oh god, my heart beats wildly and my hands tremble when i think about how only two more days remain until the last harry potter novel arrives on my doorstep. i wish i had the stamina and time to go to book court again and get the novel at midnight tomorrow but the peanut has zapped me of all energy. dudes, i went to bed at 9:30 last night. i haven't gone to bed that early in a long time! and guess what? the nut woke up at 5AM this morning! ugh. she's going through some major routine changes and we're coming up on the 4 month growth spurt. i want to die!
anyway, i've pre-ordered my book from amazon so that it'll be here on saturday. i often wonder how the UPS delivery guys feel when they drop off these books to happy and excited people of all ages. i'll be constantly looking out the window and waiting with bated breath.
by the way, the NY times just posted its review. it's thankfully devoid of spoilers except for one little piece of information about what the deathly hallows are. kakutani gives the whole series praise and i'm glad to see that she's a fan.
things are very hectic at chez gleek these days. just when we think that we've figured things out around here, the peanut throws us for a loop and we're screaming for mercy. we had a blessed two weeks when she was technically sleeping through the night. only one feeding around 3AM and she'd sleep till around 6:30AM after that. it was blissful. then she went through her 3 month growth spurt and we're back to two feedings a night now and my body is aching with sleep deprivation. i was just getting used to getting 5 hours of sleep in a row. it was really nice! well, those days are a distant memory.
ew!
we're also finding that getting her to go to sleep is tough as well. i haven't resorted to feeding her to sleep since she was 5 weeks old but she definitely doesn't self-soothe herself to sleep yet. we have to rock/sway/bounce her until she passes out which thankfully isn't a long time but still too long in my opinion.
fun in the mirror
she doesn't suck her thumb or take a pacifier so i'm at a loss at to what to do for her. we swaddle her in a miracle blanket for every sleep period so she doesn't have access to her hands. i'm going to try switching to the aussie swaddle method this week and see if that doesn't help things. it's all a gamble.
mmmmm
but she's as cute as can be! each time she smiles at me or gurgles or follows me with her eyes, i know that i'm in love forever.
ok, enough about the nut. during the all-too-brief naptimes i'm able to get a few things done around here. i've managed to put blackout curtains in both the master bedroom and the nut's room. i bought the fabric on ebay and sewed them up myself rather than pay $50+ for each window which is ridiculous. no photos, sorry. they are very ordinary.
these are super simple and fun and, wow, actually stay on your head! i love them and want to make more but i already put away the sewing machine because the clutter was driving me bonkers.
from the front
from the back
in other sewing news, i want to draft my own skirt pattern and whip up a few skirts that fit my post-baby body. i DID have a few skirts that fit me well until the nut decided to spit-up all over them and now they can't be worn in public anymore. sigh. oh well. i got the sew what! skirts book and am reading it through now. just need to get some large paper (maybe i'll just use some of the crappy christmas wrapping paper from last year) and get going.
the miters are coming along too. i now have the pattern memorized so i knit them much faster.
pile o miters
and i started a pair of socks but i don't have a picture yet because it's a total of 5 rows. as you can see, the knitting is coming along but not too quickly. just slowly but surely.
now referring to the post title, in the times when i have time to write, code, or blog, i usually don't have my brain with me. i'm not sure where my brain goes during these times but it's surely not in my head. this moment here is brought to you by sunday and the hubby taking the peanut for a walk. i was very happy when he volunteered to take her out! but wouldn't you know it that the instant she disappeared out the door i missed her. of course!
by the way, less than a month and the new harry potter book is out and in my hot little hands! i can't wait! i've been reading the half-blood prince aloud to the peanut whenever i'm feeling a little too silent and i get excited with each passing page. i can't wait! (oops, already said that. where's my brain? don't know.)
