then there are blackbirds

♣ Check out these language maps of the US! So interesting!

♣ I am currently reading Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice, so my face is pretty stuck like this: *_______* I think this is the first SF/F book that I've actually slowed down to savor on the first read, rather than my usual reaction of FULL SPEED AHEAD OMG MUST DEVOUR [/finishes in 3 hours or less]. It's kind of an interesting change, though commute-reading probably helped the slowness a bit?

♣ I caved and bought some yarn off Knitpicks, and my new project has grown a lot in the few hours since it began: ( beginning phase here )

(Okay, it has also grown crookedly somehow- the cloth doesn't lie flat and there's something a little one-sidedly wobbly looking about the starfish arms and I am trying to decide whether I want to redo rounds 3-6, sigh. But stitch-counting practice is good for me!)

♣ such_heights! I watched your Flyweight Love vid last night, despite only having watched 30 minutes of Thor! ♥ And then promptly got suckered into the rest of the Aims video album, hahaha... Anyway, that was an excellent video vortex, even though I don't know most of the fandoms. :D (I am also super tempted to watch Sleepy Hollow now- THOSE VIDS OMG.)

1. USians who celebrated, I hope you enjoyed your weekend as much as I've been enjoying mine! As always, I am grateful for all of you. ♥

2. Thanks to my dad, I have unexpectedly and fairly reluctantly achieved smartphonelandia at last. Any iPhone apps you guys find particularly handy?

3. On a completely random note/for my non-twitter folks, I would wear boring white button-downs EVERY DAY if they had cats embroidered on them.

4. I found this article on Productive Stretching for Dancers via one of my dance friends and thought it was worth passing on. Obviously, not everybody dances and ymmv on the utility of the specific exercises mentioned, but the concept of productive stretching is a useful one.

+ Ugh, hiding in the library to escape the heat and my extremely frustrating modem. The internet in my apartment has been crapping out all week, but I don't have time to call about fixing it.

+ In between all the dancing and running around to see friends who are leaving/visiting the city, I managed to inhale Tamora Pierce's Beka Cooper books- or most of them; the other half of Mastiff will have to wait. Is it just me, or are they the most entertaining ones she's written to date? (Also the least racially-questionable as far as I've noticed, heh.)

+ Speaking of binge-reads, I need to dust off my to-read list! I know N.K. Jemisin is on there but I can't remember what else I was looking forward to before my school-induced hiatus. What other exciting reads have I missed in the last two years, and/or what are you reading now? ♥

+ I'm taking the bus to Toronto tonight and won't be back til Wednesday. SO EXCITED! :D

Relatively, of course. Compared to NYC it's pretty balmy. This is still a novelty for me; I've never been to Taiwan before without dripping with sweat in 5 minutes flat. Because of this, my mom remains somewhat unconvinced that my cold is the result of sitting near a hacking person on the plane, not from having one too few layers on yesterday (though I'm sure that didn't help). Next time I plan to test my hypothesis with a facemask.

I'm going to be running around like a headless chicken until tomorrow, when we leave for Kaohsiung, so happy 2013 in advance!

» Things I've been meaning to watch this summer that I have not watched:
+ the Olympics (beyond some gold-round women's foil & an earlyish South Korea vs. US men's doubles badminton match *___*)
+ The Wire
+ more Coffee Prince
+ Natsume S4

Thing I have been watching obsessively instead: Kuroko no Basuke. Like, seriously, it's probably been months since I have been this full of RIDICULOUS GLEEFACE, and definitely the first time- well, barring Jeremy Lin- that I've gleefaced over something involving basketball! There may be icons coming up in the near future, heh. At this rate I'm gonna have to institute an "I BLAME inkstone" tag. :P

» Interesting link that came up via fb: Home: reflections for Anthony Shadid. To be honest I wasn't enthused about all of the passages, but I do like things that get me thinking about diaspora, so.

» I've been down with a summer cold since Thursday! BOO. Or, okay, I probably should be down/semi-quarantining myself but a) there is no air conditioning in my apartment and it has been DISGUSTING the last few days and b) I am really stubborn when it comes to not missing dance classes and/or people that I rarely see, so I've been drinking copious amounts of honey/lime(/ginger) tea and washing my hands all the time/etc. instead. >.>

Annnnd that's my procrastination limit for today, so it's back to work for me!

( Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, Martín Espada, eta for Emmanuel Ortiz; possibly triggering; feel free to skip! )

Am in the midst of homework that I should get back to once my eyes stop crossing, especially if afternoon/evening plans & possibly shenanigans for moon festival tomorrow are still a go! (Dear self, please let's not to get behind on everything already.) Birds, as you say, fly forward*.

*&Li-Young Lee;;;;

1. We can almost map out our family history with food. Some of the first memories I have of Taiwan are of sitting at my 外婆's kitchen table, eating 絲瓜 and 番薯 and pan-fried fish, sharing cans of shu pao in front of the living room fans to cool down, and how it was so different to eat the same things in my ama's house in 鳳山 with my dad's family. My dad will reminisce at night about 宵夜 with ama, my mom still drools over the 牛肉麵 she used to eat with her college friends, my sister adores 鹹魚茄子煲 (which I think she first had with our cousin), I still remember the time I woke in the night at my 三姨媽's house and stumbled into the kitchen to find her and 二舅母 in front of the fridge with a just-opened box of creampuffs.

