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Yesterday one of my coworkers told me that I come across as a Mormon. And even though 1) I have nothing against Mormons, and 2) I put no stock in said coworker's opinions, this is not something you want to hear when you're trying to convert to Judaism. Yesterday I saw the episode of "Sex and the City" where Charlotte converts and puts a mezuzah on her door at the end. I don't know yet if want a mezuzah when I convert or not. (Update: Here's my mezuzah!)
Anyway, I think maybe I came off as Mormon to him because I'm so clean-cut and boring, which is funny because my Mormon friends have more drama than anyone I know. I should've told him that he comes across as a bag of flour.
Back in 2003, shortly after I got my truck, I came across a red-white-and-blue toy donkey while browsing in a second-hand shop. I bought him and named him Alan Roosevelt Moore -- Alan after Al Franken (whom Sara and I got to see in person when he gave a speech at LSU at 2004), Roosevelt after FDR, and Moore after Michael Moore. We called him Moore and sat him the back window of the truck, where he stayed for the next three years. In 2006, Mom accidentally threw Moore away, and I feel a little stupid for saying this, since he was just a stuffed animal, but I was pretty upset over it. (I posted about it here.)
This week, Sara bought me a new, similar red-white-and-blue toy donkey. I don't like this new guy quite as much as Moore -- he is smaller and a bit more cheaply-made -- but I am happy to have an all-American jackass again. I plan to put him in the back window of Muse Watson (my car). After much thought, I named my new donkey Jethro Michael Errant: Jethro after NCIS's Leroy Jethro Gibbs, Michael after my Jewish grandfather, and Errant after "ears like errant wings," a line from GK Chesterton's poem The Donkey. (Yes, it has a Christian theme, but do you know of any other poems celebrating donkies?)
As with Moore, I'm going to call this donkey by his last name, Errant. According to the dictionary, it means 1) deviating from the regular or proper course, erring, straying; 2) journeying or traveling, as a medieval knight in quest of adventures, roving adventurously; 3) moving in an aimless or lightly changing manner: an errant breeze.
Here's a picture of Errant. I scoured through all my old photos, but I don't have one of Moore. :(
Only two new episodes to go in Season 8 of NCIS! From the spoilers and promo photos, it looks like Mike Franks is going to die on Tuesday (Swan Song). I'm kinda dreading it. Mike's not a main character, but I named my car after the actor who plays him, Muse Watson, and will be sad to see him go.
We went to bed on Thanksgiving Day with the air conditioner on, and woke up on Black Friday to freezing-cold, wet weather. The annoying thing isn't so much that it's up and down, but that it always seems to be down on Friday evening. The crazies were out in hoardes that night, and on Black Saturday.
Eva, Adam, Ben, and I went to the movies to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 on Saturday night. (Yes, Ben came with us. I'm as shocked as you are.) I was also a little shocked with how much dark stuff they got away with putting in that movie. It was good, but between the God-awful Prince's Tale and Epilogue, I'm really not sure if I'm going to see Part 2 next summer. Anyway, it got me reminiscing about where I was when each previous Harry Potter movie was released.
- Sorcerer's Stone. Released 16 November 2001. This came out on the last Friday before Thanksgiving vacation of my junior year of high school. In French class that day, Mlle Gryppe let us play charades, and when Lauren started to touch her hair as a clue, I immediately guessed, "Harry Potter." Mom and Adam went to see it that day while I was in school. Dad took Adam and me to see it sometime during the next week, and we talked to him nonstop throughout it, explaining what was happening. He said he enjoyed it, but I imagine he must have been bored out of his skull. The first two movies weren't the best.
- Chamber of Secrets. Released 15 November 2002. This was came out during the Thanksgiving vacation of my senior year. Aunt Carolyn was in town for the holiday, and she took Adam, Juliana, Olivia, and me all to see it. We talked about the symbolism of different characters' names, and Aunt Carolyn said Lucius Malfoy was "a bad daddy."
