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earlgreytea68This is what this entry was going to be about:
It was going to be about how I had made my peace with September. You see, September is my least favorite month when I am living in New England. I hate the approach of fall, I hate the anticipation of it. I hate watching summer go through its death throes, the encroachment of the lengthening night and the insidious nip in the air that eventually chases you inside and leaves your swimming pools bereft and your deck chairs abandoned. But I came to a realization during this past month here: September--the idea of autumn--doesn't bother me when I feel like I've had an actual summer. It was never autumn itself that bothered me, but the fact that, in New England, I frequently feel we get two weeks of summer and then the annoying indoor weather comes back. But this year we had the sort of July that I dream about, when it was pool weather every single day and we sat outside every night until after 9:00, enjoying the remarkably lucky act of being alive in that particular place in time. I had a picture-perfect July, a storybook July.
My last night at home, we put on sweatshirts at night for the first time in weeks. I looked at the next-door neighbor who had come over to say good-bye and I said, "It feels like fall, you know." And she winced and begged me not to say that. I moved down to New Orleans. It was in the upper 90s here, hot and humid. At home, there was a cold snap in the 60s. This helped immeasurably with the homesickness. I was so happy to be somewhere where August was August, there was no leaking over of September, no reminder of that lurking threat. I had a spectacular summer month here. The people on my f-list who live in seasonal places started to talk about autumn happily, and normally when that happens I tense up. "No!" I protest. "I am not ready for the winter to come! I have not had nearly enough time!"
But a remarkable thing happened this year: Autumn sounded nice. I have always suspected that, while I love summer, I love seasons. I am not like my mother, who would happily forego winter for the rest of her life. I like all of it, but I want to feel like it's somewhat evenly divided. In my view, Boston gets eleven months of cold weather, two weeks of heat, and two weeks of bearable in-between-ness. This year things evened out for me a bit, and, ironically, here in a place without autumn, I felt ready for autumn. Two full months of summer heat behind me, it was time to let other types of weather have their turn. Rather than summer dying in a desperate struggle, I was willing to have summer gracefully step aside and hibernate for a bit (even though, I am aware, it's not going to happen here. But the fact was that it would be okay with me if it did).
So, Labor Day weekend was upon me. Summer's last hurrah. I was going to go the Shrimp and Petroleum Festival, because doesn't that sound AWESOME? And then I was going to regale all of you with pithy and charming tales from the Shrimp and Petroleum Festival. But do you know what happened instead?
SEPTEMBER HAPPENED.
I swear to God, September, I was totally ready to accept you this time around, but September 1 arrived and it immediately started raining in New Orleans and it has not stopped since. And will not stop until sometime after Labor Day. So, summer's last hurrah: There you have it. No Shrimp and Petroleum Festival. Instead, I am holed up in the house AS IF IT IS WINTER. September is the silliest, stupidest month, it really is.
Anyway, here are a couple of Things That Have Happened So Far in September My Archenemy Month (the most dangerous month you'll ever meet and so my problem right now):
1. This Is Why It Is Better If We All Just Don't Talk to Each Other
September 1. It is raining. Although still hot. So I put a dress on and go to the streetcar stop to wait for the streetcar, with my umbrella. This was actually decent rain, in that it wasn't windy, so I wasn't fighting with the umbrella or anything, I was just standing at the streetcar stop, in a black dress and flip-flops, holding an umbrella and listening to music and waiting for the streetcar. Incidentally, everyone around me was wrapped in sweatshirts and turtleneck sweaters. I think wet automatically = cold here, even if the temperature is still in the 80s. So, it's possible that, in my little black dress, I looked like a hooker, since everyone else was all covered up.
Regardless, a car pulls up behind me and beeps its horn. My first thought is, "OMG, my skirt is up," because this is a terror I have, that I will be walking around in a skirt that is, like, tangled up in the back. But I smooth the back of the skirt, and it's not up. I ignore the car.