ETA: i did some hard thinking about why the peanut wasn't falling asleep well and realized that maybe she's just not soothed enough when i put her down. in walks itunes and my trusty ipod with jbl soundstage and i've got lullabies going for in no time! what would i do without an internet connection? surely i would perish. she's been sleeping well since i got the music going. also, she's started taking a pacifier to sleep! i can't tell you how happy that makes me!
and for all the nursing mothers out there that have had to give up milk/dairy, almond milk is truly the nectar of the gods. if you're not allergic to nuts, i highly suggest you try it. i HATE soy milk and rather dislike rice milk because they have such horrid aftertastes, but almond milk is really yummy and creamy. tastes great in my coffee!
sorry that i have no knitting content except to say that i'm into my third ball on the noro shawl and by all accounts (thanks to math!) i'm going to need 11 balls to finish this sucker so i ordered another one from ebay over the weekend. let's hope it's enough. i also finished my first christmas gift hat and am planning my second one now. on friday, i received 3 new balls of knitpicks swish in coast grey to make my own glittens but i'm putting that aside until i'm done with christmas knitting.
in the meantime, here are some links to harry potter and the order of the phoenix videos on youtube (courtesy of mugglenet.com):
because they hadn't updated their feeds in a long time and i was missing all of these entries for DAYS!!! it was really annoying. so i downloaded sage (thanks hammy!!) which is a firefox lightweight add-on for RSS feeds and figured, to hell with bloglines and all these online RSS services that can't be trusted, i'll do it on my own. and sage is pretty cool but having to manually synch up all of my reading between home and work is a bit of a pain as is checking RSS feeds from a computer that i don't own.. so sage is nice but, alas, not bloglines. then i received word from bloglines:
We are currently moving our machines to a new network facility that will enable us to update feeds as soon as the publisher tells us there is something new. For feeds that don't tell us when to check for new articles, we'll update every hour or less.
this is good news as now i no longer have to write about how bloglines sucks. i can save that rant for the future should they ever suck again (and i wouldn't put it past them.)
j.k. rowling has been kind enough to give the leaky cauldron a great interview. the first two parts have been posted and the third part will be posted tomorrow. it's so very interesting to see how she handles her "property" in the wake of a million theories. she seems like a very down-to-earth, committed woman. be warned, the interview is really long but worth the read.
i've updated the reading blog to reflect the two books that i've read recently: out and harry potter and the half-blood prince. i've taken great care not to reveal any delicate plot points in my review of HP so if you're mad at me for posting spoilers in that last entry, you can jump over to my reading site and get a sanitized viewpoint. ok, now i can go back to talking about battlestar galactica (awesome premiere on friday!), firefly (you can catch it this friday on scifi!), knitting, and anything else i can think about... like maybe some more harry potter!! (shoot me now)
i don't think that i have ever devoured a book so fast in my life. i was so excited for the new installment of harry potter that i read it all in less than 24 hours time... and then cried. ok, if you haven't read the book yet, STOP READING THIS up until the yarn picture. i will post spoilers so come back and re-read this later once you've read the book as well (and the review i'm going to write of it and out.. i'm two books behind on my reading blog.)
first off, here i am receiving my book.
look how happy i am for being up at midnight on a friday night! lisa looks pretty happy too!
anyway, we got our books and i just HAD to read the first chapter before bed on friday night. then i spent most of the rest of the weekend reading before finishing on sunday afternoon. so quick!
a few things about harry potter and the half-blood prince struck me right off the broomstick. harry has finally learned to control his temper! after a year of being tortured by umbridge, battling he-who-must-not-be-named, and losing his godfather, harry has become a solid, sixteen-year old grown up. his anger still mounts but he's learned to keep it under wraps when he knows that arguing is futile. there is, after all, a time and a place for everything. it was a calm and cool harry, and gosh darn it, i was so proud of him as i read along! he's finally become an adult.