2. When I got sick when I was little, my mom used to stir glasses of Sprite until the carbonation disappeared and give me a couple of slightly crumbled Saltines at a time whenever I woke feverish and nauseous. If I could keep those down, I could have 稀飯 with a little bit of salt the next morning, or- if I was feeling even better than that- with 魚鬆. This led to some perplexity when my non-Asian school friends told me about BRAT diets years later, and also some relief; I have never been particularly fond of applesauce, though I'll eat it.

3. An incomplete list of things I've developed cravings for over the years: 玉米 (so NOT the same as stateside corn), 芭樂, 蓮霧, 蚵仔煎, 烏魚子 (which I didn't like at first, and can still only take about two slices of at a time). Those cravings can't be completely fulfilled even by going back to Taiwan, simply because three of my grandparents are no longer there to share them with.

4. Living in Manhattan during and after undergrad was a great way to expand my culinary horizons, but it also made me recognize just how integral food is to my concept of home. I didn't actually move very far, and I've had countless amazing food adventures with friends (late-night Chicken & Rice treks, bo ssam at Momofuku, Picnic Garden in Flushing, brunch at Popover Cafe, and my former roommate R's quest for the best sushi in Manhattan, just to name a few), but sometimes what I wanted the most was my mom's haphazard noodle soups or experimental casseroles thrown together from a random assortment of things in the fridge.

5. I've realized that I don't so much rely on specific foods for comfort as I do on cooking and eating with specific groups of people. 火鍋 with my immediate family is different from 火鍋 with my relatives in Taiwan is different from hotpot with all the different permutations of my "usual suspects," friends from ballroom/undergrad. Dim sum with my "American grandma" is different from dim sum with my Chinese family friends (where there's never any explanation involved but the check-grabbing fights remain the same). Making far too much frosting with R- and burning my fingers on his molten chocolate cupcakes- for a birthday party we threw for a friend was different from my current adventures in baking, now that I'm living alone. These days it's not that the easiest cake ever is fast becoming a comfort food for me; it's comforting to make it even when I'm the only person eating it because I know I share that experience with so many of you.

Oh, man, ( one of the best Christmases I've had in a while; )

I'm trying to keep myself off the AO3 today, but I did manage to read a couple of Yuletide stories, and they are glorious! I received The Sugarcane Drive, which is utterly delicious intriguing and politicking with Eugenie and Jessaline and HOMG YOU GUYS, I GOT EFFLUENT ENGINE FIC, HOW AMAZING IS THAT?!?!? I also managed to read Sincerely, Cindi, a Metropolis: The Chase Suite fic which is one of the best love letters to visionaries and revolutionaries that I have ever come across. I plan to hit up dark_agenda's Chromatic Yuletide masterlist and trawl through the Chromatic Yuletide Madness prompts next! :D

Merry Christmas to everyone celebrating, and happy Yuletide/happy Saturday to the rest of us!

1. It is generally a terrible life decision to go to work on 2 hours of sleep, y'all. Also a terrible life decision? Staying up until ass o'clock in the morning reading epic 100,000+ word A:TLA fic when I still have to do ALL THE THINGS. It's a good thing I was productive yesterday, otherwise I'd be kicking myself really hard over that "writing break."

1a. In unrelated terrible life decision news, I have been neglecting to back up recent icons and music & video files to my external hard drive, and now my creaky 6-year-old desktop where most everything is housed is suddenly refusing to turn on and I have no idea what is wrong with it! Probably it's not worth fixing since I need a new computer anyway, but argh. 6 years' worth of ahemmables! And now I will not be able to check which media files I need to re-ahem, sigh. At least I use googledocs/laptop/thumb drive religiously these days, I don't know what I would have done if actual important things (like my personal statement!) were on it.

2. dark_agenda has a useful AO3 invites and reminders post! Which actually reminds me that I have an AO3 invite, should anybody need one. *g*

3. Still debating Yuletide signups. /o\ None of my Deadlines coincide with the fest deadline this year, so I will technically have enough time to write fic! Must ponder requests...

* &hearts

Things I am doing this weekend: arranging a thesis defense party (ARGH), another round of Restaurant Week (\o/!), some cleaning, haphazard cooking of random things in the fridge, catching up with Occult Academy/Rizzoli & Isles/The Closer/possibly Uraboku, Loveless rewatch, finishing my giant book post (& resisting the library/B&N as I should not read ALL THE BOOKS while it is still being drafted)...

... and so of course what I am doing right now is putting up linkspam. :P

+ livrelibre has a content notes collection for VVC collated from public posts in spreadsheet form, for those of you who might find it useful. (NB: I am not going to the con and don't have even a pinky toe in vidding fandom. I merely support things that can help attendees to make informed decisions about what they choose to watch.)

+ oyceter is looking for kdrama anecdotes, so, friends who watch kdramas- if you have a moment to comment on your experiences, please pop over!

+ zahrawithaz's review of Covert Affairs 1x01 is bumping the show higher on my consideration list. Alas that I already have many things to watch this weekend! *g*

+ For all two(?) of you who might have missed it- dharmavati's hosting an ATLoK friending/squee post on LJ, and nan's hosting the ATLA/ATLoK friending meme on DW! I'm sticking to the DW meme because I &hearts DW, but whatever floats your boat. :)