The winner of the ham battle is you!

Hello! I have settled on these at last! I have dated this entry to the day it is all "due".

Regular text means not started yet.
Italics means in progress.
Bold means completed (hurray!).
Strikethrough means I've decided not to do them but haven't come up with a replacement yet.

( 101 Things )

Man Bardcamp was amaaaaazing, I am going to post a giant post as soon as the pictures are up HINT HINT mirabehn AND mostlyacat.

Although I did feel a bit knocked-out and less INTO IT than I wish I had been; I was ill all through the first night, and although I love the late-night partying and singing and games-playing, starting the weekend out with dehydration and a massive sleep deficit didn't do me any favours later on! But I still had a great time even if I did have to sneak off in the middle of Richard III for a nap before I passed out onstage. ANYWAY. Pictures and boring notes about my favourite ad-libs and character moments to come (HINT HINT mirabehn AND mostlyacat).

Currently I'm trying to fill out my performance review form. I actually really love performance reviews (I get to talk about how great I am and someone else is paid to listen and give feedback! How is this not amazing?!), but this year I'm working on tactics for getting what I want, which are in the following order:

a promotion

more compensation, either in pay (HAH!) or eg more holiday time

skills I can use to apply for better jobs, namely:

internet knowings (so I can start reasonably applying for web editor jobs)

writing (so I can go 'look, people have paid me to write things, therefore you should pay me to do that too')

process management (if they let me do more of this, it has the side effect of my possibly being able to mitigate some of the stonkingly stupid decisions of upper management, although considering my manager has been trying to do this for years it seems unlikely)

So I'm currently trying to fit "I want a new title (and also more things to do) and also to learn how to make the internet happen and oh yeah I want to write things too" into a coherent Development Plan. Especially since I'm not really fussed about which one to focus on: if they let me write things I'd be happy to learn computer things at home, and vice versa.

In sadder news, the Pod they are building across the street from my office STILL HAS NOT OPENED. It has been 'coming soon' for at least six weeks! SIX WEEKS! The nearest Pod is like EIGHT MINUTES away! WAH.

atreic tipped me off about this amazing-looking book that seems to have been pulled from the inside of my head without knowing: Religion For Atheists by Alain de Botton. It comes out today (hurrah!) - I foolishly ordered it off Amazon when obviously I could have just bought it from a shop today and had it RIGHTNOW.

Yesterday when I was searching for bad fiction about the Wars of the Roses on Amazon to get my Histories fix, I found this self-published gem: RED & WHITE Interwining, which is amazing so far. Richard of York goes to help pick up Margaret of Anjou from France, and they FALL IN LOVE, or at least so far have spent like 50 pages awkwardly swooning at each other while Margaret speaks in a "French accent" that is strangely Germanic (keep all comments about last weekend's Constable of Bavaria Sweden France to yourselves, peanut gallery). IT IS GREAT. I bet they do it and then she breaks his heart and then Richard decides to become king just to spite her.

(It has also brought back my Thoughts about how the internet's Shakespeare fandom writes fic that is as good if not more so than the profic you see, and I would totally have purchased every fic on for a similar price, and how many Shakespeare fic writers are academics and I'm sure could use the extra income, and although there are clearly Issues with monetizing fanworks in general, slapping Shakespeare fanfiction up somewhere people can pay a nominal sum for it is something loads of people are doing already so why not get in on it, but maybe everyone else has already thought about this and decided against it so it's a moot point anyway.)

Poll #9248
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7

View Respondents

Hello! What are you having for lunch?

View Answers

Veg boxes: AMAZING, yes? I'm so excited about (cooking and) eating the:

View Answers

broccoli
4 (66.7%)

cabbage
3 (50.0%)

carrots
4 (66.7%)

cherry tomatoes
4 (66.7%)

eggplant (or aubergine if you must)
1 (16.7%)

Jerusalem artichoke
0 (0.0%)

leeks
2 (33.3%)

rutabaga (or swede, ditto)
1 (16.7%)

potatoes
5 (83.3%)

apples
6 (100.0%)

avocados
3 (50.0%)

blood oranges
1 (16.7%)

mangos
4 (66.7%)

locally-sourced seasonal one that we will start using as soon as the Waitrose box runs out
1 (16.7%)

Poll #9249
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 1

Tell me a secret!

