Dumbledore's triumphant look...

Goblet of Fire is done.

I've written about this on this blog before, about a year and a half ago. But there is a sentence...a sentence that still bothers me a lot. I still don't understand it in the context of all the rest of the books. Was it just a fluke sentence? Something I'm supposed to read and forget?

The sentence is: "For a fleeting instant, Harry thought he saw a gleam of something like triumph in Dumbledore's eyes." This happened right after Harry had explained how Voldy had risen again, using Harry's blood and so therefore, the "ancient magic mother's love protection" is gone. Last time I wrote about this on the blog, someone commented that they thought Dumbledore was excited because now the fight could begin - the work of defeating Voldy could start. This isn't a bad theory, but one I can't agree with because of the choice of words. It wasn't a gleam of excitement - it was a gleam of triumph. Triumph that Harry's protection is gone? Triumph that Voldemort is back?

Stupid sentence.

Keep me honest...

This may be a long post...

I hope you all had a good weekend...I've started this Monday with some happiness and the formulation of some plans. How about we start with the happiness?

• Fun mail day! Yay for having some friendly snail mail again (Al, I'm going to try!). I also received (I'd love to lead you on that someone sent it to me - but I bought it - it just went through the mail really, really slowly which led me to believe it might be lost. Blame it on Chicago because the postmark is about 13 days ago) this:The color is a little off because I had to take the picture without flash to avoid glare, but it's pretty fun, huh? I should have probably given it to my Mom and giggled (there's a whole Mom/owl joke in my family)...but I want it. So too bad Mom. It was super cheap too, without shipping it cost me a total of $5. I'm going to buy a frame and plunk that thing on my wall and, voila, art! The only thing I worry about is that the "red" is really, really deep and rusty. But, it'll still fit in around here. If you're curious about the artist - hit etsy here.
  
• I'm having Indian for dinner because it sounds so good.
• I actually finished a project today at work. One down, 1,000,000 to go.

Moving on to plans:

• I realized today that I have to have a website up and running by the end of this summer. While that website doesn't have to have a blog, it has to have an area for my past projects. It basically has to just be a resume boost at first - a site to send people to that I designed (emphasis on I) that contains a bunch of "coding" samples or links to any work I've done on live sites. It's just a must. So, starting next Monday, every night after work I'm going to spend some time on website work.
• I don't want to start spending all my time on a computer if this apartment is still a dump. So, during the week this week I'm going to amass all the necessary supplies and then Saturday is the day. On Saturday this place will be completely clean - tidied and scrubbed. There are no IFs or BUTs.
  
• I have the following knitting planned that I sort of want finished by tomorrow but will probably have to wait weeks for (since my time seems to be leaking away):
• Fingerless gloves for work - it is SO COLD there
• A pair of knitted socks for the same reason (since i prefer to walk to work in sandals)

Hope I didn't bore you too much - but I need to type up the plans sometimes just to keep me honest - if you all know my apartment will be spotless on Sunday, then maybe I have a better chance of actually sticking to that promise...

My summer habit...

I am a non-smoker (vehement non-smoker. Dad.). I've decided to have a "pack a week" habit - but instead of smoking that money away (and you know, getting cancer) I would buy a bunch of flowers. At the farmers market each Saturday, a bunch of flowers is between $3 and $5. I'm thinking of taking the extra money (since my sis has estimated that a pack in Chicago would be $7), adding it up for a few weeks and giving it to some charity.

My "pack a week" flower/charity habit...why not take what seems like "pocket change" and apply it somewhere...

Bang bang chitty chitty bang bang...

I wonder...if Chitty Chitty Bang Bang were pitched nowadays would it have ever made it to film? Sort of a creepy children's movie (along with Babes in Toyland)...yet somehow these are the movies I remember watching in childhood. And I was always fascinated with the weird contraptions in Chitty's house (was there an egg machine?). Fascinating fact of the day: Roald Dahl was one of the screenwriters on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - makes a LOT of sense.

I've decided that I love being in charge of RSVP's for parties. I love hearing who is coming and who isn't. It's delightful. Have a party? I'll take your RSVP's. And, this party is an experiment in email as RSVP device - I have a feeling I'll get higher numbers of email RSVPs than phone. In fact, I sort of bet that all of the people of my age will email. Email: 1. Human contact: 0.

