Bit of Ivory

Rats.

Actually, it’s not all bad news. Gary Oldman I can handle. Pam Ferris is brilliant. David Thewlis– well. I already said my piece.

I guess I’ll just have to have faith that they made the right decision. They haven’t gone wrong with any of the other casting decisions (they even picked the *exact* actress for the Fat Lady that I imagined)– maybe there’s more to Thewlis than I’ve seen. But he’s going to have to work *awfully* hard to convince me.

Oh, well. At least there’s a new Gilmore Girls tonight.

I haven’t been online since Friday, because I went home for the weekend and our dial-up went down. It’s not really their fault, I think it’s the phone company’s, but I was still without internet access all of Saturday and Sunday. I’m at work now, and I just barely finished catching up on all the e-mails I missed. Down with dial-up.

So on Saturday I did a shift at Deseret Book. For the first 2 hours I was on gift wrap/ imprint. The gift wrap part I’ve got covered. I used to be terrible at it, but I got better. Now I actually enjoy it. Anyway, gift wrap is a cinch, especially because there aren’t that many things to gift wrap this time of year. Imprinting, on the other hand, scares the heck out of me. Have any of you ever done any imprinting? Unfortunately, it’s a process very prone to human error. At least, with the machines we have at Deseret Book, it’s a process very prone to human error. We have a machine that’s completely manual. I’ve mispelled names, put the name on the back cover instead of the front, put the name too far over so that it’s on the margin of the leather and stamps too deep, accidentally moved my hand inbetween stamps and double-stamped, used gold foil on a silver-leafed book and vice versa, and just about every other imprinting mistake you could possibly make. It’s not so bad when I mess up $10 hymn books and $12 journals (unless I mess up 3 or four in a row, which I’ve been known to do); but I tend to make my biggest mistakes on $100 scriptures. I’m especially bad when I haven’t done it for a while. You’d think my manager would have learned his lesson and just not scheduled me, but he has this thing about every employee knowing how to do imprinting, so there it is. Besides, I *am* good at gift wrap, and the two go hand in hand.

Anyway, I was on imprint Saturday. The last time I did imprint was Christmas, when I messed up a Spanish Triple Combination (it includes the Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, and Doctrine and Covenants, our 3 added books of scripture). We didn’t have anything to replace that one, so, in line with Murphy’s law, I had *really* messed up (I put the name on the back upper corner instead of the front lower one. Upside down, of course). So I was especially nervous to do any imprints Saturday. To my shock, amazement, and utter surprise, I did six imprints without messing up on a single one. And they were *all* expensive scriptures. Hooray for me!

I’m sure my luck won’t last, though.

Today’s my dad’s birthday– I won’t tell you how old he is, though. If he wants to tell, that’s his business.

I hope we’re going out for dinner (we’re all coming home for the long weekend) before heading off to Know Your Religion. I could really use some Salt and Pepper Shrimp.

Happy Birthday, Dad, and I’ll see you this evening.

Please tell me this is just a rumor. I’m prepared not to have Jeremy Northam playing Remus, but. . .they’ve got to pick someone good for the part to make up for it, and David Thewlis is not going to cut it. Absolutely not.

I might even stay home from PoA if he gets it. The movie would be ruined for me.

NOOOOO!!!!!!

I must explain my excitement. Don’t worry, Levi, I’m not planning on living on this natural high forever– or even for more than, oh, the rest of the week. I have good, solid reasons for being as excited as I am. Want a list?

1. By the time the book comes out, I will have been waiting a few days shy of 3 years. You see, I finished reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at about 8:00 PM on July 8, 2000– the day it was released. I haven’t had any new Harry Potter books since then.
2. Since I’ll have been waiting 3 years for the book, without any definite idea of when it would be out, the certain knowledge of an actual date is extremely exciting to me. I now know exactly how long I have to wait.
3. June 21 seems very good to me, as the latest rumors had it coming out on July 31st, which seemed like an age (and happened to fall after the Nimbus convention). So we’re getting it a month earlier than I had recently been led to believe.
4. My birthday is in June. It’s June 4, true, but close enough. It’ll feel like a late birthday present.
5. I have a lot of things to do between now and June 21st. Not only do I have my last semester of college (which is looking quite busy–fun, but busy), but my family’s going to take a trip to Nauvoo in late April/early May (after school gets out), which of course will go fast, and then I’m getting my tonsils out (which may go slow, but I’ll use the time to write fanfic and re-read the first four books in anticipation), then my birthday, and hopefully I’ll have a real job by then, so I’ll have something to keep me occupied, then it’ll be out! So really, time should fly between now and then.

So basically, don’t rob me of my moment of joy. It will pass soon enough. But for today, I’m going to be on cloud nine. And nothing you can say will stop me.