It beeps again, so I look at it curiously, and the person inside of it waves me over. I cannot see the person clearly (because everyone here has tinted windows, which isn't allowed in New England and makes it easier to see who the sketchy people are trying to abduct, rape, and kill you; only drug dealers have tinted windows in New England). I shake my head and wave him away and go back to ignoring him.
He honks his horn again, continuing to gesture. Now. Here is the thought process I have: There is a girl who works with me who lives on my street and who drives to work. So, I'm thinking, maybe this is her, offering me a ride in the rain. I take a step closer and duck my head to try to see into the car.
The driver rolls down the window, and it is not my colleague. It is a strange man I have never seen before in my life. He calls over to me, "Do you want to get out of the rain?"
People: WHAT. THE. HELL. This is why I hate when strangers talk to me, okay? Because they do sketchy things like this! I'm like, "No," and back rapidly away from the car (I wasn't particularly close to him, but, like, CRAZY PERSON HERE clearly). He's like, "Aww, you're sweet as sugar, I just thought you might melt." Again, I repeat to you: WHAT. THE. HELL. PEOPLE. I turn my head and ignore him, a patented Bostonian response to crazy people, and he eventually gets bored with me and drives away.
Blargh. This is why it's better if people just don't talk to each other, okay? Because too many of us are crazy, and if the normal people aren't going to talk to you, then it's easier for you to know that ALL THE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO TALK TO YOU ARE THE CRAZY ONES. You see? There is a system in place! There is method to the madness.
Moving on.
2. Dunkin' Donuts Turns Out to Be the Biggest Tragedy of All
Yesterday I decided to go shopping. I had a gift card from my birthday and I wanted new shoes. I ended up buying a dress instead of shoes, but I digress. My plan had been to go shopping this weekend, but we've got this tropical storm sitting over us going two miles per hour (this is the second time I've had a tropical storm essentially stall over my head; I am a magical weather mage as well as being a technology wizard) so I decided to go shopping on Friday before everything flooded. The school closed at 3 because of tropical storm preparations, so I took off immediately to go to the mall (this is how I react in emergency situations).
The mall experience was fine, but then I decided to do this: I decided to go to the one Dunkin' Donuts in the New Orleans area. Every Wednesday, we have departmental meetings of all the professors who teach the same subject I do. Last Wednesday, I was sitting in the meeting, and the girl opposite me was drinking an iced coffee out of a Dunkin' Donuts plastic cup. There was nothing remarkable about this...until I remembered that I wasn't in Boston, and suddenly that cup became the most amazing thing I'd ever seen and I literally interrupted the meeting to be like, "Wait a second, is that a Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee?" She smiled at me and was like, "I was wondering how long it was going to take you to ask. Every time I have one of these, I get stopped by every New Englander I pass begging to know where the Dunkin' Donuts is." I was like, "Yes! Where is the Dunkin' Donuts?" So she tells me. It's out by the Target in Metairie, she says.
So, I specifically go out to Metairie to shop yesterday so that I can go to the Dunkin' Donuts.
Here is a conclusion I have reached: I am a terrible driver here. I am a very good driver in New England, but I am terirble here. I feel like I am always almost getting myself killed. It's a good thing I don't drive very much. 97% of successful driving is being a good predicter of what everyone around you is going to do next. I rock at that in Boston, where I have perfected that specific type of aggression. Here, I have NO CLUE what anyone is going to do at any given moment, and I am constantly in their way. The traffic flow bewilders me, all these weird U-turns and funny lights and deceptive speed limits. I have a different definition of "merge" and "yield" than New Orleanians, who seem to interpret these terms to mean, "Stop. For a very, very, very long time." So, frequently, I'm getting on the highway, and I'm watching the traffic to see my opening into it, gauging the speed I need to go, and I glance ahead of me, and the person ahead of me is at a dead stop and I have to slam on my brakes. (Sometimes, if I'm very, very lucky, the person in front of me doesn't have brake lights at all. Why does this happen here?)
