Love In The Asylum

We went to the Glow this weekend!

Meant to go on Friday, but we were utterly rained out - made it all the way to the girlfriend's house before we realized they were probably going to cancel it, and ended up just going for sushi instead. But our passes were good for the whole week, so we tried again last night and it was awesome. I really missed the balloon fiesta while I was in California. I don't crew, and I never want to get up early enough to go to mass ascension, and it mucks traffic up all over town the whole week, but, idk. There is something familiarly pleasant in knowing that I can get up in the morning to a balloon accidentally landing in the yard. And the special shapes glow is the best. I saw an octopus balloon (that one was my favorite), and the Creamland Cow, and two bees with a baby bee, and a really lovely butterfly, and I got a trading card for the Spiderpig balloon. Fun times.

I also got a haircut this weekend, but no pictures of that. You can't really tell the difference anyway, I only got three or four inches taken off. But it feels a lot better!

Things I Did Today With Hanjuuluver (OMG I AM SO GLAD TO TALK TO A PERSON I'M NOT RELATED TO, YOU HAVE NO IDEA):

1. Lunch at Flying Star (bestest cafe chain in the state) - they always have great food, and today was no exception. Big burgers with real, chewy delicious buns! Chicken pot pie as big as your head! MAC AND CHEESE OMG. And we were sitting right next to the counter where they display all the desserts, so of course we walked out of there with chocolate cheesecake. I'm amazed we managed to resist the temptation to buy a dozen giant cupcakes.

2. Shared a bunch of music, since Hanjuuluver shares my love of geektastic filk and is too computer-inept to download her own. There was also a lot of singing along to Doctor Horrible songs and songs about Canada, because we are awesome that way.

3. Our near death by bad cooking, because my dad left us to make dinner for ourselves. Our recipe, ginger-soy chicken, was not fail, but I was under the impression hanjuuluver could actually cook (MAYBE BECAUSE SHE TOLD ME) and did not need to be supervised, and this was not the case. As she proved when she took the lid off the rice to stir it five minutes in. Or when she took the partially cooked chicken off the stove because she forgot to chop it (and then couldn't handle non-deboned chicken, so I had to do it instead). I DO NOT APPROVE. If we all die of food poisoning, it is totally her fault.

4. Watched Due South! I think she got sick of listening to us rant at her about it, because she made me let her watch it. We rewatched the pilot movie, and then some random episodes from season 1 and 2 because I am missing most of the first season (I've seen it, I just didn't start saving it until the Victoria episodes). She is also of the opinion that Fraser and Ray are totally married and should just kiss already. And that Diefenbaker=win. She was an easy convert. :D

I've also been making a few new Torchwood icons (nothing from the Series That Never Happened, though) and working on the crossover. I've got the prologue finished, and the first chapter plotted out. Tomorrow I'm going to my mom's to hang out and get a haircut! And by haircut I mean a half-inch trimmed off the bottom which will be virtually indistinguishable to anyone else, not, you know, an actual haircut. Boy oh boy, my life is exciting.

Things That I Have Done Over Labor Day Weekend:

• worked, which was fairly hellish, since it was 7.30 to 4. Also it was very strange sitting in someone else's cubicle. 
• finished several pieces of paperwork I needed, including my letter of resignation for work (handing in tomorrow!) and my absentee ballot form so I can vote for Obama and Udall in November.
• Finally finally finally got in touch with my roommate for this year. She's a junior, econ major with a creative writing minor, sounds really nice so far. Hopefully we will get along, yes?
• got a metric ton of sleep, which is always a good thing. I don't care how much my dad teases me - sleeping is /fun/
• downloaded (still in process of) some new comics, because i am feeling keenly a lack of sufficient Impulse, Robin, Super-boy and Nightwing in my life. And one can never have enough Booster Gold. XD
• played Sims for 4 hours, in which I had one of my Gen 6 Llewellyn heirs meet a new girl, hit it off, date, have hot lesbian sex, and then get engaged, only to have Max spontaneously shut down because of overheating, which meant I lost everything. Woe. But I played for awhile toniht and got them back together, and at least Cymry and Evan and their eternal 3-bolt love affair are safe.
• became addicted to a new game: Mechquest. Thank you oh so much, hanjuuluver . One of the reasons work on Sat was so hellish was because I only got 2 hours of sleep beforehand because I was up so late playing. But it's so captivating! And simple enough that even someone like me who fails at RPGs can handle it, and I'm playing as one of my space opera OCs, so I get to make up stories about him while I play.

