Bit of Ivory

It’s a girl!

8 minutes after her mom (my sister, Laura) arrived at the hospital (and only two hours after labor began), my newest niece arrived in the world:

(picture shamelessly stolen from my brother-in-law, since my camera’s batteries were COMPLETELY DEAD :(( )

Abigail Diane (probably, with the middle name being pronounced dee-ahn, which is my grandmother’s name), 19″ long, 6 lbs. 14 ounces.

She’s got lovely reddish-blonde hair (like her dad), long fingers and toes (like her mom) and an adorable little cry (she squeaks when she inhales). Hooray for a new niece! That makes three nieces and a nephew for me. *happy sigh*

Being an aunt is the greatest.

So, what has been good lately?

A) I’ve felt a bit more urgency to get my thesis done, and have made a (little) bit of progress. My main motivation? I have banned myself from reading any books that I have not already read (unless it’s thesis-related) until it’s done. This means no Beedle the Bard for me. No River Secrets (which I bought the other day but haven’t gotten to yet). If I’ve never read it, it’s out. (Of course, this means that the several hundred books I’ve already read are still fair game, but you can only read Pride and Prejudice and Memory so many times before you start to want something new. So.)

2) I filled my car up for under $15 yesterday. That is INSANE.

C) I’ve been bringing my Doctor Who DVDs to work with me to watch/listen to while I push papers around. Makes my job so much more enjoyable.

IV) Speaking of work, I got a fun reward today. My bosses were so impressed with the excellent job I did on open enrollment (Kathy said they’d never had one go so smoothly) that they gave me 4 tickets to Friday night’s Jazz game! And these are primo seats, too– not first row, but lower bowl, high face-value tickets. I’ve never been to a Jazz game before, so I’m quite excited about it.

E) My parents, in an effort to help me get more sleep (I had a really bad time for a couple of weeks, when I was stressed with open enrollment, but, as you all well know, I haven’t felt properly awake since at least 2000) spent a, frankly, obscene amount of money to buy me a new mattress. It’s an Intellibed, and it arrived today. I’ll try it out tonight and see if it helps at all. I’m cautiously optimistic– my aunt and uncle bought an Intellibed a few years ago and adore it– but I’ll have to give you an update after I’ve slept on it for a while. I’m excited, though.

6) When I came home from work, I found a package waiting for me from my friend Katy, containing an early Christmas present– a Basil the Basilisk! It’s ADORABLE, and I luves him, and he’s currently curled around my neck. THANKS!!

Now, to finish cleaning up all the scattered books and yarn in my room so we can move my mattress onto my bed. . .

Between Halloween parties and getting ready for same, it’s been an insane week at my house. But I was saving this title for Halloween week (and one other, which I’ll hopefully post about tomorrow), and even though I missed Halloween itself, I’m still going to post.

“And they used Bon Ami!” [Read more →]

It’s highly appropriate that I would be posting this on a Sunday, because this has long been one of our favorite Sunday afternoon movies.

“DEATH COMES UNEXPECTEDLY!!”

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Sorry for the delay. I’ve had a busy few days! I would have posted this yesterday, but I typed it up at work and forgot to e-mail it to myself. Rather than do it all over again, I just decided to wait.

“I think he did a little too much LDS”

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From Keane’s new album (I like. Different, but I like):

Better than This
<i>Is this what you meant?
Is this what you dreamed of
When you were making your plans
Shaking the dirt off?
Do you feel like you and I belong?
Just keep your eyes on the road
And nothing can go wrong

You can do so much better than this
You can do so much better than this

I’ve been checking my sums
Oh where did the time go?
Holding my photograph up to the window
Through the paper and refracted sun
I can see all the things I wish that I’d done

You can hang your hopes on the medicine
You can put your faith in the phone-in
You can tell yourself you’re doing your best
You can do so much better than this

Get a grip on yourself
Get a grip on yourself
Could have been something but you’re too late
And you weren’t invited anyway

Because the photographs show the wrong man
Because there is no soap star holding your hand
You don’t see yourself in the freeze frame
Must be someone else using your name

And everyone will be the same
And everyone will glow
And everywhere you’ll see your name
In every shop window

It’s better than this
You can do so much better than this
You can do so much better than this
You can do so much better than this</i>

Yes, I can. And I’m going to try.

I actually had another movie in mind for this post, but I decided to take advantage of the fact that Pam asked me to cap part of it for her BNAT application. Since I had planned on capping the exact same moment she wanted me to cap. . . well.

This is a favorite movie of my family, especially for Sunday viewing.

“Who is this fair young god entering into the house of Pharoah?”

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I wasn’t quite sure where to go next with my series– should I go to something completely different? Or follow in the same comedic vein? And then this movie showed up on TV the other night. Ta da! It was decided.

“Is it possible he met her while doing charitable work in a mental infirmary?”

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In an effort to write something, anything (in the hopes that the writing will translate to my thesis), I’m going to be starting a new series of posts. A series about movies.

More, specifically, a series about Movies My Family Quotes. I’m starting with 31 movies. There are many more that I could add. And that’s not even counting all the TV shows and church films and cartoons (oh, the cartoons!) which I’m not even touching. I got the idea from conversations with my co-workers, where I realized that the movies that my family quotes are not always the movies everyone quotes. But when someone recognizes a quote from one of our movies, I know I’ve got a kindred spirit. So I thought I’d share my love for some of these amazing films. Who knows– maybe you’ll find a new favorite. Or you’ll discover that we’re also kindred spirits. I have no idea what my posting schedule will be, although I’m going to try to do at least 3 movies a week.

I thought I’d start off big– with the mother of all quotable movies. At least for my family. I remember one camping trip with assorted extended Bytheway relatives, we sat around the campfire for at least 20 minutes, spouting line after line from this movie. If we tried hard enough, I think we could, collectively, quote the whole thing from beginning to end.

“Propriety? Noun: Conformity to established standards of behavior or manner, suitability, rightness, or justice. See: etiquette”

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So I’m about to embark on a day-trip down to Cedar City to see Cyrano de Bergerac again (yes, it was that good), and I realized that I hadn’t posted something that I intended to post. So.

A few months back I got an inquiry about helping to co-host a radio program for KBYU-FM, which is a public classical music station originating from my Alma Mater. I’d been recommended by my thesis advisor, because the subject was Harry Potter. Karen A. Brown, who did her undergraduate degree at BYU, has written and published a book called Prejudice in Harry Potter’s World, and they wanted to interview her for it.

Due to the fact that she was in London and I work full-time, it was hard to schedule a time to actually do the interview, but we finally managed it on Saturday morning. The interview is 26 minutes long (with me providing what I like to call “color commentary”), and will air today at 11:00 AM mountain time on KBYU-FM (89.1 and 89.5 here on the Wasatch Front). It will also be replayed at 8:00 PM, and will eventually be uploaded as a podcast to the Thinking Aloud website. If you’d like to hear it live, you can get the streaming audio from the Classical 89 website. There are hints on the site that it might also be available via BYU radio, which is available on Dish Network at least, but we haven’t been able to find any confirmation of that.

So. Just in case you’re interested.

I’ll do a real update soon, I promise.