Dear Yahoo!, welcome to tumblr

i’d be worried if they chose wincest

It’s been said that the SuperWhoLock fandom is the largest fandom on tumblr. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s awesome that the SPN fandom decided to welcome Yahoo! in a fashion that truly reflects who we are.

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The other day, I mentioned companies giving email interviews instead of reaching out to do a phone screen… well, one of those actually worked in my favor and I have a phone screen with them tonight. I’m assuming this is interview two out of dog knows how many.

The weirdest thing about this is that this is a type of company I never thought I’d be interested in working for in a million years. It’s a political group that aligns themselves with the majority of things I support: LGBT equality, Planned Parenthood, the ACLU. (Yes, my inner liberal is showing.) But I’ve never been a political person. I wait until the night before election day to finally make my choice as to who to vote for, even if I already have an idea. I figure by that point, the candidates have already said everything they’re going to say. As long as we agree on my four main issues, I’ll vote for that candidate. What scares me about that is that one day, I may have to vote Republican. Of course, I highly doubt that will ever happen, but you never know.

I’m the worst person to talk politics with. I get emotional. I don’t make sense. If we disagree, I’m likely to hate your guts (temporarily) and hold a grudge (not so temporary).

Yeah.

But…it’s in Boston, they haven’t balked at my salary requirements, and I’m actually pretty excited to have the opportunity to work for a company like that.

In my favor: the fact that I worked for an environmentally friendly heating oil company. (No, you read that right. We blended waste vegetable oil into our #2 oil. Lowers the carbon footprint and reduces the dependency on foreign petroleum sources.) Of course, I didn’t take that job because I believed in what the company did, but as time went on and I got more educated, I grew proud of our product. It makes me look all environmentally friendly, even though that’s not one of my pet causes.

(HOLY CRAP! THERE’S A CHARACTER NAMED “AMY POND” IN THIS EPISODE OF SUPERNATURAL! When fandoms collide…)

Also in my favor: I also have a degree in marketing and experience in market research and advertising. Political group - they work on campaigns, so they may need new ways to get their message out.

Despite the ridiculous amounts of resumes I’m sending out, there are some positions I would kill for. THOSE are the ones I’m spending hours on - rearranging my resume to highlight what they’re looking for in the first few bullet points, and writing cover letters that dig into the job description and give details on what I did.  The others get a half-assed cover letter and a resume.

They hit three out of the four: equality, civil rights, reproductive rights. If I could work for a company that pushes for those causes…

Well, let’s put it this way…

It ain’t Sig Sauer.

Never apply logic to Who

never change, tumblr, never change

Can we…

Can we just…

When David Tennant was little, he wanted to be the Doctor.

He married the 5th Doctor’s real-life daughter.

Who then played HIS daughter in Who.

Who then gave birth to his daughter in real life.

So… the Doctor’s daughter played the Doctor’s daughter and then gave birth to the Doctor’s daughter.

BOOM.

Bored. Kinda.

it’s all cumberbatch’s fault, really

I really do love how Sherlock’s pronunciation of John’s name has become wildly accepted. It pops up everywhere in the fandom. Even my fan fiction.

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I’ve been sticking to trying to apply for 5-ish jobs a day, at a minimum, and the majority of those cannot be through recruiters. For every recruiter I apply to, I have two find two more positions. I’m aiming high and hoping for the middle. I guess it could be worse… Maybe some of these companies will see my resume and be all “OOOH! SHE’S PROBABLY CHEAP! LET’S BRING HER IN.”

It’s a nice fantasy. Right?

——

I’m currently taking advantage of being (temporarily?) less depressed than I have been by working on craft projects. I have some thank you cards I’m making as part of a wedding gift and I’m working on my Wonderful Wallaby. The cards are easy. The sweater? Not so much. I vented on Facebook that the company that wrote the pattern really sucks. The pattern really does suck, not because it’s hard to knit (it’s actually pretty enjoyable and I can see why they become pretty addictive), but because it’s written in a conversational fashion.

Instead of saying, “knit for a thousand rounds,” it says “So we went to the lake and had a wonderful summer. The kids love to swim and oh, by the way, go ahead and knit for a few rounds. We think it would look awesome if you made it really long… a thousand rounds should do.” OK. Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much.

Now imagine trying to join sleeves to a sweater body when the pattern is written so conversationally. Lots of Google.  Print outs of drawings. Falling down the rabbit hole that is Ravelry… to finally have that blinding flash of the obvious and attaching those suckers to the body. Apparently, I’m not the only one frustrated by “After we got ice cream, we knit three stitches, then backed up and moved the six previous stitches to a holder. By the way, I had strawberry ice cream. It was good. Where was I? Oh yeah, then you want to knit all the stitches except the twelve you moved to the holders. Do you like ice cream, too? What’s your favorite flavor?”

Yeah, still an exaggeration, but still very close to the actual pattern wording.