So, anyway, to get to the Dunkin' Donuts I am required to do a U-turn through four lanes of extremely busy traffic. Someone in the first lane lets me go, but I have to get over IMMEDIATELY to get into the Dunkin' Donuts. I'm not usually a fan of drawing to a halt instead of just going with the traffic flow, but, if I pass the Dunkin' Donuts, I'm just going to have to go around and do this whole thiing over again. At some point, I am going to have to stop four lanes of traffic to get over to this place.
Well, nobody is letting me go. I don't think this is because they're being rude, I think it's because they're perplexed by the blinking light on my car that I think indicates I want to move over another lane and they think indicates I'm sending a signal in Morse code or something. So now people are beeping the horn at me because I'm holding up traffic. I HATE getting beeped at, because I pride myself on trying not to annoy other people on the roadways the way they are always annoying me. So, I panic a little bit and just floor the car across the four lanes of traffic. Seriously, I feel the tires skid in the puddles on the road, it's that dramatic a thing.
I make it into the parking lot, and I sit for a second trying to slow my heartrate down. "Well," I think. "You're going to have a Dunkin' Donuts iced tea soon. It'll be okay."
I get out of the car and walk into the Dunkin' Donuts. I am the only person in the place, which is remarkable enough. Then the person behind the cash register is like, "Hi! How can I help you?" with this huge grin on her face, and I'm like, "What is this place? This is not a Dunkin' Donuts!" So, I'm like, "Uh, sure, can I have a medium--" But my order dies on my lips, because I'm looking at their menu. And I'm slowly realizing... "Wait a second," I say to her. "Do you guys not have iced tea?" "No," she says. And I stand there for a second stupidly, trying to figure out if I want something else, but then I decide I don't want to reward this strange iced-tea-less Dunkin' Donuts, so I turn around and leave.
So, yes, I almost got killed, and I didn't even get my iced tea out of it! (For those of you thinking to yourself that I live in a place that serves fabulous iced tea most places, yes, I do, and it isn't that I couldn't get iced tea elsewhere. It's just that I had been looking forward to the Dunkin' Donuts iced tea! And for those of you thinking I'm crazy, I'm telling you: Try a Dunkin' Donuts iced tea. I have converted many, many people over to them, the latest being my sister, who doesn't even drink iced tea.)
Anyway, the good thing to come out of the Dunkin' Donuts escapade was that it settled once and for all the internal debate I was having about Metairie vs. Across the River. There are two main shopping districts--Metairie and Across the River, as I call it. I'm closer to the Across the River shopping district, but you have to pay a toll to get over the bridge (even though I really like driving the bridge). I'm farther away from Metairie but I thought it had the Dunkin' Donuts. WELL. Metairie doesn't have the Dunkin' Donuts and it has that road with the four lanes and the constant U-turns that I really, really hate to drive, so, ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner: Across the River!
3. It's Not All Bad
In good news (largely all of it stemming from August and not September):
--I love my job. It took me a little while to get comfortable in it, but now I love it. And everyone there is super-nice and I love all of them. We have great conversations about lots of things that are not law-related, which almost never happened at the firm because nobody there really had a life outside of the law.
--Last week I met![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
beatlejessie, who is awesome, and it's so great to have a fannish person nearby. We went to go see Fright Night (it was better the second time because I wasn't nearly so tense, even though people STILL kept talking through the whole movie), and then we watched DW together. (Which, new DW again tonight, so: YAY.)
--We're pretty sure now that my Internet issues are router-related. A new router has been ordered and should be here on Tuesday. So maybe September will redeem itself then.
--I am very much enjoying "The Hour" and "The Lying Game." Two very different shows, but, you know. Also, last week "Burn Notice" had an entire fight scene that involved Michael Westen in a steam room in nothing but a towel. So that was a good thing from September.
--I am about halfway through another fic.
--My writing website, elizabethlantagne.com, got hacked, BUT, in good news, we seem to have caught it quickly and it's fixed now.
--In writing news, I have revised my query letter 17 trillion times. I think it gets better each time, so that's why I keep doing it, but still. It's like writing poetry, you have to be so precise with your words, and it's reminding me why I don't write poetry.