So yeah, all in all not a bad long weekend.

The Good

Weekend was really a terrible amount of fun. Yesterday hanjuuluver, diamminesilver and I went up to Santa Fe for our long-planned and now apparently traditional mid-summer onsen trip. The bathhouse out there is so lovely - it's up in the mountains, and all the baths are outdoors, so you're soaking in the water looking up at the trees and the sky and hearing all of the birds and the wind and everything. Hard to imagine a more relaxing experience, really. We did the women-only bath for awhile, and then the sauna, the cold plunge - well I did the cold plunge, they were wimps - and back in the baths, and by the time we left I was so relaxed I almost fell asleep in the car on the way home. I can't wait for next year.

After we got back to town, diamminesilver's dad took us into Albuquerque for dinner and music, since there was an R&B band he wanted to see playing at this winery. I was a little wary, since R&B isn't my scene, but the food was fabulous (Kobe beef burgers and sweet potato fries, OMG, plus two plates of cheese and salami and crackers and bread and a brownie so big the three of us split it and still barely finished) and the band was pretty good, so we had a really great time. All in all, a wonderful day.

Today, the three of us met up again so we could go book-shopping, since Border's was having a sale. Once again, a good time was had by all - read a bunch of new manga and all of Trace Memory, freaked out passers-by with our habit of having very little respect for each other's personal space, and bought new headphones and the next volume of Yellow (SO SHINY). Also chocolate. Yay.

The Bad

Man, I keep trying to post about this and dissolving into incoherent shouting and crying and wanting to hit people with baseball bats. To make a long story short, I've been planning for about a year to go to Yaoi-Con withhanjuuluver, and making serious plans, of the "paying for tickets and making hotel reservations" sort, since April. Her parents are kind of overprotective, so we've been making sure everything gets cleared with them the whole way, and when we told them our plans in April, they said she could go and they would pay her airline fare.

This week, they decided she couldn't go, mostly because they are pissed off that she didn't place into as high a math class as they thought she should have. If she doesn't go, I can't go either - I just plain cannot afford the hotel room.

I am so fucking pissed off at them right now.  Not because they told her she couldn't go - as her parents and the people who are paying for it, it's their right - but because they are fucking jerking us around. They told her she could go in April, and they knew when they told her that that both of us then started to spend money - MONEY I DO NOT HAVE TO SPARE - on it. Letting us do that, and then suddenly changing their minds, isn't fair to her, isn't fair to me, and is in all truth just generally fucked up. Not to mention that in the whole fight they've said some incredibly insulting and offensive stuff about me to her, treated her like she's five, and that her dad did what I think was a horribly manipulative thing by saying he would not pay for her textbooks this year if she went. I just. God. I hate them so much right now.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do now. We aren't going to be able to talk them around, so at this point I'm trying to find another roommate, but I don't know - if I can't find someone I trust pretty well, I don't know if I want to do it, since I can't spare the money if they bail on me. I might ask her parents to refund me the money that would have covered her half of the hotel room - I think they owe me that - or at the very least the money I spent on registration - that I'm not compromising on. But all in all, it's a bad situation.

The Genderswapping

The Amazon blurb on the 9th Torchwood novelization, set to come out later this year:
   
    "The ninth novel in the bestselling Torchwood range from BBC Books. Emma is 30, single and, frankly, desperate. She woke up this     morning with nothing to look forward to but another evening of unsuccessful speed-dating. But now she has a new weapon in her quest for Mr Right. And it's made her almost perfect! Ianto Jones woke up this morning with no memory of last night. He went to work, where he caused amusement, suspicion, and a little bit of jealousy. Because Ianto Jones woke up this morning in the body of a woman! And he's looking just about perfect! And Jack Harkness has always had his doubts about Perfection..."

Holy fucking hell I love this fandom so much.