harry potter.

while my sister (who, for reference, just got her B.Sc. in biology) was down for the thanksgiving break, she bought the 5th harry potter book on tape for her to listen to on the 5-hour drive back from philadelphia to rochester. as we were driving home from the mall, she insisted we listen to it. just listening to the opening snippet made me finally realize what i don't like about harry potter.

now, there are, apparently, lots of reasons to not like harry potter. the web is full of sites by "hardcore" sf/f fans who won't get within 10 feet of a harry potter book. i'm not really interested in hearing why j.k. rowling sucks because she doesn't follow directly in JRRT's footsteps (and trying to do that often gives you even worse results, c.f. robert jordan *shudder*).

i can also see what's good about harry potter. she's stripped out a lot of the sex and violence and highfalutin philosophy and complicated language that often accompanies fantasy. she's made the fantasy genre completely accessable to the mainstream reader. and as a fantasy fan, i can't say but that's a good thing. the more it gets demystified, and the less things like "using futhork runes" ends up on the ADL website are good things by me (adl.org is a general anti-racism and specifically anti-anti-semitism website. at one point in 1999 or so, they added the futhork runes to their list of signs of white supremicist activity. they were then inundated by hordes of emails from fantasy fans, pointing out that JRRT, among others, used the futhork in his book The Hobbit, and they were needlessly lumping a whole genre of literature in with some admittedly disgusting activity. 3 days later, they took it down).

no, what bugs me about harry potter is her apparent resistance to any tendency to actually develop the characters of harry's muggle family. now, admittedly, making them caricatures makes them easy to hate. but isn't that a little immature? why not make them fully 3-dimensional characters, to be pitied instead of mocked? what harm could that possibly do to the story? actually, i think it would make it better. they're small, close-minded people who are missing any family connection to harry potter. frankly, i think that's sad. instead of giving them trite dialogue, dialogue that can be predicted even if you haven't read the book, why not make them real people? as long as you're going to use them as a framing device for every single bloody book, don't make them a torture to read, please.

now what?

it's funny, for the last 4 weeks, i've been consumed by the pressure of NaNoWriMo. i have to say, i never thought i'd make it my first year, much less make it early. i've never written anything that long before this. now that the pressure's off, i don't know what to do.

finish it, i guess. i've never finished any work of fiction either.

phrnglff.

50,351 words. holy fucking shit.

my cat hates my NaNo.

he likes sitting on my lap, see. and he has determined that when i'm typing, i'm not playing with him. so he has taken to sitting on my lap, and then either pushing my keyboard away, or laying his head on my hands so i can't move them. he's a spoiled brat.

also, he likes to chase the mouse cursor around on the screen.

happy thanksgiving.

happy thanksgiving!

all my canadian readers can pretend i said this a month and a half ago ;)

well, that was short-lived.

apparently, my quest to solve the murder mystery on *ahem* "ABC's hot new show 'Desperate Housewives'" has been enthusiastically derailed. i don't think i've watched the show in 3 weeks now. apparently, i just don't have the structure in my life to be able to remember to watch a 1 hour tv show once a week. either that, or i'm just entirely out of the habit of watching tv. maybe i'll download all the episodes and watch them on my own time. it's cheaper than a tivo, heh. i wonder if nano has been part of it...i've been so far behind on weekends that by sunday night, i'm rushing to catch up (still about 2000 words behind right now...supposed to hit 40,000 by the end of today). also, the fact that my partner doesn't like the show, and they introduced a really annoying character made me kind of lose interest.

oh well. next victim: House,MD on Fox. i think yesterday was the second episode. whoops. http://www.fox.com/house says it's on tuesday nights at 9pm. dammit. at least we both like this one :P

oog.

this weekend was a waste as far as writing is concerned. i am now days behind. i think we're having leftovers for dinner tonight. if we have dinner. the kitchen is an utter wreck.

