Bit of Ivory

Alright, so I missed uploading the new section of fic by 54 minutes. So
sue me.
As a teaser, here’s the first two paragraphs of Look to Your
Dreams: section 2–Cherish:
Ginny’s first class the next day was History of Magic, for which she
was duly grateful. It meant she could think without having to act like
she was paying attention. Her dream of last night had unsettled her.
After
crying herself to sleep in the armchair by the fire, the same scene
that
had awoken her before was repeated. It was slightly different each
time,
but the underlying principle was the same—she was engaged to someone
else
(she never did find out who), when suddenly she’d spot Harry in a
crowd.
They’d look at each other and just know. Ginny had woken from
the
last of these scenarios as the light from the rising sun touched her
face.
Startled, she ran back up to her dormitory before anyone could realize
she’d been gone. She made it back into her four poster just in time.
She sat at the opposite end of the Gryffindor table from where she
usually
did at breakfast, unwilling to see Harry up close. Bur her eyes sought
him out, almost involuntarily. He was talking quietly with Hermione and
Ron. He was quiet more often than not lately. Sometimes he would be
stirred
into a smile or a laugh, but usually he was very subdued. He’s had
to
grow up too quickly, Ginny thought. We all have. How could
they
not, with the terrors they had all lived through? It was simply a
matter
of survival.
Ginny watched as the three friends walked toward the dungeons, on their
way to Advanced Potions. Hermione said “Good morning!” as she passed,
and
Ron and Harry both gave her a wave. They were such a tight-knit trio;
there
simply wasn’t room for her, however much she wished differently.
Sometimes
she thought it would be nice for Harry to have another friend. She
remembered
her second year—their third—when Ron and Hermione had fought
practically
all year. Harry had been forced to choose between them, and his choice
of Ron had hurt Hermione very badly. Then again in her third year,
during
that awful fight Harry and Ron had after his name came out of the
Goblet
of Fire, Harry had only Hermione, who was caught between them both.
That
had been a tough time for Ginny, who alternated between being furious
with
her brother for acting so stupid and worrying herself sick over
Harry—whether
he would live or die in the Triwizard Tournament and how he must feel
having
lost his best friend over something that wasn’t his fault and that he
hadn’t
asked for. In both cases, he could have used a third friend—one who
wasn’t
so closely involved with the others. Even now, he could use that
friend,
since Ron had finally realized what everyone else already knew and
asked
Hermione to be his girlfriend. They both tried very hard not to make
Harry
feel like a third wheel, but it was inevitable that Harry would be left
alone sometimes. If only I could fill that place, she thought
as she made her way to Professor Binns’ classroom.
Go to the HJP
Fanfiction Forum or the Heir
of Slytherin Yahoo! Group to read the rest.

Okay, I guess I’d better jump on the bandwagon and do the Friday Five:
1. Do you have a car? If so, what kind of car is it? I don’t
personally own a car, but it is almost universally acknowledged that my
parents’ 1997 white Toyota Corolla (named Lizzy) is “my” car. I say almost
universally acknowledged because my brother would like to challenge
that ruling, but my dad bought the car so I could drive back and forth
to Provo, and I had been driving it almost exclusively for 5 months
before he even saw it (he was still on his mission). But Ben’s
considering buying his own car, so hopefully my title will be
undisputed soon. I’ll probably end up buying Lizzy from my parents
after I graduate.
2. Do you drive very often? Ummm, yeah. How about a 90-mile
round-trip commute three times a week? And a lot of around-town
driving. There’s an unwritten rule in my house, that whenever siblings
go anywhere together, the oldest drives (except in the case of my twin
sisters—when it’s just the two of them they trade off). So if it’s just
me and my sisters, I drive. If it’s me and my brother, he drives. And
if it’s all four of us, he drives. Since Lisa, Laura, and I tend to go
a lot of places together, I drive a lot.
3. What’s your dream car? I’ve always wanted a cherry-red Toyota
Paseo, but then they stopped making them. I’d have to get it used, and
as the years go by the cars keep getting older. *sigh* I guess a
brand-new 2003 Corolla LE is my dream car right now, although after
driving my dad’s new Prius, I’m starting to get second thoughts. (Can
you tell my family is a Toyota family?)
4. Have you ever received a ticket? Not a one.
5. Have you ever been in an accident? Not any serious ones, and
only one that was my fault. I’ve been rear-ended a couple of times
(never with any damage), and once I accidentally backed into another
lady in the Wendy’s parking lot. We couldn’t see any damage, but I gave
her my phone number in case she found any. She never called, and I
never told my parents. Luckily no one in my family reads this blog, so
I can admit this.
Well, there it is. Hmm, that’s kind of fun!

Tired. Oh, so very tired. Must get caffeine. At work. No caffeine at
BYU.
I am in deep trouble.

