Two. Two posts, one long and poetic, one the highlights of the poetic version. Gone. The first due to a power outage which rendered my work unrecoverable for some reason, the second due to Blogger screwing up.
It started out as such a lovely day, too.
It’s too hot to sleep.
It’s too hot to read.
No one told me there was a new Holly Cole album out.
I keep having flashbacks to this afternoon’s anxiety attack, the first in a very long time.
My back hurts. I have blisters on my little toes from my sandals.
I call a do-over on today.
When we got back from Angrignon Park last night (mosquito-bitten but content) we discovered a note on our door. The couple who owned the kitten got her back safe and sound. She had spent most of the day curled up on a pair of my husband’s jeans, napping and purring. The man who came to pick her up said that there was something pretty special about her, and I have to agree.
So: a good deed. And I got to cuddle a tiny kitten again.
I finished HPOTP last night. Harry’s not a kid any more; no sir. If/when they make this film, it will be phenomenal to watch. I’ll have to read it again, but not for a week or so. To give myself a complete change of pace, I read Mort by Terry Pratchett. Next? Not sure; likely more academic stuff on Norse history and society.
I spent the day outside yesterday, from sunrise to welcome the Summer Solstice, to teaching my class outside, to a farewell picnic with good friends. It was glorious. I also received an early birthday present from Ceri, who’s heading off to Halifax for two months: a lovely lap desk with a tilting top, pencil trays, and a basket for books and such on each side. It’s the absolutely perfect height to rest my laptop on. I was so touched.
I woke up this morning around four AM, thinking I heard a cat in heat outside. I drowsed on and off for a couple of hours, hearing the cat, then fell asleep until a knock on our door just past eight woke me up. My husband answered it, and found our concierge with a tiny beige and grey mackerel kitten in his hands.
“This yours?” he asked. “It’s been out in the hall for hours, crying.”
When we told him no, he knocked on other doors to try to find where it belonged, but no one answered. He came back to ask for a bit of kitten food; he was going to put it in an empty room downstairs and lock it until he came back tonight, but I said, “Well, it’s so young; why don’t we keep it in the bedroom if you’re not going to be home? We have an extra litter box, and bowls, and I’ll be home all day so if someone sees your sign they can come knock right then. I’m sure they’re frantic.”
Well, after a stern warning that under no circumstances was I to fall in love with this kitten, my husband allowed her in. It’s now been five hours, and no one’s come to claim her. She’s adorable. She must have slipped out when someone came home late, or left really early. She’s fearless, and not upset at all. Mind you, if I’d been alone in a hallway for hours, crying, I’d be in love with whoever gave me water and pats too.
And I’m just over halfway through Order of the Phoenix. I can’t help reading it; it’s so smoothly written, and things lead from one to another… but I so want to make it last.
Well. Apparently whoever’s driving this thing knew a back way around that roadblock.
One of the two projects I’m editing/reviewing has been done. (And for the two of you who are wondering, I did the one I got first: the comic script.)
I’ve also written 1,600 words and have moved my Great Canadian Novel protagonist from the dead stop she was at to Europe. Blink, blink. I’m probably about as stunned as she is.
Back into the fray!
Caitlin says:
I will sit in this chair, in front of this iBook, until at least 5 pm. I may write. I may not. But I will spend the day sitting here in this chair in front of this iBook. Beads of blood may appear on my forehead. My back may ache. But I will sit here.
Stop trying to write, and frelling write.
I know it’s that simple. I know it’s that intricate.
Except today it’s reviewing and editing other work, and I’m just staring at it and nothing’s sinking in. Which is not at all the fault of the authors. The connection between my eyes and my brain appears to be under construction, and the route is closed until further notice.
It’s roadwork season in Autumn’s brain. Who says we don’t reflect our physical environment?
In honour of today being the last day before Order of the Phoenix Day (come on, you know that most of the world thinks of it that way instead of as the Summer Solstice!), here are a couple of intelligent Harry Potter links that I’ve been keeping my eye on:
From The Hogwarts Wire today:
Rowling: Occult accusations are ‘utter garbage’
JK Rowling hates accusations that Harry Potter turns kids onto occult. “I think that’s utter garbage,” Rowling tells Katie Couric in an upcoming TV interview. “I absolutely do not believe in the occult, practice the occult. I’ve never … I’ve met literally thousands of children now. Not one of them has said you’ve really turned me on to the occult. Now, I’m convinced that if that’s what my books were doing, I would by now have met one child who would have come up to me, covered in pentagrams and said, ‘Can we go and sacrifice a goat later together?'”
So there. Honestly.
Classics scholars will get a kick out of this one, posted on April 17, 2003:
Here comes Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis
Bloomsbury recently announced they will be publishing a Latin edition of The Philosopher’s Stone. Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis comes out in hardcover this June along with a Welsh version. Harry Potter has been published in 40 languages already and Gaelic and Ancient Greek versions of the first edition should come out in 2004.
Both sites are great; they report a lot of the same articles, but with different spins. Despite the fact that both the above quotes come from the Wire, I actually prefer the Leaky Cauldron.
And is it just me, or does Harry look an awful lot like Tim Hunter on the US cover of Order of the Phoenix?