(no subject)

[oyceter]

Luckily the horrible week has ended and the weekend has been pretty good. I was social all through the weekend! And not just social, but happily social, instead of those horrible social situations in which you have to go and make awkward small talk and don't get anything out of it except free food. On Friday I went to see Finding Neverland with fannishly, which I liked and she didn't quite really. But I was really happy because it was all about Peter Pan, and I have many fond childhood memories of Peter Pan. And Johnny Depp was, as usual, amazing. As was the kid who played Peter. And there were just some lovely little sequences in there that I liked, especially that final shot of the Kate Winslet character in the garden. I also seem to be a sucker for biopics on authors, which is interesting. I usually am not all that fond of biopics, but I love watching these movies where people speculate as to how certain elements of an author's life has crept into their works (Shakespeare in Love, etc.). On a totally shallow note, I wanted everyone's clothes. Mmmm, Edwardian age.

I think it's rather odd how I have some sort of fondness for most Western time periods except the Regency and the medieval period, which seem to be fairly popular with most people. I think I just never read books set in those periods that I imprinted on early. With the Edwardian period, there was Anne of Green Gables. I got into the 1800s with the Little House books and Gone with the Wind, and I like the 1700s because of The Scarlet Pimpernel. In fact, that book and Sara Crewe's fascination with the French Revolution fueled many fantasies as a kid. And then there's The Three Musketeers and the 1600s. Gah, I should reread that. I loved that book.

On Saturday, sophia_helix and Alex and one of their friends came over after the Dickens Faire and we all had a great deal of fun playing with the boy's racing setup (yes, my boy has a racing chair with a wheel for his games), eating pizza, and chatting. And I'm quite sure my rats had a lot of fun because there were new people holding them and playing with them. Life must be so good if you are a rat. I'm afraid I foisted a great deal of books onto M, but you see, it is quite to my advantage. All I have to do is fill up all the empty spaces on my shelves with new books before the boy comes home, and he will never realize I bought more! Haha! It's perfect. No, the boy is actually very nice about the amount of books I buy -- he's just sort of hesitant about buying new shelves for me, given the utter lack of wall space (and the fact that I already have five shelves).

Today I woke up extremely late but still managed to run some errands. Then I spent the entire afternoon watching The Princess Bride, partly because it felt suitable, partly because I haven't see it for forever, and really, who needs a reason to rewatch Princess Bride? And then headed over to a potluck of a friend from the bookstore, which was really cool and fun, and maybe there will be even more people to hang around! The best thing is that all the people there live about a block away from me. So now I am entertaining high hopes of game nights and movie showings and etc.

This feels good, actually. I think I'm starting to have a social life again. I'm trying to be cautiously optimistic, and I guess it sort of fits. From personal experience, I don't start making real connections until I've been somewhere for about a year and a half. So this is roughly the right time. And I'm finally going home, so I'm starting to re-connect with old friends, which is always nice. It's impossible to stay in touch with all my friends from home, because I'm hard to get a hold of and usually they are too. And we tend to be lazy about keeping in touch, I think because there's this inherent assumption that we all will see each other again sometime. It's comforting. But yes, it's sort of strange after a year or so of wandering around and feeling completely unconnected to everyone in the area. Amazingly, I'm getting along with people at work in general, I like the group I'm in, I'm still talking to the bookstore people, and LJ people are finding their way into RL. It would be nicer if more LJ people lived around me though, but oh well. I will meet people in real life someday.

Comments

[ann1962]

From personal experience, I don't start making real connections until I've been somewhere for about a year and a half.

I thought that was just me. Usually after meeting someone early and not doing anything about it. And then finally do. And then I wonder why we hadn't gotten together and wasted that time. Sigh.

[oyceter]

Heh, yeah. Or I sit around and wonder why I am defective and can't make friends. It does seem to be a good rule of thumb for me, though... someone told me in college that most people don't meet the people they hang around with until sophomore spring, which is about a year and a half.

[barbary-coast.livejournal.com]

This past weekend, I met two LJ people in RL. We went to a craftshow that one of the LJers had mentioned in her journal. It felt so odd to meet these people in RL. I've grown used to the idea that everyone in the LJs lives...somewhere else, far away. It surprised me to learn that these two people lived so close by. I knew that one of them lived in the same general area as me (the Washington, DC area) because she posts info from the Washington Post all of the time. I had no idea that the other lived near me until she mentioned this local craft guild and show and asked if anyone on her f'list was going. Turns out that she lives 4 miles away. Because we share RL interests as well as LJ interests, we will undoubtedly get together again for various craft-related activities. It's far to soon to know if that will lead to forming actual friendships or if we will simply be friendly acquaintences, but if it hadn't been for the LJs, I would probably never have said more than two words to either of these people had I simply encountered them at the craft show without knowing about their LJs.

[oyceter]

Oh nifty! The strangest RL-LJ intersection that I've had was meeting someone on LJ and realizing that not only were they from Taiwan, but that in the end, they were actually the cousin of my friend's boyfriend. And that my mom had actually met her before at another person's wedding! And then it turned out that she lives just about ten minutes away, so we've started hanging out, which is immensely cool.