Author: Heather Meadows

Whenever I read the scene in Order of the Phoenix that takes place at St. Mungo’s with Neville and his parents, I start crying. I can be going along, la-ti-da, everything’s normal, but then suddenly I’ll just burst into tears. It’s happened every time I’ve read the book, and it’s because of the gum wrapper.

It’s one of the most brilliant scenes I’ve ever read in any book, with an image that is as powerful as it is simple.

This does not seem to be a good year for trains.

Three Pakistani trains crash, 128 killed

A crowded Pakistani passenger train rammed into another at a station on Wednesday and a third train plowed into the wreckage killing 128 people and injuring 170, officials said.

In all, almost 2,000 people were aboard the trains, a railway official said, many of them asleep at the time of the pre-dawn disaster.

Officials said the driver of one of the trains had apparently missed a signal to stop, setting the disaster in motion.

Previous train wrecks: Graniteville, South Carolina, January 6; Amagasaki, Japan, April 25

These days, I don’t even seem to hear Sean’s alarm. Instead, I wake up when he gets in the shower. I lie there for a few minutes, thinking about how nice it would be to just stay in bed, and then I get up, make the bed, move my phone and book to the office and living room respectively, take my pills, and make Sean’s lunch. I’m typically well-rested when I get up; it’s just that I like sleeping so much that it’s sometimes hard to decide not to do it anymore.

Reading Harry Potter lately, I’ve been actually jealous of all the homework the characters have. It would seem that I miss the school environment–or at least miss an environment that challenges me regularly.

My diet was going all right until yesterday. I didn’t exercise, and DietPower had only given me about 1100 calories. This doesn’t seem to be enough for me. I started the day all right, with Slim Fast for breakfast and a frozen Healthy Choice for lunch, but then an amazing hunger struck me and I ate a Hershey bar and some banana bread.

I would have been fine if I’d not eaten anything after that, but dinnertime rolled around and I wanted a big hamburger…so we got Hardee’s, and I went about 1000 calories over my limit.

The reason I didn’t exercise yesterday was because I felt bored at the prospect of going biking again, by myself. The weather forecasted rain (wrongly, it didn’t rain at all yesterday), but that wasn’t an issue. Really, I just wanted to do something different, and I couldn’t think of what that would be, so I didn’t do anything except read.

I have a job interview today at 2:45. Yesterday I emailed a bunch of job contacts for updates, and discovered that one job I was really interested in has been “cancelled” in favor of a hardcore web programming position. I haven’t heard back from three other places where I was expecting a response, including the temp agency, and I never heard a peep about all those government jobs I applied for last month. I failed to get a job at Payless ShoeSource because I have a problem with being dishonest, and she asked me a question point-blank that I couldn’t answer without making myself a horrible candidate.

I am getting really bored, and really tired of not contributing to our household budget.

At least the internship is going well, I suppose. Maybe someday I will have learned enough for them to consider hiring me, but since I’m only there one day a week, I’m not sure how soon that would come about.

I was looking at Grandpa’s Aubrey-Awbrey of Virginia and Kentucky yesterday. My entry is on page 41, under “Ronald Vance Aubrey” (“1. Heather Ann Aubrey – Born May 30, 1978, Lexington, Ky.”). There are little blurbs here about my parents and their parents that remind me how old this book is…Dad’s business, Ron Aubrey, Inc., isn’t mentioned at all, Mom is still said to be working at UK Med Center, and Granny (Mom’s mother) is still listed as being alive. Grandpa didn’t put a compilation date in this book, but Mom’s entry says, “Is presently employed (1985) as a registered nurse”, so there you have it. Dad started selling No-Dogs in 1987 or so; Granny died in February of 1991 (I think); and Mom quit her job at UK to help out with the business some time after that, before I got cancer. Grandpa himself died January 5, 2000.

Someday I hope to put all the stuff in this book onto the web as a geneaology resource, as I have Grandma’s permission. It’ll be either a lot of retyping, or scanning each page and hoping for some decent OCR. (I’d probably have to go back and hand-check everything.)

I am really enjoying Order of the Phoenix. I’d forgotten how great it is to see Harry and his friends fighting back against Umbridge–and I’d forgotten exactly how evil Umbridge is. Ugh. A lifetime Quidditch ban? That has got to be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard…and those “lines” Harry had to write weren’t exactly innocent and sweet, were they?

Ah well…looking forward to the revolution :)

I was poking around on Google and I found some cute Kyou Kara Maou-inspired art on DeviantArt. Check out the Kyou Kara Maou Fan Club “ID”/logo, “kyou kara maou:Yuri e Wolfram“, and “++ Kyou Kara Maou – Group ++“.

Kind of makes me wish I could draw ^^;;

Harry Potter’s latest secret slips out in Canada

Harry Potter’s latest secret may have slipped out in Canada, and publishers of the best-selling books hope the magical allure of author J.K. Rowling’s autograph will get it back under wraps.

Rowling’s sixth book about the young wizard is scheduled to be released on July 16, but a store near Vancouver briefly put the book on sale last week.

Man, it would rule to be one of the handful who bought it early:

The court also ordered all the copies be returned to Raincoast, which has promised the early buyers book plates autographed by Rowling once the embargo is lifted.

Not only are they the first to know what happens in the books, but they get autographed book plates! Maybe I should move to Vancouver before the last book comes out…;>

You know, I think that may be my favorite book. It’s very long, and some of the stuff in the beginning seems to drag, but by the end you see how it all fits together, and it’s hard to think of anything that could be left out. (I’ve been pondering during non-reading times how exactly this novel is going to be translated into a movie. The screenwriter has his work cut out for him. Part of me is kind of envious, though…it’d be a very interesting challenge.)

