Well, it appears I’ve been moved to the New Blogger.

I must say that on first glance it appears to a) look pretty much like the old blogger and b) suck as much as the old blogger.

Because, of course, they’ve lost my template, which means who the hell knows when this will get published. Either I will give in and reconstruct the template, or they will give in and restore my missing information. Who has the greater willpower? We shall find out!

*ahem*

Now, in other news, I went to the movies today and saw Alex & Emma and Charlie’s Angels 2. Both were good (but not great) for different reasons. I will not be reviewing them further than that because the trailers pretty much tell you exactly what you’re going to see. You want to see a romantic comedy about a dude writing a book? Go see Alex & Emma. You want to see hot chicks jumping around and things blowing up? Go see Charlie’s Angels. Or wait for Tomb Raider.

On the way home I went to Borders, which I hadn’t been to before as the B&N is slightly more convenient.

Borders: Large graphic novel section, two full bookcases on both sides.
B&N: Has a little cardboard stand.

Borders: The children’s section is completely disorganized with all the books thrown haphazardly together in no particular order.
B&N: The children’s section is neatly arranged with recognizeable genres and labelled cases.

Borders: Has two floors.
B&N: Looks like it has two floors from the outside but this is actually a big FAKE OUT.

So, it looks like they both have pros and cons. The Mystery & SF sections appear similar in both.

But that was not the exciting thing I discovered while I was in there. I found out that they are republishing TRIXIE BELDEN. Pardon me, but OMFG. TRIXIE BELDEN!! Random 50s Nancy Drew ripoffs, I love you! Trixie Belden, The Bobbsey Twins, The Happy Hollisters — everything but the Hardy Boys! I got the first Trixie book when I was seven or eight, and I remember reading it and thinking how OLD and GROWN UP Trixie was. I would NEVER be 13. That was positively ancient.

And now they’re back. XD XD #1 and #2 are out in hardcover for only $7/each. I see #3 and #4 are scheduled for next month. I’m hoping they manage to get through the whole series (there’s 38). *so excited* The cashier girl was surprised to see them herself. She went “Trixie Belden!” and I went “I know!”

Order of the Phoenix is finished.

A few comments:
1. Most of the plot in the book would never have worked on a MUSH.
2. Most of the plot in the book is going to be ruined in the movie when it’s made.
3. My dislike for Dumbledore is well on its way to loathing.
4. *heart* George
5. *heart* Fred
6. *heart* Ginny

So after we went to see Bend it like Beckham today, J was obviously scouting around IMDB and discovered that they’re making yet another movie of Vanity Fair, this one with Reese Witherspoon and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers.

But poking about, it appears the BBC did a miniseries recently of it too, which I would have to guess will be worlds better than this production…

My accomplishments this summer so far have been few. But one thing I did manage to do, which I’d been intending to do for a very very long time, was to read Vanity Fair. No, not the magazine, the book.

The book, which was written in the mid 19th century, is referenced so often in other books I’ve read, that I felt like it was a necessity for me to read it and thus understand better the source of all these side comments. During the winter I even got so far as to read the first chapter standing in Barnes and Noble in Burlington. And it was good! Jane Austen and a few others aside, most of the stuff I’ve read from the 19th century has been from the late Victoria era, and it’s almost all been aimed at children. There were standards and plotlines which had to be obeyed. The wicked were punished, the good were rewarded, and the saintly died. This isn’t to say that there weren’t variations on this theme; there were, of course, but it was all still very Suitable for a Young Audience. So when you contrast Becky Sharp flinging the dictionary out of her carriage window and plotting her social ascent with the March sisters, all very pious and patient in their poverty, it’s quite a shocking difference.

This is, of course, a novel intended for the adult audience, whose tastes are naturally(?) more sophisticated than their children. Or so they’d like to think.

After reading that first chapter, I didn’t actually buy it until after we’d moved.

In any case, it was good. Parts of it were better than that. There were a few lines where, reading them with a modern take on vocabulary, I had to wonder if they would have had the same connotation as they do now. (The interesting thing is that the modern connotation fit the scene.) Because if they did! I found it a much faster read than Middlemarch, which really dragged for me. The characters were more interesting — they did things rather than sit around and angst about them.

Now I have a couple days to finish rereading the rest of the HP series before book 5 comes out.

More sightings for the easily amused.

On the McDonald’s Board:
Now here: Nemo & Lobster Rolls

On the marquee outside the AMC:
The Matrix Reloaded
Finding Ne o

And finally, a picture I saved a while ago and then never put up.

The fg.com IP address changed last week… looks like I can actually post again now.

Go Ontario.

For those of you not involved in the drama, you can safely ignore this.

<begin comment>
Having been gone since Friday, I really must guess at most of what this is in reference to.

But, perhaps stupidly, feel like some of it needs to be replied to.

Friendship
To me, friendship is give and take, yes. It’s also people you trust to tell you when you’re acting like an ass, and whose opinion you respect enough to realize they’re right. But even though they said that, you know they like you anyway. It’s people you trust to want the best for you and for you to be happy. It’s people who will listen to you vent and realize that it /is/ venting, and that you probably don’t really mean half of what you say.

Friendship is not people who will put up with endless crap forever. I would never expect that of someone, nor should anyone. That’s not friendship, it’s exploitation.

Now, on to talking about people behind their back.

