Wishlist
Holiday wishlist meme, via Tarigwaemir.
STEP ONE
1. Make a post (public, friendslocked, filtered…whatever you’re comfortable with) to your blog. The post should contain your list of 10 unlimited holiday wishes. The wishes can be anything at all, from simple and fandom-related (“I’d love a Naruto icon that’s just for me”) to medium (“I wish for _____ on DVD”) to really big (“All I want for Christmas is a new car/computer/house/TV.”) The important thing is, make sure these wishes are things you really, truly want.
2. If you wish for real life things (not fics or icons), make sure you include some sort of contact info in your post, whether it’s your address or just your email address where Santa (or an elf) can get in touch with you.
3. Also, make sure you post some version of these guidelines in your LJ, or link to this post (it’ll be public) so that the holiday joy will spread.
STEP TWO
1. Surf around your friendslist (or friendsfriends, or just random journals) to see who has posted their list. And now here’s the important part:
2. If you see a wish you can grant, and it’s in your heart to do so, make someone’s wish come true. Sometimes someone’s trash is another’s treasure, and if you have a leather jacket you don’t want or a gift certificate you won’t use–or even know where you could get someone’s dream purebred Basset Hound for free–do it.
3. You needn’t spend money on these wishes unless you want to. The point isn’t to put people out, it’s to provide everyone a chance to be someone else’s holiday elf–to spread the joy. Gifts can be made anonymously or not–it’s your call.
4. There are no rules with this project, no guarantees, and no strings attached. Just…wish, and it might come true. Give, and you might receive. And you’ll have the joy of knowing you made someone’s holiday special.
My wishlist:
1. More or less the same as Tarigwaemir’s: donation to charity. I’m not all that interested in material goods for myself, and things that I want or need, I can buy. What I want is donations to charity: something that helps other people and makes life better all around. Causes that mean a lot to me: international humanitarian issues, human rights (including women’s and queer rights), literacy, the arts, the environment, and health care. Donations don’t have to be large; what matters is that you care and that you do what you can.
Some of the organizations I support: Women for Women International, CARE, Heifer International, local Planned Parenthood affiliate, RAINN, Sylvia Rivera Law Project, SF Women Against Rape, St. James Infirmary, Partners In Health, and SF Symphony’s music education & outreach programs.
2. Donations in kind: volunteer at a non-profit. Donate blood. Donate hair. Make a commitment to volunteer once a week, once a month, at the local Planned Parenthood, youth mentoring program, homeless shelter, soup kitchen, animal shelter, etc. Sign up to volunteer at a rape crisis hotline.
3. Reservations at the French Laundry. MWAHAHA I HAVE THEM!!!! WHEE!!!
4. Reservations at Per Se and airfare from SF to New York.
5. Time to visit friends.
6. A trip to Rome, Istanbul, and then somewhere new.
Meme: Literary Personals
Idea via tarigwaemir:
While we were cooking, Steve and I listened to the recording of La bohème (Callas as Mimì, di Stefano as Rodolfo, orchestra and chorus of la Scala) because we had tickets to the SFO production on Saturday, and I wanted to familiarize him with the opera. I showed him the libretto for Mimì’s famous aria, “Sì, mi chiamano Mimì”, and he remarked that it sounded like a Craigslist personal ad.So…we made a Craigslist listing in the Casual Encounters section:
Subject: I like poets
They call me Mimì, but my name is Lucia. I live all by myself and I eat alone. I’m French (but I like to sing in Italian) and I’m prone to coughing.
Age: young but legal (I think)
Occupation: seamstress
Likes: things that have gentle magic, love, spring, dreams and fancies, poetry, praying (but not going to church), the sun’s first rays, April’s first kiss
Hobbies: embroidery, making silk flowers (that have no scent)
What I’m looking for: Someone who writes and lives in happy poverty. You don’t have to have a lot of money as long as you’re a millionaire in spirit.
Rules:
1. Choose a character.
2. Make a Craigslist personal post from that character’s POV.
3. Post a link in your blog.
4. Post any responses if the person gets the joke!
Alas, I haven’t gone through the CL postings in a while, and so I missed the opportunity to respond to tarigwaemir’s via email. But here’s late-20s man seeking wife:
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. I am a single man with an income of £10,000 a year (~$15k U.S. at the current exchange rate, not adjusted for inflation). I consider myself handsome and intelligent, but some people think that I am overly proud and disagreeable. They are idiots.
My parents are deceased and I’m the guardian of my younger sister, who is dear to me. A former friend of mine–we’ll call him W–once attempted to elope with her. This is why he is a FORMER friend. Don’t mess with my family and friends, because I will protect them.
I enjoy horseback riding, dancing, and walking around on my estate, which is quite sizable and well maintained. I have a manor house and treat my staff very well. I do not enjoy tiresome balls at small estates in the country.
I’m looking for a woman of good family, someone who is handsome and not merely tolerable. She should be pretty and have fine eyes.
