molly_o

I am trying to be better about posting more in the new year. (It would be difficult to post less!)

RM and I actually got to the movies TWICE in the past 10 days -- thereby doubling the number of movies we've seen in the theater in the last six months. We saw Avatar and Sherlock Holmes.

For the latter, I refer you to Cleolinda's awesome report: http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/835800.html.

I went to see the former knowing I'd have Issues with it, and I felt more than a twinge about doing so (having read this via zvi). I didn't even think it was going to be so awesome -- frankly I felt pretty meh about it -- but seeing movies together is Big Thing for RM and me, and the 23rd was one of literally a half-dozen chances we've had to see a movie together in the past *year*, and he really wanted to see it, and there just were no enough other movies playing that day that offered a compelling alternative. ("Did You Hear About the Morgans" was not going to cut it.)

It had, as most people know by now, many awesome elements and many troubling elements. I'm pondering what a less-troubling version of Avatar might look like, and maybe I'll post about that at some point. (More like, it'll be one of those things that sits on my hard drive forever.)

Anyhow, I am glad to be in 2010. 2009 was awesome but also exhausting. Sometime in November I started to feel like more or less consistently on top of things, and I have my fingers crossed that 2010 will be more like that.

I had all these plans to take the BG to the fireworks in Takoma (=less crowded than the ones on the Mall and perhaps more like my childhood memories of the ones on the Mall, before they created an elaborate, celebrity-filled celebration and then created elaborate security protocols to deal with the resulting crowds).

Instead, we went to the neighborhood parade in the morning. It was led by a delegation from the Marine Band, and an excellent local high school marching band brought up the rear, and in between there were cars advertising real estate agents and a couple women dressed as the Statue of Liberty and lots of parents and kids marching on behalf of one school or another. (My favorites were the kids who tossed candy to the bystanders - and then ran to grab the pieces that fell short for themselves.) After that, I felt like we had celebrated pretty well

I keep thinking of Minotaur at the most random times -- editing an article about San Diego at work, or dabbing a bit of diaper cream on the BG's taint. Still, I don't know if it will really hit me that he's gone until CON.TXT. RM is *really* going to miss him -- he looked forward to hanging out with Stuart at slash cons.

Lately I've been watching TrueBlood and Burn Notice (though not slashing either). It's a fun exercise to watch TB and compare the plot structure to the books; the TV writers often take a wildly different path to get to a similar place.

I've also been watching a lot of this video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Za-V_lhwGg. I thought it was awesome to begin with, but I made the mistake of watching it with BG, and she likes to replay it 5 or 10 times every morning.

Racialicious had an interesting discussion last week about the propriety of white writers writing CoC.

The conversation there played out differently than these conversations seem to in fandom, which I am guessing is due to the fundamental difference between fanfiction and original fiction. CoC in fanfic are already there, and most likely were created by white people to begin with, so (though most readers who care about the topic at all no doubt hope white writers will do a good job, a responsible job, writing CoC), the task is to write CoC no worse than TPTB do -- a pretty low bar.

So I'm googling this Sullenberger guy -- who did seven years in the Air Force -- and it turns out there's a Sullenberger stables, and for some reason that seemed like a bizarre coincidence, like we're in the AU where John's last name is Sullenberger and Dave is running the stables while John is a commercial pilot. Or maybe that's just because I read this yesterday.

Also, should I be concerned that the character on TV who always says just what I was saying a minute ago is Dean Winchester?

( not really spoilery, but ... )

Also, I am slightly embarrassed by how much I want to see My Bloody Valentine in 3D.

I guess LJ was down? I didn't notice so much, seeing as how RM and I are halfway around the world with a small person who pretty much has to be touching one of us 24/7. (She is shaping up to be a Daddy's girl, and RM is all worried my feelings will be hurt, and I'm like, dude? I'm allowed to sleep without a 24-pound dead weight on my right shoulder all night long, I think I'll get over it.)