- Prisoner of Azkaban. Released 4 June 2004. This came out the summer after my freshman year of college. I went to see it with Daniel, my friend from high school, and we ran into another friend, Amanda, who was working at the theater concession stand. In July, Mom, Adam, and I went to Houston to visit Dad, and the three of them saw it, but I saw Two Brothers.
- Goblet of Fire. Released 18 November 2005. This came out during my junior year of college. My French professor, JXB, mentioned in class one day that the students and teachers from the Beauxbatons were terrible French stereotypes. I saw it when I was home for Thanksgiving, but I honestly can't remember who went with me. I do remember that I wore the Harry Potter shirt I bought for the release of the book Half-Blood Prince, which came out the summer before, and that Eva told me she was "so embarrassed" for the Beauxbatons girls when they did that little dance entering the Great Hall, which I found hilarious.
- Order of the Phoenix. Released 11 July 2007. This movie and the seventh (and final) book came out within two weeks of each other during the summer after I graduated college and before I went to France. Sara, Adam, and I saw the movie on July 21, the day the book was released. I wore my Harry Potter shirt and baseball cap, which I'd won a few weeks before, during Harry Potter trivia day at the Baton Rouge library. After seeing the movie, Adam and I attended the midnight release at Books-A-Million, and I read travel books on France.
- Half-Blood Prince. Released 15 July 2009. I took Eva to see this a week or two after it was released, and we made a day of it. First we went to a local water park, then ate lunch at McDonald's, then went to see the movie. We still hadn't completely dried off from the water park by the time we saw it, so we were cold and shivering in a dark theater for about two hours, but other than that, the day couldn't have been better. My entry on it is here. (Edit: I just realized something neat: Eva and I saw HBP on July 21, two years to the day after Sara, Adam, and I saw OotP, in the same theater. Cool, huh?)
- Update! The Deathly Hallows: Part 2. Released 15 July 2011. Adam, Eva, and I went to the same water park, and saw the movie afterwards. My entry on it is here.
P.S. I just spent about the last two hours transferring a ton of old photos off my two poor abused SD cards and onto nice big flash drives, where I completely reorganized and labeled them. SCORE!
And Rebecca? She wants to go to Venus!
Oct. 21st, 2010 10:28 pmI heard Levon on the radio as I was driving home from work today. For some reason, I remember very vividly the first time I heard that song. Join me for a trip down memory lane.
It was April 2006, around the time of Spring Break. I had just gotten out of French Literature class with the drunkard and taken the Tigerland bus back to Tarpartment, where Sara and I were living at the time. It was still early in the afternoon, so I got in the truck and drove around Tigerland looking at apartments, since Sara and I would be moving out of Tarpartment at the end of the summer. It was a beautiful spring day, cool and sunny, and I had just turned onto Tigerland Avenue when "Levon" came on the radio.
I was sort of in awe, and I remember thinking, "How have I never heard this song before?" I don't know why I remember this so well, since it's not an especially meaningful song to me or anything. It's just so... strange. I mean, when it got to the lyric Calls his child Jesus / Cause he likes the name, I wondered for a minute if I was hearing things.
Rebecca wore shorts yesterday!
Jun. 7th, 2009 10:16 pmWell, my barf-free streak came to end last Tuesday night, after I ate spaghetti at Grandma's. It wasn't as bad as it usually is, but I was still disappointed in myself. But I did last for almost a month there, and I'm determined to make my next barf-free period even longer.
Sara was offered a transfer to Baton Rouge, so we went there on Friday to scope things out. We got to revisit all our old campus haunts, which was both cool and weird. I can't describe it, but it's weird revisiting a place that used to be so familiar to you. (It's like when I see pictures of French street signs, or other things that I used to see every day in France. It hurts.) Campus was as lovely as ever, except for the construction that they're still doing on the Union! (They started it in 2006!) The Quad and Allen brought back nice memories; Middleton was closed, which sucked because I had so wanted to go back there. But revisiting my old place of employment in the Union, one of the worst jobs I've ever had, made me feel like I was having a panic attack.