getting drunk both saturday and sunday nights probably didn't help *grin* sunday night we celebrated our anniversary and buying the house, but, as my father says, you never need to go looking for reasons to open a bottle of champagne. however, what emerged was a vision for remodelling the whole condo. that is, you know, if we had a couple thousand dollars just lying around. which we don't, having sunk a fair amount into our down payment. eh. it's something to think about, at least. sober, for once ;)

in other news, i only have to work 3 days this week, so that's good. yay for holidays and stuff.

i crave attention.

non-blogger.com members can now comment on this blog.

sorry about that. i had never really thought about it, and the i realized that i hate it when other sites (evite.com, i'm looking at you) insist you sign up to comment or reply or whatever. so. you may now comment with your privacy intact. assuming you see anything here worth commenting on ;)

whaddya know.

it turns out someone did take my phone last night. they thought it was someone else's. how you mistake an incredibly un-cool blocky nokia (no colorscreen! no camera!) for someone's sparkly silver clamshell is beyond me. but at least we know where it is now.

strange effects of technology.

i can't find my cellphone this morning. this is strange, because i left it on my desk last night. when i tried to call it, it rang less than it should have before dumping me to my own voicemail. which is equally strange because it had a nearly fully charged battery. so it's either under something where it can't get reception, or someone took it last night (a thought i don't really like to consider, because everyone who was over last night was a friend).

the strange thing is, i've only had a cellphone for a few years, now. i used to walk quite far, alone, through a city without one, and i never felt the lack. but now, faced with walking a mile and a half through the suburbs in the near-dark without one, i am feeling distressingly paranoid. i have quite come to rely on it as a sort of safety blanket.

i wonder where my phone is.

whee!

i passed the 25,000 word mark! halfway there and only one day behind.

new sneakers.

one thing i do have to give these shoes, while they may look like silly little mesh slippers, they're bouncy as hell.

*boing*

call the fashion police.

what the hell has convinced shoe manufacturers that walking sneakers should only be made in white?? you're walking in them, for fuck's sake! one assumes, if you're walking, you know, you might be walking on the ground? where there is dirt? geez.

plus, white shoes simply don't go with a thing in my wardrobe.

on the other hand, they're comfortable, and i appear to have no recurrance of the shin splints i was suffering last week.

brrrrrrr!

so i'm up in northern NJ today, with my mother's family. we all got up early to watch my cousing play his first playoff football game for the post-season. football is even harder to make sense of when all you can see are the refs making weird hand motions for no apparent reason. and then in the fourth quarter, someone on the opposing team was laid out and they called the ambulance. that was when some of us went home.

%$*&% #$&% $*@%(*$#ING $%@&#$ it was cold on those bleachers! coldcoldcold. i had my hood up, my scarf wrapped around my face (the ninja elf returned!), gloveses, and i was still freezing. i put on an extra jacket my aunt had brought to sit on (but nobody sat because there was ice on the seats) and i was still cold! bitter, bitter wind. brr! the things you put up with for your family.

oh, and my cousin's team won.

ow.

blister.

wizard needs new sneakers.

test.

this is only a test.

brr.

we had our first real frost this morning. it was still cold enough while i was walking to work for the sun to be up, but the frost was still glistening on leaves, grass, and cars.

i wore my heavy coat, but said, "aww, there's no wind. i don't have to wrap my scarf around my face." haha. cars make wind as they go by. by the time i was halfway to work, i was convinced my earlobes were going to freeze and fall off. of course, my body was sweating. that made for an interesting contrast.

in other news, i am 4000 words behind for NaNoWriMo. *dies*

woo, and stuff.

posting from my bed. hahahaha.

and the cat's over there asleep. he's going to be very unhappy when i try to explain that it's my bed, and no, he can't spend the night there.

well, finally.

we have internet at home. woo.

paradoxically, it's cheaper to combine basic cable with internet than it is to get cable internet alone. so i guess we have tv too.

