GeeCee's Not-Entirely-Original Miscellany

Good lord, I hope I'm not as cranky today as I was yesterday. I have dinner plans with 2/3 of the boyfriends and a hawt poet chick, and then I get to go listen to Mark Doty and Carolyn Forché read. That ought to make for a good mood, right? (Well, except for the driving in to DC part. Ugh.)

Anyway, on to the next prompt. This time, the question was about where I would live, anywhere in the world, if it was feasible.

This is a tough one. I can count on one hand the places I've lived in my entire life, especially if I simplify DC and surrounding environs: NoVA, Memphis, [town in MS outside Memphis], DC, NoVA. I also haven't done nearly as much travelling in my life as I'd like to do, especially within the US. There are a lot of things I like about where I live now, although they're balanced out by the fact that despite our little blue-ish enclave up north, on the whole this is a very conservative state. I like that if I drive an hour and a half in one direction, I'm in the mountains. If I drive a few hours in another, I'm at the beach. I love Skyline Drive, and the easy access to DC and the Smithsonian. I hate that public transportation where I am is spotty at best, leaving me car-dependent. I really hate that we recently added a hateful marriage amendment to our state constitution.

I've spent a lot of time in Boston, enough to know that I couldn't be happy there for any extended amount of time. I like the people I know there quite a lot and would love to be able to see them on a regular basis, but for a girl with SAD who was raised in the south, it's too cold and dark and expensive, and it feels very unfriendly (even for me, someone who's truthfully fairly reserved). New York City is good for a weekend at most, and after that I want to run screaming away from all the people and the noise. The SF Bay area is also nice to visit, but I've never really felt called to settle down there. I only spent a little bit of time in Austin for work purposes, not enough to really get a feel for the place; it is someplace I'd like to spend more time though.

The one place I've been that I thought "I could live here" nearly immediately was Boulder. (Yes, again with the little blue island in the middle of an exceedingly, frighteningly red state. Oy.) I have no idea what it was in particular that triggered that reaction. Ever been someplace where you walk in and immediately feel comfortable? That was the first day I spent in Boulder. I couldn't tell you why, either then or now. I suspect the Front Range and the Rockies influenced me a lot. I don't know why, but that was the one place I've ever specifically thought "I could move here and probably be happy". (Except for the part about having to find a job again, of course. There's always that BigTechCompany in Broomfield, I guess. Heh.) I wouldn't actually move there based on three days spent playing tourist though. I'd want to go back and spend a month or so to see if my crush on the place holds up.

From time to time, I wish I was daring enough to put stuff in storage and traipse around the world/live abroad for a year or so. Settle down for some time in England, a few more months in Italy, a bit of time in South America. I have neither the necessary money nor the balls to do that any time soon though.

Oh, what the heck. To break up a string of what seems mostly like a long string of automated link dumps, as seen on journals everywhere this week:

Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on slash, favorite type of underwear, writing techniques etc. Repost in your own journal so that we can all learn more about each other.

Comments are screened, so have at.

From a bunch of people on the ol' f-list:

1. Pick 15 of your favourite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
5. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search functions.

( the quotes )