The real kicker, of course, was the French Department. It was a Friday evening, so everything was empty, but man, looking at those dark, empty classrooms -- again, I can't describe it -- but just looking at them and thinking about all the days and weeks of my life I spent in them, and how little use it all was when I was actually in France. It was a good thing my old professors weren't there, because I probably would've started screaming at them, "Why did you make me discuss Balzac and translate medieval French?! Why didn't you teach me something I actually needed to know?! Et pourqoui, et pourquoi!"
Our old neighborhood had hardly changed at all. That was weird too, that life goes on as normal (in Baton Rouge, in Villers-Cotterets, etc.) even when for you, they've become a thing of the past. I got a pepperoni-mozarella-feta calzone for dinner, Sara got nachos and fried pickles, and we ate them on a picnic bench on the lakeshore.
This post has been very nostalgic and heavy, so I'll end with a link to the coolest YouTube video ever. A literal music video of "Total Eclipse of the Heart". If you haven't seen this yet, I envy you. I saw it for the first time last night, and I had to keep pausing the video because I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe.
As most of you know, my dad and my aunt both died in 2004, within a month of each other. I remember thinking that things couldn't get much worse. But no. Because less than a month after my dad died, Bush was reelected.
I was a sophomore in college. I had classes in the morning (Intermediate French, Louisiana Fiction) and afterwards I ate lunch at the base of the clock tower, where I almost always ate lunch in college. It was raining that day, so I sat under the widest awning of the tower and watched the rain fall. When I was done eating, I had to make a mad dash from the clock tower to the student union, where I worked. It wasn't a long distance and I tried to run fast, but I still got soaked. A guy was standing outside the union, under one of the awnings, holding up a big Bush '04 sign. I was disgusted. And worried. In fact I was worried all day. My stomach hurt. I was at my job in the union all afternoon, and that evening Sara and I went out and voted. I don't remember exactly where we went to vote, but I remember it was hot and there was a long line. I also seem to remember Mom being there. I always knew, deep down, who was going to win that election.
In 2008, I also knew who was going to win the election. I was also at work for most of the day. (I wrote Obama on the back of my hand in the morning, but later my boss made me wash it off. Only one person commented on it. It was this black woman who said, "That a girl!") But that's as far as the similarities go between '04 and '08. This time, there was no worrying, no stomach ache. There was a feeling of relief, of Oh God, it's finally over! He won! It's over! And he did win, but it's not over. It's beginning. It makes me want to mail postcards to Marlene and Chinese Sara and say, "Look, we did it after all! We elected him! We did it!"
Yes we did. Yes we can.
Greetings from our new apartment!
Today our landlord replaced our lock, we got our cable and Internet hooked up, and I went grocery shopping with my foodstamp money and bought us a lot of food, including goat cheese and Kroger-brand pickles! And I bought Sara some tequila and lime salsa and David-brand sunflower seeds, which I guess are her version of goat cheese and pickes. I jokingly told Sara that now we probably won't leave our apartment for days. Actually I'll probably leave soon to go bike-riding. Our neighborhood is the kind that just begs you to go bike-riding through it.
We haven't thought of a name for our new apartment yet (the last two were "Tarpartment," in honor of the tar dripping down the walls and "Slobpartment," after the slobby roommates). Judging strictly from what is inside the apartment, this one isn't quite as nice as Tarpartment; it's older and doesn't have a dishwasher or central air-conditioning. But in every other aspect, this one is way better than Tarpartment. The complex is smaller, the neighborhood is infinitely nicer, we actually have landlords instead of slumlords, and so far there have been no black people blaring loud rap music at all hours or Mexican families living ten people to one apartment.
Rebecca's book awards are here!