It looks like our moving company may have nicked a box of DVDs (at least; we haven't yet unpacked everything and don't know whether eg any books are missing either).

The company was CheapestRemovals (yes, I know; they had very good feedback on Qype!), and we booked them for 9am on Sunday morning. They called at 5pm on Saturday evening to see whether we could push the appoinment back to 2pm. I hemmed and hawed, and said I'd think about it; they called back ten minutes later to say "please can you do 2pm, we'll give you a 15% discount", so I said sure.

Despite this two men and a van turned up at 9am on Sunday, when we were still in our dressing gowns and only about 70% packed. We quickly threw lots of things into boxes, while they complained that they'd been told we only had 25 boxes, instead of ~50. We had never told them any figure of boxes; when I booked I said "it's one bedroom with no furniture except a mattress and some bookcases", which was accurate.

They said we'd have to pay them more because the number of boxes was more than they'd been told, and it had taken longer than expected. The latter was true; I had booked them for two hours, but because we had to spend a lot of time packing up after 9am because they'd come five hours early, it took two hours forty minutes rather than two hours.

I called the head office and they confirmed that we would have to pay more money (they'd quoted us £65, including the discount they'd offered, and then asked for £105). I didn't challenge this like I should have, and we paid them. We gave them a large tip as well because of feeling pressured by their complaining about the number of boxes.

On Monday we discovered the box of DVDs was missing. At first I thought it had been left at the Nunhead house, because the DVDs had been packed early and I thought they maybe hadn't been out with the other boxes, but Ewan has searched the house pretty thoroughly and they aren't there.

I don't know what our options are; I called the moving company, and after a few hours they called back to say there hadn't been anything left on the truck and that Ewan and I had been with the movers the whole time (Ewan rode over with them, but I didn't). I asked for more details and mentioned I'd be filing a police report, and they said they'd get back to me via email.

I don't know if I can actually file a police report. We have a list of DVDs we know we own(ed), but didn't catalogue the boxes carefully as we were rushing around to pack everything in time. If I were very cynical I'd say they moved the times around to catch us unprepared so we wouldn't track our boxes carefully, but they are probably just incompetent.

It's very frustrating.

Man, Firefly is a much more misogynist show than I remembered. :(

...which I've been seeing and/or hearing fairly often recently, and which are (or should be) easy to correct:

1. Jews for Jesus is not a Jewish group or movement; it is an evangelical Christian movement aimed at converting Jews to Christianity. I know, it sounds really nice and interfaith and chilled out! IT ISN'T. :(

2. Judith didn't feed anybody cheese to make them sleepy so she could kill them. Yael fed someone dairy products to make them sleepy so she could kill them. Judith fed someone wine to make them sleepy so she could kill them.

Any others? (don't have to be Jewy!)

Blerp, what have I been up to recently?

Last weekend Two weekends ago many friends went to a big house in Derbyshire to readthrough Buffy season 5. It was lots of fun, as readthrough weekends always are, even if my part (Dawn) was a bit difficult due to being written like an eight-year-old (I ended up giving her a smoking habit and trying hard to hit "angry" instead of "whiny"). Anyway, it was fun! I made a taco bar and nachos for 16 people, which is more people than I have ever catered for, and it was successful! Go team.

Last Wednesday I had cocktails and dinner with kake and liv at Shaker & Co and Mestizo, which are conveniently about 5 metres away from each other on Hampstead Road. We ended the evening with a half pint at the Cider Tap (for Liv and Kake) and a snifter of calvados for me, which was onyl served after the woman behind the bar earnestly explained that calvados wasn't actually a kind of cider and did I understand it would come in a smaller glass?

Thursday joran_j and I had a mini CV workshop where we read each others' resumes and edited them, which was really good fun actually. I like applying for jobs because of the ~possibilities~ (both for exciting career development and for ££), and although obviously getting rejected is no fun I do like putting together DEAR WORLD, THIS IS WHY I AM GREAT AND YOU WOULD BE AN IDIOT NOT TO HIRE ME packages.