For those of you for whom this is a long weekend, have a great one!
It was going to be about how I had made my peace with September. You see, September is my least favorite month when I am living in New England. I hate the approach of fall, I hate the anticipation of it. I hate watching summer go through its death throes, the encroachment of the lengthening night and the insidious nip in the air that eventually chases you inside and leaves your swimming pools bereft and your deck chairs abandoned. But I came to a realization during this past month here: September--the idea of autumn--doesn't bother me when I feel like I've had an actual summer. It was never autumn itself that bothered me, but the fact that, in New England, I frequently feel we get two weeks of summer and then the annoying indoor weather comes back. But this year we had the sort of July that I dream about, when it was pool weather every single day and we sat outside every night until after 9:00, enjoying the remarkably lucky act of being alive in that particular place in time. I had a picture-perfect July, a storybook July.
My last night at home, we put on sweatshirts at night for the first time in weeks. I looked at the next-door neighbor who had come over to say good-bye and I said, "It feels like fall, you know." And she winced and begged me not to say that. I moved down to New Orleans. It was in the upper 90s here, hot and humid. At home, there was a cold snap in the 60s. This helped immeasurably with the homesickness. I was so happy to be somewhere where August was August, there was no leaking over of September, no reminder of that lurking threat. I had a spectacular summer month here. The people on my f-list who live in seasonal places started to talk about autumn happily, and normally when that happens I tense up. "No!" I protest. "I am not ready for the winter to come! I have not had nearly enough time!"
But a remarkable thing happened this year: Autumn sounded nice. I have always suspected that, while I love summer, I love seasons. I am not like my mother, who would happily forego winter for the rest of her life. I like all of it, but I want to feel like it's somewhat evenly divided. In my view, Boston gets eleven months of cold weather, two weeks of heat, and two weeks of bearable in-between-ness. This year things evened out for me a bit, and, ironically, here in a place without autumn, I felt ready for autumn. Two full months of summer heat behind me, it was time to let other types of weather have their turn. Rather than summer dying in a desperate struggle, I was willing to have summer gracefully step aside and hibernate for a bit (even though, I am aware, it's not going to happen here. But the fact was that it would be okay with me if it did).
So, Labor Day weekend was upon me. Summer's last hurrah. I was going to go the Shrimp and Petroleum Festival, because doesn't that sound AWESOME? And then I was going to regale all of you with pithy and charming tales from the Shrimp and Petroleum Festival. But do you know what happened instead?
SEPTEMBER HAPPENED.
I swear to God, September, I was totally ready to accept you this time around, but September 1 arrived and it immediately started raining in New Orleans and it has not stopped since. And will not stop until sometime after Labor Day. So, summer's last hurrah: There you have it. No Shrimp and Petroleum Festival. Instead, I am holed up in the house AS IF IT IS WINTER. September is the silliest, stupidest month, it really is.
Anyway, here are a couple of Things That Have Happened So Far in September My Archenemy Month (the most dangerous month you'll ever meet and so my problem right now):
1. This Is Why It Is Better If We All Just Don't Talk to Each Other
September 1. It is raining. Although still hot. So I put a dress on and go to the streetcar stop to wait for the streetcar, with my umbrella. This was actually decent rain, in that it wasn't windy, so I wasn't fighting with the umbrella or anything, I was just standing at the streetcar stop, in a black dress and flip-flops, holding an umbrella and listening to music and waiting for the streetcar. Incidentally, everyone around me was wrapped in sweatshirts and turtleneck sweaters. I think wet automatically = cold here, even if the temperature is still in the 80s. So, it's possible that, in my little black dress, I looked like a hooker, since everyone else was all covered up.
Regardless, a car pulls up behind me and beeps its horn. My first thought is, "OMG, my skirt is up," because this is a terror I have, that I will be walking around in a skirt that is, like, tangled up in the back. But I smooth the back of the skirt, and it's not up. I ignore the car.
