Scheherazade in Blue Jeans

Administration
Happy early birthday to pierceheart, rhiannonhero, fubar, and jmspencer, who advance a year over the weekend!

State of the 'Song
Bed before ten last night, and slept til 8. Very much needed. The headache that's been chasing me all week has finally caught up with me, though. I have popped Excedrin and am waiting. very. patiently.

NYC Readers!
sindrian has a day to kill in your city! Recommendations of cool things to do/places to go?

This is the Home I Choose
As I guided sindrian through the streets of Boston on Wednesday, I was reminded that I've only ever had a sense of direction in two cities: Vegas in Boston. And that's no coincidence, I think. I never felt I had a home anywhere before Vegas, a community - which is why the shattering of everything in Vegas was so harrowing for me. Y'know, beyond the obvious facts of the matters that led up to that shattering. But it was my first home, my first chosen family, so of course it resurfaces all the time in my stories; sixteen years and I am still, in a way, Hal's keeper of secrets; I still remember Layne's quick and quirky smile.

When I left for Florida, it was because I could not raise a baby in Vegas. Not and be fair at all to said baby. Florida was never Home - I do wonder what it would've been like had I met felisdemens, enderfem, maxymyllyn, kires, and the rest of that merry crew before I moved to Atlanta. Atlanta, I moved to for love of yendi... it was not Home, though, not beyond yendi himself and the few good friends from there I've kept. Atlanta was pretty toxic.

And I never learned my way around there, even after five years.

Boston was the home I chose. We looked at Chicago and DC, too, because we knew we wanted the hell out of Atlanta - but it was no contest. It was always Boston, where we already had a community.

This is my second chosen family; this is the home I choose. And if you drop me anywhere in this city, I can get you home from there.

Link Soup
* 30 Days through Muslim America.
* Trajan really is everywhere.
* Boston Book Festival!

BPAL Reviews
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Daily Science
Researchers at Caltech have developed a new type of material—made out of silicon, the second most abundant element in Earth's crust—that could lead to more efficient thermoelectric devices. The material—a type of nanomesh—is composed of a thin film with a grid-like arrangement of tiny holes. This unique design makes it difficult for heat to travel through the material, lowering its thermal conductivity to near silicon's theoretical limit. At the same time, the design allows electricity to flow as well as it does in unmodified silicon.

Friday Memage!
Wearing: Calaveras nightgown, but about to change into jeans and a randomly-chosen t-shirt for my walk to the gluten-free bakery.
Reading: Still Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor - it's intense, so I take breaks.
Writing: The temple-prostitutes-in-Vegas story.
Knitting: On the border of a baby blanket; potentially done today. I need to block the previous baby blanket today so we can get it in tomorrow's mail. The other thing on the needles is the Arabella shawl, and that is for me! (I knit all the time but I never get to keep anything.)
Planning:
Today: Writing, then nailing down the StrowlerCon schedule. Dinner with thewronghands.
Tomorrow: Tabling at a Northeastern law school event (about internships and volunteer opportunities), party in the evening, sleepover date with feste_sylvain. <3
Sunday: Another small gathering, and I am waiting to hear back from feste_sylvain on whether we can incorporate something else into our morning/early afternoon. (EDIT: Yes, we can, so we'll be helping hammercock and trowa_barton move.) Evening at home.

You?

I haven't done one of these in a bit. And this story - I am sitting down to write this story now and I know that it is going to gut me. In ways that produce a good story, but still. So I'll want a break between that and StrowlerCon stuff. So here is a poll. Give me questions to answer! Tell me secrets! I'll answer questions later today, with names not attached; no one but me and you will know what you asked. Also, no one but me and you will ever know your secret.

Post-writing (no, the story's not done, but I am done working on it for right now), pre-nap.

What is your favorite children's /YA book?
There are too many to name! Um. Let's say A Wrinkle in Time.

Cicatrix?
Is lurking patiently in my brainmeats. I owe a crtain editor two stories by midOctober, one of which is the one I started today, and I owe some other short fiction and poetry elsewhere, and I have this Thing wherein I feel guilty about diving into novelling when I have other stuff to do first. But rest assured that it is happening.

