Bit of Ivory

Thanks to Angua for pointing out the pic to me. She has taken the icon as a reward. Feel free to do the same, if you feel so inclined. There’s enough eye candy to go around.

I worked all afternoon. I wish I hadn’t, as it was a complete waste of my time except for the money I made. I really need to be working on Nimbus stuff. Oh, well. I can do it tomorrow, I suppose. But there aren’t a whole lot of tomorrows left. Eep!

My head hurts. Am going to bed.

Pirates is excellent. Good, good fun. Even without Sexy Pirate Boy, would be good. Not that Sexy Pirate Boy isn’t sexy. He is. He’s VERY sexy. And very piratical. Is great to have him there. But he’s not the whole story. It’s a good movie in it’s own right. And funny. Really funny. Johnny Depp– who I have never really seen in anything except for Edward Scissorhands– is excellent. Hilarious, actually. So, everyone go see it. I plan on seeing it again in the near future.

And speaking of our Sexy Pirate boy– Super Sexy Boy? (scroll down). I can see it. Mmmmm. Orlando in tights. Sounds like Superman Lives might be worth seeing after all.

(This entry was supposed to be posted yesterday, but due to problems with Ben’s server, it couldn’t be.)

So. Camping. Usually a very pleasant experience, all things considered. Just keep your eye out for mosquitos and the occasional horsefly, and bond with nature. That was what I was expecting. I packed my four paperback British editions of HP and OotP, and planned on working on my panel presentation for Nimbus, when my aunt wasn’t teaching us how to knit. Good food, good company, all the s’mores you can eat. Come home smelling like smoke, relaxed and refreshed. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

The first indication of something amiss came when we got off the freeway after a 2 1/2 hour drive. There were these little black specs on the road, and they moved. Actually, “little” is a misnomer. They were actually rather big. And the closer we got to the campsite, the more of them they were. As the cars came closer, they hopped. It became very obvious what they were: Mormon crickets.

Mormon crickets aren’t really crickets at all, they’re more closely related to grasshoppers. But that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that they are about 2 1/2 inches long, and that there were thousands of them. You couldn’t take a step without having one nearby. There were probably about 2 crickets per square foot by the time we got up there. I tried to be brave. I thought I was handling it well– until it came time to go into the tent to blow up our air mattresses. Because they were all over it– all over the top, all over the windows, inside the screen we’d put up on our awning. I lost it. After I finally got in the tent, I had to close my eyes and ignore the scuttling all over it. I ended up curling up in fetal position and sobbing when I realized I’d have to leave the tent to go to dinner. My sister Lisa was in a similar condition, although not quite as bad. Neither of us are Gryffindors, obviously. Laura, who is a Gryffindor, was much better off than either of us, and was even able to help mom (who must be a Gryffindor as well) brush the crickets off. None of us slept very well, though. It’s difficult when there are crickets hopping into the side of your tent, or losing their footing and scuttling down the sides as they fall.

We left early.

But we did manage to get the knitting lessons before we left. As of right now we’re just practicing, but I’m sure we’ll be up to elf-hats any time now. Can’t wait till I’m good enough to attempt a Ravenclaw scarf. My crocheted one is lovely, but a knit one would be ever so much more authentic, you know?

It wasn’t easy, though, what with crickets falling out of the tress we were sitting under.

Note to self: Never go camping in central Utah during a drought year again.

My family’s going camping this weekend. I myself will only be gone for tonight and most of tomorrow– I have to work at Cottonwood on Saturday. However, that will constitute one of the longest periods of time that I’ve been away from my computer since I got my tonsils out. It’s going to be a terrible wrench to tear myself away.

But I’m bringing the first 4 HPs in paperback, and OotP with me– along with my Hogwarts notebook– so I can worx on my other panel for Nimbus. This one needs to sound very professional, as I’m presenting with 4 Ph.D.’s Yikes!

See you all tomorrow night!

I finally got around to importing all the entries from my old blog, Virtual Parchment. There are a few kinks– Blogger didn’t support titles, but Moveable Type requires them, so the first few words of the entry is used as the title; for some reason the formatting is off, even though I did everything it told me to; and there aren’t any comments on the entries yet. I do still plan on pulling those from YACCS. Anyway, I’m glad to have all my entries in one place now. I can link back to old entries all I want.

Like this one, an old Friday Five where I expressed my wish for a certain pair of sandals.

Yesterday, I suceeded. Almost.

On my trip to Office Max to buy my Nimbus stuff, I happened to glance at the Payless Shoes–which was having a clearance sale. Now, I haven’t gone to Payless a whole lot in the past few years, because they haven’t had any styles I like. Every once in a while I’ll drop in, but it’s rare that I find anything I *have* to have. It’s more likely that I’ll find what I want at Wal-mart or on sale at a department store. But I figured I might as well look. Couldn’t hurt.

And I found them. For $3! Now, these aren’t the *exact* shoes I’ve been searching high and low for, but they’re so close that it makes little difference. The style I always bought had a buckle above the inner arch, instead of having the straps running into the sole like you see in the picture. The straps are also thinner than my old ones, but I don’t really care anymore. I have them back! *does the happy Snoopy dance*

Thank you all for sharing my joy.

I haven’t posted at SQ in a while, what with other stuff taking up my time, so I haven’t noticed that my title has been changed.

I am now the Captain for Canon, Dumbledore’s Army!

*falls over*

I feel all prepared. I just bought index cards– 5″ by 8″ index cards. Nice and big, so I can fit lots of stuff on them. I bought the multi-color pack, which includes blue, pink, green, lilac (I think I’ll use those for CoS ), and yellow. 5 colors–5 books. I also bought a pack of plain white ones for arguments which are not book-specific or cover several books. I feel very Hermione-ish, color-coding my notes.

Am getting very, very excited. . . .

fresh homemade raspberry ice cream.

MMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Anyone I have talked to about The Project should go to the You-Know-Where and chex out the You-Know-What.

Anyone who has absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, e-mail me and I just might tell you.

Is all v. secret.

Such as it is. I figure I’ve posted so much on OotP that I haven’t said much about what I’ve been doing. Not much, actually.

I heard back from that library job. They hired someone else. This leaves me in the position of having to look around for another one. It’ll have to wait ’till after Nimbus, however, since it would be rather tought to get a job and then say “but I need a week off in– oh, two weeks.” So I’ll start looking after we get back from Florida.

I had a follow-up appointment with my Ear Nose and Throat doctor today. Everything has healed very nicely. Still hard to tell whether it made any kind of a difference yet. We’ll see.

My mom thinks I’m spending too much time online. I’m going to spend lots of time next week on my editing project with my wireless card safely in another room. I need the money. They’ve already sent me a check, but I feel guilty depositing it when I haven’t done much work yet. I’ve decided I can’t really be a freelance editor. I don’t have the discipline for it.

After I do the editing, I’m going to do lots and lots of work for Nimbus. Not only do I have tons of evidence to gather, I also have to write my part of the other panel. So actually, I have plenty to keep me busy in the three weeks left till Nimbus.