Friends

Thank so much to everyone who commented to my entry about the new host family. ♥ I know I've been horrible about replying to comments, but you guys are awesome.

Don't feel very unfrozen yet, except by lack of negative shit inundating me, but December is looking to be a lot better than November in terms of doing stuff. Handel's Messiah on Monday, Copenhagen on Tuesday and Wednesday, Andrea Chénier at some point in the next two weeks, concert version of La Bohème next Tuesday, London the weekend of the 20th, then home. I definitely do not feel like I'm wasting my life. XD

Also poking at a major website update. No new sections, but there are a bunch of little errors and incompletions that I have to fix, and I'm finally going through last year's Paris photos to add to the tour guide. Plus various translations, etc.

And I need to get the Barricade Day website online.

Ack! It's December. Did you know about this? Were you going to tell me? When were you going to tell me? Where have I been? Where am I now? Where do I need to be next? Where are my socks?

I'll tell you where I've been--in the writer's cave, that's where. Down in the Hobbit Hole with my Gollum of a deadline mumbling ever near my ear. In the meantime, I'm trying to post a bit here and there on my Twitter (I'm @libbabray, as opposed to @notlibbabray or @thatidiotlibbabray.) And I'm going to try to get on a more regular blogging schedule in another week, week-and-a-half. Also, it is holiday shopping-wrapping-packing-and-mailing time. I hate this time. No, do NOT attempt to post your efforts at Christmas cheer. Do not say, "But Libba, it's a beautiful time of holly and berry and peace on earth and goodwill toward all, God bless us everyone." I say "Bah, humbug."

But this is all beside the point. Here are things I want to tell you--there are signings going on!

* Tonight, Dec. 4th, @ the Voracious Reader in Larchmont, NY @ 7 PM
* Tomorrow, Dec. 5th @ the Brown Bookstore in Providence, RI @ 4 PM
* Monday, Dec. 7th @ Red Fox Books in Glens Falls, NY @ 6 PM

It will be a roster of yours truly, David Levithan, and Natalie Standiford. There could be finger puppets and singing. I'm just saying.

Also, THOSE OF YOU WHO WON MY CONTEST FOR HAVING YOUR NAME WRITTEN INTO A SHORT STORY: I have your ETERNAL KISS books and I would like to send them to you! So, if you could leave me a message on my LJ inbox (it's all I have right now) with your name and addresses, that would be swell, and I'll get it right out to you. Amanda, due to my terrible oversight, you will officially be written into the next short story, which is due...gulp...next month.

For those who've asked about a way to contact me, that LJ inbox really sucks. I've tried responding to people before and if there are parental controls, it boots me out. (And after I brought a cake and everything.) So, I'm going to be talking to my web master, Mr. Theo, and getting an email put on my website for the new year. Hoorays!

Is that it? I think that's it. Wait, where are my socks again? I'm going to hop the train to Larchmont. Hope to see you there tonight. And stay tuned to my Twitter feed for updates.

LiveJournal: The First Decade

Just in time for holiday shopping, we're thrilled to announce the release of our ten-year anniversary anthology. Published by Blurb.com, the book showcases a decade of extraordinary talent drawn from LiveJournal users around the world. This must-read compilation features stories, memes, photos, comics, editorials, graphic content, and more, including:

1. Excerpts from Oh No They Didn't (a/k/a ohnotheydidnt), the largest community on LiveJournal, covering celebrity gossip, entertainment news, and pop culture
2. A look at post-Katrina New Orleans from the journal of Poppy Z. Brite
3. Gripping narratives, including a poignant reverie on a blind date
4. Photography that spans the globe, ranging from old-fashioned Polaroids to underwater photography
5. Mouthwatering dishes from food_porn

What began as a late-night inspiration back in Brad Fitzpatrick's college dorm in 1999 has grown to encompass nearly 25 million users worldwide, with journals and communities covering every conceivable hobby, passion, and topic. To get your copy, please visit the Blurb Bookstore. For updates and entries from book contributors, please join lj_turns10.

Tweaks and enhancements

• You can now ban a user from all of your communities and journals at once. To access this feature, hover over the person's userpic and choose Ban user everywhere from the drop-down menu.
• Follow LiveJournal on Twitter!

Give a little to help a lot!

In honor of National AIDS Awareness month, we've added a new charitable vgift. For each red ribbon you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to support the development and global distribution of an affordable HIV vaccine (we'll cover credit card fees). You can read more about IAVI at lj_cares. While we're on the subject, we raised $740 from our November fundraiser for Love Without Boundaries, which supports emergency healthcare and adoption of Chinese orphans. We thank you for helping us help others.

Photos of the week

We're back with more incredible pictures from our super-talented LiveJournal photographers. Congratulations to ilya_gorokhov, who is the winner of our very first lj_photophile poll.