I’m not sure I’m looking forward to Order of the Phoenix. There is some really cool stuff in that book, to be sure, but all I can think about is how Harry turns into an obnoxious, surly teenager. I understand the reasons, but this book is also huge, and I know I’m going to be impatient for him to discover everything so he can get his head screwed back on straight.

Plus…Sirius.

In any event, I think I should have no problem getting through it by Saturday. Mari mentioned to me that there’s a Harry Potter party on Friday night at Borders. It lasts until midnight, at which time the people who preordered from Borders get to take home their books. (Mari will get to start reading hours before I do…mine’s coming in the mail.) I think it might be fun to attend the party, since there should be raffles and such. This means that I will really want to be done with Order of the Phoenix by 9 pm on Friday night, when the party starts.

I’m pretty sure I can do it; I’ve got all the rest of today, most of tomorrow (one job interview in the afternoon), Thursday evening, and Friday during the day. It took approximately a day and a half to get through Goblet of Fire, so I seem to have plenty of wiggle room.

MSN has a pretty good article from the Mayo Clinic up about why we eat based on mood, how that ends up crippling our metabolisms, and what we can do to break out of the cycle.

Emotional eaters don’t necessarily eat more foods, they eat more unhealthy foods, such as starchy, sweet, salty and fatty foods. Consequently, if stress or negative emotions are chronic, emotional eating can cause health problems such as weight gain and increased cardiovascular risk.

The good news is that if you’re prone to emotional eating, you can regain control of your eating habits. By understanding the reasons why stress and negative emotions may cause you to crave those unhealthy snacks, and how you can avoid indulging your cravings, you’re well on your way to avoiding a dietary disaster.

The other day, someone sent me an email with a horrifying story in it. I was skimming it and not really paying attention, because I thought it was just another happy-happy email forward, and so I saw things that I really did not want to read.

I don’t even know if the story in the email was true or not. But now it resurfaces in my mind at odd moments, when I’m not focused on something, and I have to force it away.

As soon as I realized what I was reading, I rejected it as false and deleted the email. I can’t remember any details like the names of the people involved. And I’m not sure I would want to look it up and see if it is true or not anyway. I don’t want it to be true. I want to pretend that it isn’t.

I don’t know why I’m writing this. I guess…I’m scared that I’m not going to be able to block it out. I’m afraid, deep down, that this is yet another thing I’m going to have to “deal with”. I’m going to have to look this nauseating, terrible thing in the face and “get over it”.

And I don’t want to. I don’t want to have to deal with it.

It’s not fair.

Today’s OO…I just…oh god.

They’re going to put Keiko’s face on Takeshi @_@

Sean and I both had the craving…so he’s picking it up now.

Yay!

I’ve got a pretty bad headache, and I can’t seem to find a comfortable reading position.

My computer chair feels pretty nice, though…;P

Think I’ll watch Yawara 34 and 35, and ponder what to make for dinner.

This is really cool. If people are able to play a sport–or do any activity–on the same level as the majority of people doing that activity, then they should be allowed to participate too, regardless of sex or other factors. I’m glad that Wie is doing so well, and I wish her luck in her Masters bid.

His newsposts on Questionable Content are typically only a few paragraphs long. He says what he has to say in a concise way, and doesn’t go off into tangents. You’d think that with that kind of format, he’d come across as rather terse.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

His style is comfortable and open, like he’s welcoming you personally into his life. But it’s not gushy–he doesn’t imply anything about his relationship with you. His writing doesn’t assume that you want his drama.

In fact, Jacques is polite enough to keep drama out of his newsposts altogether.

In the world of Jeph Jacques’ newsposts, people are nice to each other. People want to communicate, and they have good things to say. There’s a sense of camaraderie.

There is nothing in Jacques’ newsposts to cut him off from the reader. There’s no self-pity. There’s no boasting. There is never the implication that we can’t understand him.

Instead, we feel as though we’ve just walked into his store or coffeeshop, and he’s greeting us like old friends even though we’ve never met. He’s treating us with respect and friendliness and acknowledging that, in the end, we are all, himself included, just people.

He’s inviting us politely into his life–a life where the world is full of awesome things, and all we have to do is open our eyes to them. But he’s not forcing this world upon us. We go there willingly–I go there every day–because we are invited with no strings attached. Jacques will always be there to wish us well, no matter when we happen to stop by.

The bartender was someone I hadn’t seen before today: an absolutely beautiful girl in her mid-twenties, jet black hair pulled back into a ponytail, gold eyes and olive skin. Freckles dusted across her shoulders matched the ones across her nose.

I approached, and saw her reading my “Shrodinger’s Cat Is Dead” shirt.

“What does that mean?” She said.

“It’s a very nerdy physics joke,” I said.

“So it’s not being cruel to animals?” She said.

“Well, there’s a lot of Uncertainty about that,” I said.

I love Wil Wheaton :>

The story continues:

She frowned. “What?”

“That was also a very nerdy physics joke,” I said, and explained Shrodinger’s Cat to her.

” . . . so until you observe the results, the cat is both dead and alive,” I said. “Which, I’m sure, is just thrilling to you.”

She reached into the cooler and pulled a beer out of the bottom. Chunks of ice clung to the sides, and she wiped them off. As she opened it, she said, “Actually, I was listening to you because I think nerds are incredibly sexy.” She bit down on her lower lip.

Gulp.

I’m sure I blushed, and said, “Well, on behalf of nerds everywhere, I’d like to thank you for that.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, as she set my bottle on the bar. I paid her and got the hell out of there before my wit and charm started writing checks my body couldn’t cash.

Moving on . . .

I just have to say…the running away, there? That was such a nerdy thing to do.

:D