there's another world we're living in tonight

[one] you guys, i want to live in the wizarding world of harry potter. i really do. it was so well designed and executed and just perfect in every single way. it's been a few weeks since i've been back home, and i still feel like i should just quit my life and go back. the "london" side is perfect. like, it seriously looks like a street pulled straight out of london, and then you go into diagon alley and it's like you're home. (if you, like me, have always felt more at home in fictional worlds than this real one i'm stuck in.) fire breathing dragons, people running around with wands performing spells that actually work, sipping butterbeer. i sat in the sun eating a scoop of florean fortescue's ice cream while listening to celestina warbeck perform live, and i cannot even explain how perfect that moment was. i would move to orlando in a heartbeat, get an annual pass, and spend every minute in diagon alley if it didn't mean that i had to live in florida. no offense to floridians, but the news stories that come out of that state have me noping big time. plus, too many bugs. but sigh, take me back.

[two] it's almost nanowrimo time again! i was, as is typical of me in octobers, wondering if i should even do it this year. i have a baby that wants me to spend my days building towers for him to knock down. i have a dissertation that i need to write slash start from scratch with slash cry about in the bathroom. i have a severely neglected blog that i never seem to have time to update. and yet, i think i can write a fifty thousand word novel? am i crazy? apparently. i usually have some hint of a plot idea or a character or a feeling that could be turned into something by the beginning of october. this year? nothing. at first i took that as a sign to take a break from it, but then i got on the site, looked at titles in the adoption station, and started to get the excitement in the pit of my stomach that means creativity is near. i didn't see any titles that jumped out at me and filled my head with a story, but just looking through them started to get my brain turning, and now there is a feeling starting to bubble up that i might be able to turn into something. and it feels almost as perfect as being back in diagon alley. if i could spend my days writing in a fictional world on the beach, i think i'd die of happiness.

[three] baby update! cricket is seven months now. which means that it has been over half a year since he's been around and that is just ridiculously crazy to me. he's eating solids and crawling (sort of. he does some weird version of the worm across the floor.) and sitting up and knocking down towers and jumping and just basically being not a newborn anymore. it's mindblowing to me though it really shouldn't be, this is what babies do, they grow up. but goodness this is fast, having a baby around again brought light to the fact that i know waaay too many kid songs and if i used that brain power to remember something more productive i could probably be some sort of academic genius at this point with three post-graduate degrees, a hundred published articles, and seven schools begging me to work for them. instead i just have a vague sense of guilt and frustration and a much edited outline for a new dissertation topic. oh well.

*Here With Me - The Killers

[one] i went six months without a single unsolicited stomach touch, and it was great. this morning i went to my old high school to cheer on my brothers, and it was like stepping into the land of unwanted hands on my stomach. i do not get it. first of all, pregnant people deserve personal space, too. it's bad enough we have someone coming in and taking over on the inside, it would be great if people on the outside could respect boundaries. and second of all, what do you think you are touching exactly? yes, there is a baby in there, but it's under a whole lotta layers. aside from the usual clothes and skin and muscles and everything else, i also have an anterior placenta (not sure if this is considered tmi so um sorry?), so really, there is absolutely no point in you rubbing your hand on me. it gets even worse when your sister shows up and asks all of your old teachers that hadn't already felt that they were somehow allowed to just touch my stomach (which isn't even that big yet!) in the middle of a conversation that had nothing to do with babies or pregnancy at all, "do you want to touch her stomach?" and then i can't say, "please don't" because i am me and these are my old teachers and ugh. i feel like one of those statues that people rub shiny because they think it's good luck.

[two] i'm sitting at mason, and it's pretty empty because it's still a little early and finals are coming up (already here?) and so it's really hard to not hear everything people on this floor are saying. anyway, one guy says that he didn't like any of the harry potter movies except for the second one and i almost had to say something because, what? the second movie is probably the worst of all the movies. how is it not only your favorite, but the only one you liked? i mean, goodness. i still don't understand this.

[three] i am supposed to be working on dissertation stuff. i am not working on dissertation stuff. i cannot work on dissertation stuff. it is impossible. i do not think i can school anymore. my brain refuses to function. i will gladly sit and research things that have nothing to do with my dissertation, but that i find fascinating, but i just shut down when it comes to my actual work. ugh.

[four] my husband, siblings, mom, and i went to a craft show yesterday at the place where we do pottery, and i bought this jam (because i have a really hard time resisting homemade jams for some reason. they just really appeal to me.), and i suddenly really want to eat it right now. and i do not have it with me. lesson learned: always carry a jar of jam in my bag. also, there were a bunch of things that i either make/ could make being sold for anywhere between fifteen and sixty dollars, and whenever i go to these kinds of things i think, i could totally sell my stuff. and now i am in the mood to open an etsy store again. 

quick updates about what's been going on in my life slash proof that i am alive and have not given up blogging:

• we have been living in the new house for a week, now. we still have no couches which means our living room cannot be set up which means there are still boxes of stuff that cannot find homes which means we are still technically not moved in which kinda sucks. 
• we do have internet and tv now, though. so yay for that, although i really haven't used either very much.
• aside from not having couches or a living room (or a dining room. we are basically living on the floor) half of my books cannot find shelf space. i need more shelves, but it's not a high priority at the minute so my library is also filled with boxes of stuff that still need homes. 
• i am doing nano, slowly but surely. very, very slowly. i have only been able to write three days so far which sucks. i have just over 4500 words. i will put up the word tracker on my blog eventually in case you care. i will make it to fifty thousand by the end of the month.
• i have a blog post that i am halfway through and another one that is just barely started that i will finish and post as soon as i'm less behind in my nanonovel. they are both a lot sappier than usual. i think my pregnancy hormones are getting to me. 
• due to panicking, some poor planning, and stupid apartment policies, we still have our apartment for a bit and i have been making sure that the almost four years of living there (more like three and a half for me, my husband lived there alone for a bit) is wiped clean. this involves a lot of cleaning, obviously, and carrying last minute things down three flights of stairs. in really small batches. because i am pregnant and not supposed to be carrying heavy things. i have spent more time at the apartment this past week than i have at the house.
• apparently it's deer mating season (or so i am told) and the other day a stag came running across the street and sort of almost got hit by us, and my first thought was, "god, james, look both ways" and i think i have a problem. 
• i am itching to have some down time to start crocheting/knitting. i will crochet so many baby blankets. and sweaters (i found a fast and easy and still adorable sweater pattern that i will make a hundred of.)