Hooray! The CPAP saga is finally over. I had my follow-up appointment
with the Sleep Center today, and the CPAP is outta here. I told her the
truth– that I hadn’t even worn the thing for a week, it was so
disruptive to my sleep. She still thinks that my breathing is the main
problem, though, so I have an appointment with an Ear, Nose and Throat
specialist to be evaluated for a tonsilectomy and a rhinoplasty (I have
a deviated septum). She also gave me a prescription for Trazodone,
which is an anti-depressant which doesn’t really help much with
depression, but which does help people’s brains calm down enough to
help them sleep. I tried it once before, but it was just coming off
Ambien, so I think I need to give it a better shot. I took some about
20 minutes ago, and I think it’s starting to have an effect. I’m
feeling really sleepy.
In other news, I wrote some more of my fanfic today. I figure I’m
almost done with section 2. I’ll probably post it by Friday.

Well, I’d like to thank everyone who gave such great comments on my
fanfic. Due to such comments, it’s being heavily revised and expanded.
Look for section 2 by the end of the week
In other news, my family got a new car on Saturday. It’s really my
dad’s car– he’s never had a car all his own. In high school he drove
his parent’s car, when my folks got married he drove my mom’s car (and
continued to drive it for the next 22 years), and after that car died
we bought my grandpa’s car from him, and dad drove that. Dad’s hated
that car ever since we got it. We only bought it in the first place
because my grandpa really wanted us to buy it, and since he’s old and
has Parkinson’s disease, we felt we had to do it. But now the car’s
having problems. It won’t start half the time, and the other day it
quit in the middle of the road, then sprang back to life. It was time
to get something new.
For the past three years, my dad has been eyeing the Toyota
Prius. It’s a gas/electric hybrid. Basically, it works the same as
a regular car. You put gas in it, and it gets all its energy from the
gas. No plugs. The difference is that they integrated an electric motor
and giant battery with the gas engine, and added a super computer. The
computer weighs a number of factors, and decides when to run the
engine, and when to run off batteries. Plus, they added a special
feature that turns the electric motor into a generator when the car is
braking, so it takes all the kinetic energy that is usually lost in
braking and feeds it back into the system. The result? The car gets 48
MPG on the freeway and 52 MPG in the city (because with all those
starts and stops, the engine doesn’t always need to run). Dad figures
he’ll need to fill up about every 6 weeks. It has a cool display where
you can track exactly where the energy is coming from and your
real-time MPG, as well as a graph in 5 minute intervals. We took it up
Parley’s canyon to see what it can do. Now, we’ve never been able to go
more than 65 MPH on that summit, but the Prius can take power from both
the engine and the battery when called upon to do it, so we flew by
everything on the road at 75 MPH. We didn’t get the greatest mileage on
the way up, of course, but when we went back down, the engine was off
the entire time and we got about 100 MPG. It averaged out to about 50
MPG. We had great fun driving it, although I must say it’s a bit
disconcerting when the car completely turns off at stop lights. I now
look at all those SUV’s that get 12 or 15 MPG and think “Suckers!”
Toyota is working on getting the Hybrid technology into other cars
right now. They expect to release a Hybrid Sienna and Four-Runner in
2004. Now THAT will be cool. The sticker price is a little over
$20,000, but it includes a lot of extras, like keyless entry, side
airbags, cruise control, and stuff like that. It’s estimated that they
actually cost Toyota about $30,000-35,000 to make, but they’re selling
them at a loss to build a market. Now how many American companies can
you think of that would do that?
And, further to my post of June
17, we are trying to come up with a name for the car. Dad is
favoring Bingley at this point (as in Charles Bingley from Jane
Austen’s Pride and Prejudice), although I’m putting on a strong
case to call it Albus. The car is white, and we need something
to keep You-Know-Who in line (that’s our van, again, see previous
post). My brother Ben says it will bring balance to the garage, but I
told him that in that case, we’d have to name it Anakin. Other
possibilites include Guy Patterson (from That Thing You Do!),
Muscles McGuirk (which is a name my dad has used for ages, and we just
recently discovered that it was the name of a character in the old Adventures
of Superman Series starring George Reeves), and White Knightley
(again, after George Knightley in Jane Austen’s Emma). One
thing is certain, however. A couple of years ago, we made my dad a
license plate cover, but it wouldn’t fit on the the Sara, so it’s been
sitting on his dresser since then. We want him to put it on the Prius,
now that it’ll work. To understand the significance of the license
plate cover, you first must understand that my dad has always insisted
that he is Perfectly Normal. Of course, he’s far from it, but whenever
we try to tell him he’s weird, he says “I am not, I’m Perfectly
Normal.”
The license plate cover says “Perfectly normal people worry me.” It’s
going on the car tonight.

Okay, I’ve now posted it at the Heir
of Slytherin Yahoo! Group (you’ll have to join to see it there) and
at the
Harry James Potter forums (who knows how long that name is going to
last?). Please comment.
Now I’m all nervous.