Ending it all with some Harry Potter...so I finished Azkaban. I must admit that I'm wavering a bit on Harry dying in book 7. After reading Chamber of Secrets I was sure of it - he was dying. Azkaban has me questioning. One of the things that I know I've read before (in more than one of the books) is that Voldy always underestimates the "old" types of magic (Harry's Mom protecting him with her love being the obvious one). And, because of Book 3, Peter Pettigrew owes Harry his life. A life debt. A strong, ancient form of magic. Which may come back to haunt Voldy in the end...Peter saves Harry's life at the last?

Summer TV...

OK, so...I feel slightly embarrassed for liking it...but I like So You Think You Can Dance. I watched last week and while parts were predictably boring (I can't help but get bored during a lot of the ballroom turns), others were unusually riveting. I must say that I usually find contemporary dancing a bit sketchy and sometimes boring (all the reaching and stretching and jumping and..yawn). But last week's contemporary routine has me hooked. The song + the dancing is really amazing.

I am almost, ALMOST tempted to put my first youtube video up here. But, I'll refrain...keep this an un-youtubed up blog (not that I don't enjoy those blogs that pick out the enjoyable videos and hand them to me on a platter). But anyway, you should go here when you're bored next and watch (the music is a must though).

And that's that. I just wanted to share that dance with you. If you like watching dance numbers of any kind, you should watch...

My tuesday...

So, I'm enjoying this whole 'blogging every day' thing. I enjoyed it last November and I enjoy it right now...

Instead of sorting through my pile of crap, I've entertained myself tonight in myriad ways. Yes, I'm technically still busy cleaning the apartment - if by cleaning you mean "walking around the crap and looking at it forlornly." The one big pile of crap has become numerous little piles of crap ("sorted") and then one smaller pile of crap. So I'm close to having the cleaning done (HA. Not true - I'm close to having the sorting done. Then I probably need hours to put stuff away, vacuum and Wet Jet).

Here's what I've done in the last 2 hours:

1. Ate.
2. Organized my bookshelf.
3. The above really only meant that I put all of my yarn into lovely little Target bought faux leather milkcrates (which are both already full) and shifted books around to fit said crates onto the bookshelf.
4. Took pictures of all of my "stash" yarns which I am now going to post on Ravelry - which I love, love, love.
5. Read some HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Children of Men (the latter for an experimental book club).
6. Filled out a rebate form.
7. Started watching Sin City - which I don't love. I don't even know that I like it....

Hope you all are having a fun Tuesday...

Anglophilia...

Besides being immersed in Harry Potter (which has me thinking in English terms like, "too right, too right", brilliant or bogies), watching Dateline with Wills and Harry has been delightful.

They are delicious (both - and from magazines I thought I was far fonder of Harry...but after watching the interview I sort of love them equally). Anglophilia rears its head...its always lurking...

Harry and hairy...

Two unrelated mini-posts today.

Harry as horcrux?

For a while now I've been convinced that Harry will die in book 7. I hold the belief that in order for Voldemort to be be destroyed, Harry will have to be destroyed as well. In other words: Harry is one of the horcruxes (per JK Rowling's site, this is the correct spelling). Proof o' Horcrux-iness (from Chamber of Secrets, Chapter 18):
Harry: Voldemort put a bit of himself in me?
Dumbledore: It certainly seems so.

Hairy blogging issues...

I've discussed this with more than one person over the last few days...but sometimes the whole public blogging thing can sort of hamper the point of a blog. If everyone you know and love knows where your blog is, you can't exactly be talking smack about these people (ok, the truth is that I wouldn't talk smack, I'd more talk about my frustrations with these people).

So what do you do? Sometimes you just can't make a situation hypothetical enough for the people not to know that you're talking about them. Do you hope that their feelings won't be hurt by some possibly uncomfortable talk about them and just blog about it? Go elsewhere and get a private blog? Or just keep it out of the blogosphere all together? It just feels like this blog suffers from my lack of complete honesty/forthrightness with who I am/who the people I love are. And since this is a personal blog...it not reflecting me feels a little...short?

Saturday morning HP thought...

I feel like I'm reading the book differently this time around....(HP and the Chamber of Secrets still).