It’s like manic me decided to write a knitting pattern.

*sigh*

Simon Pegg must be on tumblr, too…

Not even Simon Pegg will call the Cumberbabe by his real name…

What have we started?

Differences in urban transport

spn actress alona tal shows the fans her death scene makeup at boscon

Let’s get this out of the way first: Pot, meet kettle.

I feel weird writing this, but I wanted to get it out of my head.

I was reading a Johnlock fan fic where the author’s note said: “This is my first Sherlock fan fic, not beta’d or brit-picked. I’m American, but I spent two weeks in London and I used to write Harry Potter fan fic, so I think my use of British spelling, words and phrases is spot-on.”

It honestly made me giggle.

If only because I found several really obvious errors.

ME.

The first person to admit I WANT my fan fic brit-picked before I post it online.

I’m never going to pretend I’m an expert on London. I’m never going to pretend that I’m an expert on British stuff in general. Even though - based on the author’s assertion that two weeks makes her an expert - I’m wicked knowledgeable because I’ve spent over a month in my favorite international city. (Over several years, but a month is a month, right?)

Yep. I’m going to take the MASSIVE amounts of all things London I’ve amassed and I’m going to start brit-picking other people’s fic.

Because leaning on Google, watching massive amounts of BBC America, whatever British movies I can find on Netflix, and watching Sherlock almost every single day (Shut up. It’s research!), gives me as much knowledge on all things British as someone who has lived there their entire life.

As Gordon Ramsey is so fond of saying, “Fuck me.”

Anyhoo - to get to my point…

I have a coffee mug I bought during one of my trips that features a portion of the London Underground map. I don’t use it often because I’m afraid of breaking it, but it came in handy the other day. As I was drinking my coffee, I looked at the mug instead of hopping on Google to figure out how to get from Baker Street to Covent Garden via the subway system. (Yes, I know they almost always take a cab, but was for a case, and a resource is a resource. I double checked it against Google and then deleted the scene. That’s how I roll. An hour of research and then it gets chucked in the bin.)

I have noticed that I’m starting to use British phrases and words now. I’m a little concerned because it makes me feel like a bit of a poseur. (Does anyone even use that word anymore?!) But I’m learning as much as I can to make it authentic and it’s going to happen. Just like picking up the Boston accent again. (I suppose they *could* do a case in Boston, but it doesn’t feel right.)

I can’t stay on track this morning. HA! Get it? Train tracks. I promise. I will get there. Eventually.

(Unrelated (Possibly related?): I’m a little manic this morning. You can almost always tell in my writing because I get all parenthetical. (Like this).)

Wow.

Where was I? Oh yeah, making fun of the British ‘expert’.

As I was looking at the Piccadilly Line on the Tube map, it dawned on me that in all my travels in London, I’ve never once heard it called the “Blue Line”. (Of course, according to the Tube’s website, it looks like there are THREE blue lines.) Also, it’s the “Tube”. Not a subway. Not a trolley.

Here in Boston - another subway system that I have a vast knowledge of because of my frequent trips up and down the Green Line - we call our version the “T”. I’m assuming that it comes from the name: The Massachusetts Bay TRANSIT Authority. (It used to be known as the MTA. I’m not sure where or when the B was added and I’m too lazy to look it up.) Older generations have called it a trolley, but I haven’t heard that in years. Possibly, most of that generation is gone by now and it didn’t stick.

Also, in case you didn’t notice, I called it the “Green Line.” (The only trains that are named are the commuter rails and those are named by termination point: Newburyport, Haverhill, etc.) To further confuse things, there are a B train, a C train, a D train and an E train on the Green Line. You want to go to Boston University? You take the B train. You want to go to the Pru? You take the E (Take any train to Copley). You want to get back to North Station? Any train will do. You want to get to Harvard Square in Cambridge from the commuter rail? You get off at North Station, hop on any of the Green Line trains, go to Park Street, and change to the Red Line. There you have a choice of Alewife, Mattapan or Braintree. (You want to go to Alewife, BTW.) The Aquarium? Take the Green Line to Gov’mnt Center, change to the Blue Line. (Thankfully, the Blue Line doesn’t split. Neither does the Orange Line.) Like most trains, too, there’s an inbound and an outbound. You can almost always tell the tourists - and those of use who get lost frequently (it’s a skill!) - because they go the wrong way when left to their own devices.

I’d like to point out here, in case it isn’t obvious, that my knowledge of the T is way more extensive than my knowledge of the Tube. Maybe because I’ve spent YEARS riding up and down the Green Line? I’m not going to pretend that I know the Tube inside and out after a month in London (spread out, again, over several years) when I spent the majority of that time on foot.

So… to recap: two weeks doesn’t make you an expert. Writing Harry Potter fan fic for years doesn’t make you an expert. The only thing that makes you an expert is time and experience.

And I have neither.