Green Room - Week 19 - Day 5

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

Good morning Idol!

I had a terrific birthday, thanks for all of the messages that I received! (and those who took advantage of the "subtle use of links", definitely thank you! :D)

We do have a matter of a finale to handle though: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/699150.html So it's no rest until tomorrow night! There was a question asked, and answered over there though that I think a lot of people might be interested in. I know that I was intrigued by my own answer!


We are going to see how this season is going to end: Will it be Breaking Bad or the Sopranos???


How was YOUR version of my birthday weekend? I know it couldn't have been *as* fun... but hopefully it was still decent.

Comments

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

First? Yay!

I didn't watch either Breaking Bad or the Sopranos, so I have no real frame of reference, LOL.

As long as the season doesn't end on a cliffhanger, I'm cool with it!!

My version of your birthday weekend was pretty cool - my BFF had a tea party / sleepover on Friday night and Saturday morning, and on Sunday we drove up to Ohio to go to the RenFaire, which was fun. The weather was perfect with the exception of about 20 minutes of drizzle. All in all, a very nice weekend!

[phoenixejc.livejournal.com]

*confetti*

[lrig-rorrim.livejournal.com]

Happy first! And yay for RenFaires! Did you end up buying anything nifty, or see anything particularly awesome? :)

[kajel.livejournal.com]

Our RenFaire starts this weekend I believe. I am hoping we make it this year. We didn't last year.

[ashgaelsonaria.livejournal.com]

Nothing worse then a show ending with a cliffhanger (Alien Nation) then you have to wait for the Tv movie to fix things.

[jensi08.livejournal.com]

I negelcted to wish you a happy birthday!!! Sighs. Happy belated...birthday?

[adoptedwriter.livejournal.com]

I spent the weekend getting my memoir book launched at Apple iBooks and as a print book ( Amazon). We received the proof copies! Woot!
I'm a real author now!

Also took kids to the Reds game. Game sucked but we had fun being together.
AW

[mac-arthur-park.livejournal.com]

Congrats on the book!

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

You did remember how to spell "Dreslinski" right? You didn't accidentally have chapters mentioning the wrong name. ;)

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Congrats on the book! I hope it does well!

[ashgaelsonaria.livejournal.com]

Way to go.
I still have to turn Something Zombie into a print book via Amazon.
They are so awesome for self publishing as you only have to pay for the proof but have other services you can buy as well. (I wish I could pay for an editor) .
And its free to publish for the kindle.

[mac-arthur-park.livejournal.com]

My version of your birthday weekend was deeply weird, I went to NC Pride (my first!) with my SiL.

You know that awkward moment when you realize people assume you and your SiL are a couple? Errr, yeah. So people seem to assume my girlfriend is my sister and my SiL is my girlfriend.

It was fun, though...then again, anything with drag queens, beads and feather boas that ends in chocolate/espresso martinis is fun in my book. :)

Which is good, because life has been reallly stressful lately.

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

anything with drag queens, beads and feather boas that ends in chocolate/espresso martinis is fun in my book.

You got your feather boa in my martini!
You got your martini on my feathered boa!

I don't think I want a feathered boa in my martini, just a mini parasol if you please!

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

I apparently need to start posting on all the things that I don't like - that other people do. That way when they are talking about those things, they will know that I don't want them to do so.

People should only discuss things that *I* want them to talk about on their social media! ;)

[kathrynrose.livejournal.com]

If you're talking about me, I am totally unashamed.

If I have to scroll through twenty-some-odd comments from various people on my FB list that say nothing more intelligible than:

"Aww MAN!"
"Woo Pig"
"That is what I'm talking about!"
"Grrrr!" or
"Go (insert random name here)!"

Then the people on my f list can deal with one comment from me implying how absofuckinglutely annoying that is.

[ashgaelsonaria.livejournal.com]

But everyone is intitaled to my opinion.

[lrig-rorrim.livejournal.com]

Despite random sneezing attacks coupled with just sort of falling asleep in the middle of the day a few times, I had a pretty good weekend! On Saturday my sweetie and I did some gaming, and that was pretty awesome. It's fun to be someone else for a while - immersive escapism is the best. Yesterday I made fancy spaghetti sauce, and we did some chores together and then goofed off by playing Tales of Xillia. It was a nice, low-key couple of days.