this is one time that you can't fake it hard enough

i don't understand how people adult. like, how do you wake up every morning and go to work and pay your bills and buy a house? how do you not eat a bag of chocolate chips and stay up too late looking at gifs of tv shows you don't even watch? how do you stop not doing the things you are supposed to do? i feel like maybe i should have figured this stuff out by now. there are only so many times that you can fake your way through things, and i think maybe my abilities will start to wear off pretty soon.

but until it does, let's talk about house hunting. because oh my god it is the worst. i liked all of the houses that i lived in while i was growing up, so i really just want to hand my parents my money and have them buy a house for me. i don't do well with decisions or too many options and i just really want this whole thing to be over already. 

yesterday we looked at houses. most of them were in various stages of suckiness. i mean, they weren't bad but they weren't not bad either. there was this one house that i was in love with online. i was ready to buy it before i even saw it. and then i saw it. and i still don't think i am over the disappointment. and not "being committed" to a real estate agent yet means that i had seven hundred of them wanting me to commit to them and then some of them called this morning and i have no idea which one is which because i am really bad at faces. and names. and people. 

that's another thing about house hunting. there's people involved. people use up so much of my energy. and there's shopping. and shopping uses up the rest of my energy. this was what the internet was made for. get with the program, real estate. i should be able to search for houses online (which admittedly i can) and then add the ones i like to my cart, eventually narrow it down to one, type in my billing information, and have myself a new house. (the disappointment of my dream house yesterday has already pointed out how bad of a plan that is. i know. just.... ugh.) 

i love looking at houses when there is no pressure to make a decision that will affect the next five to seven years of my life. and who decided that money should even be a thing? because budget limitations suck. 

and because i am me and this whole thing is too much adult for me to handle, i am planning to run off to harry potter world in florida early next month for a good dose of fiction. i'm trying to use it as motivation for house shopping. like, c'mon if you make a decision on a house you can go to florida! but i am too smart to trick myself and i know that i will go regardless and think that maybe i can figure out a way to just live in the wizarding world for the rest of my life. who needs a house when you can have a castle?

*The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most - Dashboard Confessionals

[one] i dropped off darcy this morning to be boarded, and i miss him so much more than i thought i would. the apartment seems so empty and quiet. i didn't realize how much noise he makes even though he doesn't actually "speak." i bet the people under us are happy, though. i always feel bad when darcy thumps because i'm sure they hear it through their ceiling. his thumps are loud.

[two] i am currently in the middle of that feeling of doing something and then not really remembering why you thought it was a good idea and kind wishing that you didn't but you already did so you have no choice to see it though. like when you drag a joke out a little too long, and even you want to just stop it, but it's too late.

[three] future me looking back at my life via my blog may not realize that yesterday was a really good day. i think i should put the record straight. despite not getting landline, it was a very potter day, and it doesn't matter that harry potter technically ended years ago. it doesn't matter that i am now a supposed fully-fledged adult. the second new harry potter stuff appears, the fangirl in me flares up as big as ever. the rita skeeter article was like a breath of fresh air when i hadn't realized i was drowning. i missed those guys. (although technically the article took place two years before the epilogue so my desire to know what happens after the epilogue is still unsatiated. and if this article came out two years earlier then teddy kissing victoire shouldn't have been such a big deal because they would have been doing it for two years. see, this is what happens when i'm starved of information. i get too analytical and critical.) the wizarding world expansion also opened yesterday, and i am planning on visiting it this fall and i am so excited. this has kind of been the year of harry potter news with the theme park, the movie, the play (which i am also fantasy planning on going to see and really hoping that it turns into really planning), and new short stories.

[four] this is kind of going along with the previous point, but it's not hp related so it got its own number. yesterday marked the day that i finally finally finally got past that stupid level in candy crush. the number three-twenty-three will forever haunt me, but i learned a valuable lesson. if it has nothing to do with school, i do not give up easily. i work and try and work and try until i succeed. yay me. (if only i could apply that same perseverance to more productive things. oh well.)

[five] there are eight minutes left until i can eat so i am not going to reread this. if there are typos or non-flowy parts, i apologize. i'm not sorry enough though to edit. 

the television's on, i turn it off and smile

so remember a little while ago when i complained on here about the price of audiobooks? (this is where i'd usually link to the old post, but i don't feel like it so you're going to have to just trust me on this one. despite it being just barely past nine:thirty, i am exhausted. i have been having this weird exhaustion-insomnia thing going on. like, i will be super tired but i just will not go to sleep. and i'm not even sure if i'm not going to sleep because i can't or just because i don't want to. even though i do. and because i refer everything back to books, it's kind of like this scene in enchantment (which i have told you all to read several times already so you should know what i'm talking about) when princess katerina is finally going head to head with baba yaga (the evil witch). the princess draws a pentagon (hexagon? octagon? i think i'm due for a reread.) to keep baba yaga trapped in, but she does it by making baba yaga not want to leave the pentagon instead of actually trapping her, effectively using baba yaga's own strong will against her. once baba yaga realizes what's going on, she makes the floor fall out from under her and comes back outside of the pentagon. i kinda feel like i am trapped in an insomnia pentagon, but i don't know yet whether i am trapped because i am trapped or if i am trapped because i am under a false impression that i want this. will i be able to drop the floor? and is trying worth the risk of losing the hope i have that i can?)

