balinares: (Default)
Balinares ([personal profile] balinares) wrote2006-05-08 03:17 am

Life, housing arrangements, and the wizardry of adulthood.

Argh, busy.

Life's been good! [livejournal.com profile] jallora moved in with me. She brought in a lot of stuff. Those who know my flat and its relatively small dimensions might be concerned for the resulting state of our living space. Fear not! After an interestingly frenzied week, everything was reorganized, new furniture (hush, Reveille) was purchased, stuff was moved around, and everything ended up fitting into a nicely cozy living place, the practicality of which was tested at once with [livejournal.com profile] kefen and [livejournal.com profile] unblue staying over for the extended weekend. Much fun and inebriation was had by all.


I've tried to keep up with my artsy meme of last month, without terribly much success. Too much to do, too little time. But I'll see it through eventually, goddurnit.

Speaking of that, by the way: [livejournal.com profile] unblue, they're cheap and they're good, if you're still interested in getting one. Mine's an older model, and those are presumably more modern and better in some way. If you've got a scanner to get your sketches into the 'puter, tablets are good for inking, owing to the magic power of the undo function. The cheap one looks pretty decent as an entry level model, and I hear a lot of good about the painting software it ships with (assuming it isn't a custom crippled version), but note that its stylus has no eraser button.


Otherwise, the non-household related highlight of the week was an interview with a sociologist.

A coworker's sister is studying sociology, and preparing a memoire on the topic of adults who read (and enjoy) the Harry Potter books. Apparently, she's had a hard time finding those, and her brother thought of me. For whatever reason. :) Since Jall gladly came along, our sociologist got two interviews instead of one, which is all the better.

And for a long time, we delved into what we liked in the Harry Potter books, how it appeals to us, what characters we like and why, do we collect HP paraphernalia other than the books (no, I don't), etc. I got to talk about Joseph Campbell and the theory of storytelling, and lots of things beside: imagination and escapism, and the sultry power of things that might be.

Only late in the evening did we reach the real meat of the matter, though, and, I think, the real subject of her study, with questions about what it means to be an adult, and what society expects of them. I made a fairly long and complex answer to that last one; I might make a whole post on that topic, because it involves a lot of things that I've been giving a lot of thought to for years, and I'd like to develop it further in this here journal, as a future reference, and to get some feedback from those I've broached the topics with in the past. (God, if only I didn't suck so badly at developping things.)

All in all, a very nice evening. I've asked her for a copy of her memoire when she's done with it; it should be interesting.


And now, I'm sort of back to a saner life schedule, but my Net is being flaky. Very flaky. Tsh. So if you've not heard from me in a while, it's not (just) that I moved on into a world of cuddles and pink clouds; I've also simply not been able to get online.

Bali out for now.

[identity profile] reveille-d.livejournal.com 2006-05-08 05:46 am (UTC)(link)
I said nothing!.......Unph!

[identity profile] balinares.livejournal.com 2006-05-08 02:10 pm (UTC)(link)
Some things are best left unsaid. In public, anyway. ^^

[identity profile] kefen.livejournal.com 2006-05-08 05:49 am (UTC)(link)
I think this all deserves a big "YAY", and thank you for said week-end, it was delightful :)

And I'm looking forward to reading your view on adulthood!

[identity profile] balinares.livejournal.com 2006-05-08 02:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Righto. Do feel free to prod me mercilessly into putting those thoughts down on paper, then, or they'll probably remain in my brain for the time being. I mean... 'SPyrit', right?

[identity profile] kefen.livejournal.com 2006-05-08 03:02 pm (UTC)(link)
Yep, I'll even borrow a dragon prod if I have to!

[identity profile] balinares.livejournal.com 2006-05-08 10:57 pm (UTC)(link)
That would probably help, myeah. :}

[identity profile] luna-the-cat.livejournal.com 2006-05-12 05:21 pm (UTC)(link)
That sounds like fantastic fun. Well, maybe not the moving-and-rearranging bit, but certainly the inebriated-weekend-and-talking-about-Harry-Potter bit.

Your co-worker's sister had a hard time finding adults who read Harry Potter? Seriously? Geez, that girl hangs with the wrong crowd, that's all I can say.

[identity profile] balinares.livejournal.com 2006-05-12 11:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, the moving and rearranging thing was vaguely stressful, in the way changes in your living conditions tend to be, no matter how good, but otherwise it was pretty darn nice, I can tell you. :) My flat seems such a lot larger now!

And yeah, I know countless people who have read HP... I suspect that the student protests of the last months have had something to do with her lateness in her memoire, too.