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So I did write <a href="http://mimic-of-modes.blogspot.com/2012/05/museum-cataloguing-and-you.html>a million words on cataloguing</a> that probably nobody who reads my blog will be interested in, ho-hum.
I've started reading this hilariously bad romantic adventure novel, mainly because a) it was free and b) the summary included the line, "the moon oft casts a hopeful luminescence". Really? Does it oft do that? Anyway, it's the kind of Mary Sue fiction I like - where the heroine is sooo pretty that it's suuuch a problem for her and people are either touched by her sweetness or desperate to exploit her, it's just so OTT and Iddy. (The kind I don't like is when the heroine seems very average but people keep seeing how special she is - it's still OTT and Iddy, but it's just not really my Id, I guess. But the first kind always comes across as someone going, "you know what, I'm just going to do this obvious fantasy and have fun with it and maybe entertain some other people who like this," while the second, and maybe this is unfair of me, comes across like someone who can't quite admit that it's a Mary Sue-type fantasy and is trying to achieve the effect while keeping the heroine superficially normal to cover it up.)
<lj-cut text="Some bits I bookmarked">- Early on, there's a long paragraph about how Faris (the heroine, a maid) always tries not to rub her eyes too hard because it makes her eyelashes fold up under her lids and scratches her eyes, and her mother used to scold her about it because the pain used to drive her to "tantrums". I jut kind of stared at it in befuddlement. It's like a weird combination of pepper-jack-cheese and princess-and-the-pea.
- The highwayman (who is almost certainly the absent son of her new employer, lbr) speaks with an intentional raspy growl, like Batman. Also, his accent is represented with "ya" and "yar" for "you"/"your". "Ye"/"yer" is so everpresent in fiction that I can't imagine someone either not being aware of it and coming to this on her own or actively deciding that it's better.
- In Faris's new job, she's BFFs with the daughter of the house (of course) and yet Lillias feels so ~unattractive~ next to her, and thinks about how Faris's elflike eyes can see into everyone's souls. It's actually a little bit like Emily Starr there.</lj-cut>
Thinking about doing a chapter-by-chapter readthrough of Fifty Shades of Grey. It fits into that second category, so I find it very very slow going and keep going back to more amusing things.
I've started reading this hilariously bad romantic adventure novel, mainly because a) it was free and b) the summary included the line, "the moon oft casts a hopeful luminescence". Really? Does it oft do that? Anyway, it's the kind of Mary Sue fiction I like - where the heroine is sooo pretty that it's suuuch a problem for her and people are either touched by her sweetness or desperate to exploit her, it's just so OTT and Iddy. (The kind I don't like is when the heroine seems very average but people keep seeing how special she is - it's still OTT and Iddy, but it's just not really my Id, I guess. But the first kind always comes across as someone going, "you know what, I'm just going to do this obvious fantasy and have fun with it and maybe entertain some other people who like this," while the second, and maybe this is unfair of me, comes across like someone who can't quite admit that it's a Mary Sue-type fantasy and is trying to achieve the effect while keeping the heroine superficially normal to cover it up.)
<lj-cut text="Some bits I bookmarked">- Early on, there's a long paragraph about how Faris (the heroine, a maid) always tries not to rub her eyes too hard because it makes her eyelashes fold up under her lids and scratches her eyes, and her mother used to scold her about it because the pain used to drive her to "tantrums". I jut kind of stared at it in befuddlement. It's like a weird combination of pepper-jack-cheese and princess-and-the-pea.
- The highwayman (who is almost certainly the absent son of her new employer, lbr) speaks with an intentional raspy growl, like Batman. Also, his accent is represented with "ya" and "yar" for "you"/"your". "Ye"/"yer" is so everpresent in fiction that I can't imagine someone either not being aware of it and coming to this on her own or actively deciding that it's better.
- In Faris's new job, she's BFFs with the daughter of the house (of course) and yet Lillias feels so ~unattractive~ next to her, and thinks about how Faris's elflike eyes can see into everyone's souls. It's actually a little bit like Emily Starr there.</lj-cut>
Thinking about doing a chapter-by-chapter readthrough of Fifty Shades of Grey. It fits into that second category, so I find it very very slow going and keep going back to more amusing things.
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jennil!I have to ask for Friday and Monday off for Dress U driving. :/ I hate asking for time off, and it's tempting me to skive off Dress U and I paid $85 for it, I'm not going to just not go but since this Monday is a holiday I'm all, "oh, I can't ask for more time off." So annoying, my brain and my anxieties. I'm feeling a lot more chill about my issues lately, though. My internship is pretty much the embodiment of my issues - I catalogue things, fitting everything neatly into a category and sub-category, sitting in a room full of artifacts by myself with no human contact except when it's necessary. And I love it. So yeah.