So...Snape. Debate rages about whether he is good or not, what will happen in the end with him. Sometimes I can be naively trusting that people are good, and I still think he'll do something heroic in the last book to save Harry (and I honestly think that somehow Draco will too). However, that doesn't mean I like him. I think he's an ass.

But, here's my thought: We know now that Snape is a leglimens (spelling? in non-HP language, he can read people's memories and emotions but not necessarily their current thoughts). Either way, when he "stares piercingly" at Harry after Harry has done something wrong (ex: throw a firecracker in a cauldron of boiling Swelling Solution) it suddenly makes sense. He can sense Harry's guilt or fear or whatever and KNOWS Harry did it....so I sort of like Snape a bit better. Because he clearly gives Harry a "pass" on loads of occasions. And maybe all of that mean, hateable Prof. Snape stuff IS just an act....

Ugly in pink...

You know what I hate about the movie Pretty in Pink? That Andy (Molly Ringwald) takes her bosses really classic, fun pink prom dress and makes it into the most hideous, unflattering prom concoction EVER. I mean, the dress Andy wears to prom is possibly the ugliest prom dress in the history of movies. Every time I see this movie I feel angry that she butchers the bosses cute pink dress. It takes away from my enjoyment of the movie...

I started sorting through my pile of crap today while watching Pretty in Pink...

The googliest...

Some nerdy nerdery for you tonight...

Since near the inception of this site, I've had a visit/pageview statistics counter (see way down below, at the very bottom of this page). As of this moment in time there have been 27,679 visitors to this site. Yes, that's a lot. But...remember, if you came here once a day for most of this blog's life, you were counted more than 600 times in that total...

My nerdy friends out there - I've found the MOST FUN, free traffic analyzer ever (and I've only been using it for four days). Google Analytics. I can see search words, locations, lots of cool trends including how loyal you are (how often do you come back to me, you loyal readers? Four of you in the past 4 days have been to my site between 9 and 14 times. That's a lot you nerdos. I usually post every other day at most - what are you doing here at least twice a day?).

Google analytics. Go. Add it to your site. It takes a bit for it to start functioning (I think I did it on Saturday and it fully worked on Sunday) but oooh boy, that's some fun stuff. And it's FREE.

Welcome mundanity...

I feel like now that I don't have school, I should blog more. You know - since I have nothing to do most nights, maybe now I can sit down in front of the blog and write about something besides school. So I'm committed to trying. Possibly next week (possibly the week after) I'm going to try to blog every night. See what comes out of me.

However, it depends on how the cleaning goes - if the cleaning goes really well, I'll try that out next week (chances are it will be the week after next). When my apartment gets super messy (super messy = coffee table and kitchen table are completely covered with shit + stairs that haven't been vacuumed) I deploy the following cleaning approach:

1. Take everything off of the tables and corral everything littering the floor and put it in one big pile.
2. Sort through the pile.
3. Break out actual cleaning supplies and make everything sparkle.

I'm stuck at step 2 right now. In fact, I haven't even really started step 2. But there is a large pile of shit (not literally, but close...you'd be surprised at the amount of trash in that pile...dirty kleenex, granola bar wrappers and junk mail) in a corner of my living room. I think the reason I can't get motivated to start sorting the pile is that now the place feels fairly clean. Clear tables, nothing much on the floor and the pile of shit is out of eyesight. So the motivation to clean is lacking...

So that's that...boring for now. Hopefully after the clean I'll start the website construction...

Oh - and, I'm about to start reading the Harry Potter books all over again in preparation for the new book. I only own 2-6, so I'm skipping the re-reading of number 1 (which I sincerely don't like that much, so I'm not upset about it). I'll let you know if I cry through parts of the last book the second time around....and I'll let you know if I spawn any new theories about Horcruxes (horcrux...horcruxi?), death, lockets...etc.

las fresas dulces...

I love sweets. My sweet tooth dominates my mouth (mental picture: one large, chocolate tooth hanging out in the back of my mouth with the molars). This weekend I bought some fresh strawberries at the farmer's market. And WOW are those things sweet. So sweet that I can only eat a small handful at a time (as opposed to when I buy fresh raspberries or blueberries and I accidentally eat the whole quart or pint in one sitting. Really - you'll be munching and look down and they're suddenly almost gone. Can't wait for those things to show up at the farmer's market). I think this is my first time with the fresh strawberries and I am wow'd with their sweetness.