Jan. 4th, 2008 10:31 pm( Award-Winning Books of 2007 )
( All Books of 2007 )
P.S. If the anchorman on CNN International says, "You've never seen an American election like this before!" one more time, I think I may have to put a brick through the TV.
Things that have pissed me off…
This afternoon I taught a new class for the first time, and they were easily the wost class I've had so far. They were a 2-class, so they didn't speak English very well, but rather than clam up like most of the 2-classes, they just decided to be loud and disruptive in French. The hour could not be over fast enough. Afterwards I told Madame G about it – assistants are supposed to report any discipline problems to the teachers, immediately – and she said she wouldn't leave me alone with them next time. Fortunately next time is two weeks away.
For dinner in the cafeteria tonight they served what they claimed was boudin, but it certainly didn't look or taste like any boudin I had ever seen. I couldn't get it down, so I went to kitchen and had a bowl of cereal instead. (I recently found a French cereal that is exactly like American Honey Smacks!) Nakeisha didn't eat the boudin either, but Sara did, and when Nakeisha asked her in amazement, "You actually like that stuff?" Sara replied, "No, of course no, very bad," and cotinued eating. She has a remarkable talent for eating even the most disgusting cafeteria food.
As some of you know, I've been trying to make YouTube videos ever since I got here but haven't been able to. I really wouldn't mind being unable to make videos so much, but suddenly the school computers aren't letting me visit YouTube at all. Every time I try to go there, the "C'est interdit!" blocker comes up, telling me that it's a pornographic site. I know it sounds pathetic, but I'm scared by the thought that I wouldn't be able to log in, moderate comments, or edit video information (which I do regularly) for a very long time – possibly not until April. I simply can't not log into YouTube until April. There's not an Internet cafe in this small town, but if I have to, I'll find one, wherever it is, and start going there regularly.
Things that have made me happy…
This morning I got two pieces of mail, one of them a check from Mom, one of them a package of magazines from Grandma (and getting packages from home is like Christmas). Two of the magazines Grandma mailed me were old issues of The Sun from 2003 and 2004. I was floored by them, because Sara had a subscription to The Sun at that time, and I remembered these two issues clearly, even though I hadn't seen them for such a long time. Sara and I were living in our old apartment, and we used to read Readers Write to each other every time we got a new issue. When we were done reading them we stuck them on the black end table, next to the pink couch, and later I stacked them beside my bed – this was before I moved my mattress into the closet – so I could reread Readers Write and Sunbeams before I went to sleep.
Adam scanned several pages of The LSU Gumbo and e-mailed them to me. It was wonderful to finally see some of it, because I worked so hard on it last year and have been waiting so long to see how it turned out. One of the articles Adam sent me was "LSU in the Rain" – it's hard to read those words now and know that I wrote them over a year ago.
I finally got a key to my very own classroom. It's less than half the size of all the other classrooms, but that's okay, because I don't feel fully comfortable in front of rooms that big anyway. Today I decorated my room a little with posters I had stolen from the LSU Union Art Gallery and brought with me here. One of them is a poster of "Where We Live," a show of photos taken by kids living in a FEMA village. It's a powerful feeling to look at the photos of those kids standing between the white trailers, a world away from France.
Rebecca has a job!
Aug. 8th, 2007 12:31 amI'm almost halfway done with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. So far I've stuck to my goal of reading one chapter a day, and I'm still keeping a journal of it, which I write in almost every day (which is why I've haven't been writing in this journal so much lately).
I'm back at Mom's house for now. Moving out of Slobpartment went smoothly and certainly much better than moving out of Tarpartment, although Mom was late arriving in Baton Rouge because she'd stayed up late the night before finishing Harry Potter (every Potter fan in the world is probably done with it by now except me). Although I didn't hate living in Slobpartment, I was not sorry to see the last of it. My three roommates there were nice girls but incredibly wasteful -- hence my name for the place. One of them bought milk and let it sit in the refrigerator until it was lumpy. One of them made brownies and let them sit on the counter until they were rock-hard. One of them bought a chicken dinner, took one bite, and threw the rest away. I never said anything to them about it, but it really angered me. Wasting food like that is an insult to everyone in the world who doesn't have enough to eat.
