.

However, I'm actually enjoying getting to spend some time at home, as opposed to flagellating myself for not having a job for all of three weeks--I've been back in my room at my mother's house, and things have been all right so far. It's great being able to weed through my room at my leisure, have access to everything in the refrigerator, and not pay rent. Both my brothers are home for the summer, though the little Gorgon is busy working the (lol) graveyard shift for a funeral home and the littlest Gorgon is on the computer most of the time. Finding a temp job to tide me over had been way more of a pain than I'd anticipated--I've had some great interviews for other teaching positions abroad, permanent placement jobs in the US, and extended temp positions in the US, but no luck on snagging something simple and short-term. Please, dear God, just let someone need an extra set of hands for inventory. I do, at least, have a possible tutoring gig I need get the details on tomorrow. Verbal SAT prep, which I can totally do, even though it took me a while to remember they don't make the SATs like they used to.

Also, I went to a 90's dance party over the weekeend and met up with the lawyer chick who'd copped my number a couple nights before. All was well, till she had to leave early and help take a sick friend home. Unless that was all just an excuse to get away from me for whatever reason. Still, my friends and I rocked out to the end and went to bed around four in the morning, after a much-needed falafel run on the way back from the club. Vegetarian lesbians party hard, y'know.

The other night I dreamed I was trapped in PPTH, and Pontius Pilate (from the 2000 version of Jesus Christ Superstar) showed up to tell me the hospital was on fire and that I should make sure House got out safely. I couldn't find him, though I did find Chase and Cameron passed out in separate beds in one of the patient's rooms, and ended up yelling "Pilate!" in frustration at the top of my lungs.

Apparently the hospital was burning very, very slowly, since I never saw any smoke or fire. But I'm sort of wondering what would happen if House did get caught in a fire. Aside from massive amounts of angst and/or hurt/comfort.

Also, I got a job offer from a charter school in Maryland (too far and not well-paying enough, even as a temporary position, though; I'm not shelling out that much for gas/parking/metro) and a language school in Cairo (which I'm going to decline because it's not a very good package and I'd really rather do Korea). Went in to talk to a couple high-level temp places this week and managed to get an interview for tomorrow morning with a company Temp Place #2 found for me. So ideally, I'll get that job for a few months, get all my papers in order (got my background check done, going to call and make sure my transcripts are on the way, and plan to get the apostille stamp as soon as I can). So I might not be working right now, but I'm definitely busy. Which is something.

Gonna go trot on the treadmill before the next phone call. Gaaaah.

Ugh. I've been laying low lately because I feel like every little thing has the potential to make me mildly pissed off and no one really needs to listen to that.

Still trying to catch up on fic-reading and comment-leaving, still trying to get back into the swing of writing things. Only, I keep guilting myself every time I try to work on something because I get irked for not finishing anything original.

However, I really think I want to teach in Korea. I've been reading up on the pros and cons, and it's got some of the best deals in Asia, which is where the demand for English teachers is highest. Tomorrow, I'm going to talk to the registrar at my university about getting a few transcripts mailed over so I can get them notarized; I also need to see if my current criminal background check is applicable or if I'll need to have a new one done. Then I get everything mailed off to my school of choice and wait for my visa to get processed.

Thing is, I can't not work while I'm going through all this, so I'm poking around for something to tide me over. I've barely been back in the country a week, and I've already got cabin fever from staying at my mother's and not having a job. I've never not had a job--even when I was starting a new one, it was always the day after I finished up with the previous one. Productivity has to happen.

I really am excited about Korea. A little nervous, but mostly just glad for a chance to travel and teach. I hope everything works out.

I had two job interviews scheduled yesterday, one of which I canceled because it was a second-rounder and I knew I wouldn't take the job, the other of which the interviewer postponed because of an emergency. Today, I had one in-person interview that went okay, one phone interview that I think is going to lead to an in-person one, and one phone interview that was supposed to happen at 4:30.

I think I've been stood up.

And this actually really bothers me since I had a place I'm really interested in contact me about scheduling an interview around 4:15 today and I asked if we could do it tomorrow instead. Really, the least the guys with first dibs could've done was, I dunno, not waste my time.

The place I'm hopefully going to get to interview with tomorrow is regarding teaching in Korea. I'm excited.

And finally, the club I'm going to tonight says you must be "18 to cum, 21 to swallow." Could this be (a) any gayer? (b) any cruder? (c) any more obviously the work of someone who thinks they're incredibly clever for coming up with it? Men.

OH HAI.

So. I've moved out and I just used a large chunk of my Target gift card to pick up sunblock, bug repellent, a cool hat, a long white skirt, a long black scarf (word on the street is you can get pure water in mosques, though I'd wanted to visit one even before I heard that intriguing little tidbit and will most likely just be paranoid and buy everything in bottles anyway), and hand sanitizer.

I really don't want to get malaria or something.

I've unpacked partway, and made a big dent in the organizing-my-room terror. Yes, I get to unpack from moving out only to repack for Egypt! It's amazingly annoying, which is why I'm puttering around online instead.

Then I need to make sure everything's cool with work, so I have a bunch of nitty-gritty details I need to get down in memo form so it doesn't seem like I'm leaving the new staff members up a creek without a paddle. And I have two phone interviews on Tuesday, my last day (yes, and my flight is Wednesday; I like to be busy), not counting this one place that wants to meet me in person...only, they're in New Jersey. And all these people called me on the same day while I was spectacularly busy. Those bitches, showing an interest in my resume...

After-Egypt still seems a little nebulous, and the when-I-get-back options deserve a post of their own. I'm more worried, right now, about just making it there safely.

Yes! I got a job interview with a place that isn't trying to meet me in person while I'm out of the country! Phone interviews make everything so much easier.

All I have to do now is pack up, move out of my house, make sure my bedroom and bathroom are clean, unpack at my mother's house, straighten out the disaster that is that room, move out of my office, make sure I've left as many memos as possible to smooth the way for the new staff, make sure my work laptop is organized, grab a couple more things for Egypt, print my itinerary, load up my mp3 player with Egyptian Arabic tutorials so I can keep learning on the plane, make sure not to forget my passport, keep on staunchly sending out my resume so I have some kind of employment when I get back...

La Actriz is getting me dinner in a little while. I will stop my compulsive list-making then.

Well, I did it. I've been accepted to a TEFL program in Egypt.

...now what?