I don’t know if I’m completely crazy or not. Probably. I’ve just done
something I thought I would never, ever, do. I just wrote a fanfic.
Well, a ficlet, really. I’d like to expand it a bit, make it more
interesting, but there it is. I wrote it here at work, and just
e-mailed it to myself so I can put it on my computer at home.
I honestly can’t believe I just did this.
It’s a Harry/Ginny fic, and it’s based on a dream I had the other
night. You see, I’ve been hopelessly in love with a certain guy for
years on end. I dream about him a lot, actually. Whenever there’s a guy
in a romantic role, it’s always him– sometimes he plays different
characters, but it’s always his face, his personality, and I always
know in the back of my mind that it’s him, even when he’s supposedly
Clark Kent or whatever. What made my dream different the other night
was that the same scenario was repeated over, and over, and over again.
It was a little different each time, but the basic premise was the
same. One of these scenarios was particularly vivid, and that’s the one
I used in my fanfic. This dream has been replaying in my head ever
since I woke up from it. It’s occurred to me more than once that
Ginny’s situation and mine are terribly similar– hopelessly loving a
man far out of reach (I think that’s probably why I’m so H/G, I want
her to get together with him because I want to get together with this
other guy)– and today it occured to me that I could turn my dream into
an H/G ficlet. So I wrote it. I also incorporated a song that has been
kind of my theme song for this guy lately– Crash and Burn by
Savage Garden (that and Goodbye to Love by the Carpenters). I
know it came out years too late for the HP universe (it came out in
2000, didn’t it?), and especially since my fic takes place while Harry
and Ginny are both still at Hogwarts, but it’s just so perfect for what
I feel Ginny’s going through (because dang it, I’m going through it
too) that I just had to include it. Maybe it was a wizard song that
Savage Garden stole. Yeah, that’s it.
Anyway, it’s written, and I’m trying to get the courage up to post it
somewhere.

I just found out something very exciting: from Publisher’s
Weekly:
“Startz also has a first-look deal with Miramax, where her
co-production of Gail Carson Levine’s Newbery Honor– winning Ella
Enchanted begins filming in Ireland next month, with Anne Hathaway (The
Princess Diaries) in the lead role.”
Okay, how cool is that?!? Squee! Ella Enchanted is one of my
all-time favorite books. I read it in about 2 hours while I was working
at Deseret Book, and I immediately bought it. Eventually I got a
hardcover version, because my paperback one was already totally worn
out. Every time I read it, I think “This would make a great movie!” And
then I think they wouldn’t make it, because Ever After was a
Cinderella adaptation, and it didn’t come out all that long ago. But
here they are, starting filming, and with Anne Hathaway in the lead
role, which I think is a perfect match. It hasn’t showed up on the IMDB
yet, but I did a Google search and found out that this
guy is going to play Prince Charmont. I’ve never seen him in
anything, but he looks like he could do the part.
If you go to that PW article, there’s a list at the bottom about all
the other kids’ books that have been optioned. There’s a lot of cool
ones: His Dark Materials; The Two Princesses of Bamarre
(another Gail Carson Levine book); Artemis Fowl; The Secret of
Platform 13; Dial-A-Ghost; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; A
Cricket in Times Square; Nancy Drew; Because of Winn-Dixie; Frindle;
and more! Then, of course, there’s Tuck Everlasting, which is
coming out in October and stars Alexis Bledel, who plays Rory in Gilmore
Girls. Wonderful!
I can see that I’ll be at the movies a lot in the next few years.

I rode in from my car on my Razor scooter today. It was pretty fun. I
bought the scooter last week, and it was quite the impulsive purchase,
I assure you. My sisters and I had gone to our local factory outlet
stores in search of new backpacks (my old one was 4 years old and
falling apart). After buying our chosen backpacks, we wandered– right
past a place called “Toy Liqudators.” It’s Kay-Bee Toys’ outlet store.
I wasn’t planning on going in, but then I noticed them: the Razor
scooters. Actual Razor brand, no less. I’ve been thinking about getting
one for a while, but I just couldn’t justify spending 80 or more bucks.
So I went in to look at the price: $27.95. A bargain! I bought one.
I’ve spent the last few days finding out if the scooters are legal on
campus. Rollerblading, rollerskating, and skateboarding are all
outlawed, but there’s not a word about scooters. So since I was running
late this morning, I decided to take the Razor with me and see if I
could get to work any faster. I did, although I felt a little stupid
carrying my folded-up scooter upstairs to the Humanites Workroom to
stash it for the day.
But I decided I really like riding the thing. Who knew?

Further to previous post, I found a dowloadable version at gamehouse.com,
who makes the game. I’ll probably be downloading the trial version
tonight, if not the full $19.95 version. Go me!