Bit of Ivory

Edited all day. My head hurts. *sigh*

My employer wants me to do the source checking on it as well, which I told him would take about another week, although I doubt it will actually take that long. I’ll only check the sources that he’s actually got cited. I’m going to make him dig up the references for the scriptures and stuff he quoted without a citation. I want to get this done and out of my hair.

In other news, my brother updated my Moveable Type today. I’m now using 2.66! It has the decided advantage of being compatible with the MT-Blacklist software, which lets me block comment spammers. I’ve been getting spammed on a regular basis. It also makes it much easier to delete the comments if something *does* get past my blacklist. Yay!

Going to bed now.

HP Meme gacked from everyone:

When did you first discover Harry Potter?: May 2000
Book first or movie first?: Book
Were you hooked instantly, or did it take a while?: Instantly.
Did you instantly fall in love w/ any specific character?: I loved Harry from the very beginning. Lupin was almost instant as well.

Favorite…
Professor: Lupin, but Dumbledore and McGonagall are a close second.
Marauder: Lupin, far and away.
Gryffindor: Other than Harry, I’ve gotta go for Ginny.
Slytherin: Umm. I don’t really have a favorite Slytherin. Snape is about the closest I’d venture.
Hufflepuff: Cedric Diggory was my favorite. My favorite living one is Hannah Abbot.
Ravenclaw: Even though Luna is much better developed, I’ll have to go for Penelope Clearwater, my alter-ego.
Character overall: Harry.
How long did it take you to read…
Book 1?: One day, but it was because I was at work.
Book 2?: Two days– once again, at work.
Book 3?: One day. Brought the book home that night.
Book 4?: Umm. Let’s call it one day for the sake of simplicity. Had several interruptions.
Book 5?: Umm. 6 and a half hours, from 12 am to to 7:30 am, with a break to watch myself on the Today show at 5:00
If you were in Harry Potter…
What house would you be in?: Ravenclaw.
What would your pet be?: Owl. I’m allergic to cats.
What would your wand be?: I tend to get ash and phoenix feather at the official site. The one I made for myself I call rosewood and unicorn hair.
Who would you date?: Depends on what generation I was in. Lupin in Mauraders, Harry otherwise.
What would be your fav. subject?: If only there were a Magical Literature subject. . . Umm. Charms, I think.
Other
How did you feel about youknowwho dying?: Wow. Sirius. Huh. Didn’t see that one coming.
What are your views on the Dark Lord?: He needs to go away. Soon. Bad Dark Lord!
Weasleys or Malfoys?: Weasleys all the way. I heart my Weasleys.

So I’ve been working all morning on a freelance editing job that I got BAX in, like, April. Have learned that I do not have the self-discipline to do freelance. *sigh* Anyway, I promised the guy that I’d have it done by the end of this week. Now, when I set a deadline like that I can always make it. Maybe that is my key. I’ve set myself deadlines on this project before, but have never shared them with my employer. I need to let someone else know about them. Hmm.

In any case, I figured out how many pages I have left, and how many I have to do each day to get it finished by the end of the week. The result? 39 pages a day. I can do that.

So I took a slight break from editing to eat some lunch and chex up on goings-on online, lest you accuse me of procrastinating. Will go BAX to editing shortly.

Finally heard about that job. Didn’t get it. Am incredibly overqualified, anyway. *shrugs* I wish I could have WORXED with Fellytone, though. BAX to the drawing board, then.

Gilmore Girls was. . .well, there were some good spots and some bad spots. The Mormon jokes were slightly amusing but inaccurate (as most Mormon jokes are. I wish that just once someone on non-news television could mention Mormons without the mention being a joke, derrogatory to us, or just plain lies). I was distressed, as I always am, with how easily Lorelai jumps into bed with people. You’d think she would have learned her lesson on that score, but apparently not. There was too much Paris and not enough Luke, too. But Michel rolling Davy under the bed? Priceless.