Is it always good when people not on your friendslist join in with conversation on your LJ? I feel I'm crashing the party sometimes. (This is not a passive aggressive way to ask for friending.)
Comment away! It is almost always awesome. I don't add people to my friendslist often unless I know them in person or have known them online for years - not being on my friendslist is usually just because I don't have enough LJ-reading time to read all the nifty people. But I like discussions here.

What do you do when your muscles hurt, when it hurts to be touched?
Heh. I take Robaxin, usually. But also I give myself permission to rest. This is a good time to curl up with a book or watch a movie or nap. When it hurts to be touched, be sure to get your love in other, nonphysical ways, so's not to feel deprived.

In North America, from what region come the people you find sexiest?
I... don't think I have a preference? I've found sexy people from just about everywhere. No specific region stands out.

I will be at StrowlerCon doing massage. Any interest in scheduling a session?
Perhaps! I'll get back to you once I've finalized the schedule.

What's the best remedy for a seriously sore throat?
Tea with honey. I love Yogi Throat Comfort tea - as it has slippery elm bark in it, though, pregnant people should not drink it.

How do you not lose faith and keep going?
Oh, love, I've lost my faith a dozen times. But I've picked it back up a dozen and one. Essentially - I'm hella wicked stubborn. If I give up, if I allow myself to lose my faith for good - they win. And I will not let them. I fall down, but I stand back up, because I will not let my faith be taken from me.

what did you last eat?
A gluten-free pumpkin chocolate chip cookie bar. OM NOM NOM.

What has been the best moment of your last year?
I can't pick just one! I was recently asked this at a work checkin, but just the best moment of the past month, not even the year, and - too many! There have been concerts with people I love. There have been first dates and first times and gorgeous realizations. There've been BARCC new volunteer graduations and dancing and howling at the moon, story writing and story sales and awesome readings, gleeful afternoons with my daughter. There have been some awful moments this year, too. But there have been some gorgeous ones.

What is your favorite distraction when the World feels to powerful to fight?
Due to My Childhood And Adolescent Shit, I don't tend to have very much personal connection to my body; my body isn't me, it's this strange and defective bit of meat that's attached to me. So my distraction is actually my grounding - taking the thinking-too-fast hyperanalytic mind and grounding it in the body, and in the body experiencing pleasure. The three big grounding things for me are dancing, sex, and kink. When doing those things, I am doing only those things; I can turn off the "aaaagh too much to do and plan and think and be" and just be there, in what Elfquest calls the Now of wolf thought. And I always come away from those things feeling very restored, and ready to engage with the world again.

How does BARCC interact with the legal community?
We have an awesome legal advocacy department! We also work closely with the Victim Rights Law Center, which started as a part of BARCC. :)

I absolutely love the way you dress, where do you shop?
Oh, shopping is so fraught for me! *laugh* But I hit sales at Anthropologie whenever they have them. Lots of my stuff comes from there and from thrift stores. T-shirts, usually ThinkGeek or shirt.woot. Most of my basic wardrobe staples come from Target.

You have one weekend free to do whatever you want with whomever you want. Describe the weekend.
This is another "how can I possibly choose?" question! Too many people! Way too many! With you, it'd be that culinary tour we've been discussing, plus whatever hijinks we get into along the way. We need a videographer.

Do you think boobs should used as non-leathal weapons?
...erf?

More answers later! And I swear I should write a series of posts about the weekend one.

I wrote the first chunk of a short story that is going to involve me exploring how I present sacred sex like a lot, had a nap, had lunch with a friend, caught up on some backlogged e-mail, cleaned some of the things, got a request for my bio for an upcoming story, got notified that another story is being nominated for an award, and got asked to write a parenting column or indeed any column I want for our new hyperlocal Watertown newssite. And tonight I will set the Strowlercon schedule.

It occurs to me that most people don't have all of this stuff happening on the same day. And so. Hi.