It's just after six and less than an hour ago two of my friends from work texted they just got home. Today averaged about an hour drive for people living less than ten miles from home and up to five hours for those living about thirty miles away. I am so glad they are home.

 

It's definitely a good night to be inside. Here in Columbia, the snow is still coming down. A good website for checking out traffic and road conditions is right here, though obviously right now is not a good time to go out at all...just for future reference:

 

http://www.chart.state.md.us/TravInfo/trafficcams.php#

 

 

So it did turn out to be a big snow event and we were let out early from work and I am so glad I was able to face my fears of driving in bad weather and not freak out like I used to in the past. I think it's nice to have a role model in your life because you can think, "What would that person do?" and then you try and face the situation the way she would.

And facing your fears (even if driving in the snow may not be everyone's, most of us still have something we fear greatly) is awesome:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/amyanderson/2013/10/16/face-your-fear-the-result-might-be-amazing/




Chicken Little fever has struck Maryland with all the reports of impending snow. It's so contagious and a few people today are just a tad..um, unfriendly? ...so I am just needing to see this today:

“I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'Well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.”
― Maya Angelou

 http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/self-acceptance

I feel my sad mood wanting to return, but I will not let it, absolutely not! So I'm putting on a good album for conquering bad moods and one that's also good for Friday nights. the id by Macy Gray is one of my favorites from the early 00s. I think "Freak Like Me" is one of the sweetest, weirdest love songs ever. :)

This is taken from a review for the album that appears on its Amazon page:

Over the course of Gray's second album, the novelty of her vocal style is somewhat tempered by her limited range. That said, what she lacks in octave-conquering she and producer Rick Rubin more than make up for in creativity. The album's many eclectic singles stand strong. "Relating To A Psychopath" opens the disc with a wall-of-sound block party; it's a funky, celebratory track, well endowed with twangy surf guitar, glimpses of theremin, a ragga-inspired bass line, and lots of goodies floating in the song's highest register (backing vocals, splashes of cymbals, piano). Gray's album also benefits from a host of R&B and hip-hop guests, including Slick Rick, Sunshine Anderson, Angie Stone, Mos Def, and most notably Erykah Badu, who supports Gray on "Sweet Baby," a moving uptempo ballad that easily rivals the best that '70s soul has to offer. Once again, her lyrical sensibility is gripping, vacillating from whimsical ("Oblivion") to disturbing ("Gimme All Your Lovin' or I Will Kill You"). In all, Macy Gray continues to wave her R&B freak flag while digging deep in the trenches of the vividly real. --Beth Massa


Also good for a Friday night is "Dazz" by Brick:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbfL4Q9bP7g


And vintage Madonna:

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine  [-]

 

Although she never left it behind, it's been easy to overlook that Madonna began her career as a disco diva in an era that didn't have disco divas. It was an era where disco was anathema to the mainstream pop, and she had a huge role in popularizing dance music as a popular music again, crashing through the door Michael Jackson opened with Thriller. Certainly, her undeniable charisma, chutzpah, and sex appeal had a lot to do with that -- it always did, throughout her career -- but she wouldn't have broken through if the music wasn't so good. And her eponymous debut isn't simply good, it set the standard for dance-pop for the next 20 years. Why did it do so? Because it cleverly incorporated great pop songs with stylish, state-of-the-art beats, and it shrewdly walked a line between being a rush of sound and a showcase for a dynamic lead singer. This is music where all of the elements may not particularly impressive on their own -- the arrangement, synth, and drum programming are fairly rudimentary; Madonna's singing isn't particularly strong; the songs, while hooky and memorable, couldn't necessarily hold up on their own without the production -- but taken together, it's utterly irresistible. And that's the hallmark of dance-pop: every element blends together into an intoxicating sound, where the hooks and rhythms are so hooky, the shallowness is something to celebrate. And there are some great songs here, whether it's the effervescent "Lucky Star," "Borderline," and "Holiday" or the darker, carnal urgency of "Burning Up" and "Physical Attraction." And if Madonna would later sing better, she illustrates here that a good voice is secondary to dance-pop. What's really necessary is personality, since that sells a song where there are no instruments that sound real. Here, Madonna is on fire, and that's the reason why it launched her career, launched dance-pop, and remains a terrific, nearly timeless, listen.

One last song that is good for bouncing into a good mood:

The Mammoth Book Of series can be hit or miss, but this collection is amazing so far, amazing. And one of the best things about anthologies is you can read a few stories each day and get back to the real life things you need to do.:) The problem with this one, though, is that the stories are all so good, reading the collection is like eating a bag of chips and trying to stop at just one.

<3 So many great tales here, but "Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra" by Vandana Singh is absolutely stunning! <3

You can read one of the stories from The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women right here:

http://www.strangehorizons.com/2010/20100329/somadeva-f.shtml



Also worth checking out is Martini Shot by George Pelecanos:

http://www.washingtonian.com/bookreviews/fiction/george-pelecanos-attempts-a-new-literary-direction-in-the-martini-shot.php

 

 

You can feel pretty far from normal when very few of your friends, if any, are gay and your family is extremely homophobic...

snippets from a book on the history of lesbian pulp fiction...Katherine V. Forrest

  

There are some days where the only way I get through them is by pure daydreaming...get it all out of my system and move on.

I have a fight (disagreement, really, since it does more good to just listen than to argue back) with my parents, for instance, and I imagine the way I wanted my life to turn out, not the way it is.

It's so funny, in a way, because when I was younger, I distinctly remember being in the Walden Books at Security Square Mall and seeing a book about Fire Island with two men on the front. I remember flipping the book over and the word "gay" jumping out at me. When we got home that night I asked my mom about the word.

She didn't flinch or make a face or anything like that. She went on to tell me that gay people were just people who were "lost and confused," but that we should never hate or judge them. I remember that like it was just yesterday, even though it was the early 80s.

Now, now, the word "gay" (or "lesbian") brings out nothing but fire and brimstone in my mother's voice. I'm not saying what she told me when I was younger was right, but it was certainly kinder than she feels now and no matter how hard I've tried to explain, she just won't (or can't) believe that I am the very thing she once said shouldn't be judged or hated.

I've mentioned (ad nauseam, I know, and I keep hoping to get past that) that this is a huge issue between my parents and me, one that I know will never be resolved and I've only been able to accept at all because I've never met anyone who could feel the same.

But on days when it gets really hard, I go to my happy place, which is sometimes Hawaii (goodbye, cold weather!), but is more often somewhere big and more likely to swallow me up whole...like New York City. I'm sure The Big Apple has its share of homophobia, but I feel like being in love and together with another woman wouldn't be the heartache it would in my real life.

A few weeks ago something happened that, due to a small series of very odd coincidences and a silly desire for it to be so, almost made me believe something ludicrously wonderful. I say "almost" because I actually don't believe in coincidences (the phrase "there are no coincidences" drives me up the wall) and because in this certain situation I just knew it would have been astronomically impossible to be...well, never mind that. I'd rather not go into what the situation was...

I just want to share this awesome article I found online. I discovered it when I typed "there are coincidences" in Google. And, yes, tonight, I have way too much time on my hands. But it's (as it is in a large part of the country right now) extremely cold so....bundled up under lots of covers, with books, a laptop and "I Love Lucy" episodes is the only way to be right now if I don't want to run my heat over 65 degrees.

Anyway, below is the article:

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/6078/features/who-says-there-are-no-coincidences/