We hope you'll continue to post, vote, and comment! A gentle request: Please post only one photo at a time and limit size to 350x350 (so images display properly on friends pages). And now, without further ado, get ready to cast your ballot and view more awesome user content after the jump!

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Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. Stay safe and snug out there!

**EDIT Thu Dec 3 23:24:15 UTC 2009 **

Hey Everyone, we are about to run the last alter job that we need to on our database servers. This will effect userpics / scrapbook / vgift images for the next few hours. Have no fear, your images aren't lost, there is just a really intensive process running on the servers which store the information for mogilefs. Thank you for your understanding and all the LJ love...

Hey LJers,

I just wanted to let you all know that we are going to be performing some mogilefs maintenance over the next few days. We will be upgrading our current version to latest stable as well as changing some db config information to better handle the amount of files we are currently hosting. This shouldn't cause a big impact on site stability, but you may see some minor delays with userpic / scrapbook images appearing or other requests associated with our mogilefs. We would love to not have that happen, but unfortunately with some of the steps we need to take we have to cause a delay with images. I figured this was a better solution than taking down all of LiveJournal because well lets face it, we all need our daily LJ fix ;)

Thanks,

OMG new host family is awesome. So, so nice, so non-judgmental, so much cooler than Old Bitchy Host Mother. I get the whole attic, which has been converted into a living space that is probably bigger than your average Parisian studio apartment. And they have a cat who is disgustingly friendly and thinks everything is a cat toy and attempts to climb up my leg if she thinks I'm not paying enough attention to her. ♥ And last night we hung out watching The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and my bookshelves are fully stocked with DVDs, Harry Potter books, and French comic books. (French comic books are awesome. Like, Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore awesome. As a genre it is much more appreciated than in the English-speaking world.) And I no longer feel like a freak or an alien for wanting to play non-classical music from time to time.

Also, location! Right across the boulevard from what used to be the Field of the Lark. My nerdy soul is happy. toi_marguerite and I went to walk around there this afternoon, through the Rue du Champ de l'Alouette and the Rue des Cordelières and the Square René-le-Gall. After much squinting at old maps, I am fairly sure that the Square René-le-Gall at least partly occupies what used to be... uh, either the Field of the Lark or the backyard of the Gobelins factory, which might be one and the same thing. It has a reconstruction of the Bièvre river running through it. Rather glad the actual Bièvre is underground now, as a few centuries' worth of industrial pollution have probably made it un-clean-up-able.

So, yes. Happy.

Okay, so I'm not sure whether this week's craziness is winding down or just taking a deep breath before the grand finale. I did not flunk Midterm #2--in fact, the most obnoxious part about it was that we were allowed one page of handwritten notes and I stayed up until 4am cramming a semester's worth of stuff onto one sheet of paper, only to discover I didn't need any of it. Completely straightforward, no obscure questions. The exact opposite of Midterm #1. Dammit, I could've got a full night's sleep.

Packing for the big move to the new host family. Uberbitch has apparently been informed that I'm leaving, and the program director inists that everything's OK and going smoothly, but I am still slightly leery of what will happen when she comes home. I don't think she's going to make a big scene out of it, but interrogation and/or subtly nasty comments are a possibility, and I am just so sick of her shit. And the fact that I have to anticipate and think about her shit, and the mental weight it puts on me.

Grargh, I feel so shut-down--like I'm just going about everyday necessary routines and not much else. Ordinarily this would be pretty normal functioning, but I am in Paris and I feel like opportunities are whooshing past my head while I sit holed up in my room. I really hope I break loose a little after the move.

Operation Avoid Host Mother is working--I haven't actually seen her face to face since I waltzed out the door yesterday morning, telling her I was going to go see La Bohème with toi_marguerite that evening and wouldn't be home for dinner. Bohème was sold out, but we went to see a production of Mariage de Figaro (the play, not the opera) instead and had a smashing good time.

Bombed the first of my two midterms this morning. Or, well, I'm pretty sure I did. I don't know, maybe part of the French university system is assigning shit nobody can complete. Midterm was in three parts; I finished the first one on complete tunnel vision, felt pretty damn proud of myself, and looked at my watch to discover I'd used up one and a half of my two hours. Frantically completed maybe three-quarters of the second part, attempted the third part but it didn't make any goddamn sense. So even if my work is perfect (which it was not), my raw grade can be at most 13/20, and is probably more like 8/20. Hopefully they will curve it like they did for the homework, because FUCK.

Was a giant ball of quivering insecurity for my voice lesson. Not really over the exam, which is over and done with and I am not allowing myself to stress about it, more from the accumulated wear and tear of living with a glowering old harpy who seems to deliberately needle at my insecurities whenever she thinks she can get away with it. I dunno, normally I'm pretty chin-up about it (rants on LJ excepted), but first day of period = emotional instability and very little uninterrupted sleep due to cramps waking me up all night. So I kind of lost it when I kept screwing up one particular passage and went into "oh god I cannot do anything right, everyone is STARING at how incompetent I am" mode. Not a terribly fun place to be when you're trying to sing.