5 years, at least.

yay? ugh? i'm not sure. moved into our first house this weekend. well, condo, really, but it's 2 floors and we own it. no more renting, yay! signed half our lives away, ugh. on the plus side, though, everything went smoothly at settlement. no interest rate surprises, and our realtor very nicely over-estimated our closing costs, so we walked out with a cheque. made out to us(!) well, 2 cheques, actually. very exciting.

we vacuumed before we moved in. we need to vacuum again. dust, and dust, and more dust. my goodness. the cat is going to freak out again. we took the vacuum cleaner out of the closet last night, didn't even use it, and he darted to the far side of the house and curled up in a little ball.

on the whole, though, for 3 days of moving, everything went pretty smoothly.

unexpected setbacks:
- we don't have a trash can. uhm, whoops.
- the cat had never seen stairs before. the first time someone came down the stairs, his fur puffed up to twice its size and he ran and hid in the kitchen. this was less than ideal, as his litterbox was going upstairs. he's acclimated now. he's even discovered he can stop half way up, instead of tearing up or down at top speed.
- all the dishes, glasses, pots and pans, etc had been packed in newspaper. this necessitated several runs in the dishwasher to clean everything. i don't want to see our first water bill >_<
- we had minimal food. which is to say, we had spices, tea, oils, and alcohol. thank fuck for parents ;)
- the cable tech never came despite being scheduled. we still don't have internet access at home.

on the good side:
- arcade is taking the whole week off work, so many little things will be ironed out, and much shopping will be done.
- the cat is extremely happy with his situation now. less puffy tail, more purring.
- the cable company is going to pay our first month of internet because their tech never showed up.
- it's our own house.
- we have an attic. yay for storage.
- i can walk to work. this is much extremely better than spending an hour breathing exhaust.
- we don't have to do this again for another 5 years, at least.

aha!

this was actually a pretty neat article. it tells us who to blame for neat things like cell phones, credit ratings and venture captial ;)

USATODAY.com - Innovators helped shape America

on a lighter note.

i'm not a satanist, i'm just in research!

http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2004-11-02-ancient-foods_x.htm

i'm sorry.

i did tell myself i wouldn't get political on this blog. and indeed, i think i showed admirable restraint throughout the campaign. but now...i don't know. i'm just depressed. i'm depressed that we've elected a president who only sees black and white. i'm depressed that we'ev elected a president who misuses his power, one who trades on fear, one who uses a personal grudge as an excuse to destroy the lives of, at the very least, hundreds of thousands of people, one who wants to destory the carefully balanced government that some very, very intelligent men set up two-hundred-some years ago. a president who is apparently so ignorant as to how the government in this country works that he thinks he needs a consitutional ammendment to define civil marraige. i'm depressed that we have a majority in this country that is not only easily distractable but is so damn scared.

i can't stand the thought of another 4 years, or more, of destruction of due process, customer (consumer) rights, of a further widening between "rich" and "poor"...of simple, stupid things that are so telling once you pile them up in a heap, like viagra being covered by medicaid/care, but birth control isn't.

i'm not interested in blaming anyone or anything, for once in my life, i don't care about the root cause of something. i'm just feeling...depressed right now. helpless. i went out and voted yesterday. PA gave kerry all our 21 electoral votes. and now what? who knows.

i think, though, i'm most depressed that Tom Daschle, who is probably one of the best and smartest men in the u.s. government right now, was voted out in favour of a candidate who had to be ordered by a judge to stop following native americans back to their reservations from the polls and writing down their license plates.

this is why i love the net.

we have a subscription to USA Today here in the office, and sometimes i check it out online because it's easier than waiting for my co-workers to put it back when they're done with it. so i go visit today, and i check out the "Money" section.

headline: Wells Fargo Customer Data Stolen

right next to a Wells Fargo credit "Apply Now!" ad. hee.

just a hunch, but i think their clickthrough rate might be a little lower today.

time to panic, i think.

for all intents and purposes, there are 3 days left. we still need homeowner's insurance.

oh, and a fridge. a fridge would be good too.