Trailing paper across the globe

AM ONLINE AGAIN!!!! THANK GOD. I was starting to wear a hole in my new floor with the pacing while waiting for new roomie to be around so I could install the router.

And I have moved house. And I am very behind on everything and have so much to do. Gah! And a new job for the next few weeks. This was not supposed to be so complicated. Updates soon...

Haven't updated over the last few days (?) weeks (?) due to everything in the universe happening at once. Maybe not everything, but if not, I'm hoping fate doesn't take this as a sign that I need to be taught a lesson. All of the below are occurring/have occurred/will occur within the current two-week period:

( On moving my parents to one state, myself to another, and the endless tower of boxesCollapse )

( On getting ready for my first professional conference, various plane tickets to the northeast, visiting Travis, general freaking outCollapse )

( On accidentally deleting all my email, including messages I composed in 1994Collapse )

( On being hit by a transfer truckCollapse )

( On being asked on a date by a senior citizenCollapse )

( On learning to eat fireCollapse )

( On that damned poem by Stephen CraneCollapse )

Oh, and my favorite club closed down last night. The end of an era. Wah.

Er, happy solstice! :]

I am at work right now (on 3 hours' sleep), so this will likely be hysterical and incoherent, but I just wrote a six-page, spoiler-free essay to a friend who asked the innocent question, "So how was the movie?" and am now in full rant-with-spoilers mode. I saw a midnight showing last night, so some of the details are a little hazy, but I'm going again tonight after work (not soon enough! *twitch, twitch*). I guess you can tell from my subject line that I liked it.

( PoA *SPOILERS*Collapse )

Okay, I just barely stopped myself from answering the phone 'Sirus' instead of the company's name. Bad sign. I'm going to the movies now, where I can indulge such lapses in comfort.

"'The madhouse has chucked me out,' said Harry. 'So I can do whatever I like."'

Apparently, what I'd like is to get stone drunk on Newcastle and pain medication. Yes, I think I'd like that very much.

It's race week here in stock car country, and so we residents of the Charlotte area are hereby condemned to suffer for our sins. The streets are glutted with cars of the world bearing driver numbers, checkered flags, and beer bellies, and every shop, gas station, restaurant, and public office in town flies the mocking banner, "WELCOME RACE FANS." ( Bitter, table for one.Collapse )

I bought my tickets to see Potter 3 at midnight on the 3rd today! I am insanely excited. I'm trying not to look at the pics and videos and behind the scenes spoilers anymore, but it is damned difficult when I can't help visiting TLC at least once a day. And what pictures! The details! Check out this picture - tear yourself away from the fact that this child seems to have aged 10 years for a minute and look at the wand. THAT is a kickass wand, not some rounded-off stick that looks like somebody's baby doll lost its toy kitchen broom. Okay, now look at Harry. Notice the hair? The messy, messy hair? I don't care if there is enough gel and sticky goo in it to baffle Shelob - it's MESSY! YES I WILL USE CAPITAL LETTERS AND LIKE IT! See, it really doesn't take that much to be faithful enough to make us happy - it's the details, Chris, the teensy little details! I'll go with bending the canon a little, as long as it's clear you were paying attention to canon in the first place! Sirius Black's tattoos are not canon, but I haven't heard a single person complaining about them. No one takes issue with the talking shrunken head or the [edited for spoilers] scene with the candy. Of course, I have not seen PoA and I might be taking this all back bitterly in a week or 2, but right now it's all so very promising. Can't wait.

And now, it is 3am. Again. People should not let me drink tea with dinner.

It seems JKR visited a fansite chatroom & passed around a few wild theories about the ending of Book 7. She said no one was interested in hearing what she had to say. There was also this gem of a quote:

"I would like to take this opportunity to say that the practice of calling Lord Voldemort 'Voldie' must stop, as must the insistence that with a bit of therapy 'Voldie' would be a real sweetheart."

HAHAHAHAHA!! There are an awful lot of FAQ questions on the site about the books, rumors squashed, etc, and I am petrified that one or many of them will crush my own wild theories, so I'm taking it slowly. But really... when has JKR saying "Er...no," ever stopped me from coming up with wild theories? Meh.

In other news, Travis graduated from college today. I am ancient. Woe.

