Meme: I forget, who are we talking about?

You know how sometimes people on your friends list post about stuff going on in their life, and all of a sudden you think "Wait a minute? Since when were they working THERE? Since when were they dating HIM/HER? Since when?" And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you should already know? It happens to all of us sometimes.

Please copy the topics below, erase my answers and put yours in their place, and then post it in your journal! Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration. One-Word-Answers seldom help anyone out.

What follows is more about me then you want to know.

NAME: Katy, or Zhelana in the SCA.

AGE: 28

LOCATION: Perris, CA. That's a bit south of Riverside, but not so far as San Jacinto.

OCCUPATION: Graduate student in Latin American history, working on the evolution of education from Peron to the present regarding how he is portrayed in history textbooks. I just finished my first quarter of the phd so... so far so good.

PARTNER: My husband of 6 months, Kevin. We met at a religious discussion group, for a faith neither of us holds anymore about 10 years ago. He was the only person from Georgia who really bothered to keep up with me when I moved to Colorado. Though we didn't date the entire time, and broke up and made up a time or three, he's been the most consistent thing in my life for the last 10 years.

KIDS: I want kids, but not until I've been married a year. We're probably going to start trying when I get back from Guatemala.

SIBLINGS: Just one sister, Kelly, who is 2.5 years younger than me. She graduated from St. Andrews in NC which no one has ever heard of with a degree in equestrian business management. Now she teaches horse lessons and works with dogs.

PARENTS: My parents live in the same house I lived in my entire life, in Atlanta, GA. They're still together :) Mom is a gifted education teacher, and has recently discovered how lucky she was with her old principal. She recently received her phd in education. My dad recently started a franchise of a pool management company. I wish I were closer to them.

PETS: Two dogs (Jack and Rogue) and two cats (Cricket and Tyke). The dogs are both from pet stores, the cats are both rescues. Cricket, my friend rescued and then couldn't keep her, so I re-rescued her and brought her out to California with me. Tyke we adopted from Petsmart's adoption run.


LIST THE 3-5 BIGGEST THINGS GOING ON IN YOUR LIFE:

1. Grad School - which pretty much eats my life and doesn't let me do much of anything else.
2. Getting settled into being married and learning to live with each other
3. Trying to deal with being disabled.

WHAT ELSE SHOULD PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT YOU?
I don't know?

Eating
I have to admit I was kinda disappointed in the local SCA event. I tried to speak to a couple of people but most of the time sat there feeling kind of awkward. Apparently I'm so unattractive that people would rather set up a whole new table than risk the cooties inherent in sitting next to me. I wound up sitting next to the chatelaine and her two kids, feeling rather like a charity case. I had originally been sitting at that table with someone I knew from fighter practice and his girlfriend, but they were invited to sit at a better table and left me there. So I sort of just felt abandoned by the like two people I knew at the whole thing. Everyone was at tables with their friends, and since there were only a set number of chairs at a table, it's not like I could join a table or anything. So I sat alone at my table and felt awkward. Just to top it off, my cookies I made got lost somewhere, didn't make it to the dessert table, and I was never able to find them to get my tupperware back. I had been debating whether to be an hour late to karaoke or leave an hour early from the event - in the end it wasn't even a debate. Frankly, I'm probably not going to bother with events until I'm authorized to fight unless A. it's something like collegium or B. there's thrown weapons since I'm already authorized there.

Singing
So, Jimmy decided we should all go do karaoke and found a karaoke sports-bar place for us to go to. Surprise! People at this bar take it seriously and can actually sing. Not that this stops us for a moment. Jimmy got up there and belted one song so seriously funnily that one of the other tables bought us a round of shots. I sang Piano Man rather poorly. A few others from our table sang too...

Dancing
As the night went on, we continued to get more and more drunk. Eventually we wound up playing Spice Girls and Back Street Boys with two people having microphones and the entire group jumping on stage to dance badly. Then we started deciding to dance whenever there was music going on. It started pretty funny, with a group of us deciding to blues to some rap song I'd never heard before. Eventually it went into just ordinary dancing. It was hilarious fun.

Shooting
I woke up this morning not feeling so hot, but one of the only good things to come out of the event was that I finally made contact with the archery person and the dance person, who now does Victorian, not Renaissance dancing, but invited me to come do that. Both were once a month, and happened to be today, archery from 11-2 and dance from 4-7. Neat. So I went to archery. I was apparently given some talent at this in the baby-making-factory because I managed to get 6/6 into the hay bale once and regularly got it 4/6. I even got a bullseye - which admittedly was pure luck :p And managed not to hit my own arm. So I'll clearly be back next month.

