Friday Five:
You're stranded on a deserted island. Somehow, magically, you knew to bring the following five things to make being stranded somehow bearable.
1. What form of entertainment would bring with you (eg: a certain book or a badminton set)? Well, since I have such amazing foresight, I would bring all my Harry Potter books
and the Bible.
2. What tools would you bring with you? A shovel? Maybe a knife of some kind? It's a deserted island, so I'm probably going to die soon, anyway, without any company or food I like.
3. Who would you bring with you? Am I that smart? Huh. I don't know. There are good things and not-so-great things about all my friends. About everyone on Earth, really.
4. Name one grab bag item you would have with you (anything you want). Lotion. I've been hooked on St. Ives lotions (specifically the Vitamin E one) for years. If I have to be on a deserted island, at least I can have moisturized skin.
5. Name one thing you simply couldn't live without on the island. Water. I know, that's practical and boring, but I really do like water.
I started HBP Friday night (remember the definition of the Lindsay Day), then gave up at 3am because my eyes were too tired to concentrate. I read most of it on Saturday, after I did my laundry and got dressed and all, because while I love Harry Potter, I also have to live the rest of my life. I finished it on Sunday evening.
Oh, my.
That was wonderful. I closed the book, and just whispered, "Wow." I won't fully be able to judge it until I read it again, and I don't think that'll be for a while. That said, HBP is a definite candidate for my new favorite book. I don't know how people that don't have it yet (or haven't finished reading) can stand it! I've been all around LJ communities and the Internet at large, sharing this latest burst of HP love. I posted on the Good Ship again, which was nice. I wrote a very long post of all my post-HBP thoughts, which is
friends-locked in my LJ, and a separate one for my
shippy thoughts (though I didn't really let my Trees flag fly like I could have). If you don't belong to LJ (though you don't need a code now, and you can have a mainly-comments journal, like I do) and want to read them, let me know. I also joined Harry Potter for Grownups, another Yahoo!Group, because I needed better conversation than twelve-year-olds in my current mailing list. HPfGU is a really high-volume list, but I love that the posts are so intelligent. I've missed good HP talk.
I heard that some copies of HBP were accidentally printed
without the first chapter! I guess when you make ten million books, there have to be some mistakes. Still, I think my "mistake" was way more important. I was lost in reading when I noticed a shadow near the bottom of my book. I turned the page and found a BUG SMASHED onto page 450! I was horrified. I used the tissue I conveniently already had to wipe it off, but that was gross. So yucky.
Another HP factoid, courtesy of the
Times Online (London):
In a recent attempt by a team of mathematicians in Istanbul to work out how much J. K. Rowling had earned in Turkish lire (at 2,318.9 to the £), the university computer blew out all windows within a diameter of 300 metres.
Okay, no more HP talk... for now. How awesome is this
Jeopardy! clue:
When it was launched in 1998, it was just a noun; now it's a verb meaning to look somebody up online. Yay for the flexibility of language.
Oh my gosh: Zsenya of the
SugarQuill (home of R/Hr shippers)
works at UMD! I knew she lived in Maryland, but that is just so cool. Okay, no more HP for this entry, I promise.
It's been a more interesting week than usual. I went back to OfficeTeam on Tuesday, to take that second ID, and also to take the PowerPoint certification test. I passed with 952 points. I only needed 840 to pass, so that made my day quite nice. It felt good to have made the trip worthwhile, especially after the sweltering ride up to Greenbelt that afternoon.
The next day, Dian (the woman I interviewed with at OfficeTeam) called to offer me a job. Imagine my surprise. Unfortunately, they were looking for someone that knew how to use Adobe Pagemaker and some other programs I've only barely heard of, so I had to turn it down. Yesterday, though, she called to offer me a job I could take! It was right in the middle of my lunch and
Star Trek, but when opportunity knocks, you can't just tell it to come back later.
So I went to bed early last night, slept terribly, and got up at the crack of dawn (okay, 6am) for my new temporary job. I was in a rush, so I had to leave my bed unmade. Dian stressed, though, that the person I replaced was fired for being consistently late, so I was determined to be on time -- early, if possible. Anyway, the job is with Long Fence in Beltsville, the opposite direction on Route 1 from UMD. Basically, they're transferring old files to computer. I sift through the paperwork to find the most important stuff, then scan it into PDF. It's boring, but it's easy, and I couldn't really afford to pass it up for a more interesting job. The people there seemed really nice. Matt, the guy who showed me how to do the files, looked like a college student, possibly at UMD. He was dressed like your basic campus guy, anyway, right down to the fad bracelet (I couldn't tell what his cause was). I was overdressed, but that's easily rectified, and I wasn't uncomfortable besides.
I got stuck in rush hour traffic on the way home. I make it a point to let people in when I happen to be driving in the right lane (I usually stay in the right-center lane), but I started losing my patience when I got to the Route 5 exit. It gets really backed up there during rush hour. When I drove with my mom to UMD for the first time, on the way back she told me, "If you get close to your exit and see a big line, that's your line." The nicer people ride in the right lane for a while, then start lining up on the shoulder as the line gets too long for the actual exit lane. The not-as-nice people try to zoom up, then jump in later. So, not only did a car jump in front of me, but so did a truck. A TRUCK. I was already tired and rapidly overheating (me, not the car), and I'd already let several people in. I quickly hit the brakes and thought, "Lord, I can only take so much." I'm content with my patience, but really. I'm only human.
(And the answer to that
Jeopardy! clue was, "What is Google?")