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

What made the spaghetti sauce fancy? Or did you just fancy making spaghetti sauce?

Hungry tummies want to know!

(Also - gesundheit... just in case)

[x-disturbed-x.livejournal.com]

This weekend was pretty laid back. I did some homework and lazed around Saturday. On Sunday night the wife and I watched the season premieres of Once Upon a Time and Revenge. :D That was the excitement of my weekend, haha.

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

I spent the bulk of yesterday in a half-asleep stupor because my work schedule has now switched back to early AM; ergo, it's evident that I can no longer indulge the night owl in me.

Saturday was spent decompressing from our jaunt up to Maine. I really wished we'd had enough time so I could have met up with a couple of friends. Ah, well, maybe next time.

Writing and Gender

[kathrynrose.livejournal.com]

I have a question for the room. (Hopefully it's early enough in the day folks will jump in.)

I'm old enough, that when I started writing, we used "he" when referring to a man, or when the gender was unknown. "She" was specific to females, but "he" was inclusive. (Which sounds odd, given the evolution of the use of the word "inclusive.")

Time passed, and we began saying "his or hers" or "he or she." Informally also maybe "s/he." I have occasionally heard that people have used a new word (maybe "hir") - I'm not sure I remember that correctly - but I've never seen that in common usage.

What I have seen lately in common usage is the use of "they" or "their." This bugs the ever-loving heck out of me, if I'm honest, because it's a plural pronoun and it's being used in a spot where a singular pronoun goes.

My question for the room is - how do you deal when you need a singular pronoun and don't know the gender? Does the (mis)use of "they" bother you? Does context matter? If so, how?

Re: Writing and Gender

[lrig-rorrim.livejournal.com]

It really depends on the context for me. I would usually prefer to see someone just pick a pronoun or find another way to frame the sentence. But if they want to use "they", it doesn't bug me too much (ha see what I did there). In instances like that just now, it stands in for "one" or "someone" pretty neatly, and feels less awkward, so I prefer it. In more specific contexts that imply direct and personal agency ("they bought a jug of milk at the store" instead of "she bought a jug of milk" or "he bought a jug of milk" or (even better if you don't know!) "the person bought a jug of milk"), it can be grating or seem wrong. I do see "hir" used in a few places I frequent online, but not many.

[kajel.livejournal.com]

The weekend was spent cleaning out our shed and locating things to donate/sell. Scraped up a lovely ceiling fan and our two comfy armless chairs as well as a toy stash I thought I already donated away. Broke down a million and one empty boxes that I am never going to use to mail things with. I had 4 large boxes of MIL's teapots from when she was thinking of moving in with us. I finally got those back to her this weekend. Overall, the weekend was pretty good to us.

[ashgaelsonaria.livejournal.com]

Children had a teacher in service today so it is still the weekend.
I got more charcoal made.
I have to get up early tomarrow to submit my amazon order and visit a cash machean so I can contribute to school fundraiser.
I have running to do after they are in school - putting a bigger Tv on layaway, getting big sauce pan, canning jars, wwz and some other stuff.
My father is on vacation this week so we are going to can the tomatoes this week and turn them into sauce next week.

Man likes to micromanage stuff like this and I want to keep his hands out of my sauce.

[porn-this-way.livejournal.com]

Now that I'm done ranting about pronouns from my phone...

My weekend was pretty good! Went to a friend's housewarming party, ordered some components to put together a ren faire costume I'm working on assembling (I don't have the time or energy to sew things from scratch during the school year, but effed if that stops me from hacking things together!) and also realizing we tend to have a ton of faire goers in Idol. Huzzah!

[lrig-rorrim.livejournal.com]

I feel like I should record the incredibly noisy chorus of frogs singing in my back yard and work it into the background of an epic rap battle or something. I'm in that kind of mood, evidently.

Ahem. Carry on, carry on! There's no cause for alarm. I am ill equipped for this mischief (both in recording equipment and rapping talents) and so you shall all be spared for another day.

[kathrynrose.livejournal.com]

Heh. Have you ever seen my truly dorky epic rap battle?