Watched the theatrical edition of FotR on Encore Action yesterday. The whole thing this time. Was in fullscreen. It’s the first time I’ve seen it in fullscreen. I prefer widescreen in almost all cases, but fullscreen has one definite advantage– closeups of Sexy Elf Boy and Sexy Ranger Man are much closer. It’s a great movie, though. Has been a long time since I’ve watched it, and I loved seeing all the things that were echoed in TTT and RotK. Probably should have stuck in our EE rather than watching the theatrical release, but it was kind of nice to see that one as well.

I bought a pattern for a skirt today. I’ve had the material for over a year now– it’s a cool black-and-white snakeskin print. Very very much out of my usual style. It’s sheer, so I had to buy some black fabric for underneath it, which I did in early December, but they didn’t have the pattern I wanted then. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it this week.

I got to sleep by 12:30 last night. Not *too* bad, and not for lack of trying. I finished volume one of my Pocket Austen S&S, though.

I’m hoping to get my shipment from Alibris soon. My copy of Jane of Lantern Hill is absolutely falling apart, but it’s out of print. I found a copy in supposedly good condition on Alibris for about $11, and it was shipped on the 12th, so it should be here soon. *crosses fingers* I love Alibris. Where would I be without it?

New Gilmore Girls tonight! Has been an *age*. Whoot!

Rachel got her late Christmas present today! I sent her a Sexy Pirate Boy shirt. She likes it!

I’ve made lots lately, and some of them are even for me. See, Angua showed me a few really nice pics of Orli last night, and the icon-making bug kicked in. So I made

and

last night, and am currently making more.

Yesterday we watched our beta classics– the church films I mentioned last time, and our Speedy Gonzales tape, which is just as hilarious as ever. Stupid Cartoon Network, not playing Speedy cartoons. Duh.

Still no word on job. Called Friday. Will send e-mail tomorrow.

My primary kids this year are so cute. I got a new class to teach, so now instead of 4 girls and a boy I have 3 boys and two girls, only one of whom comes regularly. It’s quite a switch. The lesson yesterday was “I Am a Child of God,” and we talked about all sorts of things, one of which was how thankful we should be for our bodies. The kids got to jump around and crawl and basically do lots of things that. Of course, I had to do it with them.

Hey, for all of you in Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, and Washington, get ready! ‘Cause Pride and Prejudice will be opening in your states as early as Jan. 23! Go to the website to find out which theatres will be showing it.

I really need to stop staying up late. It’s making me irritable, I think. Will be asleep by midnight from now on. Really! Stop laughing!

My dad recently won an auction on eBay. We are now the proud owners of—

A Betamax!

Our old machine is broken, and we’ve been missing a lot of tapes that simply aren’t available on VHS or DVD. Things like old church movies– do any of you know “Pioneers in Petticoats” and “Measure of a Man?” and my Mom’s favorite version of “Goodbye Mr. Chips” and a few others. We’ve replaced quite a few of them, but we just couldn’t stand it anymore. So dad started trolling eBay and found one that actually worx for $150. It’s great!

It can join our Atari 7200 that still worx as well.

Orlando Seale was in tonight’s episode of Monk!

For anyone who watched it, he was the French police lieutenant. For anyone who didn’t, the episode is entitled “Mr. Monk and the Paperboy,” and it’s supposed to be replayed at midnight, Eastern time. Watch it! Then you can see what I admire so much.

Plus it’s a great show.

This will probably only be of interest to Jen, but oh well. I was delighted and had to share.

Jen! Condition of Desperation on the P&P soundtrax? It’s a PERFECT WALTZ.