anyway, audiobooks. sometimes (like when i am knitting or driving or doing similar hands busy but head not activities) i will want to read a story. and because i can't, i will want to listen to an audiobook. and since they are so expensive, i will end up listening to music or watching tv, which i love i really do, but it doesn't really scratch the itch. i want a story. and one that will play out in my mind.

i think i finally found the solution the other day. one that had my comic-book-loving-thinks-batman-is-cool-majored-in-economics-willingly-and-on-purpose husband to call me a dork, but i'm okay with that. apparently after i stopped reading fanfiction on mugglenet, they decided to turn some of their stories into audio-fanfiction. which you can download and listen to. for free. (the benefit of learning about this five years after it started is that i now have over two hundred episodes (it's set up as a podcast) to pick from.) i was super excited when i found out about this. i mean, it's the perfect solution. my harry potter nostalgia that's been hounding me lately gets fed and i get my stories without emptying my back account.

i haven't listened to very many yet, but i think i may restart my neglected knitting just so i have an excuse to listen to these more.

*Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf - The Killers

so i lied

so remember that time in october when i wrote part one of a post and then never actually went on to write part two? yeah, i'm really good with procrastinating. (actually, i have come back to this multiple times since december. it is now may. i just cannot finish or post it for some reason. you guys, i think i may have found some dignity. who would've thought?) just in case you don't feel like clicking the link, part one basically said: i have an issue with attention. when i am put on the spot, suddenly the center of attention, asked something directly, have too many eyes on me or whatever, i panic. like real, hand sweating about to throw up panic. my usual response is to say the first thing to comes to mind that will take the attention off of me the fastest. this first thing usually does not have an immediate effect, and i end up having to answer a few questions. this first thing is usually a lie. well, it used to be. i've gotten a lot better at handling this and while i slip up sometimes, i am more likely to tell the truth these days. (this habit made me into a really good liar, though. a topic i can talk about in another post maybe.) after i say the lie, i'm pretty much trapped because saying just kidding i lied would make me look like an idiot and explaining the panic would just take too long.

and now that you are all caught up, let's go back to high school, shall we? when i was decidedly less successful at this whole not panic-lying thing. *cue memory wavy screen thingie*

it was my senior year. i had recently been turned onto fanfiction full force by a friend who shared a novel-length fic that was so much better than any of pieces i had seen before. it was really good, you guys. i was reading fanfiction regularly and had started writing it a bit, too. in secret, of course. (like, i had a password on the word document just in case. one to open it to read and one to edit it.) the first chapter of my own work was just posted on mugglenet, and i had plans of sharing that with my friends. (maybe not immediately, but definitely before the third chapter was posted. who would see it before then anyway? i had a plan. it involved a lot of stranger-validation and teenage insecurity. i'm not exactly proud of it.) the morning after it was posted, though, before it had more than twenty hits or a single review, i walk into school and my friend asks if i wrote it. (it was actually more of a "i know you wrote it" sort of thing.) the familiar wave of panic crashed into me and i felt a slight breeze as my plan flew out the window and i did what i always did, i lied.

she didn't give up that easily and would casually slip leading questions into group conversations. i remember her asking about a title of a movie and i said it was wicker park and she thought that was solid evidence that the fic writer was me because it was listed as a favorite movie in the author profile and who even knew that movie existed. i argued that the reason i knew it was because i had just watched it on a friday night friend get together thing a few friends and i used to have. which was true. but that was also why it was listed as my favorite movie. because it was in my head. (every time i see/hear anything about the movie - even now - i suddenly feel ashamed and sometimes it takes me a minute to remember why.)

anyway, i continued writing my fanfiction and posting it to mugglenet and making friends with amazing fellow fanfiction writers (one of whom i actually just had a brief catch-up session with online the other day, after eight years of radio silence. it was cool.) and improving my writing and lying about it, because i was too far in to stop. it was pretty awesome because i had some loyal readers and i got a bunch of reviews and some friends and i used to email each other whenever a new chapter was posted on one of our stories because we didn't want to miss anything. it kinda sucked too, though, because although there were great people online, i sometimes wanted to talk to my real life friends about it, and i couldn't. i couldn't even mention the name of the story just in case it blew up in my face. shortly after that, my friend and i started working on a story of our own which i have mentioned on this blog a few times. i wrote both. my online life was so far removed from my real life that they never even bled into each other. i don't think anyone ever conclusively found out that it was me, but really, they could have known the whole time.

and then graduation happened and i got busy and abandoned my story. (not the one i was working on with my friend. that one got finished.) i sometimes feel guilty about it and think that maybe i should go back and write an ending for it. any ending. but i'm not the same person i was at eighteen and i don't really want to corrupt it. besides, i only have vague memories of what was happening in the story. i haven't read it since the first semester of undergrad and am not sure that i want to. anyway, this is my compromise. i may not ever finish my story, but i will acknowledge it as mine. it is no longer a bastard, and that's about the best that i can do for it.

(also, yes, i do realize that i was - and probably still am - quite pathetic.)

*Here's to the Night - Eve 6

the drop dead dream, the Chosen One

this weekend, which was supposed to include me doing some actual work, helping a student (oops), and reading a book that i need to review, somehow ended up including none of those things, and instead was filled with harry potter. it was awesome.

i used to read the series with my brothers when they were younger, but what with me getting married and moving out and my younger brother getting impatient and just reading them on his own, well, it just sort of fizzled out somewhere in the middle of the fourth book. this resulted in one brother having a semi-complete knowledge of the wizarding world (it's amazing how much you forget when you only read the books once) and one having even less than that. (the older one's knowledge of everything post quidditch world cup-ish comes from the lego harry potter video games. you can understand how upsetting that has been for me.)

anyway. i've spent the past few years trying to get the older brother to read the books (which he hasn't) and then finally decided to go the second-best route and just watch the movies.