It beeps again, so I look at it curiously, and the person inside of it waves me over. I cannot see the person clearly (because everyone here has tinted windows, which isn't allowed in New England and makes it easier to see who the sketchy people are trying to abduct, rape, and kill you; only drug dealers have tinted windows in New England). I shake my head and wave him away and go back to ignoring him.
He honks his horn again, continuing to gesture. Now. Here is the thought process I have: There is a girl who works with me who lives on my street and who drives to work. So, I'm thinking, maybe this is her, offering me a ride in the rain. I take a step closer and duck my head to try to see into the car.
The driver rolls down the window, and it is not my colleague. It is a strange man I have never seen before in my life. He calls over to me, "Do you want to get out of the rain?"
People: WHAT. THE. HELL. This is why I hate when strangers talk to me, okay? Because they do sketchy things like this! I'm like, "No," and back rapidly away from the car (I wasn't particularly close to him, but, like, CRAZY PERSON HERE clearly). He's like, "Aww, you're sweet as sugar, I just thought you might melt." Again, I repeat to you: WHAT. THE. HELL. PEOPLE. I turn my head and ignore him, a patented Bostonian response to crazy people, and he eventually gets bored with me and drives away.
Blargh. This is why it's better if people just don't talk to each other, okay? Because too many of us are crazy, and if the normal people aren't going to talk to you, then it's easier for you to know that ALL THE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO TALK TO YOU ARE THE CRAZY ONES. You see? There is a system in place! There is method to the madness.
Moving on.
2. Dunkin' Donuts Turns Out to Be the Biggest Tragedy of All
Yesterday I decided to go shopping. I had a gift card from my birthday and I wanted new shoes. I ended up buying a dress instead of shoes, but I digress. My plan had been to go shopping this weekend, but we've got this tropical storm sitting over us going two miles per hour (this is the second time I've had a tropical storm essentially stall over my head; I am a magical weather mage as well as being a technology wizard) so I decided to go shopping on Friday before everything flooded. The school closed at 3 because of tropical storm preparations, so I took off immediately to go to the mall (this is how I react in emergency situations).
The mall experience was fine, but then I decided to do this: I decided to go to the one Dunkin' Donuts in the New Orleans area. Every Wednesday, we have departmental meetings of all the professors who teach the same subject I do. Last Wednesday, I was sitting in the meeting, and the girl opposite me was drinking an iced coffee out of a Dunkin' Donuts plastic cup. There was nothing remarkable about this...until I remembered that I wasn't in Boston, and suddenly that cup became the most amazing thing I'd ever seen and I literally interrupted the meeting to be like, "Wait a second, is that a Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee?" She smiled at me and was like, "I was wondering how long it was going to take you to ask. Every time I have one of these, I get stopped by every New Englander I pass begging to know where the Dunkin' Donuts is." I was like, "Yes! Where is the Dunkin' Donuts?" So she tells me. It's out by the Target in Metairie, she says.
So, I specifically go out to Metairie to shop yesterday so that I can go to the Dunkin' Donuts.
Here is a conclusion I have reached: I am a terrible driver here. I am a very good driver in New England, but I am terirble here. I feel like I am always almost getting myself killed. It's a good thing I don't drive very much. 97% of successful driving is being a good predicter of what everyone around you is going to do next. I rock at that in Boston, where I have perfected that specific type of aggression. Here, I have NO CLUE what anyone is going to do at any given moment, and I am constantly in their way. The traffic flow bewilders me, all these weird U-turns and funny lights and deceptive speed limits. I have a different definition of "merge" and "yield" than New Orleanians, who seem to interpret these terms to mean, "Stop. For a very, very, very long time." So, frequently, I'm getting on the highway, and I'm watching the traffic to see my opening into it, gauging the speed I need to go, and I glance ahead of me, and the person ahead of me is at a dead stop and I have to slam on my brakes. (Sometimes, if I'm very, very lucky, the person in front of me doesn't have brake lights at all. Why does this happen here?)