There's no internet, though, which is a pain. I'm using a laptop in the collection storage, and once I'm done with the inventory everything's going to be put into the network's PastPerfect. I had thought I wasn't allowed to connect the laptop with the internet because it would automatically keep joining with the network's PastPerfect, but it turns out that they don't have a wireless router at all. This probably keeps me more productive, but on the other hand it keeps me from learning about identifying items or silver marks, etc. or looking up comparanda to let me date things. I know that dating isn't important at all in this project, someone else can go back and date everything later, but if I spend two minutes researching I can usually apply what I've learned to a whole bunch of things. I can always take the computer downstairs to plug into the ethernet for a bit, I just don't want to have to make a big production out of it and have a list of things to look up and then have to go back and find each ObjectID in the system again and type in whatever. ETA: A good example of why wifi would be helpful is that I had to put in an object as "unknown" but just now searched for "sterling electric canister paddles" and found that it's an ice cream freezer. Now I have to search for it in the system again.
Ugh, I haven't checked my follow-list for Blogger in two days. It's going to be overflowing.
( and a little bit on the House finale )
Why didn't they get Clint Eastwood to voice the Spirit of the West in Rango? The character design is so obviously him, what is the deal?
Yesterday I made $20 on my clothes garage sale at Mom's. From one person. Because nobody is out walking around them and most of the people I've seen at other sales are older and larger, and my clothes are all from the past six years or so and wouldn't fit them or suit them. :/ I'm probably going to consign them at the cheaper thrift store in town afterward, because I've cleaned all these things out of my closet/drawers and don't want them back. Except the miniskirt, kind of. Anyway. And the time I tried to sell a bunch of things on eBay I got rid of hardly anything and the things that were bought went for way too cheap. eBay generally frustrates me.
No longer must the Darcys be confined to “three or four families in a country village”. This “little bit of ivory” has grown up and gone to London.
- review of 'Second Impressions', a P&P sequel
And there my interest dissipates.
ETA: I think the trouble is that I love pretty much all types of ships, so if one character is friendly and nice to another I want to write the two of them falling in love as it would be sweet, and if one character is a huge jerk to another I desperately want them to be reformed. It's tricky.
"Don't mess with Magnol' cos the line's too long" perfectly sums up my feelings on Magnolia Bakery, tyvm Andy Samberg!
As today was my last day at AIHA, they gave me a copy of the museum's catalogue signed like a yearbook and postcards of a few of my items from the exhib. It was lovely and everyone was so nice and I only felt a little bit like I'd lost the script and didn't know what I was supposed to say.
1911 corset is much closer to being finished. All the grommets are in, all the bones are in, half of them are flossed, and the top edge is bound. It is a leetle on the large side, unfortunately. I have a hard time patterning corsets to have a gap in the back for some reason. (That reason is that I don't do real mock-ups.)
Finally writing again - working on the story based on that dream I posted about one time. As usual I have to first fix everything because it's been such a long time that huge glaring flaws are jumping out at me in every line. I won't be able to move forward until they're fixed, I get too obsessed.
My own short story's made me $14 so far, which is nice considering that it was never going to be traditionally published. I'm pretty sure nothing I write except maybe academic things someday (hopefully) is ever going to appear in bound book form, and I don't really mind anymore. I used to be in a very Emily-of-New-Moon mindset, wanting to be Accepted by Editors, a writer before anything else, but when I wasn't paying attention my priorities changed. I'd like to write more than I do these days, but the trouble is that I can't sew one day and write the next and then switch back, I have to devote myself to a single type of creative energy. This is why I still haven't finished a cardigan I started ... gosh, over a year and a half ago, I think. I started sewing those blue stays when I was nearly done with it and have been sewing pretty much ever since. The couple of weeks when I wrote A Worthy Attachment I don't think I was able to do any sewing.
Anyway, I haven't got anything else finished or near-finished, unfortunately. Well, I do have the last NaNo I did, 2008 - it's fantasy Regency and fairly silly. I need to reread it to see whether or not it hangs together, but I'm slightly nervous that it's going to be so incredibly terrible I won't be able to deal with the excruciating embarrassment.