(completely unrelated side note: i just had to go outside to transfer my mom's and my pottery stuff from the trunk of her car to the trunk of my car and oh my god why the hell is it so cold outside? i thought we were into spring and warm weather and blossoming flowers. my hands are burning. you know that burn-sting feeling from the cold? yeah. and they feel sore all the way down to the bones. i wasn't even out that long. ugh.)

but back to harry potter. a few weeks ago i decided to do a harry potter movie marathon with my brothers because a) they hadn't watched all of the movies which is ridiculous because abc family throws a marathon every three weeks, b) they needed a refresher slash basic education of the world and characters, and c) it's been a while since i had a harry potter marathon despite abc family's broadcasting tendencies mentioned in (a).  the problem with this, though, is that my parents do not know how to marathon, and since we were watching them in their living room, this cut into our fun. it took us about a month to get through the first three movies. (which sounds worse than it was. we were only watching when i visited on sunday and one of the sundays we were unable to watch anything because of some football or soccer or other organized sport thing that i do not remember.) but then my parents left to connecticut and i moved into their living room and my brothers and i were finally able to get through them. my youngest brother was half watching-half playing minecraft up until the deathly hallows movies  because he claimed he had seen them all (though i am almost positive he hadn't), but the older one got really into them. which was awesome.

there was the usual disgruntlement that everyone has after watching a movie adaptation for a book they have read. for example, he was super excited for the quidditch world cup and that was pathetic in the movies. they were both outraged after watching the first movie that they cut out dumbeldore's "nitwit oddment blubber tweak" speech, and after the final one they said, "man, i was really hoping that they were going to put that speech into one of the later movies. they missed a golden opportunity with that." and then of course there were the usual comments that you would expect boys that age to make dealing with butts and other similarly pleasant subjects *rolls eyes*. turns out that my brother is a harry-hermione shipper, but i forgave him for it because of his deep loathing of snape. his hatred for him was beautiful.

i think my favorite comment of his, though, was during the fourth movie when the weasley twins have just dropped out of hogwarts and there are fireworks going off everywhere and the entire student body is in the courtyard cheering them on as they fly away and harry gets the vision of sirius being tortured by voldemort. he groaned and said, "god! whenever anything good happens, he has to make it bad." which i think sums up the series pretty well. (he was a huge fan of harry's, though. liked him way more than i did when i was his age.)

the weekend, though, left me really wanting to reread the series. it's been something ridiculous like two years since i read them last. i was planning on getting to them after finishing the stack of need-to-reads i have, but i may just bump them up to the top of the list.

*Read My Mind - The Killers

what the hell

i've been at mason a long time. a really, disgustingly long time. i've seen the campus nearly double in size and the number of trees shrink to almost half. i have seen buildings and the school paper change names. i experienced the migration from webct to blackboard and from masonmail to outlook. i have seen professors and presidents and deans come and go. there's a part of me that finds comfort in this fact and a part that wants to die just to put an end to it. i have learned the hard way that the experience of a student at a university changes drastically depending on what level you are at - and not in a good way. encouragement turns to scorn, helpfulness turns to hindrance, and everyone loves to blame you for the fact that they just didn't prepare you for the next step.

after all of that, you'd think that i'd be used to change. but i'm not.

i get on the computer this morning all ready to face the responsibilities i put off yesterday for the super bowl, and they changed their freaking email system again. it took me twenty minutes of fiddling with the settings, and it still looks wrong. the font is huge and the bold isn't bold enough and every reply opens a new window. what the hell, mason. stop messing around with this. gah.

going back to the super bowl. during the playoffs, i decided that i was going to root for the seahawks because none of my teams made it in and they had pretty colors. (duh.) plus, i somehow hadn't seen them play at all this season and thought that they were some kind of underdog cinderella story. so, i should be pretty psyched that they won. but i have never rooted against the team i was rooting for so much before. it all started with their game against the forty-niners where i spent all but the first fifteen minutes of the game hoping the niners would win. and then yesterday was pretty much the same thing. (and also, what the hell were you broncos doing? it's like you were actively trying to suck. goodness gracious.) despite this, i never "turned" on the seahawks formally. i wanted them to lose both times while simultaneously telling anyone who would listen that i hoped they won the whole thing. lesson learned: i am really bad at being a sports fan. also, i like underdogs. BUT after marrying an avid sports fan i can pretty much hold an intelligent conversation in most sports and you'll think that i know what i'm talking about and that i'm a sportsy person... but i'm not. and if you talk to me long enough then you'll realize i start to slip and call the players characters and turn plays into plot twists and that annoys hardcore sports people for some reason. (you'll also learn that i spend most of the game commenting on looks and names. like, did you know that the lions have a character named pettigrew? as in peter pettigrew? i don't care how many times i am told his name is not peter. he is still a rat, and that's why they lost because they put their trust in a traitor. they're just lucky it didn't turn out worse. i mean, the last people who put their trust in a pettigrew ended up killed by lord voldemort.)

and speaking of harry potter, what the hell jk rowling. you cannot write a book and then years and years later come back and say, "actually, no. i changed my mind." it doesn't work that way. have a problem with how you wrote things? write yourself some nice fanfiction and move on with your life. i feel like i have to have a rant about this lady soon. it's been building up for years. (in case you have no idea what i am talking about here, jk rowling recently came out and publicly stated that she regrets putting ron and hermione together, that hermione should have ended up with harry, and the whole ron thing was just wish fulfillment and didn't make any sense. whatever, rowling.)

