In honor of my mom's birthday today, here are a few interesting tidbits from her contribution to my genetic material:

My Grandmother Jan worked as a jazz singer for a year between high school and college. In her later years, she facilitated my love for music by helping my parents buy a piano... I owe much to her, for providing me with a focus for my passion.

As family lore goes, either my great or great-great grandmother (I always forget which one) utilized some unusual means of procuring a husband: She came to the United States alone as a young woman, and upon having difficulting finding a husband she deemed worthy, she returned to Norway, married a man, and brought him back to the states. Rather revolutionary, don't you think?

My Grandma Jan (the jazz singer) also had quite a spark of social commentary in her: apparently she scandalized her rather WASP-y Congregational church by pointing out that Jesus himself probably wouldn't be welcome in their congregation- he'd be too dark skinned and have too large of a nose to be accepted by the hoity-toity suburbanites.

One of my male ascendents on that side of the family was an inventor who held several patents. Well, and he was schizophrenic. I guess there is something to be said for those wacky insane creative genes...

This past weekend I spent in Madison, at a conference (MBLGTCC) with over a thousand GLBT college students. In a word, it was incredible. It was so affirming, to use a touchy-feely-happy buzzword, to be with that many people who have something that important in common with me. For a few days, I lived in a world where I was among the majority rather than the minority in terms of sexual orientation.

The conference was held at Monona Terrace, Madison's Frank Lloyd Wright-designed convention center. I've always had a thing for Lloyd Wright's work, so it was really neat to be in a space he designed. Of course, the disparities that arose in the 60 years between the time he designed the space and the time it was built provided some amusement- as I walked around, I catagorized elements of the building into "things Lloyd Wright intended" and "things added to the design in the nineties". For instance, the curved walls and spiral parking ramp were pure Lloyd Wright, and the square ballroom with ugly art deco-ish light fixtures were definitely NOT.

I witnessed, thought about and continue to think about far too much in regards to the conference to tell in just one entry. Ideas about constructs of gender, sexism within the GLBT movement, differences between hidden and blatent heterosexism, and so many other things are bouncing around my head right now, all of which make schoolwork seem boring and unimportant by comparison. I am, however, provided with fodder for journal entries for the next several days...

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Listening to: Ani DiFranco's Living In Clip, with absolutely sickening repetition. Nothing else has been in the CD player since Monday afternoon. Please, shoot me if I turn into one of those snivelling Ani-grrls who speak in Ani-lyrics and whose rooms are done up in full Ani-decor. Really. Shoot me.

An example of the my Comp. Sci. professor's awful pun-esque sense of humor: He translated Hamlet's line "To be or not to be..." into C++. It's "2B || !2B", in case you're curious.