So, anyway, to get to the Dunkin' Donuts I am required to do a U-turn through four lanes of extremely busy traffic. Someone in the first lane lets me go, but I have to get over IMMEDIATELY to get into the Dunkin' Donuts. I'm not usually a fan of drawing to a halt instead of just going with the traffic flow, but, if I pass the Dunkin' Donuts, I'm just going to have to go around and do this whole thiing over again. At some point, I am going to have to stop four lanes of traffic to get over to this place.
Well, nobody is letting me go. I don't think this is because they're being rude, I think it's because they're perplexed by the blinking light on my car that I think indicates I want to move over another lane and they think indicates I'm sending a signal in Morse code or something. So now people are beeping the horn at me because I'm holding up traffic. I HATE getting beeped at, because I pride myself on trying not to annoy other people on the roadways the way they are always annoying me. So, I panic a little bit and just floor the car across the four lanes of traffic. Seriously, I feel the tires skid in the puddles on the road, it's that dramatic a thing.
I make it into the parking lot, and I sit for a second trying to slow my heartrate down. "Well," I think. "You're going to have a Dunkin' Donuts iced tea soon. It'll be okay."
I get out of the car and walk into the Dunkin' Donuts. I am the only person in the place, which is remarkable enough. Then the person behind the cash register is like, "Hi! How can I help you?" with this huge grin on her face, and I'm like, "What is this place? This is not a Dunkin' Donuts!" So, I'm like, "Uh, sure, can I have a medium--" But my order dies on my lips, because I'm looking at their menu. And I'm slowly realizing... "Wait a second," I say to her. "Do you guys not have iced tea?" "No," she says. And I stand there for a second stupidly, trying to figure out if I want something else, but then I decide I don't want to reward this strange iced-tea-less Dunkin' Donuts, so I turn around and leave.
So, yes, I almost got killed, and I didn't even get my iced tea out of it! (For those of you thinking to yourself that I live in a place that serves fabulous iced tea most places, yes, I do, and it isn't that I couldn't get iced tea elsewhere. It's just that I had been looking forward to the Dunkin' Donuts iced tea! And for those of you thinking I'm crazy, I'm telling you: Try a Dunkin' Donuts iced tea. I have converted many, many people over to them, the latest being my sister, who doesn't even drink iced tea.)
Anyway, the good thing to come out of the Dunkin' Donuts escapade was that it settled once and for all the internal debate I was having about Metairie vs. Across the River. There are two main shopping districts--Metairie and Across the River, as I call it. I'm closer to the Across the River shopping district, but you have to pay a toll to get over the bridge (even though I really like driving the bridge). I'm farther away from Metairie but I thought it had the Dunkin' Donuts. WELL. Metairie doesn't have the Dunkin' Donuts and it has that road with the four lanes and the constant U-turns that I really, really hate to drive, so, ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner: Across the River!
3. It's Not All Bad
In good news (largely all of it stemming from August and not September):
--I love my job. It took me a little while to get comfortable in it, but now I love it. And everyone there is super-nice and I love all of them. We have great conversations about lots of things that are not law-related, which almost never happened at the firm because nobody there really had a life outside of the law.
--Last week I met
beatlejessie, who is awesome, and it's so great to have a fannish person nearby. We went to go see Fright Night (it was better the second time because I wasn't nearly so tense, even though people STILL kept talking through the whole movie), and then we watched DW together. (Which, new DW again tonight, so: YAY.)--We're pretty sure now that my Internet issues are router-related. A new router has been ordered and should be here on Tuesday. So maybe September will redeem itself then.
--I am very much enjoying "The Hour" and "The Lying Game." Two very different shows, but, you know. Also, last week "Burn Notice" had an entire fight scene that involved Michael Westen in a steam room in nothing but a towel. So that was a good thing from September.
--I am about halfway through another fic.
--My writing website, elizabethlantagne.com, got hacked, BUT, in good news, we seem to have caught it quickly and it's fixed now.
--In writing news, I have revised my query letter 17 trillion times. I think it gets better each time, so that's why I keep doing it, but still. It's like writing poetry, you have to be so precise with your words, and it's reminding me why I don't write poetry.
For those of you for whom this is a long weekend, have a great one!