Last night I found something on Boku's face - it looks bloody or rashy (you try looking at her face closely - yeah, it's impossible. I might try to take a picture later tonight so that I can zoom in with the computer. I have to use technology to look at one of my cats. Really sad. If I take a picture I'm going to update this post with a picture of her weird face problem here). This morning it didn't even look like it was there anymore. I'll try to get a good look again tonight - but this might mean a trip to the vet. And that makes me feel like crying right now (since a visit to the vet always involves chasing cats, shaking limbs and frustrated crying). I understand why some people never bring their animals to the vet. I sort of feel like becoming one of them.

My apartment smells like ASS. So, don't visit until I can start cleaning (Tuesday night!).

Almost there...

Some days I have many ideas about blog entries I can write. Most days I don't actually write them. Today I'm just going to write every blog entry idea that I had (or at least, all of those that I can remember).

Entry #1:
Tomorrow night I give a short presentation with my group member (the best group ever! But I knew her before - and we knew we would work together well. It went so smoothly that the class seemed like a piece of cake. Isn't it nice to hear about a good group work experience? Although my belief that group work has no place in graduate school still holds) and then that class is done. I wish I could share my final project (my last name is all over it, so I'm not keen to share) with you guys because I'm pretty damn proud of it (although the reason I'm proud is hopelessly nerdy. I don't love it because the site looks nice or works correctly - although it does both. I love it because of the way we implemented everything. Yeah. That's pretty nerdy).

Entry #2:
Over the summer I plan to build myself a website. I learned yesterday that I can use the server at work to build the site (although in the end, after the site is developed I'll move it from that server to a host, because again, developing it at work my last name will be all over it). I'm going to try my hand at design (which is my shortcoming) - so over the next few months you can expect some questions for you all about the look of certain things. This blog will move over there. And there will be a part of the site that is a portfolio of my work (so that in the future, potential employers can have one place to go to to try to hire me). I think this ultimately means that eventually my name, full name will be attached to all these blog entries. Which, isn't the worst thing in the world. But there are always worries when going public with your name on the internet. I'll have to think about that some more.

Entry#3:
I think I've changed a bit. I feel calmer as of late - and I truly think it has to do with the fact that I feel like I have a happy future in work that I like. It may seem like a simple thing, but I never had any solid plan for my career. Not in high school, not in college, not when I was working for a living....I also feel like maybe I'm getting a little more patient. Maybe.

Entry #4:
My hand-knitted blanket (I like to call it Saffy Cables - which is really only a shortening of the pattern name - Saffron Cables) is progressing slowly. Every other project has sort of been shafted to the side (although all that sock yarn on its way to my Mom's is going to be super hard to resist). And tonight I finished my first pattern repeat! Yay! Just 2 repeats to go (and some change, I'm thinking about knitting until my yarn runs out even if that means the pattern ends at a weird place). Saffy in numbers:

Current width of the blanket: 254 stitches.
Current width in inches: ~57 inches (it's hard to measure on circular needles)
Current length of the blanket: ~95 rows (i'm a bad row counter still)
Current length in inches: 16.5 inches
Total number of stitches knitted so far: ~23,617

Fa la la la la....

Yesterday, when walking home from the L after class, a man walking toward me was playing the harmonica. Just walking, harmonica'ing. No busking. Just music.

Today when walking home from work, a man walking toward me was playing the accordion. Just walking, accordion'ing. No busking. Just music.

I wonder what music will walk towards me tomorrow.

Metadata monotony...

I'm bored out of my mind. I have 1 and a half assignments left...and that half an assignment is bumming me out (the other one should go pretty quickly - it's really a shared assignment with my group member). Basically I'm writing a paper explaining metadata/folksonomies to common people (you know, all of you). I hate writing papers (which I have probably stated before). But if you want to know what metadata/a folksonomy is...let me know. I'll let you read my crap paper when it's done.

To break up the monotony I accidentally bought a whole lot of yarn online (it was on clearance!). I'm hoping to make a million pairs of socks (watch out - you too, will be getting socks for Christmas...).

I haven't really been allowing myself to do anything fun the last few days (besides that little bit of online shopping)...and it has worked out. But I'm so tired of school...