*My Eyes Burn - Matchbox 20

writing is hard. which is why my nano word count is pathetic (i'm supposed to be over twelve thousand words by the end of today. yeah. not happening. can i actually be looking at a year where i fail nano? i effing refuse.) and my blog hasn't been updated in days (weeks? i don't even know anymore) and my contributions to classes and group work is bordering just on the edge of slacker student who should probably fail but she answers the questions completely and a minimum word count was never set so it's really their fault.

also, i spend the little time i have for writing thinking great, ponderous thoughts like, the actors who play gandalf and dumbledore are often confused for each other and the actors who play frodo and harry potter are often confused for each other and there must be a bigger meaning for that. but of course there isn't, although that doesn't stop me from trying to construct some kind of essay exploring it. and kind of along the same lines, yesterday i heard someone ask their friend if emma watson was in anything before perks of being a wallflower and just, what?

(for the past ten minutes i have alternated between staring at this page and staring around my apartment (which is finally clean! but kinda still cluttered because i am a hoarder and there is too much stuff for a one bedroom apartment in here) for some inspiration on what to write, and... nothing. i'm telling you, i am so out of touch with my writery self it's ridiculous.)

i think that for the past couple of years i pushed my academic-ness to the back burner to focus on writing, and now i'm supposedly bringing  my academic-ness to the front which of course isn't happening because i diluted it way too much with extra on-campus jobs and responsibilities so you can barely even taste the academia in it, but then i guess the writer-ness got pushed to the back burner, and why is the oven of my mind so stupid? why can't i have two front burners like every other oven in the world? (i realize that there are ovens with only two burners. i also realize that i should be using stove instead of oven and that family and stuff has pretty much taken permanent residence on one of the front burners leaving me with only one available and that i don't actually have a deformed oven.) and wow i completely destroyed my metaphor in that aside. this is what i mean about the writing these days. it's hard.

i just want all of my free time back. why did i ever complain about being a lifeless couch potato? why couldn't i appreciate a good thing when i had it? why can't i just read, write, and knit my days away? why are rhetorical questions my go-to writing these days? (oh, and the word "well." i really think that two thousand of the six thousand words i have written are characters starting every sentence and thought with "well,...")

i just left a comment on a blog post that was longer than the actual post itself. and why, you may ask. because the post mentioned something about harry potter that i just had to discuss. i couldn't let it go. the final book in the harry potter series was published over six years ago and yet there are still blog posts referencing it and i still feel the need to discuss it. (unfortunately, the people in my own life have neither the time nor the inclination to have potter discussions anymore or i would literally spend at least three days just talking about the books nonstop.) 

kids starting first grade this year were born into a world where the entire harry potter series was finished. by the time they were born, we knew that snape was "good" and that dumbledore dies and that good wins out over evil but not without great loss to both sides. there was no more speculation or waiting or anything. it was done. 

also, the epilogue of harry potter takes place in three years. i grew up with these characters, and in three years i will have outlived the entire storyline. and yet i will still probably have millions of words about the series that i have not yet said. i will still probably be rereading it. i will still probably secretly wish i got a hogwarts letter at eleven. 

i was hoping that an actual point would surface in my rambling, but no. i like harry potter. the end. 

let's waste time

finals week. and i do not want to study. so obviously it becomes imperative to find time to blog because blogging is super important and neglecting my blog is just awful. blogging is so important, in fact, that it is my number one priority. really. who cares if i pass another batch of classes if my poor blog goes unupdated? (let's pretend that once a week updates has not become the norm here. let's pretend that these are the days when i would update daily. or better yet, the days that i would post multiple times a day.)

so my grandma is in town again, and that is always fun. of course, it would be more fun if it was not finals week, but that's what next week is for. familial gathering and enjoyment of the schoollessness of summer. (except that i have to figure out a bunch of school related stuff this summer and get my act together, but that can wait until the week after next week.) my grandma is awesome, and we share some sort of telepathic connection, i swear. for example, remember way back when when i said i wanted those novel posters that reproduced the text of a work into some design? well, the delivery man just delivered the pride and prejudice one to my house. it was a gift from my grandma, and i never even told her that i wanted it. this isn't the first time that she's done this, either. one of the teapots she got me when i got married was one that i was drooling over online for months.

i am still reading cassandra clare, and she and her editor should be stoned. there is not much that i can not tolerate in writing, but inconsistencies make me suddenly want to do strange things like drive my fist through a wall and egg people's houses. i'm not talking about those inconsistencies like when your super clumsy protagonist suddenly moves with all the grace of a ballerina when the need arises. i'm talking about when you make a big deal about a character's bright yellow pajamas and then somehow forget that he's wearing yellow pajamas and describe him as wearing striped pajamas in the next scene. or when you spend a paragraph talking about how a character was not wearing makeup and how she looked younger and her eyes looked bigger and blah blah blah, but somehow in the process of her moving from the window to the bed, her eyes become smudged with mascara making her look like a french model slash actress. things like that distract me. they pull me out of the story and ruin any momentum that you were building. i don't like it, and someone should catch them before the book becomes a best-seller. there are other things that have started to annoy me about clare, but if i started with those i would never stop typing. and i do eventually need to get to a final exam. maybe even study for it.

also, reading all the stuff about the harry potter fandom has made me really want to read fanfiction, and i am adding hours of fanfiction reading to my summer to-do list. another thing, netflix kind of really sucks. a bunch of the titles that i was planning on watching over summer were suddenly taken down in their recent "let's lose 1800 titles" thing. i mean, i know that it is less netflix's fault and more the fault of the stupid copyright holders who want to start their own streaming services and charge us directly to watch their titles so that eventually we'll be paying for twelve different streaming services or watching everything illegally, but it's easier to blame netflix. so netflix sucks.

*Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol

what did you do today? i did nothing

so my to-do list for today included things like "finally clean the freaking apartment because it's getting gross" and "finish the stupid schoolwork that i've been putting off" and "start washing the mountain of laundry in the bedroom because i need clean clothes." but my sister called and invited me to lunch with a friend at eleven and then we hung out pretty much all day because, well, sister or cleaning? not a difficult decision. i did take a shower, though, and finally got around to checking out the library by my apartment (which i fell in love with) so i mean, i'm writing it off as a pretty productive afternoon.

now that i am on my own again, the responsible thing for me to do would be to finish the last project i have for this semester and then at least do some preliminary cleaning so that tomorrow i can study for my quiz without feeling like the mess is going to attack me, but i finally have the fifth book of the mortal instruments series and i think i should finish it because commitment and stuff. also, however many years ago 1998 was today, the Battle of Hogwarts happened and Voldemort was killed and not in some deserted area but in the middle of the Great Hall and he didn't turn into ash and fly away because that was just awkward and stupid and people getting too excited with their CGI nonsense when someone should have told them to stop it already, and the end of evil should definitely be celebrated by blog posts and run-on sentences because why not? we should also be sad that remus died because he was pretty awesome. also, he was a werewolf, and i've kind of always had a thing for werewolves. and in this story that my friend and i wrote in high school, i ended up married to remus so we're pretty much family and you should mourn the death of family.

also, i really do not want to do any schoolwork. i am ready for this semester to be over. this semester should be over. can we just call it summer break  already?

*Never Miss a Beat - Keiser Cheifs

i am utterly disgusted with the path you trek

instead of finishing up the last of my semester work over the weekend, i read through the history (or, part of the history) of the early harry potter fandom, and let me just tell you, that was some crazy stuff. i'm not going to get into all of it here because it was really long and had a million characters and if you're really interested (though i think most people have more of a life than i do and don't have time to read about the shenanigans of online harry potter fans in the year 2001) you can find comprehensive biographies written out by people who "don't want the history to disappear." suffice it to say that there was major bullying, stalking, getting people thrown out of colleges, fake harassers, hacking, and lots of threats to sue. what sent me on a semi-educational search for fandom history that happened before i was using the computer for more than playing oregon trail? (like, seriously, this was even before my sisters and i each got fifteen minutes a day on the computer to check email. this was back when yahoo lists were where fans got together.) cassandra clare. remember when i first said i wanted to read the mortal instruments? a friend had told me about clare's fanfiction plagiarism debacle and how the series was pretty much the fanfiction minus the plagiarism. since i finished the fourth book of the series and didn't get the fifth one yet because the world seems very confused about when it came/comes out in paperback (i need to get to a library), i went to read up more about that and try to find her original fanfiction trilogy. (which i downloaded and will start reading as soon as i finish the fifth in the tmi series.)

i am very against fanfiction being published as original fiction. (see all my rants on fifty shades of grey). people have said that although she recycled a couple of scenes and can't seem to write original characters (which is admittedly hard when you've been working with the same set for six years so i'm willing to forgive her a little there), tmi is not the draco trilogy repurposed. i think i need to see for myself, though. (there were quite a few parallels to harry potter that i found in the book.)

regardless of that, what i don't get is clare's choice of name. cassandra clare is a pen name derived from cassandra claire, which was her name in the harry potter fandom. i get that using the same name that made you famous with harry potter and lord of the rings fanfiction is securing you a reader base, but still. the name also connects her with some really bad cyberbullying (which she allegedly still does), plagiarism, and just overall childish pettiness. (she was one of those harry/hermione shippers who was ready to kill fans that thought harry and ginny should end up together around the time of the third book.) personally, i would want to distance myself from all of that, but what do i know? i'm not a new york time's best selling author. 

oh, and also, i find it ironically hilarious that clare's group of friends in the fandom were referred to as the Inner Circle and in her book, the evil death eater equivalents are called the Circle. it makes me chuckle. 

(so the title is a little harsh, but that's the song that came to mind... so yeah.)

***UPDATE***
in case you, too, want to read about cassandra clare and early hp fandom psychosis, check out the following links (the first and third are super long, with chapters and everything):

the cassandra clare plagiarism debacle (also includes basic fandom pettiness)
cassandra clare is a massive bully this is the other side of the cc trying to kick a girl out of college story, and in this case i'm going to have to side against the girl accusing clare.
cassandra clare, ms scribe, and the sock puppets
the problem with cassandra clare's writing

*Dutch Courage - The Spill Canvas

believe in magic that can set you free

so my brother turned eleven yesterday, and as every harry potter reader knows, eleven is a big birthday. bigger than your first double digit age, bigger than your first year as a teen, bigger even than your first year as an adult. eleven is when you find out where you stand: are you a wizard or a muggle?

as i've already mentioned on here, i got him an owl (stuffed of course) and an acceptance letter and had my sister leave them near his bed as he slept so he'd wake up to them. i also got both of my brothers wands. later in the day, as they were jumping around the living room wizard dueling in that way that only someone who has given up all thoughts of dignity and self-consciousness to be a real, nerdy fangirl (or boy i guess) can do, he kept telling his brother, "you know none of your spells can ever work because you're a muggle." his brother kept reminding him that he, too, lacked any real, magical powers, but it never seemed to stick with him. i'm not sure how much of that was because of birthday excitement and how much was due to the fact that when my brother picked up his wand my dad swore that his stuffed owl blinked (and my brother somehow believed him?) but it made me happy to see that imagination and a belief in magic were not something they were growing out of. i hope they never do.

this year i also started taking the birthday boy out for breakfast. if you grew up with siblings that were always having to do everything together, you may remember how cool it was to be able to go out by yourself. anyway, we go to ihop and he orders an orange juice. when he gets it, he takes a sip and says, "is this fresh squeezed? it tastes like it came out of a carton."

he was also telling me about all of the things that he could do now that he was eleven. apparently he was talking to my dad about the same thing earlier that morning, to which my dad replied that eleven year olds have to start cleaning and he made him clean his room. as he was listing off things, he took a sip of water and said, "their water tastes like paper cups. now that i'm eleven, i can criticize things." i gave him a look and asked when he ever didn't criticize things. "i never criticized things before i was a perfectionist," he said matter-of-factly. "and anyway, i just said that now i'm allowed to criticize, not that i never did before."

so eleven: the year of magic, cleaning, and criticism.

on the agenda today is to clean my apartment before my student gets here (did i mention that i restarted tutoring? i can't remember.), do a little schoolwork, and then bake a butterbeer cake for tomorrow. (i had class last night and didn't want to bake a cake for a day that i wouldn't be able to eat it.)

if you want to do something to celebrate this most magical of birthday years, you can buy my book. i know, i know. do i have no shame? using my youngest brother's special day for my own selfish promotion? obviously not.