I finally found a temporary job, which is a huge relief. I'm working at the bookstore at the university here for the first few weeks of the fall semester; they hired me right away when I told them that I was a veteran of the LSU bookstore. My first day was today, and although it was difficult to wake up so early and stand up for so long, it feels good to be earning money again. The air conditioner in the bookstore was broken, but it wasn't as bad as you'd expect of Louisiana in August -- several were fans were on, and one them was blowing right on me. But a broken air conditioner is probably the least of that school's problems. From what I saw, there was no landscaping or custodial services, litter was everywhere, outdoor benches were covered in bird shit, and the public restrooms in the student union were filthy. Most of all, it was unbelievably small. The bookstore where I work only has one floor, and its textbook department is less than a fourth of LSU's. When I first started at LSU, I regretted not going to this college instead, but now I'm thankful that I didn't. It doesn't even have a French Department! The French education that I would have received there couldn't compare to what I learned at LSU. (Sara said that when I ring up their totals, I should add to my customers, "Getting an education, priceless," like in the MasterCard commercials.)
Speaking of my French education, my departure for France is drawing frighteningly near. We're making a trip to the Visa Consulate in Houston tomorrow to apply for my visa, and I'll probably be buying my airplane ticket soon. More on that as it develops.
Best and Worst of...
May. 20th, 2007 05:21 pmAt Sara’s suggestion, I have compiled a best and worst list of my college professors. Here goes!
BEST
1. Brager (French). I hated Brager immediately, but by the end of the semester, my feelings had changed completely, and I was actually didn’t want his class to be over. He was probably the hardest French professor I ever had, but I learned more from him than from anyone else.
2. Lowe (English). Even when they were on really boring readings, Lowe’s lectures were always interesting. He also took a lot of time to actually get to know his students, which I really appreciated. With his pin-striped suits and his thick Southern accent, Lowe can only be described as charming.
3. Yeager (French). So many of my French professors are French, so it felt like a breath of fresh air when I realized Yeager was American. Because he had to learn French, like his students did, he knew how difficult it could be, and he was much more understanding than most French professors.
4. Anselmo (French). Anselmo was probably my funnest professor. He was so enthusiastic and energetic, and he loved letting us play games (like French Scrabble) to help us learn. I’m also grateful that I was in Anselmo’s class when Dad died. He gave me all the time I needed to catch up.
5. McGuire (English). Very friendly and approachable, McGuire knew exactly how to make a class of scared freshman feel at ease. More importantly, she knew how to challenge us and make us better writers. I think she retired shortly after I was in her class, which is a shame.
WORST
1. The French Snob (English). He was French and taught English, and he was easily my most arrogant professor. He offended or condescended to every student in class. When he passed out an essay he had written, his grammar and logic were so poor that I would’ve guessed it had been written by a 10-year-old.
2. The American Snob (English). I think this snob cared less about his students than any other professor. He never expected any quality work from them, and many of the students in my class certainly obliged. He was too eager to put a label on a story rather than take the time to understand it.
3. TIE. Uncle Ben (African-American Studies). I think senility had taken over this old man’s mind. I know next to nothing about African-American Studies, but I could’ve taught the class better than he did. He felt it necessary to explain that slaves were slaves because they weren’t paid for their work.
3. TIE. The Pervert (French). I don’t think I’d go so far as to call this pointless man a professor. He didn’t seem to understand that being a professor meant actually teaching your students, not cancelling all your classes. Even on the rare occasion that he actually held class, I still never learned anything from him.
4. The Drunkard (French). He easily gave the most boring lectures of any of my professors, and his slurred speech often crossed the line from mind-numbingly boring to incoherent. He acted like a two-year-old and threw temper tantrums whenever students didn’t follow his directions down to the letter.