Friday was the official farewell Shabbat potluck dinner for one of my rabbis, who is leaving our congregation to become not-Chief-Rabbi of the Reform movement [warning: world's worst first line, ignore it and keep reading], which (1) good luck to her etc. but (2) WAAAAAH. There were some genius musical performances (our tall dignified senior rabbi going to town with the maracas on "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" will be an enduring memory), some delicious food, and some really iffy kosher wine. As is traditional.

Saturday afternoon Meg winolj and I went to see Playboy of the Western World at the Old Vic, which was really well-produced and quite funny. I didn't know much about it before seeing it, but I had the impression it was a bittersweet pastoral tragedy for some reason. It is in fact hilarious, and the langague is really good quality as well. Ruth Negga was especially good as Pegeen (I saw her as Ophelia in the Rory Kinnear Hamlet and she was pretty fab in that, too). Returned home to clean the house and putter around a bit before...

...hosting a Thanksgiving roast with a real turkey and everything on Sunday afternoon! I'm afraid I was pretty rude and spent most of the time in the kitchen, and then spent maybe 90 minutes socialising before I traipsed upstairs and fell asleep at about 8pm. As is traditional, shut up. The turkey came out brilliantly – with a big thanks to borusa for carving it after the_alchemist, Robin and I tried to figure it out via YouTube videos and failed – ixwin's pecan pie was AMAZING, people went "hey! this marshmallow-and-sweet-potato thing works really well!" (OF COURSE IT DOES), all the other food turned out really nicely and people kept bringing fizzy wine. There were not too many people and too little food, which I had fretted about. Next time I will try to figure out how to schedule the cooking so I can actually talk to people during.

The past two Tuesdays have been this really great theology-and-practice discussion group led by my sponsoring rabbi about (broadly) personal autonomy as a religious value and what that means in the context of covenental theology. It has been exactly the kind of thing I like to do for fun and kind of want to do forever, and last week I decided I would actually like to do a taught MA in Jew Stuff at some point sooner rather than later (I've been telling myself, "no, self, you can go to rabbi school as a second career thing if you still want it when you're Old!"). I may save up and do it as a 30th birthday present for myself. I was going to do this for laser eye surgery but I think I would enjoy a year of full-on Jew Studying more. I have many Feelings(tm) about this but I will save them for a later post.

And in the future!

Thursday: pub quiz about London, maps and London maps

Friday: sparkling vampires

Saturday: PACKING UP ALL MY POSSESSIONS because we are THEORETICALLY MOVING SOON FINGERS CROSSED

Sunday: Yuletide writing in a pub

Tuesday: cocktails and dinner at the new Hawksmoor with wildeabandon

Thursday: an exhibition including some of Robert's wedding pictures of me in Shoreditch and free booze (woop)

Saturday: I am giving dvar Torah (a talk about the week's Torah reading) in the morning service; going on a Tube walk in High Barnet; and going to lavendersparkle and alec_corio's Christmakkuh party

Sunday: big group pub Christmas lunch in Clerkenwell and a giant folk fiddle session party at Cecil Sharp House

There are many other things coming up but I will stop there. Also today is payday! HURRAH MONEY.

Hello! First, thank you very much for writing my story! I don't actually really have that much to say outside of my requests already made, but here goes:

( The Ladies of Grace Adieu - Susanna Clarke )

( True Grit (2010 film) )

( Sally Lockhart - Philip Pullman )

GENERALLY

I like: self-confident active (and activist) women, men who like active activist women, women who like each other, jokes, explosions, dancing, casual multiculturalism, angry idealism, optimistic history, strong settings and places, booze, sex comedy, danger, road trips, bars in space stations, everyday details, arguing, airships, making out in libraries, bluffing, dressing up (disguises, formal wear, costumes, etc), heists, kissing, Bruce Springsteen, ragtag bunches of ____, trains, revolutionaries, progressive religion, impromptu music sessions, globe-hopping, party guests with secret agendas, pocket pistols.

I don't like: systematic oppression and oppressiveness, non-consensual sex, sad things, traumatic things, babies and small children, ennui, extended dystopias. Those things exist and are a bummer but I think about them a lot in my real life and I don't like them in my Yuletide.

I don't do a lot of complicated things with my Google Reader; I have 20 or so feeds I read and would like to be able to group them into sub-feeds and be able to save some posts for later. I don't use social media or share my reading.

