Category: general

I mentioned in the comments this morning how boring my old job was; it consisted of nothing but tracing photographs.

Well, guess what my task has been today?

Tracing images.

Brains…pouring…out…ears…

Amazon.com’s homepage is estimating JuneJuly [bah!] 19 delivery. At this point, I can’t cancel my order, either…

I guess if I get to this weekend and really want something to read, I can just go buy it at the store (I know a seeeeecret about how to find a copy), and then return the Amazon order when it arrives :P

I bet they’re spooked by those Canadian lawsuits. You watch, they won’t even SHIP until Saturday.

:P

We’re working hard to make sure you get your order as quickly as possible. However, please note that we can’t guarantee that your book(s) will be delivered on July 16.

Gee. Thanks, Amazon.com.

Guess there really is no truth in advertising. You know, the only reason I pre-ordered was because it stated plainly on their site that they guaranteed July 16 delivery. What, exactly, changed?

Maybe if you use Super Saver Shipping, they don’t make the guarantee anymore, but if that’s the case, they should have stated it plainly somewhere.

In any case, it’s not like I can’t stand to wait. It’s more like I have a whole weekend to myself because Sean’s going to a LAN party, and I was looking forward to having something to do.

Bah.

I love this title.

Study Shows One Third of All Studies Are Nonsense

The Harry Potter books are really easy to read. I can read them quickly. I don’t need time to get used to the style, except when I first come back to them after reading something else–in that situation, I have to adjust my thinking down so that I’m not offended by the simplicity of the prose. Once I’ve done that, though, I can just fly right through, and pick up where I’ve left off with no problems.

They’re children’s books, so this should not be all that striking. I just wanted to mention that this is quite a contrast to the Thomas Covenant books, which I have to kind of crawl into before I can read at a good clip. The Covenant books aren’t as bad as the Aubrey-Maturin books, either. There are whole levels of complexity out there.

One thing I did notice myself doing as I read the Potter books this time was mental revision. Whenever I came across a section that I felt could have been done better, I’d write it over in my head. Mind you, the only reason this happened is that it is much easier to spot errors in simple prose. I can skim along pleasantly and edit on the fly without breaking up my flow.

Mostly my “edits” involved punctuation usage, though there were several sentences I would have removed entirely (they took away from the effect of preceding sentences by overexplaining the situation), and there were a few actual grammatical errors. Yes, I did notice the ellipses…but they didn’t bother me as much this time. Maybe I had decided to not let them affect my enjoyment, or maybe I had built them up in my head so much that when I actually came across them, they didn’t seem as bad. Either way, I’m glad.

My euphoria at finishing the books is slowly fading. I don’t have anything to fill the place Harry Potter is leaving in me–I don’t feel like jumping back into Covenant, because that would be too much of a contrast–so I hope I don’t go nuts before Saturday.

WAGT reports that Augusta is planning a huge open air shopping center at I-20 and Riverwatch. I think this is an absolutely horrible place to put a shopping center, but I could be wrong. Theoretically it’s good to have a location near two major roads, but the flaw here is that one side of Riverwatch is pretty much unavailable for turns due to the train tracks. All traffic will have to be directed the same way as the on-ramps for I-20, and it’s already enough of a mess as it is. I’m not entirely sure how they intend to make it work.

The center itself doesn’t sound like anything particularly fascinating, except for the following:

It will also house a 24,000 sq.ft. state-of-the-art Movie Tavern, a restaurant theatre concept with six screens and 1000 stadium seating, featuring tables adjacent to the auditorium seating where movie goers will be able to order and be served a full dinner, snacks or desserts. This will be the first restaurant theatre concept in the Augusta area.

Looks like someone had the same idea I did! I will be really interested to see if this will help movie ticket sales. (And of course, I want to check it out myself!)

Wow, that really wasn’t difficult after all. I suppose it’s not such a feat to read five ginormous books when you haven’t got anything else to do, though.

I get a nice little break before Saturday, too, which is cool. I can do my internship tomorrow without worry (or longing to be reading), and I can go to that party on Friday.

I wonder when my copy of Half-Blood Prince will arrive…

That job interview was totally pointless. I thought it was for a receptionist, but it turned out to be for sales.

:>

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.