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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

God, you guys...I have no idea what I want to do with my life.

One day, I'll want to teach in Thailand. The next day, I'll want to own a bookshop in Barcelona. The day after that, I'll be wondering if I should actually try my hand at submitting some writing to an actual publication, or maybe writing that thesis on drag kings my anthro adviser vetoed senior year.

I think my head is going to explode. I'm ready to move on, but I don't know where.

O hai thar, I are back from Puerto Rico.

I went to the rainforest, drank pina coladas in the pool, slathered on SPF 50 and escaped with just a little pinkness on my nose, almost broke up with my girlfriend, watched ProjRun with Spanish subtitles, ran into a religious procession in Old San Juan, got sketchily hit on, and actually got some decent networking in. I am also tired as hell, leaving for New Orleans by way of Ohio on Friday, and everybody writes too much.

But I heart you all anyway. =)

Picspam to come, sooner rather than later for anyone I know on Facebook.

I...don't think I'm cut out for this.

The board meeting went well, but how much time can I spend talking about branding and interfacing and whether a given event should be classified as black-tie?

This is what happens when you work for a not-very-nonprofitty nonprofit. I'm surrounded by hors d'oeuvres and posh hotels and CEOs in thousand-dollar suits who get their ten-year-olds BlackBerries without batting an eye.

Next month, I get to go to Puerto Rico for a few days because we're taking some of our bigger fish there for a retreat. I get to bring La Actriz. For free. It's going to be the most amazing Valentine's weekend ever. And I'm lucky for getting to experience that, and I'm learning a lot, about event planning and how to be nice with corporate bigwigs in order to get what you want and how to stay afloat in the DC business world, but I just feel like a sell-out.

To the ten-year-olds at my last job, blackberries were just things you picked off bushes and they were ecstatic if you gave them a few quarters for an arcade. I've been on both extremes of the nonprofit spectrum at this point, and I'm definitely finding out which I prefer. I plan to stay with my current job till May/June so I'll have it on my resume that I've been there over a year, and then...we'll see.

My old AmeriCorps team is doing Katrina relief for a week at the end of February and I'm taking some vacation time so I can go along. I'm really excited about that. And I don't have to wear a blazer.

I'm not entirely sure why we thought House/Wilson/barely-legal cabana boy was a good idea. But it was so much fun.

ETA: OMG UPDATING COVER LETTERS FREAKING SUCKS WHYWHYWHY DO I FAIL AT PIMPING MYSELF WHY

ETA II: Screw this, I'm going to Panera.