She is so fucking AWESOME. (I suppose I should say f-ing awesome, being a parent now.)

She will eat ANYTHING. She has eaten and apparently enjoyed every single thing we've tried out -- and mostly, we buy her adult food and give her little bits of it; it's one of the wonderful things about becoming parents to an 11-month old, all the food restrictions that apply to infants are pretty much done. The only thing she seems not to like is strawberry yogurt. (She's doing much better than Mark: he's eaten half a cheeseburger and one scrambled egg in the four days we've been here. OK, that's an exaggeration, but not much of one.)

Today at the national palace museum, she got bored with the cheerios I was feeding her one at a time and started feeding them back to me. It was so cute I almost died on the spot.

She hates baths, diapers changes, and clothing changes with a hatred that burns like a thousand fiery suns. During those events, she screams at a pitch I would think only dogs could hear, except that we can totally hear it. The whole block can hear it. Yesterday one of her socks fell off somewhere in the hotel corridor -- I have no idea when/where -- ad they brought it straight to our room, because there's no mistaking which room has a kid in it. But she doesn't hold grudges: As soon as the torment stops, she's fine.

She LOVES walking outside and looking at everything -- mopeds, fountains, flashing neon, you name it. When Mark and I are both in the room, she much prefers to be held by daddy (baba), but as soon as I step out in the hall with her in the carrier, she gets all quiet, and then we'll take a walk to the park together and I'll give her some milk and cheerios and bits of nori (I think it's nori -- they call it dried laver, it's the sheets of dried seaweed you use to make sushi rolls? that is one of her favorite snacks ever, her foster mom gave us a package with 50 individual packets of little strips of it, and it's been a godsend), and she hangs out on my lap and then dozes off and sleeps on me.

She doesn't say anything yet (in English or Mandarin, that we can tell), but she knows her nickname -- if you say Ai Ai, she'll turn and see what you want.

When baba is carrying her and she drinks from her sippy cup, she flings her head back and throws one arm out, and it's so sweet, and you can tell she *trusts* us, which is just amazing.

I will try to post some photos sometime, the internet is iffy here.

1. If you go to the SGA page on the SciFi site (http://www.scifi.com/atlantis/), there's this image of the various cast members with one person big in front, and a couple people medium-sized and set slightly back, and the rest smaller at the back. And if you hit refresh the arrangement changes -- it's all the same pictures, but they rearrange them and resize them to put different people up front.

And if you hit refresh so that Woolsey is up front? John and Ronon are holding hands. No, really -- try it and see!

2. Jensen Ackles lip-synching "Eye of the Tiger" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMOUdtEqymQ&feature=related) is one of the more hilarious things EVER. Gah, he's just so darn CUTE.

3. There was probably a 3 at some point, but I lost track of it daydreaming about Jensen Ackles.

It's a job interview: If you were applying for a position, and you knew who the other applicant was, would you spend your whole interview talking about how terrible the other applicant would be and pointing out the problems with his or her resume? Or would you spend your interview talking about how great you would be for the job?

In the endless interview that is the presidential race, Obama is doing a great job of focusing on what he would bring to the position. But all his friends are calling the HR department to point out how much the other candidate sucks. And the folks in HR (=the American public) are saying, "We like this guy, his resume is solid, he's a great interview -- but what's up with his friends? They're acting like jerks. If we hire him, will we have to work with them?"

V is for Van Halen, the Violent Femmes, Suzanne Vega, and Vixen.

Also, when Sherman Alexie and Dan Savage join forces, the results are genius. NSFW, but *genius*. (Keep reading to the end of the column.):

http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-09-03/columns/where-can-i-find-native-american-porn

So RM and I were at the movies a while back, and we saw a trailer for Get Smart. And I asked, "Would you want to see that?" And he said, "Not unless it has Jane Hathaway naked."

And then I had this mental image of RM's face if Miss Jane Hathaway appeared naked before him.

And then I giggled for, like, five minutes.