Well, when I got up this morning I saw that they had put Andy’s appearance on the front page of the paper. I decided that I’d better go earlier than I’d planned– and it’s a good thing I did, because there was already quite a line when I got there at 4, and it only got longer as time went on. Jen arrived at about 4:45, and we passed the time reading and chatting about fic. My sisters arrived next, then Lilac, then Fellytone (who finally got an LJ! Whoot!). Borders ran out of BOOX, which I think was very stupid of them. They should have known it would be packed. Originally they said that Andy would sign another piece of merchandise if someone had the book as well, but they changed it to only one thing per person when they realized how gigantic it was going to be, so it was lucky that Jen didn’t have anything for him to sign or else Sweeney would have been out of luck. Although I’d probably end up getting one copy signed and letting her have the signed one. She cares more about it than me, I’m sure.

It was weird. I wasn’t excited at all while I was waiting. It was only after I heard his voice over the PA that I realized how incredibly cool this was. Like I said in my phone post (does anyone want to transcribe that? I don’t feel like it right now, particularly), they didn’t have it set up very well at all for the presentation part of it. He spoke from the cafe, and all of us who had stood in line for hours couldn’t see him at all. It was still really cool to hear his voice live while doing the schizophrenic scene from TTT, but I wish I could have seen his expressions change. However, there were compensations for this. Everyone who had stood OUT of line and therefore got to SEE him doing the presentation had to go to the BAX of the line when it was over, and it was the longest line I’ve ever seen. Even two hours after the event started it was still all the way to the other end of the mall– almost an entire city block.

The Q&A session didn’t really yield much new information. It was interesting to hear that he felt that the scene where Gollum dies at the end of RotK was the hardest scene to film, simply because they had to decide which emotion was going to be foremost in Gollum’s psyche as he was dying. Was the pain of sinking into hot lava bad enough to make his possession of the Ring fade? I’m glad they made the decision that the Ring was what was uppermost. I loved that scene.

So while the people who had seen him got the better end of the deal there, we only had to wait about 15 minutes to actually get his autograph. He was a very, very nice guy– he paid special attention to the kids, and was very gracious to all of us GEEX. He said at the beginning of the presentation that he was absolutely overwhelmed– I think it was a bigger crowd than in New York, even, because they stopped letting people in in NY. See, they weren’t so stupid when they decided to have one of Serkis’ five cities be SLC. Maybe it shows that they actually did their homework. We Utahns love our Rings. Although my dad did suggest that Sundance taking place at the same time might have something to do with it. Maybe. I don’t really care why he came, though. He came!

They really rushed us through, so of course I didn’t get to say much, but I appreciate the opportunity to tell him that he did a really awesome job. I told him that I felt decidedly ambivalent about Gollum’s fate in the movies, which is quite an accomplishment since I was only too pleased that he died when I read the book. He smiled and said “Well, that’s a job well done, then!” I said “thank you” one last time and that was it.

Let’s see, what else? He had really big hair, and a great accent (of course). I forgot to bring my camera, but Fellytone got one with her camera-phone, and Lilac got one, I think, and my sisters bought a disposable camera at Suncoast and took a few more pics, so once we get those developed I’ll post them.

The book is AWESOME, too. Well worth the $10. Everyone should buy it.

I exercised this morning.

I worked on my editing project.

I chatted lots and lots with Angua, quite a bit with Connielane and Kirk, and wished that Rachel was around.

I made plans for going to see Andy Serkis tomorrow.

I watched the end of FotR twice (it was on the Encore Action channel, and I always missed the beginning).

I discovered that it’s Orlando Bloom’s birthday today.

I got SUXED BAX in to the DT. Is all Angua’s fault.

I’m going to bed soon.

So I’ve been using exclamations as post titles lately, I’ve noticed. Hmm. Maybe I should try writing titles based on actual content.

Nah.

So I had a job interview today, at Western Governor’s University. I thought it went quite well. After the interview Fellytone and I went to lunch and discussed all sorts of fun things. And the rest of the day? Umm. I spent lots of time online, doing research for Albus. Really must come up with a title for this story, huh? Also did research for another little thing I’ve been worxing on. You’ll find out all about it shortly. Also did some worx on an embroidery project that I started, umm, three years ago. Granted, it is a GIGANTIC sampler, but it’s ridiculous. I haven’t worxed on it for at least a year.