So busy, in fact, that I haven’t had a chance to write about it until now. 
Friday was fun. Wore my Penelope Clearwater costume to school, complete with cloak, and felt rather silly as, like, NO ONE else dressed up. Okay, so I saw two or three other costumes. But considering that this is a campus of 30,000+ people, that statistic is infintensimal. Be that as it may, I did get a good reaction (aside from the strange looks) on the costume. Lots of people were extremely impressed by it. I had one girl who I’m quite friendly with in my 18th century lit class look at me, narrow her eyes, and say “Penelope Clearwater?” which, of course, made my mouth drop open in suprise (and no, I did not want to snog her :P). She said that she looked at me, looked that the colors, saw the prefect badge, and went, “Okay, who do we know in Ravenclaw?” I was much amused, as I think she’s the first person on campus to realize that no, I’m NOT in Gryffindor, and therefore I am NOT Hermione.
After class, I proceeded on to work, where I amused all my coworkers. I don’t think they believed me before when I told them I had a complete Hogwarts Uniform. I got my picture taken by a lady who was dressed as Napoleon (I was cursing another of my coworkers in the pic), met the other HP-themed character (she came as Dr. Parkinson, Muggle Studies teacher. Cute, eh?), and then removed most of the layers of my costume, considering that it must have been about 87 degrees in my office.
After work I came home and readied the house for and my Halloween Bash. It ended up being rather smaller than we would have liked (that’ll teach US to procrastinate asking people to come, eh, K8?), but it was still way fun. My sisters, and came in their amazing Galadriel and Eowyn costumes, and brought their friend Sarah who looked ravishing in her Arwen costume. I took pics which I will upload shortly– tomorrow, probably. came as a “worn-out math teacher on her holiday weekend,” and her two adorable kids came, and although Lilac didn’t dress up, her son and daughter were adorable as Ash Ketchum and Pikachu, respectfully, and my brother and his girlfriend made a brief (uncostumed) appearance. All in all, an enjoyable evening, although I had enough food left over to sink a battleship. It’s okay, though. I dumped most of it on my family. 
I ended up working for 5 hours Saturday morning, then came home, did a bit of homework, and ended up falling asleep while reading Joseph Andrews (quite the enjoyable book, actually, I was just exhausted). I’d just woken up when my sister called to inform me that they’d just made a trip to the pet store, and would I like to come home and meet our new parakeet? Of course I would!
Guys, this little bird is adorable. It’s a violet blue color, and the bottom and tips of its wings are pure white. It’s still quite young– about 4 months, the pet store said– so we can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl yet, but it’s really cute. I’m sure it will be happy and friendly after it gets over its sudden transplanting– it usually takes about 3 days before they start to feel at home. Last time I saw it, it was sitting completely still in the same place it had been for the last several hours, its eyes wide and trembling a bit. We are going to train it to whistle and come out and fly around and play with us, just like our poor little Wedgewood who died at the end of July. It’s so nice to have a cute little birdie in the corner of our family room again!
As for a name, we originally wanted to call it Kolipoki, but after a bit of thinking we decided against it. As of now, its name is Tonks. Whether or not that too will change is yet to be determined, but I hope it doesn’t.
I wonder if we can teach it to waterski. . .