*Do You Believe in Magic - The Lovin' Spoonfuls 

as we pull up in our brand new used car

[one] when i was younger, i always said that i wanted my first car to be some used piece of crap. i liked to romanticize everything back then (can't say i've really grown out of that, though) and loved the idea for some reason. as i grew older, i changed my mind. i definitely wanted my first car to be a new one. this, however, is a year for younger me's dreams to come true, and so today a bought my first car, and it is used. while not a piece of crap, it is still about a decade old, and so i think it qualifies as fulfillment of the dream. it is a lot older than the car i've gotten used to driving lately (the one i shared with my husband until he decided to grow up and need it for work) and is a bit of an adjustment. but i have a car, and that's pretty awesome. (in case you were wondering, his name is reginald fairfield after the character from boy meets world of the same name. i was reminded of him for some reason.)

[two] i was walking outside in the freezing wind and my hands froze. i've been in my apartment for almost an hour now, and yet i'm still having difficulty typing because my fingers are numb. the heat is on, but i kinda wanna go find my gloves because this is ridiculous. of course, i'm using this as an excuse for not doing the homework i have due tomorrow (but who assigns homework for the class after the midterm? i mean, seriously.) or the research that is not technically due tomorrow but that i stupidly said i'd have in by the end of the week. saturday can be the end of the week, too, though. right?

[three] i also need to decide what to do about my brother's birthday cake. his birthday is next friday, and while that may seem like a million years away i need to go get ingredients and decorations and stuff. problem is, i can't for the life of me decide what it should look like. it's going to be harry potter related to match my presents, and he said he wanted it to be butterbeer flavored so i'm just going to use the recipe i used to make butterbeer cupcakes, but the design? completely clueless. i was originally thinking of just making a giant snitch because that would be super easy, or to do a sheet cake and draw glasses/lightening bolt/wand/etc on it, but then i googled harry potter cakes and some of those things are super amazing. it kind of made me want to try something like that myself, despite the fact that i lack the required skill set.

*Used Cars - Bruce Springsteen

i think too much

my brother is turning eleven at the end of march, and having recently finished the harry potter series and loving it (the books inspired him to write his own novel which he got a couple of pages into before deciding that novel writing is more of a summer activity) and spending the past five years of his life telling me that i am destined to a life of miserable muggleness but that there is still hope for him to be a wizard, there was really nothing else to do but to get him a hogwarts acceptance letter. which will be delivered to his bed while he's sleeping with a stuffed owl. so that he'll wake up to it on his birthday. and then there's also a wand and stuff. needless to say, i'm really excited about his present. it's like when you're younger and you get your friend a really cool gift and you're equal parts excited that you get to give her something so awesome and jealous that you're not getting it and so on the day of the party you want to swap out the gift for something less awesome of yours and keep the new thing for yourself but your parents won't let you so you kind of hate her for the rest of the day? no? i guess that was only me then.

but anyway, all of my harry potter excitement for him has got me thinking about the series, and here are some things that i have realized.

i've read the series countless times, which means that yes, okay,  i know harry hears lily's final moments when a dementor comes near him and my gosh harry stop thinking you're special you're kind of annoying just shut up already. but recently i really thought about that, and oh my god it is horrifying. like, imagine you heard your mom begging someone not to kill you, knowing that she was probably going to die, and then actually getting killed. i mean, it was always sad and terrible that harry heard that, but i don't know why i didn't grasp the magnitude of how completely horrible it was until now. like, i know he doesn't really remember his mom and never really got to know her, so it would be a gajillion times worse for us that actually grew up with our moms and maybe that's what my mind was thinking, but still. goodness gracious rowling.

also, why do all of the pets in the series get cool names like hedwig and errol and crookshanks and then neville's toad is just named trevor. it's bad enough that no one likes you because you're a toad and that means the loser of the pets, but here, have a boring human name with no awesome greek mythology story or anything behind it. (i am not an expert in greek - or any other - mythology and may very well be wrong about this. if i am, please let me know.) no wonder he was always trying to run away.

oh, and on the topic of harry potter, i feel really stupid that it took me so long to get this, but spellotape is a play on words of sellotape which i somehow did not know was what they called tape over in not-america? i spent a year overseas with people who had either lived in england all their life or were taught british english all their life, and i kind of thought that i had figured out most of the american-british-english discrepancies. apparently not. but i feel like i should have known this. so i'm sharing it here to a) document my slowness and b) share the fact with you in case you are just as clueless as i am.

on a different note, my brother (the one in the first paragraph) was complaining to me about werewolves and vampires yesterday. he was saying that everyone always says that they're immortal but you can kill a vampire with a wooden stake or sunlight and a werewolf with a silver bullet to the heart. if they can die, then they shouldn't be called immortal. i was saying that, while true, i think it's more that they won't die until they're killed, to which he responded, "well, i'm immortal until i die, too." and you know what? he's right. so mythical creatures should not be called immortal. it should just be said that they live longer or don't age.