5. The Robot (English). She treated her students like kindergarteners who had never written an essay before. She also expected us to lecture ourselves; her only contribution to class discussions was, “Hm.” No matter how insightful or ignorant a comment a student might make, her only response was, “Hm.”
Was it really four years ago?
May. 17th, 2007 04:00 pmWell, I graduate from college tomorrow. I’m still not sure how I feel about it. Part of me is jumping for joy, but another part of me is terrified. I’m glad I decided to go to graduation, even though finding a cap and gown, a new pair of shoes, and a nice outfit (at the last minute I scrapped my plan to wear a t-shirt, jeans, and flip-flops) has been a hassle. Still, I know it’s going to be hot in the assembly center tomorrow, especially under the cap and gown, and it’s tempting to spend the day sitting on my butt and eating cake batter ice cream instead. I just hope I won’t pass out like I did at my class’s farewell Mass in high school. But actually, that was somewhat appropriate, since I nearly passed out my first day of high school. That’s what they get for making us attend a Mass on the first day of school (although it wasn’t really their fault – school started on August 15, a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics). I was already scared to death as a freshman at a new high school where I didn’t know anybody, and a long Mass in that hot gym was too much for me to handle.
Lately I’ve been thinking back a lot to my high school graduation. I’m sure I must have been as nervous and as worried about the future then as I am now, although it’s hard to imagine. But I have found one important similarity between then and now: The fifth Harry Potter book was released shortly after I graduated high school, and the seventh (and final!) book will be released shortly after I graduate college. I keep telling myself that even if everything else goes wrong, I will still have Harry Potter to look forward to.
These are a few of my favorite things...
Jul. 22nd, 2006 11:26 pmToo often we only realize how much something means to us after we lose it. In an effort to try to appreciate things while they're still a part of my life, and not afterwards, I've compiled this list. Most of the things and people listed here will not be a part of my life once the summer is over.
1. Riding my bike. I've ridden Clochette (that's the name of my bike and also the French name of Tinkerbell) to and from school everyday this summer, and I just love the healthy, happy feeling that it gives me. It's sweating and getting Clochette up and down the apartment stairs that are the problems.
2. My Shakespeare professor. He quotes Billy Joel songs in his lectures, shows us the young and modern movie adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, compares King Henry and Prince Hal to Anakin and Luke Skywalker, and makes a lot of other attempts to try and seem cool. It's actually pretty funny.
3. Ann Marie. Ann Marie sits in front of me in Shakespeare class. She spends every class knitting, and she always has something interesting to say. But the prize for the best comment in that class has to go for me for, "I think that maybe Iago is actually in love with Othello and that all his hatred really stems from his inability to express this desire." Half the class laughed, and the other half gave me weird looks.
4. The crepe myrtles. The crepe myrtle trees on campus are still in full bloom, which is a little unusual for this late in the summer, but I'm not complaining. They look and smell gorgeous. I always walk by a crepe myrtle tree full of pale pink blossoms on my way to work, and it is so beautiful that I look forward to it everyday.
5. Mater Dolorosa and Cousteau. These are two pieces of artwork currently on display in the art gallery where I work, and I have a very good view of each of them from my desk. Mater Dolorosa is a needlepoint of the Virgin Mary, and Cousteau is a watercolor of a small spaniel named after the French explorer. Cousteau hangs on the wall directly beside my desk, so I like to pretend that he's my dog.
6. If We Fall in Love Tonight, by Rod Stewart. This is one of the CDs that my boss keeps in the gallery, and I usually play it when I'm at work. I've listened to it so often this summer that I should have gotten sick of it a long time ago, but I haven't. I especially love "Downtown Train," "All for Love," and the horribly cheesy "My Heart Can't Tell You No."