Sleeping
I meant to go to dance. I even drove to the dance place before finding a place to eat lunch. But as I ate I started feeling worse and worse, and dizzy. So I went home and went to bed. Woke up about 4 hours later with a migraine.

but for right now - got new gas, engine light went off. Yay!

Fuck Fuck Fuck

OK So before I start ranting, I had a really good day. Finished school for the quarter, had a really good dance class including going over to a friend's house afterwards.

Then my drive home happened.

First, I lost a contact while driving 70mph down the interstate. Then I couldn't get off the interstate to fix it because my depth perception was too screwed up to change lanes. When I finally got my contact lens fixed, I was looking at the gas gauge trying to decide whether I should stop when I see



I don't know what's wrong with my car but I bet it isn't cheap.

I really wanted to go to Argentina this summer on a school program. Today I met with financial aid and was basically told there's no way for a graduate student to get funding for a program outside of these specific ones on a list - none of which was Spanish language. In fact, all were English language. So no financial aid.

The programs to Argentina are all expensive. Around $10k and that doesn't include airfare. Obviously not happening.

But I found a program to Guatemala for $2500 including lodging and meals. $3000 with airfare, it looks like. Plus it's all private lessons - 6 weeks of 6 private lessons a day and 6 weeks of 5 private lessons a day in two different cities. So I guess that's the plan.

Actually, there were 10 spots left in a class of 16 so I just went ahead and added it.

Schedule is now:

Mondays 3-6: Colonial Latin America
Wednesdays 3-6: New directions in historical research
Thursdays 2-5: Latin American politics


Lesson learned today: half an hour is nowhere near enough time to add "in case of traffic." I was still almost 30 minutes late for class after 30 minutes that I always allow for any traffic (and have needed only once before). Anyway, if I try to show up around 1, that lets me sit in the grad student library and be social before class assuming there's no traffic.

OK SO.

People actually showed up to fighter practice. Only one person with armor, but, you know, if I had mine together, that would be enough to actually get some fighting in. He showed me how to fix the face flappy thing on my helm. Which is about what I thought. I'm hoping I'm healthy enough to fight with my athsma acting up lately, and the fact that I'm not strong enough to hold up a shield. I can fight two swords, of course, but that means moving around more and risks athsma problems. Whatever I'll figure out a way.



Furthermore, so far so good on getting rec. letters for a TA position. Both of the professors I've been able to ask in person said yes. The third is at a conference, so I had to email him. We'll see. Now, God, the Universe or whatever else willing, maybe I'll have a job next year, maybe even one that will be useful to my future career. And one that includes health insurance (though admittedly no where near as good as what I have) so I still have to be careful about losing mine, but I don't have to be completely panicky - which is why I can't get any other job.



AAAAAnd.... my petition to exempt at least one of my classes based on the fact that I took a similar class at GSU has been approved. Still no word on the others yet, but I know that Historians Craft counted for a methods class. Also meaning, I don't need Tomoff's class next quarter. I like Tomoff, but here's the issue. He said his class would either be on transnationalism (cool) or art (very very very uncool). I really don't think I could handle a class on art. So I emailed the professor who is in the polisci department and has a graduate class on modern Latin American politics at the same time as Tomoff's class. Hopefully he'll let me take his class instead, so I can do something useful.

I'm going to an SCA fighter practice that was announced today on the kingdom list. I swear to god if I drive half an hour and no one shows up, I am going to be pissed off.

Today I did a look at my armor and what I have and need.

Feet - my mom managed to find my combat boots. Well holy hell, I couldn't have even told you I still had those.
Knee pads - Somehow or other, I have ONE knee pad. Admittedly, this is probably cheap to fix at Walmart...
Legs - check! - at any rate, legal but need some work. I still have to hold one on with duct tape.
Kidney - check!
Girly bits - check (I think)!
Gambeson - Needs work, namely ties or buttons or something to hold it together
Body - Ordered online about a week ago
Arms - Check!
Half Gauntlets - Check!
Full Gauntlets - Not at all.
Elbow pads - Somehow or other, I have ONE elbow pad.
Gorget - Needs padding
Helm - Needs padding and to have he face grill attached correctly and a chin strap.
Sword - Nope - but I do own one basket hilt...
Mace - yep but I would need full gauntlets to use it.
Shield - Needs a ridiculous amount of work, by which I mean it's just a shield boss.




Also, finally hit lvl 20 in WoW and got a mount. Yay!

Have discovered I have about 60 unused icon slots. I don't have time to make my own, so anyone want to fill me in on where to find good non-fandom icons?