 *If You're Gone - Matchbox 20

it's always been the same, same old story

sometimes, i look at my academic career and my book and my family and i start to think, "you know, maybe i'm not doing too bad with this whole life thing." but then i think of james potter and my self-esteem plummets. james potter died trying to protect his family. james potter stood up to the greatest evil the world had ever seen - wandless, mind you - when he was twenty one years old. he was fighting and dying for what was right when other people were busy celebrating the fact that they could finally drink legally. and on top of all that, he could ride a freaking broomstick, turn himself into an animal, and change mice into wineglasses. and suddenly, collecting degrees and putting out a book that a handful of people will read just seems so pointless and stupid.

and then i remember that james didn't have the internet to distract him and i don't feel as bad about myself. because you just know if wizards had access to the internet they'd be too busy procrastinating to do anything cool. voldemort would be too busy writing mean anonymous comments to people and sniggering to himself to try and take over the world. which would work out fine because dumbledore would be too busy watching videos of cats on youtube to stop him. sirius would be changing his facebook profile picture every three seconds, peter would have a tumblr full of images of food and celebrities, and hermione would get lost in wikipedia for hours clicking the random article button. ron would play fantasy quidditch, and fred and george would probably spend their time between cracked and buzzfeed.

and harry would just be standing there in the middle of the room screaming about how important he is, and his parents (who would have never died) would tell him to shut up and go to his room. and he would just always have this nagging feeling that things were supposed to be different, that every child alive should know his name. he would write about it on his blog.

*Father and Son - Cat Stevens

and she's so confident that she's what everybody wants

last week, which consisted of two presentations, a ten page paper, two homework assignments, etc, is finally over. and thank god for that. now i'm at my favorite part of the semester: finals. when all the work is done (possibly), when everything that could be learned was learned (or not), and all you have left is a test that you either study for or not, but that's it. no more busy work. and i hate busy work.

anyway, school is definitely not what i want to talk about today. i'm planning on planting myself on the couch for the entirety of today and catching up on all the shows that i have been missing to do school stuff. with a few darcy breaks thrown in there.

but before i do that, have you guys heard about how jk rowling is working with bbc to turn the casual vacancy into a tv series? now, i liked the book, i did. but it was extremely slow starting. if any other book took two hundred pages to hook me, i probably would have put it down and never looked at it again. if any other book had that cover or that synopsis, i likely wouldn't have picked it up to begin with. and let's just be frank here and say that if anyone else had tried to publish it they would still be getting rejection letters in the mail. but because it was jk rowling, we all gave it way more of a chance than we would have had she tried to do this pre-potter.

and i hate to admit this, but i'm starting to feel that jk rowling is just like fifty shades of grey. before you get all in a huff, i do not mean that she writes crap. i am a huge potter fan and a few lines up said that i liked her new book, too, remember? i just mean that, things are getting done because she has a guaranteed fan base. why does twilight fanfiction continuously find its way to publishing deals? because it already has a ton of readers and dedicated fans. rowling and her agents and her publishers can talk themselves blue in the face about how her new book is this amazing, earth-shattering, completely new look at life in a small english town, but we all know that it would have never gotten off the ground if they didn't assume that at least eighty percent of the people who read potter would read this just because she wrote it. and the people who didn't read potter would read it because they knew her name and were curious about her writing but never could stomach children's fantasy. and that's okay, because what good is becoming a world famous author if you can't publish that unpublishable book that you wrote just because you wanted to?

however, if she wasn't "the celebrated jk rowling," do you think that that book would have gotten a tv series? absolutely not. but they know that they are guaranteed viewers because she wrote the book and is working on the series. i mean, i'm happy for her, i really am. (or as happy as i can be for someone who i feel has always sort of regarded her fans with a certain measure of disdain. i'm not sure what it is about her, but i always get that feeling whenever i watch her interviews.) i just don't like the idea that books are getting published and then interpreted to screens (big or small) just because they know they'll get money out of it. i mean, i totally get it, but i just don't like it.

and no, this is not just bitterness and jealousy from someone who wants to be published but, having no guaranteed fan base, probably never will be, or maybe it is a little. i'm not sure. either way, i'll probably end up watching the series and then hating myself for playing into their hands and supporting this idea that the only things worth taking a chance on are the things where no chance is needed.

*The One I'm Waiting For - Relient K

losing time in the in between

the great idea i had for my thesis that no one wanted to work with me on but that my forensics guy and i thought was absolutely fantastic has just been done by some company out in california. i can't bring myself to read the entire article because, well, i don't really know why. i mean, i was thinking of dropping out anyway. the only reason i was going to stay was because i thought this idea was something worth my time and effort. and now it's been taken by someone else - like my exact thing - and i think that i should feel a little relieved but instead i feel panic. a flood of 'oh god what am i supposed to do now?' and of course the obvious answer is to stop cowering from the real world behind a shield of academia and just get a move on with my life, but i have never really been one for obvious answers. so there's that.

and time has been disappearing on me just like my papaya nail polish and the best friend ring from my cousin did. i remember coming home from class on friday night, then waking up saturday morning, then eating pizza with my family sunday evening, and going out last night, but everything in between is just nothing. maybe i'm being possessed by voldemort. i have to admit i really wouldn't mind that too much of he could do me a favor and avada kedavra my group members that i just don't seem able to stand. at all. even though i've tried. 

i am so ready for this semester to be over. 

oh, and just in case you were wondering, nano is going very weirdly this year. it'll only get done because i refuse to even think that i could possibly lose. i keep forgetting key parts in the story that tie the two narratives together so i'll just throw a scene in the middle of nowhere that addresses the point and then continue on with my apparent inability to describe anything or give any sort of story line. it seems like a lot of dialogue with no story in between. for all the reader knows, i have characters floating around in a black void saying things emotionlessly. i used to write like that a lot, and then some wonderful person on the internet called me out on it, and i got better. i guess i'm regressing. 

*Lose Some Time - Grace Potter and the Nocturnals