I want to better organise my feeds but I'd also like to get off the Google monster platform as much as possible, and it will be easier to organise my reading list on in a new environment than get it how I like it in Google Reader and try to figure out how to replicate it.

What's the best alternative feed reader for that?

I am cramming for the Life in the UK test which I have to take tomorrow (blech, but then I will get to celebrate with fireworks! hooray!). The questions are amusing me , when I'm not getting cross at them for being completely nonsensical.

Around 40% are are statistics and dates to memorise ("In what year did women win the right to vote at the same age as men? (a) 1918 (b) 1921 (b) 1928 (c) 1945"). 30% are fairly straightforward and easy ("When is Remembrance Day? (a) February 14 (b) April 1 (c) November 11 (d) December 25"). 10% are delightful and loopy ("True or false: it is traditional for the Queen to lead a costume parade every year on her birthday"), and 10% are just plain factually inaccurate. The study guide I'm using has a sidebar on nearly every other page reading something like, "Romania actually joined the EU in 2007. However, for the purposes of the test you have to pretend it was 2006 like the study guide says."

There are also a handful of propaganda-that-are-also-factually-inaccurate:



(the answer is clearly BOTH!!!)

However, my all-time favourite question is



Anyway, if I flunk I'll be extremely embarrassed, and also have to pay another £50 to take it again. So I hope I don't do that.

Apparently there's a pretty spectacular LJ privacy bug that is allowing random users to log into other random users' accounts, including editing and deleting entries, seeing private entries, changing passwords, etc.

At 2pm London time today I'll be temporarily deleting my LJ until this is fixed, for security and privacy reasons. I'm kerrypolka on Dreamwidth with the exact same posts, so we can add each other there - let me know if you need a DW invite code, as I have a few!

So last night I and several other Jewish progressive friends rocked up to Occupy London at St Paul's. We possessed a Pop-Up Sukkah and debated for a bit whether we should put it up before or after the general assembly at 7pm; we decided to put it up before and make kiddush in it afterwards, on the understanding that the general assembly would take about an hour.

It didn't (it was still going when I left to make the last City Thameslink train to Nunhead at 9pm), but it was a good evening anyway.

After announcements we broke into groups of 10-15 and were charged with discussing "what Occupy London should do in the next week". I really enjoy most aspects of earnest protest group discussion. I especially love the hand signals. I found myself disagreeing extremely vehemently with a "fuck the police" 1960s-style radical and, in all seriousness and with no trace of irony, crossing my arms in an X in front of my chest and shaking my head firmly. And even when people verbally disagreed, a lot, they did so very respectfully. That is hard.

The group fairly quickly settled on a male-presenting person to lead/facilitate and a woman to take minutes. As there were only 15 of us with a 60/40-ish female-presenting/male-presenting split, this wasn't the worst thing in the world, especially as the male-presenting person turned out not to identify as male. But I was bothered that when I said "Hey, I just wanted to make sure we're aware of this dynamic, that we have a man leading and a woman taking notes?", someone (male-presenting) rolled their eyes and crossed their arms, someone else (female-presenting) said "Hey, we're all just people" and the minute-taker said "It's fine. Anyway, I'm not offended. It's fine." GUYS, BEING IN A PROGRESSIVE SPACE DOES NOT MAKE US MAGICALLY IMMUNE TO OPPRESSION, INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL. I can probably work on presenting issues like that in a way that is less likely to make people defensive, but I still mostly feel annoyed and frustrated.

But generally I was extremely impressed with the attitudes of the facilitators and participants, and have been a bit tempted to pitch up (I do work just around the corner...and there are showers in my office...if only it weren't so cold). There is Simchat Torah at my synagogue tonight, then I am helping lead a slightly radical-er service at the campsite tomorrow. Sometimes the difference in diaspora festival observance works out really well.*

*When reliable lunar calendars weren't around as much, Jews outside of Israel celebrated two days of each festival to be sure they were getting the right one, as the new moon is hard to gauge on its own. Now that we do have reliable lunar calendars, many Progressive diaspora Jews only do one day, because we do know for sure what day it is. My synagogue is therefore celebrating Simchat Torah tonight and tomorrow, while enough London Jews do an 'extra' days of festivals that Thursday night/Friday day is a totally valid time to have a public service as well.