Random Silliness: 8 Homes
Renee tagged me for random weekend silliness, which was sorely needed this past weekend (I cannot wait for the election to be here, counted, certified, and over). Er, so much so that I didn’t actually get to it until the weekend was over. But Monday is a good day for random silliness, right?
Where Would Your 8 Homes Be?
List them. You don’t have to list your reasons, but if you do at least for a few of them, it would be more fun. And remember that the only rule is: the homes must be within the borders of the United States of America or else, within the borders of the country you live in, so as to utterly emulate the McCains. When you’re done, tag 8 people, so that they may join in the self-indulgence, forgetting about the crappy property market and the equivalent of The End of Pompeii on Wall-Street. You could spend your time hammering your doors and windows shut in preparation for the apocalypse instead, but it would be much less fun.
The John McCain meme was actually more difficult than I thought it would be, because most of the places I’d want to live are either abroad or where I’m currently living.
1. San Francisco, CA. I love SF, possibly more than any place I’ve ever lived before. I love the liberal culture, the activism, the street fairs, the weather, the architecture, the SOLE restaurant culture, the farmers markets, the diversity, the opera, the symphony, the walks, the neighborhoods, etc.
2. Boston, MA. I have friends there, which is the primary draw. That and the Harvard Book Store.
3. Ashland, OR. I would like to go to the Shakespeare festival. We visited years ago and it was a very cute, walkable town, with lots of trees and plants. There was also a used bookstore and an ice cream shop.
4. Hardwick, VT. Well, I guess I wouldn’t just want a flat there, I’d want to live there and participate in the SOLE agriculture-based economic revival.
5. Somewhere around Tahoe, close enough to a lake to walk there. Swimming and bathing in a freshwater lake is refreshing and the air up there is amazingly clear. There are plants and wildlife everywhere and although it’s not silent, the distinct lack of electronic humming is soothing and relaxing.
6. Hippie town, NC. I forget what it’s called, but a friend used to live in this small town in NC that’s very liberal. He’d wait tables and save up some money, then take off to go camping until the cash ran out and then he’d wait tables again. Lots of environmentalists, potheads, musicians, and artists.
7. Washington, D.C. In order to more easily attend protests and demonstrations. Honestly, mostly because I’m running out of ideas. The museums are great and free and the WNO is decent.
8. Chicago, IL. It’d be nice to have somewhere to stop over on cross-country flights. I haven’t spent much time there, so it’d be nice to get to know the city.
I tag tarigwaemir and sahiya.
Meme: 8 facts
Tagged by Amy Derby for the 8 Facts About Yourself meme:
1. In food and cooking, I try to recapture memories and places. Spaghetti all’ amatriciana reminds me of Dino & Tony’s in Rome, and the happiness I felt there. Jammy biscuits remind me of a friend and the pasticceria stall at Via Andrea Doria street market. Bolognese reminds me of dinners with friends at Cave Canem in Trastevere, fresh pasta in the sunlight at Via Matta, and the joy of discovering a good Italian restaurant in Boston, which ties back in to remembering Rome and trying to relive my happiness there.
2. I think I spend too much time thinking about the past. My past, not the ancient past.
3. I have a very good sense of smell. Possibly the obsession with food is related to this.
4. Tom McCarthy’s Remainder is deeply creepy to me and yet deeply understandable. My empathy with the main character and the world McCarthy creates creeps me out.
5. I like Excel much better than Powerpoint.
6. I like pomegranates. They are inseparable from their mythology and they are visually pleasing. Eating one is like picking jewels out of a sweetly reluctant casing.
7. I also like the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.
8. I do not like Odysseus or Hector.
Tag yourself if you like.
Unread Books Meme
I swear, one of these days I will post one of the posts I’ve been meaning to post: Boston Restaurants, Tomato Sauces from Scratch, Penne alla Vodka, Pazzia, etc. I feel like my brain is rotting inside my skull, which is why I can barely string words together into a coherent, meaningful sentence and I feel so lazy all the time, which is why I haven’t been posting the posts I’ve been drafting in my head. I can’t tell if it’s missing school in a way that means I should return or if I just haven’t adjusted to not being in school yet. I’m also sick of evaluating everything in terms of whether or not it’s a sign that I should go to graduate school. I should abandon all of that and throw myself into work for my analyst period instead of not giving it a fair chance because I’m trying to decide what to do in the post-analyst period while I’m still an analyst, but the problem is, if I do end up going to grad school, I have to think about it now in terms of keeping up my languages and applying next year. One thing I can concretely say: I miss studying languages and not reading or speaking another language is what’s making my brain feel like it’s rotting. I haven’t gone this long without reading something in another language since high school, and even then, I did Latin work for NJCL during the summer. It’s been three goddamned months since I cracked open Catullus 64, which was the last bit of serious Latin that I read. Fortunately, I’m getting my Classics books from storage this weekend, which means I can resume beating my head against the Iliad shortly.
In the meantime, though, the unread books meme: the top 106 books tagged ‘unread’ at LibraryThings.com. Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize what you started and didn’t finish, and you’re supposed to strike through what you couldn’t stand, but I’m not bothering. The numbers in parens are the number of readers that tagged the book as unread.
