i have some rather big news. i'm changing my name! and i'm 100% out!
for those of you who are new here or were directed here by the facebook post 'outting' myself, i'm transgender! born a boy, want to be/feel like a/wish i were a girl. no big deal. i'm changing my name to samantha (sam and sami are agreeable nicknames). i'll respond to 'ben' by force of habit, but i'd prefer sami or sam (or samantha, as occasion dictates).
for those of who find this news alienating and/or disturbing, maybe we shouldn't be friends? i mean, this is who i am, and your bad vibes aren't going to change that or make me want to pretend to be a normal guy who likes testosterone charged conversation.
but don't let me be too harsh! i know that accepting something like this can take time, so i won't hate you regardless if you're cool with this or not.
so, i decided to shave my legs today (since a part of this whole thing is allowing myself to be as much of a girl as i want to be). wow—that's tedious! it took me an hour to do a shoddy job on one leg:
i'm guessing regrowth is easier to shave (being shorter and sticking up more) and takes less time. luckily, it's winter so no one will know that i have one hairy leg and one smooth one!
feel free to leave a comment (i take questions—any and all!)
i somehow got out of the habit of blogging regularly, so here's a kick-start! (and as you'll notice from the link in the previous sentence, i'm now titling my links just like my pictures)
in my last post on food i left out a very important picture:
this was my pineapple rendition of mumbo jumbo, of banjo-kazooie fame.
ok. back to the whole "i haven't posted in a while" topic. given the month-long dry spell, i have a lovely set of things i can write about. and for your reading pleasure, i will write about all of them. right now. GO!
the first weekend of december, i roadtripped with cool kid sara to southern california to take the jlpt (japanese language proficiency test). the test was a bit harder than i had anticipated. at this point i'm giving it about a 50-50 that i passed (apparently it takes two months to grade a scantron #facepalm).
wait...i thought i was good at japanese? did i not study hard enough? lemme think...i did study, right?
exhibit a
right, right. i dinked around on read the kanji, mainly because it charted my level of awesomeness with characters (see all the colors?!).
exhibit b
well, yeah they're comic books. but they're in japanese! that's studying!
exhibit c
it's listening practice!
ok, so maybe i didn't really study per se. sigh. however! even if i didn't pass, at least some good came out of the whole experience. like the road trip. which gave me new hope that there are in fact good things to say about LA. traffic, of course, is not one of them. but little tokyo is! check out this cool map:
we ate at the deliciously wonderful, though hardly hole-in-the-wall, curry house. (and if you're interested here's the menu.) we didn't have this awesome map at the time, so we mostly hung out in weller court (the upper left block on the map that is cut through diagonally by onizuka street), which also housed kinokuniya, a japanese book store.
all of this was over-shadowed by a later drive down to san diego the following day, when we went to book-off:
for the uninitiated, book-off is an amazing used book store that has a very large selection of $1 books (¥100 in japan), the most important of which are comic books. i bought $40 worth of books (some were from the higher priced sections):
i'm currently reading at a rate of 2 volumes per week, working on gto (see exhibit b). so with any luck, this supply (and the 10 not-pictured volumes i already owned) will last me until it's time for another road trip.
continuing with the good that came out of the jlpt experience, i discovered the wonders of evernote and livestation. just to show you how cool evernote is, here's a screenshot:
i have a note open entitled "studying for the jlpt" with the tags ブログ and 日本語 ("blog" and "japanese"). whenever i think of something i want to blog about but don't have time to write a post immediately, i make a note in evernote. since i've started a trend with the above picture, let's take it a step further (this is random and unrelated to using evernote).
ok, lemme see if i can get this right. this is a screenshot of my blogger window, which contains a screenshot of evernote, in which the open note contains a cropped screenshot of my read the kanji progress chart. pretty cool, huh?
*completely different topic warning*
my home brews turned out ok. mostly. the first ones i opened (about a week and a half after bottling) were rather sweet, tasting more like cider than beer. they were very drinkable, just not very beer-y. it was lacking in maltiness, hop flavor and aroma, and body. the brews that i let condition for a few more weeks had a more subdued sweetness, but were otherwise the same.
the results shouldn't be too surprising though. the west coast pale ale batch is half booster (a packet of fermentable sugars), which essentially waters down (or alcohols down?) the malt and hops of the wort.
the beer, dubbed "ben's breakfast blend", won't need too much work to be a solid beer. replace the booster with another can of hme (hopped malt extract), and the flavors should be more or less balanced.
in 6 of the 20 bottles, i added an extra spoon of sugar (NB: sugar is added during bottling to carbonate and raise the alcohol level of the beer). after 3 weeks of conditioning they tasted the same as the early batch, but quite a bit more alcoholic. unfortunately, i didn't get them all in time:
this is the ceiling of my closet. i kept the brews in my closet to minimize light exposure. the extra sugar brews were more alcoholic and more carbonated. until i discovered glass shards on my floor and this in the ceiling i hadn't appreciated just how much more carbonated they were. 4 bottles exploded about 36 hours ago, leaving my closet full of glass and my clothes soaked in sugary beer. (-_-)
i think there were more things i was going to write about, but i'll leave it there for now.