For NaNo this year, I want to go back to an earlier one, either 2005 or 2006, and rewrite it. 2005 only got to 2,869 words; it was (going to be) an Edwardian Mairelon-the-Magician-ish thing with a vaudeville soprano heroine and a love interest/hero who is a real magician and from a very wealthy family but who's pretending to be a stage magician/comedian while searching for some MacGuffin. I had a dense outline written in a notebook somewhere that I don't remember. I'd like to move it into the 1910s and keep it vaudeville, or change it to burlesque. Then on the other hand there's my 2006 story, which completely captured me and I'm still somewhat obsessed with; it managed to get to 31,057 words, and I have a whole trilogy planned out. The first book was set in the early 1910s, the second was WWI, and the third was the early 1920s (and you see now why I love Downtown Abbey so very, very much). The main trouble with it was that I didn't have enough planned, I think - there was an overarching potential plot about (the heroine) Ophelia's uncles trying to do some huge nefarious magic thing, but I'm really really bad at that sort of thing and wasn't sure what to do with it. Even then, I was tired of "doing it all to overthrow the king just because" plots. I was really far more interested in Ophelia's relationships with
I took the pattern of my great-grandmother's dress (as seen in this picture) the other day, and now I need to get fabric, some kind of light, crisp cotton. The main issue I have to think about is whether or not it's going to be worn with the 1911 corset. I should just sit down and finish the damn grommets already, put the bones in, and bind it, because that's all that's left, but uggghhhh.
I don't understand why people feel the need to do the Rumple vs. Regina thing. They are both complex characters with good and bad points and are fairly easy to sympathize with while also doing things that make you dislike them. There's no need for one to be the Bad Guy and the other to be a woobie.
THANK GOD Emma believes in magic now. I needed a big change. Also, I like that they're heavily indulging my "because your parents" kink. And Belle is out, yay!!
I have a few links: an article on the challenges of having a Kanien'kehaka hero/character in the next Assassin's Creed game; an Audra McDonald slideshow in the NYT (omg howwww did Ragtime flop twice??); Megan Hilty apparently WON at playing Lorelei Lee, hence my continued confusion over the Ivy/Karen rivalry (and where can I get this album).
I finally got my formal letter-in-the-mail from the Chapman Museum! This is my last week at the Institute, I wonder if I'll do anything different there. Probably not. Of course I'm nervous to start elsewhere, in my first full-time job, but it will be good for me and get me another recommendation, which will hopefully get me a permanent position somewhere. Or maybe I will get that one in Schenectady! Please!
This morning I did my exercise and mowed the lawn, which feels good. Also, now the lawn looks 100x better. On the minus side, I took my shower at 11:30 rather than 9:30.
Yesterday I met with the site manager at Mabee Farm and the curator at the Schenectady County Historical Society when I went to both places as a visitor. (It was pretty awkward, since I was the only person there and there's nothing to see at Mabee Farm unless you take a tour.) I was pleased to see that the curator is quite young, probably in his early 30s, because I'm always worried that my age is a huge strike against me - the site manager actually asked if I was doing a project for school at first. I look like a high schooler from a distance, evidently. But he said they would tell me if they wanted an interview or if they'd filled it within two weeks, so that is heartening, although of course they all say that.
Am I just stupid, or are many other people? When it comes to Once Upon A Time, I mean. So many of the theory-writers seem to think the fairy-tale parts of the episodes are happening concurrently with the present storyline, which seems to be completely missing the point.
Article in the NYT on all-white casts on television. I think it's pretty good.
After the fair yesterday, I went to the Saratoga Battlefield with Mom and Ron. There was supposed to be a big re-enactment, but apparently the regiment that was going to be there (they're from Boston) canceled, so it was only a guy from the 62nd who works at the Battlefield. But he was very cool! He's recruiting me for their regiment, which is much smaller than the 2nd Albany.
The Schenectady County Historical Society needs a new Assistant Curator! Cross your fingers for me. Know that by lunchtime today I will be fantasizing about how awesome it will be when I totally get the job, and that in two weeks when I haven't heard anything I'll crumble into despair at how my degree's/I'm worthless etc.
Pictures of me in the gown I just finished. I am kind of peeved that I still don't have the sleeves in quite right, but this is still a hundred times better than the jacket I made last year. It's so frustrating - I am great at research and taking and scaling up patterns, pretty good at sewing, and bad at cutting and fitting. I wish someone else could cut out the pieces for me. Theoretical dressmaking is so much easier than actual dressmaking.
I went to an antiques fair this morning and got a 1901 McCall's Magazine for fifty cents, which was great (tomorrow morning I think I'll go back and look for more affordable fashion-related things). Then after lunch, Mom and I went to the Bennington Museum to see their stuff in general and their exhibition of historical underwear in specific. It was pretty good, although there were a few glitches (they used the antique Edwardian mannequin to display a hoopskirt rather than anything in the Edwardian section; a pair of great mid-18thc. stays were labeled 1800). I recommend it! I took many pictures.