I have thought about this a lot. There is, somewhere, the ideal that you’ve given: that you would never say anything to someone else that couldn’t immediately be repeated to the other person. It’s a nice ideal, but I’ve come to believe it’s a fantasy, myself. People may or may not talk about me. They may say things about me — “I can’t believe K asked such a dumb question!” “What the hell is she thinking about?”. Whatever. What would be served by saying it to my face? What is served by my angsting over these things that may or may not have been said?

My parents were married for nearly 30 years before my dad died, and I firmly firmly believe that part of the reason they continued to get along well is because my mom — and I’m sure my dad — had a vent. Mom to me and her friends. Sometimes you just have to say to someone “I can’t /believe/ Don said he was going to fix the goddamn fence in the backyard, and now it looks like crap and it’s falling over! Grr! This is so typical of him!” My temper is like that most of the time: it flares up, and I need to bitch to someone. Then it’s done. The end.

Think about how mad you’ve clearly been made by that email I sent you. That was to you. Would it have been better if I had vented to someone else and /not/ sent it?

There is a difference between venting a fit of temper and engaging in a systematic effort to disparage someone behind their back. Perhaps you feel it is too fine a distinction to draw, but I don’t. I would not spread lies about someone. I would discuss with my other friends confusion I felt regarding someone’s behavior.

Anyhow:
If you have dark secrets from me, it’s only because you chose not to tell me. I think you are a fun and interesting person, and for the eight years I’ve known you, I’ve considered you a friend.
</end comment>

That’s it for my comments on the drama. I’m done with it.

Friday started out normal. I managed to get to work before 8, hustled a good amount to try and finish up the Japanese product so we could send it out for final testing. It didn’t quite happen, but it was ok because my boss’s boss rode his motorcycle to work on Friday and couldn’t take the computer home with him anyway. So we have until Monday.

About halfway through the morning, someone posted to the wellesley98 ml that they could give people rides out to reunion tonight.

K: … tonight?!

Yes, it’s true. I was firmly and completely convinced that reunion was NEXT weekend, not this one, until about 9am on Friday morning.

So, after work I went home to meet my mom. We put up some of the wallpaper in the bathroom, but there wasn’t enough, so we’ll have to order more. Then I threw together some stuff and drove on down to Wellesley. In a fit of randomness, I decided not to bring my computer with me, though as I discovered when I got there, they did have the ethernet set up in the rooms.

Friday I didn’t do much. I avoided stepsinging and headed over to dinner almost as soon as it was getting started. Since people were consistently not arriving for meals until a half hour after the scheduled start time, there was virtually no one there yet. So I stood around for a while, waiting to see if anyone I knew would show up. Eventually Laurel, who was in my intro Astronomy class, appeared, and I sat with her. Dinner was not bad. Not spectacular, but there was, at least, enough of it. Then they started singing again. So Laurel and I looked at each other and then we escaped back to the dorm. We ran into one of the student helpers with a golfcart on the way back — and since I’d always wanted to ride on a golfcart, we took the ride and rode back to the dorm. It was very cool.

We took over the TV room and watched a MST’ed a really awful movie on PAX, starring Bo Duke/Pa Kent, taking a break in the middle to go up and watch the fireworks from the roof of Bates (Impressively long display.) Then we watched some of the news, as Friday was apparently a day full of disasters, and then we went to bed. At about 12 or so, some drunken girls came around banging on everyone’s door and trying to get people to go party with them. But they weren’t too pressing and left after I’d said no about 4 or 5 times.

Saturday I got up and headed over to the library for the tour. I’d been in special collections before, but they’ve really expanded and improved the Book Arts/Conservation section since we’ve been there. It is so so cool. *reminds self to look up information about the seminars*. After the tour it was lunchtime, so I headed over to the Big White Tent(TM). Bina was there, and we sat and talked for a long while. I was glad to see her; she was on my list of people who I’d hoped would be there. We headed over to Pendleton for Prof. Lynch’s lecture, and luckily we were 15 or 20 minutes early, since due to the rain and the subject matter, the room was filled to capacity and then some.

After the lecture, we found that there was absolutely nothing on the schedule for the next hour and a half. So I procured myself a poncho (Bina, her mom and her mom’s friends had all wisely brought raincoats) and we hiked back to the dorms to wait for the class meeting to start. The meeting was loud and seemed a bit pointless. After that, Bina left and it was dinner time.

Now, this dinner, aside from the rooms themselves, was the single most expensive thing on the bill for reunion. So naturally one would think they’d, for instance, HAVE ENOUGH FOOD FOR EVERYONE. But they didn’t. It was very very sad.

Laurel and I escaped from dinner after dessert and went up to the tv room again. We had a nice talk with a student helper for a while, and then we were invaded by a group of drunk girls who wanted to watch a videotape of themselves being drunk. It was very amusing watching their sad attempts to hook up the VCR, and I have to say, the tape itself was pretty amusing also.

After they were done, we found there really wasn’t anything else on TV, so we headed for bed. People were already being loud, and on the way to the elevator, we watched in surprise as someone attempted to slide down the bannister.

Anyhow, when I got up on Sunday, I packed up and headed home. Arrived home to find drama had transpired while I was away, of the pointless teenagery variety, which made me glad reunion was this weekend and not next after all.

I’m seriously out of it. Watase Yuu has started new FY manga and I had no idea.

This page has the first two chapters.