Katherine E Bennett

I went with a couple of other Seattle friends to see Imogen Heap in concert the other night. She's pretty amazing; for one thing, she's hugely tall, which I didn't realize until I saw her standing on stage next to a group of other women, and she was the tallest on stage and as tall as any of the men.

I'm not a huge Imogen Heap/Frou Frou fan, but I like her voice, and the concert was very enjoyable. She seems to take pains to make her concerts very interactive. As well as getting the audience to provide singing/chorus lines to an a capella song, she apparently has this thing where she'll ask the audience for a key, and then a short melodic line, and then she'll improvise a whole new song around it on the spot. And what's more, she does this in every city! The tracks she creates are recorded, put up on her website, and people can download them for a dollar, which is then donated to a local charity. Pretty neat!

That's been the most exciting thing that's happened here lately. The weather has been awful. :( We're getting to the longest days of the year, which at this latitude means it's still light going on 9:30-9:45 PM, not that you would ever see it because it's always cloudy and raining. We have maybe one day of nice weather, and then another of intermittent-partly-cloudy weather, and then it goes right back to raining and temperatures in the 50s like it's November, I swear.

Happy birthday, agingparents! I will call you a little later!

Also:

The weather has finally turned nice in Seattle and just in time, the next few weeks are bound to be hectic. Today we finally took the chance to go to the Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden. Sadly, most of the rhododendrons themselves were either fallen or drooping, but it was a wonderful day anyway.

Next weekend we have some friends flying in from New York and Atlanta GA to visit for the weekend. They want to do touristy stuff, including a chocolate tour (!) but sadly I'll be working that Saturday, sniff.

The weekend after that, I am actually flying out to Lafayette, Indiana to attend one of my friend's wedding! Because of the visit and the wedding, there won't really be time to celebrate my birthday on my birthday (which is on a Tuesday anyway...) so then the weekend after THAT (which I believe is memorial day weekend) we will finally have a birthday party. Woowoo, nonstop celebration! Should be a fun month!

Smoke alarm was chirping incessently this afternoon. Finally managed to wrestle it into submission, with immense difficulty -- that is a terrible design for a battery compartment.

Also the cats all hate me now. Ooh, how they glared. They did NOT like me pressing the "test and hold" button!

Happy Easter, everyone! I think Somebody is cheating re Easter, since outside right now it's sunny and 70 degrees and gorgeous despite the forecast saying the weather would be foul for the rest of next WEEK. Still, I'm not complaining. I just have to think of something to do to get me out in this nice weather...

ETA: The nice weather only lasted until noon, then reverted to the forecast (increasing my suspicions about Cheating, since it only lasted about as long as it would take people to get to services and back. Oh well.)

Today I learned not to put clothes on the floor by the bathroom door when showering; Chrestomanci will stick his paw under the door, hook my underwear if it's within range, and drag it back to the other side of the door if not stopped.

So I feel like a total loser because I gave up and came home halfway through my shift. (And kind of more of a loser when halfway through my shift is 9:30 AM -- I got on the freeway to come home, and ran smack into morning rush hour traffic. Doh.)

( cut for self-pity. )

So yeah, I think I've actually been sicker than I've let myself realize the past few days. If I have nightmares again tonight, I'm calling in tomorrow, too.

Somehow, I managed to go the entire month of February without making any Livejournal posts. I'm not sure this was intended as an accomplishment, but I think I'll treat it at one anyway. Go away, February, nobody likes you.

"What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

“When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

— Excerpts from “Where Do We Go From Here?”
Martin Luther King Jr., 1967

I'm not very good at coming up with new years' resolutions -- generally things that I need to do, I will either do anyway, or there are barriers to doing them that cannot be overcome on the strength of a foolish new years' promise.

But here are a few I've come up with for this year. In the year or so since I've been working at my current IT job, I've come to understand a lot more about things like data backup and computer security, and while I'm very strict about it at work, I'm terrible about it at home. So here are:

Sophie's 2010 Cyberspace New Year's Resolutions:
1) I will reorganize my computer's data files from the ground up, creating new directories and labeling everything appropriately.

2) I will develop a strong-security password system and update and consolidate all of my internet application passwords.

3) After accomplishing #1, I will find a way to back up all of my important data files at a remote location, where they will be safe an accessible in case of disaster.

And slightly tangentially:

4) I will begin to take more photographs, organize, store, and put them on display.

This thanksgiving, I am thankful for my kitty <3

I've decided that for posterity, I'm going to copy my most recent few facebook status updates to here...

( Cut for TOTAL MUSHINESS ahead. )