(no subject)

Although I knew Aptri Pugliese to the extent I did through dance, if you've heard me talk about him, it's probably been as regards fencing and in the context of his death last year.

Susan, my dance teacher, writes about Patri and what he taught her about dance research here. If you want more context to whatever you've heard from me you can read that, but you _should_ actually read it because it talks about how to be a good mentor and instructor -- like much of the dance and fencing that interested Patri, that too can be something of a nearly lost art, although with him it certainly wasn't.

Forgive the runon sentence. It's late, but I wanted to get that up before it slipped my mind.

oh, heh

Thanks to a post from ktempest I have just realized I'm actually eligible for various awards this year, thanks to my HP book. So if you have nominating/voting powers in anything that hands out awards for "related works" and feel like remembering me, I'd be pleased and startled. Mostly I'm thinking of the non-fiction category in the Locus Awards which anyone can vote in (https://secure.locusmag.com/2008/2008PollAndSurvey.html), and the "related works" category in the Hugos which is restricted to Worldcon members.

tech question

What the hell does one open an .MDI with?

LJ Idol, Week 14 --The One I Love: We Are the People You Hate

"Hey, do you mind if I write a paean to Patty for LJ Idol this week?"

"Well, okay," she said, blinking pseudo-shyly at me and definitely dubious.

You see, Patty and I are those people on the subway you hate.

Not the ones who make out with their hands in each other's jeans and their tongues exposed (advice to the young and inexperienced: MTV is a bad blueprint for good kissing); I still yell at those people in my best Snape-explains-why-you-personally-are-the-decline-and-fall-of-civilization voice. I mean the cute ones who nuzzle and coo at each other, or, as (and wow, do I hate to invoke this) Seinfeld says, are "schmoopy."

We are schmoopy, although we don't particularly use the L-word.

At first, that was kinda weird to me, because one just does; or I do, anyway. I've always been the person who says it first or early or strangely, and I've tended to pay the price for it, in discomfort or at least in long explanations as regards my intent; certainly, I got very used to the idea that my wounds would always come in certain forms.

But after a bit, not using the L-word became this awesome way of expanding my expression of enthusiasm. It's much more fun for me to say and hear specific enthusiasms, and we're freed from the tyranny of the worst relationship bad habit there is: saying "I love you" like it's a question.

Last year, around this time, she and I had been hanging out, but not in any way that approached dating, while all these people were insisting that she was totally into me, I didn't know what was going on, and I was totally reluctant to make a move because I didn't want to be one of those old people (we're eleven and a half years apart) who puts younger folks in situations they don't know how to say no to.

So I got the completely stupid idea that I'd get one of those ValentineR things on my journal, and send her one of those valentines that's only revealed if you get a reciprocal one. Patty, being a sensible soul, wanted nothing to do with the entire thing, and so I was thwarted for several more weeks until I finally asked her what was up after I'd been on a set for 17.5 hours with James Gandolfini and an evil chihuahua that caused me to miss what would have otherwise maybe been our first date. Whew. How you feel after reading that sentence? That's how I felt after that day.

We've been together less than a year and live together thanks to a series of serendipitous and completely insane circumstances involving the previously mentioned star of The Sopranos and an actor-dog, two well-known authors, my roommate who moved to Macau, Patty's old lease, Mercury retrograde and the vagaries of the Internet in Cyprus.

So she pops bugs and I show her how to kill people with cutlery; we make up little songs to each other and the cats, and I tell her stories half asleep, which generally amount to incoherent, cracktastic spins on our fandoms. It's a nice life, and it's plenty sugary sweet awesome without that troublesome word.