Fortunately toi_marguerite is a wonderful person and let me cry on her shoulder (often literally) for most of the afternoon. Nervous breakdowns: facilitators of Romantic-friendship bonding? After I pulled myself together we went out and got margarine and stuffing for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, followed by delicious falafel and kosher pastries in the Marais. I might've indulged in a spot of retail therapy--got myself a black waistcoat in a vintage store, decent number of buttons, loose enough to give a male silhouette but small enough to not be a circus tent on me. Perfect for Frenchboy drag.

So yeah, this week as predicted is crazy. Still need to procure a check from my bank and send it off to Théâtre du Châtelet for the group tickets; have another midterm on Saturday; then Sunday is moving day. I'm actually less worried about moving and more worried about what überbitch's reaction will be to the news that I'm outta here.

I'm hoping I will unfreeze somewhat after the move. Enjoy Paris more, visit Les Mis locations, get the Barricade Day website up, interact more with the fandom. All the stuff I should've been doing since September.

Tweaks and enhancements

1. In order to improve site security, we've temporarily suspended the ability to change passwords for old email addresses that haven't been used for over six months. For further information and support, please visit our customer care page.
2. We've launched a new mobile site with an enhanced UI at m.livejournal.com. View spotlights, post to your journal, read and post to friends pages, and more, no matter where you roam! Please let us know what you think, since this will eventually replace our existing mobile interface. You can update your mobile preferences on your account page.
3. We've upgraded from Beacon to Facebook Connect to improve dual posting. If you've already signed up for Facebook Beacon, you're good to go. If you wish to update your Facebook Connect setting, visit Account Privacy settings and scroll down to the option labeled: "Send information about my updates to Facebook." You can choose Always or Ask each time. Remember to save (on the bottom left corner of the page). To learn more, check out FAQ 249. While we're on the subject, if you happen to be visiting that side of town, please join our Facebook fan page for a touch of home away from home.
4. You'll now receive the Writer's Block Question of the Day in the body of email notifications. To sign up for Writer's Block notifications, visit writersblock and choose the Watch Community option. Next, update your Writer's Block notification settings by checking the box to the right of "Someone posts a new entry to writersblock."
5. Paid and permanent users can now view, add, and edit Notes of commenters. Notes will appear beside the username of comment posters (instead of stars) on S1-themed comment pages.

Send some lovin' thanks to your friends with our holiday vgifts!

Photos of the week

We're so delighted with the immense talent of our growing, global lj_photophile community that we've decided to introduce a poll. Each week, we'll choose a half-dozen photos (based on user comments and staff feedback) and ask you to select a photo of the week. The winning photo will be announced in the next newsletter. If possible, please limit photo size to 350x350 to ensure that images display properly on friends pages. We want to thank you again (and again!) for sharing your passion.

Check out this week's photo poll and more fantastic user content after the jump!

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Curtains

Thanks for joining us. To our American friends, have a fantastic Thanksgiving. To all of our international neighbors, we'll eat a little extra for you!

Someone mentioned Simon's Rock on a blog tonight, and it sent me back into a kind of depressive funk. Would rather not dwell on that shit-ass sinkhole, but here, have an anecdote that makes me smile bitterly:

Smith and Simon's Rock are both off I-90, aka the Massachusetts Turnpike. This means that on a couple of occasions driving west--to my grandparents' summer house in Pennsylvania, for example, or anything that required me to pass through Albany--I had to drive past the "Lenox - Lee - Stockbridge - Great Barrington" exit that leads to Simon's Rock.

Every. Single. Time. I have driven past it, it has started raining. Once or twice, it was beautiful and sunny for most of the drive, and only turned grey and rainy and nasty as I was going through that area.

This only supports my hypothesis that Simon's Rock is clinical depression personified in a campus: it has its own personal rain cloud. I swear to god it's populated by dementors or something.

(Partially related: I am so glad I'm changing host families this weekend. I've been starting to get the same frozen, cut-off feeling I had at SRC--I've stopped doing things because I feel like I can't do anything without this bitch reproaching me, either directly or with a barbed I-was-just-teasing comment. I know, logically, that she's going to pull this shit even if I do nothing at all, but the paralysis response is really hard to beat down and I do not want to fucking deal with it when HELLO I AM IN PARIS and I should be enjoying myself.)

Edit: You know what? Now that the big bad D-word is out of the bag in relation to Host Mother From Hell, I have decided I'm avoiding her as much as humanly possible. I already was, subconsciously, but now I'm going to eat dinner elsewhere and study elsewhere and if she thinks I'm rude and antisocial she can go to hell. I know it's only one more week, but fuck this, I have two gigantic midterms this week and I do not need to expose myself to triggers for past mental health problems. The hit to my bank account from getting takeout every night this week will be totally worth not going bonkers.