7. Sam. Sam is probably my favorite co-worker. Our hours don't overlap very often, but when they do, I like talking to him. Over the summer, we've discovered that we both love a lot of the same things -- Harry Potter, Star Wars, Law and Order: SVU (and the possible romance between Elliot and Olivia), and the unbelievable head-butt that Zinedine Zidane pulled on Marco Materazzi earlier this month.
8. The birds. I've eaten lunch in the oak grove everyday this summer, and I always feed my bread crusts to the little birds that land beside my bench. I've seen many different kinds come looking for crumbs -- finches, blue jays, robins, sparrows, mockingbirds, and the occasional squirrel. I feel like I have twenty pet birds with cages that I never have to clean.
9. The two guys who have the lab station next to mine in chemistry class. I don't know their names, but these guys are hilarious. They're always telling jokes, and even the professor cracks up and lets them get away with quite a lot (they once threw a cup of dry ice onto the floor -- it disappeared!). They like to joke about having to inhale all the fumes in the lab because their lab station is right next to the fume hood.
10. Cream pops. On a spur earlier this summer, I bought a bulk box of cream pops at the grocery store. Cream pops, popsicles with an ice cream center, were one of my very favorite treats when I was a little kid, and I hadn't had any in a very long time before I bought this box. I still have a few more in the freezer, and I hope to make them last all summer, so that in the future I can refer to Summer 2006 as "Cream Pop Summer." Or maybe cream pops will become an annual summer tradition for me.
Well, I've been absent for, ah, a long time, yes, but I do have a good excuse. I was, uh, I was kidnapped by international terrorists. Yeah, that's it! And I spent the last two months held hostage in an obsucre cave in Iraq with no plumbing or electricity. I barely managed to escape with my life, and every day I prayed that I would someday be able to view this journal again, and... uh... well... okay, not really.
I obviously wasn't kidnapped by terrorists, and I don't have a good excuse. I've been busy since school started (and I think JXB's French classes are about to kill me!) but for the last month or so of summer, I was just really lazy. Not to mention depressed by the end of Half-Blood Prince. Deaths of cool, courageous, quirky, funny, well-loved father figures will do that to you, I guess.
Oh, and I do have one good excuse for the past week or so! I've been dodging hurricanes! First Katrina, then Rita. Cripes, why does God hate Louisiana?
In about thirty-six hours, my adventures with Harry will be over for another two to three years while Rowling writes the final book. I am going to read the last five chapters tomorrow, and if I can finish them after midnight, I will have made the book last four weeks. That's a new record: Order of the Phoenix, which was significantly longer, took me three weeks. The strange thing is that making the book last this long hasn't been difficult, but I can tell that today and tomorrow are going to be harder than the last few weeks put together. I've been pacing the floor and clenching my fists to keep from grabbing that book. I finished the really wonderful book The Red Tent last night, so now I no longer have Dinah and her family to keep me distracted from Harry.
I'm not going to pretend that I still don't know who dies. I visited a webpage that I shouldn't have and read a spoiler, and it's exactly who I've suspected all along. Adam has told me that the real spoiler isn't who dies, it's how he dies. The news hasn't really hit me yet, but I'm sure I'll be crying my eyes out when it happens.
Adam and I have been arguing over which book is dark, The Order of the Phoenix or The Half-Blood Prince. We finally agreed that Prince is darker but Phoenix seems darker. Prince is piled with more deaths and disasters -- Katie, Stan, Hannah's mother, the Montgomery boy -- and though Phoenix had less unpleasantries, its were closer to home, largely thanks to the cruel sadism of Umbitch.
My favorite chapter for this entry is definitely Chapter 22, "After the Burial." I would have never, ever expected Harry to so exploit being an orphan. "But my mum is dead! Give me the memory!" Hilarious. It was obviously the Felix Felicis that made him do it, because he usually doesn't even like to talk about his parents, much less use their deaths to get what he wants.
And Tonks reminds me of Mom. Sometimes I'd just like to tell both of them to get over it. Yeah, I'm a bitch, I know.