food is a very important part of my life, and yet, i frequently settle for buying/eating garbage. in an ideal world—one where tanuki exercised self-control—i'd eat healthy, and i'd eat delicious.
for example, i could be eating this:
tonjiru (豚汁 - pork, veggies & miso soup)
instead of cooking something awesome (see above), i usually follow this unfortunate pattern:
i live with 5 guys. some of them wash their own dishes. some of them don't. as such, the natural state of our kitchen sink is too-full-to-fit-a-cup-under-the-faucet. i'm gonna go ahead and blame my poor eating habits on circumstance.
no, really! i feel justified because when i was living by myself in japan during the summer of 2009, this happened:
mabo tofu (麻婆豆腐)
frequently.
so. as an incentive to eat better, i want to start including food more often in the blog, in a series i will call tanuki food. it may include recipes, pictures, and sound clips of how much i'm enjoying what i'm eating.
today i became a level 1 brewmeister. my mr. beer home brewing kit arrived in the mail a few days ago, and after buying a few extra ingredients today, i began brewing my first batch.
pictured above: tools and ingredients, from left to right—home brewing guide, mr. beer home brewing kit box, starter kit instructions, one-step sanitizer, a pot, a booster pack (non-malt sugars used to enhance the body and alcohol content of the beer), can of west coast pale ale hme (hopped malt extract) with yeast packet under the lid, 'simply orange' orange juice, measuring cup, spoon, can opener, plate, walmart bottled water, mr. beer 2-gallon fermenter.
for the most part, i just followed the steps as printed in the instructions. the wort took a little extra time to make, though, because i didn't pour the booster in slowly enough so it all clumped together. it took a lot of stirring and some low heat on the stove to remedy that.
and then, of course, i added 2 1/2 cups of orange juice to the wort. this may prove disastrous OR it may prove the special touch needed to make my first home brew the most awesome beer ever.
in some ways i feel that brewing a new variety of beer is like having a baby. i'm already thinking about some names, but i'll wait until it's ready to drink before i finalize the name. i'll just have to sit and wait in anticipation for a few weeks as my 2 gallons of embryonic beer slowly develop and mature.
be patient, little one. you'll have your chance to shine. you may be stuck in a dark, room temperature cupboard now, but someday you'll bring happiness to the world.
oh, and to you out there reading this, if you would like some of the finished product, let me know! i'll have 20 bottles worth, ready to drink in about 3 weeks or so.
i'm not a morbid person. but i've been thinking, if i were to die without leaving any requests regarding my funeral/body what would my family decide on?
here's what they'd probably do:
• hold the funeral in utah.
• have me cremated, but i'm not sure what they'd do with my ashes.
• the funeral would focus on the last few years of my life—on the more honest-with-myself version of me.
• funeral food would include some of my favorite dishes.
• some aspect or two of the funeral would be non-traditional (knowing my family), but it's hard to guess exactly what would be.
here's what i'd like to happen:
• cremated—ashes returned to the earth. anywhere is fine.
• catered dinner party funeral. guests can choose from the following entrees: sushi combo plate, mabo tofu, mushroom & beef stroganoff, carnitas tacos (corn tortillas) w/ guacamole, something vegetarian, something italian.
• talking about me at the funeral is optional.
• if i leave behind money (beyond what's needed to cover funeral costs) it should be put in a big pot. funeral attendees have a chance to win part of the pot by competing in various carnival games.
• during the funeral, my current ipod mix will play on shuffle. remember: it's a dinner party.
• if people want to pour out a cold one for me, i'd prefer it be a sierra nevada pale ale, but any sam adams (aside from samuel adams light) would be acceptable. home brews are ok too. especially if they're named after me.
i think my family knows me pretty well, but there are some key differences between the two lists. but honestly, i'll be dead. how could i possibly care?
i have a hobby. or an addiction. every tuesday night, starting as early as 5:00 pm, i play a warcraft 3 mod with a bunch of guys. this mod (dota) is so popular that it has spawned threestand-alonegames, with a fourth currently being developed. i've played dota for 3 years now (damn, it's been that long), faithfully attending "game night" every week (even over WAN a few times in japan).
well, it's an awesome game. it's like an RTS (but without the vast army to command and worry about) with some RPG elements (leveling, item collection—not story) that feels like a WoW battleground except it's entirely skilled-based (no twinks). it's my favorite multiplayer game. ever.
this is the load screen (what you see while you wait for the game to load).
uncle vanya (the play i'm stage managing) opens this coming saturday! here are the performance details:
saturday, october 23, 2pm @ byu harris fine arts center, b201
monday, october 25, 7pm @ byu harris fine arts center, b201
wednesday, october 27, 7pm @ byu harris fine arts center, b201
saturday, october 30, 12pm @ orem library
during friday and saturday's rehearsals, i took about 300 pictures with my canon point-and-shoot, and here are my top picks (or pics?):
i took a bunch of shots outside. unfortunately, about half of the backlit ones had major lens flare. but i think this one turned out quite well. from left to right with character names in parentheses: kendal (madame voitskaya), jordan (serebrekov), kat (marina), and jackie (yelena).
telegin recounts his wife's betrayal. from left to right: bryan (vanya), lawrence (telegin), critter (astrov), and kat (marina).
whenever i'm in charge of a camera, a good number of the shots end up being of me.