I can’t think of words big enough. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be released on June 21, 2003!

WAHOOO!!!!!!

*Emily jumps up and down, then stops, looks around the library, sees everyone staring at her, but doesn’t care and jumps up and down some more*

Seriously, I did. Gary Gillum, the Ancient Studies librarian, came up to me here at the desk and said– “What’s the significance of June 21st?” At first, I was extremely puzzled. Then he said– “Harry Potter book 5 will be released.” I asked where he got his information from, because we’ve had false reports in the past, and he said “The BBC.” So I immediately surfed on over to The Leaky Cauldron, which was going to be my next stop anyway, and sure enough– it’s true! I literally jumped up and down. Gary must have thought I’d gone mad. *shrugs* I probably have.

The best thing about this is that we’ll have OotP to argue from in the Deathmarch at Nimbus. Well, the best thing other than the fact that it’s about 1,000 pages long and I’ll have read the whole thing by the end of the day on the 21st. Oh yes, my precious.

EDITED to add: Just saw this in the press release:

“The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive … The only person left outside was a teenage boy who was lying flat on his back in a flowerbed outside number four.”

Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything.’”

OH MY GOSH!!!!!!

I’m going to hyperventilate.

Know what’s really funny? Just this morning, I was thinking about what I’ll do when I’ve read OotP. I’m going to want to gush to someone, but of course no one else will have finished it, because I plan on DEVOURING it, but I’ll need to GUSH. So I decided to post a spoiler-heavy review here as a link. That way I can at least get my feelilngs out.

My hands are shaking so bad I can’t type.

YAAAAYYY!!!!

*Emily takes a deep breath*

I just registered for Nimbus 2003! I’m going, baby! Tonight, after I get home from work, I’ll submit the proposal that Dr. Walker and I have written for our paper. In the meantime, I’ll formulate my argument for the Ron/Hermione vs. Harry/Hermione panel that I promised to be on (Angua, one of the greatest Deathmarch debaters ever, is going to be there as well, so I won’t feel quite so alone). I’ll probably make the panel, but I don’t know about the paper– so many real Harry Potter scholars are going to be there, that I don’t know if they’ll care about my ideas, but it’s worth a shot.

Now to make travel arrangements, figure out the hotel situation (I might be rooming with Mellie, or maybe Elizabeth and Leslie, or– anyway, I need to get that sorted out), and figure out how to pay for it all. But I’m now registered. WAHOO!!!

Just a little friendly advice: If you can possibly avoid reading The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, do so. *shudders*

Having now read several novels that were popular at the time Jane Austen was writing, I have come to the conclusion that Austen was so far ahead of her time, she should have been born at least 30 years later. Austen is as far superior to Anne Radcliffe and Sir Walter Scott and Fanny Burney as J.K. Rowling is to R.L. Stine.

No wonder Austen could write such a biting parody of Gothic novels. Most of them were awful.

Just remembered I never filled you guys in on how I did last semester. I pulled a 3.5– 1 A, 2 A-‘s, and two B’s. Considering how little I cared about my grades, I’ll take it, ya know?

I couldn’t think of anything else to blog, so I figured I’d finally get around to doing what I promised Teri I would do ages ago– type up the Procrastinator’s Creed I bought at the beginning of last semester. Appropriate that I put it off this long, no?

The Procrastinator’s Creed

1. I believe that if anything is worth doing, it would have been done already.
2. I shall never move quickly, except to avoid more work or find excuses.
3. I will never rush into a job without a lifetime of consideration.
4. I shall meet all of my deadlines directly in proportion to the amount of bodily injury I could expect to receive from missing them.
5. I firmly believe that tomorrow holds the possibility for new technologies, astounding discoveries, and a reprieve from my obligations.
6. I truly believe that all deadlines are unreasonable regardless of the amount of time given.
7. I shall never forget that the probability of a miracle, though infinitesimally small, is not exactly zero.
8. If at first I don’t succeed, there is always next year.
9. I shall always decide not to decide, unless of course I decide to change my mind.
10. I shall always begin, start, initiate, take the first step, and/or write the first word, when I get around to it.
11. I obey the law of inverse excuses which demands that the greater the task to be done, the more insignificant the work that must be done prior to beginning the greater task.
12. I know that the work cycle is not plan/start/finish, but is wait/wait/plan.
13. I will never put off until tomorrow, what I can forget about forever.
14. I will become a member of th Ancient Order of Two-Headed Turtles (the Procrastinator’s Society) if they ever get it organized.

I think number 13 is my favorite.

I discovered that whoever typeset the poster procrastinated proofreading it a bit too long, however. They had “infinitesimally” spelled “infinitesmally,” and “beginning” spelled “begining.” Sheesh.