Most of my dreams slip away when my alarm clock goes off, but last night's dream was so powerful and vivid that I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I dreamt that I was at a little park with all of my old classmates from high school. Anne Marie, Caleb, Amber, RJ, Iman, Micah, Caroline, Bruce, Mari, Aric, Melissa, Drew -- everyone was there, and we had each been assigned to write a poem. I was trying to write one about Sigmund Boraks, but before I could get started, we got the news that our class had won some sort of special prize and we were all taking a plane ride to go and collect it.
The next thing I knew, we were all packed and riding a bus to the airport when suddenly I yelled that I had forgotten something. It must have been something important because we took a detour to my house just so I could get it. And then -- and this is where the dream becomes as real as any memory -- as I was stepping off the bus, I looked up the driveway and into the backyard. The sunlight was so bright, and I thought at first I was seeing things, so I raised my hand to shield my eyes. The pool was blue and clean, and I started to walk toward it. Then I saw that someone was swimming in it, and as I got closer, I saw it was Dad.
Today I have reached my goal of making the book last three weeks. If I were a realistic person, I would congratulate myself and finish the book today. But because I'm unrealistic and stubborn and hard-to-please, I've decided to try and make the final eleven chapters last for another week. Adam doubt that I'll be able to do it; he says the final five chapters have to be read all at once. We'll see. As much as I want to know what happens in the remainder of the book, I keep asking myself, if I finish it tonight, what will I read tomorrow? With summer drawing to a close so quickly, I have to make this book last a little longer, if only so I'll have something to look forward to. Fall semester starts on August 22. Less than three weeks of freedom left. Just thinking about it makes me less depressed than panicky. My hands start shaking, my chest gets tight, my teeth clench. I don't understand why I feel this way. Aren't college kids supposed to hate coming home to their parents? Sara does. Why don't I? Why does the thought of returning to LSU make my soul hurt?
Reading Chapter 18, "Birthday Surprises," was a wonderful experience. I read it all in one heady, breathless rush, lying on my bed while Coldplay's "Speed of Sound" played over and over in my head. I'll probably always associate that high-pitched chorus "If you could see it, then you'd understand" with this book. When I was done, I did read the few first pages of Chapter 19, just to make sure Ron was all right, but I saved the majority of it for the next day.
P.S. Adam still insists that Kreacher's name is pronounced kretcher, not creature.
My English professor has assigned us each to do a presentation on a literary magazine. I'm presenting something called The Missouri Review tomorrow, and the ironic thing is that while I was scrolling through their archives, I came across a poem they published a few years back titled "X-Men"! How cool is that? I'm so going to pass this to the class.
"X-MEN," by Nicholas Allen Harp
Today in the School for Gifted Youngsters, Xavier's lesson plan calls
for sex education, the hows and whos, wheres and whens dispensed
delicately, his bald brow furrowed serious, his students wide-eyed,
chuckling, unabashedly alive and constantly, at risk from you-name-it:
G-men, invasive telepathy, Plutonian radiation, slack-jawed villains,
and now, he can't believe it, gonorrhea, pregnancy, AIDS, each
contemporary malady less innocent than the one before, a curriculum
chock-full of acronymic woe and code -- IUD, HIV, RU-486 -- too many
physical choices in the modern world, Xavier thinks, too many forces
stitching lifeforce inextricably to doomed youth, their piss and vinegar
mutated into glowy juice, concussion orbs, optic blasts, blizzards
summoned by sheer merge of will, their bodies already breaking out
from under themselves, pushing and yanking their skins like the
colleague they call Fantastic, their young lives catapulted into flight
(literally, he thinks, flight) to some fate he cannot, despite his infamous
prescience, predict, a factored variable he'll have to follow, patiently,
like a serial; the X of a xenophobic country, lonesome X-mases,
X-ratings, the X's and O's he'll send his students when he expels them
to the dangerous world.