Sent The Application in yesterday for my UK work permit. It's out of my hands now, but I'm still petrified that this final attempt will get rejected again and I'll end up working tiny revivals in the deep South forever. Of course it was the ususal frenzied rush to get the thing finished and to FedEx before they closed, despite my dithering over it since late February. When the mood strikes, you gotta go with it, I guess. I have now crossed all fingers, toes, and eyes, and am starting to get dizzy from the spinning. A small price to pay, I think.

Saw the tv movie of "A Wrinkle in Time" last night. It featured some of the worst special effects I have ever seen, along with a blessed few that were ok to passable, and several bizarre scenes which bore no relation to anything in my beloved book. I would like to state for the record that Calvin O'Keefe has RED HAIR. How hard would it be?? (And while I'm in canon whiny mode, would it be that tough to ask Dan Radcliffe to wear green contacts? Would it really?) They also racheted up the cheeze factor by at least 100%, considering that I recall none in the novel and tons in the film. Not to say that the book was not moving and concerned with growing up and accepting one's strengths and weaknesses - it was, but in an entirely cheeze-free way. Also, the matter of It? The little pulsing brain thing that in the film became some kind of gigantic, snaky, badly-CGI'ed mess underneath the floor? !!?? I think the author herself said it best in this interview with Newsweek:

Newsweek: So you’ve seen the movie?
Madeleine L’Engle: I’ve glimpsed it.
Newsweek: And did it meet expectations?
Madeleine L'Engle: Oh, yes. I expected it to be bad, and it is.

I hope I have the guts to be that honest when I'm 85.

I spent the last week and a half in Florida, reading collected stories from alternately Neil Gaiman and David Sedaris anthologies. In between readings I was hacking through the jungle with a knife and a chainsaw and touring millionaires' homes. This entry may be a little skewed, and probably contains excessive references to alcohol.

( After the maggots, Dad's offer of a couple of raw oysters went down like nothing.Collapse )

In other news: Severus Snape uses a slide projector?? Alfonso... say it ain't so!

I just overheard my mother having the following conversation by phone with my brother: "Hello! How did your fake terrorist plot go? ... Oh. Oh, no. ... All the people died? ... Oh. Well. Did you at least get your paper turned in on time?" Always look on the bright side, that's what I always say. I can only hope this was not some kind of university emergency evacuation plan. We are, as they say, doomed.

I am a bit late with this. But for me, Easter started at a quarter to 6 and ended at 3:00 this morning, and I wasn't home for much of it. So kind of a late update.

( Easter morningCollapse )

Afterwards we stopped by home to let the dog out, then went to my Gabe's parents' house. It was really nice to hang around with a family having Easter lunch, even with the hundreds of little kids under the age of 10 running around. And wow, food. They were one of 3 families who had asked us to join them when they heard our parents were out of town for the holiday. People are so nice at holidays... it was rather overwhelming. *sniff*

After lunch, with H & G in tow, we headed a couple hours north to see a concert, because no Easter is complete without a little rock & roll. And yeah, I've been blasting JCS, but LIVE rock & roll is even better. We saw a band called Pinback, kind of laid-back stuff with strong drums and freaky lyrics. There were two openers, also, though we missed most of the first due to standing outside in the freezing cold catching pneumonia and waiting for some guy called 'Trip' to show up and collect his ticket. I have never heard of the nickname Trip outside of Star Trek. ??? It was maddening - we could hear the music from the door, and I just tottered around thinking You must let me in, there are boys with guitars! I have a kind of a (Martin) thing about boys with guitars. Something about fingers... strings... dancing... (Martin)...whoa. I don't know what it is. Er. I was anxious to get inside, anyway.

As it turned out, the first opener was actually a girl with a guitar, not a boy, which may have been amazing but we only saw the very end and ended up with a great view of the next group setting up. Let's just say that when I saw them plug the xylophone into the synthesizer, I knew it was going to be a good night. (Apparently it is actually called a 'reverbophone' but I am skeptical of this and suspect xylo boy was just having us on after the show. ???) I am often amazed at how small groups of otherwise ordinary boys (silly boys, throw rocks at them, etc) can come together in magical groups and make teh pretty. It is truly stunning. I leaned against the stage for a while & felt the bass thrumming through the wood to my hands. Very relaxing. Go here and choose American Analog Set on the jukebox to the right. Gawgeous. Also, xylo boy looked like the love child of Merry from the Lord of the Rings film and my college roommate's ex-boyfriend. ??

So a beautiful and inspiring Easter was had by all. I shall leave you with the winner for Most Disturbing Thought from last week: I think I'm developing an affinity for the music of Linkin Park. Is there medication for this?