there was also that monster inside him that would flare up whenever he saw a certain cute little redhead. oh ginny, you've finally captured harry's heart and it only took you three years! harry wrestled with this for more than half the book. she's his best mate's younger sister and he was torn between wanting ginny and wanting to stay best friends with ron. thankfully, ron acquiesced and with a nod to his pal, harry fulfilled a dream. he had internalized so much of his fear and anger but remembered that love, the beast inside him, should be let loose when the timing was right. i think it's safe to say that even though he broke things off with ginny at the end of the book, their relationship is not over. dumbledore made it quite clear that it's love that lord voldemort (eek!) fears most of all and will be his undoing. not only did harry's mother's love protect him when he was a baby, but the love that he shares with ron, hermione, ginny, and all the rest of his compatriots, will ultimately be his master weapon.
the saddest bit of news was the death of dumbledore at the hands of snape. i'm torn between wanting to hate snape forever and ever and wanting to find out why the heck he did it. i have a feeling that dumbledore asked him to kill him if that's the way the cards were dealt, but it's hard to come to grips with it. dumbledore pleaded with snape not seconds before he was struck down but it was so uncharacteristic of him. you almost get the feeling that dumbledore was pleading with snape to kill him so that the double-agent ruse could continue. snape was bound with the unbreakable vow and would have died if he had not helped malfoy so dumbledore's reasoning would be that it was more important to sacrifice himself than have snape blow his cover. ugh, it's just awful to think about but dumbledore was a great man and harry will carry on the fight without him.
ok, enough hypothesizing for now. i still have to write my review of the actual book before going into my thoughts and theories of what we have in store in the last book.
in knitting news, i'm still making progress on the honeymoon cami, my koigu sock, and am about to start a baby blanket too. i whipped up another crocheted case for my camera this weekend. i'm becoming quite proficient at hammering these things out. this time i used two strands of red heart (orange and white.. i'm calling it the creamsicle case) so that the camera would have more padding. i have no pictures of it yet.. sorry! but i do have a picture of the yummy yarn (above) i bought at school products two or three weeks ago! it's cashmere and silk, hand-dyed and spun, no brand name. i'm going to use it to make a clapotis so i'll post more pictures once i have that going.
the day i've been waiting for for over a year is finally here! tonight at midnight, i can get my hands on harry potter and the half blood prince!! scholastic is breaking records once again with a first-run printing of 10.8 million so i'm sure that there will be plenty to go around. if you get the chance, please go out of your way to support an independent bookstore and pick up HP from someplace other than a large chain store. these independent bookstores work hard to give plenty of choices to neighborhoods so it's best if we all try and keep them in business.
so, my first questions i want answered from the book are: 1) who is the half blood prince? 2) will ron and hermione finally cave in and get it on? we'll see.
reminder:battlestar galactica season 2 starts tonight at 10PM EDT! firefly on scifi starts next friday at 7PM EDT.
great news this morning! "harry potter and the half-blood prince" is set to hit the bookshelves on july 16! now i'm just waiting for amazon to let me pre-order it.
finally, we have what we have been waiting for! not book six itself which we have wished for for months but the title. the next harry potter book will be named harry potter and the half blood prince. this comes after a week of hoaxes and counter-hoaxes over in JK's realm. her official website did not contain the information until someone hoaxed the whole thing telling everyone that the title was harry potter and the pillar of storge. JK does let us know that this was utterly false and the HP:HBP is the true title. she also let's us know that the half blood prince the title refers to is neither harry nor voldemort. hhmmmm... who could it be? my first thought was neville but i then dismissed that because neville is a full blood wizard. any thoughts of your own? if you have the need to think it over with a vast community of HP fanatics check out the forums at thesnitch.net. i'm sure someone there will entertain your flights of fancy.
by the way, i know that i never reviewed the HP:POA movie mainly because i'm lazy and i have trouble putting my opinions online. i thought it was an exceptionally great movie. the editing was grown-up and it kept all of the thematic elements of the book that needed to be kept and threw the others out. i was quite impressed with cuaron's take on the harry potter world. i hope he'll come back and direct another one in the future.
oh boy oh boy oh boy! the next harry potter movie "harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban" is coming out in less than a month! there's been a lot of news from HPANA lately about the film: interviews with the director, alfonso cuaron; stills from the movie; additional television spots. azkaban is my favorite of all five books so far (not that they aren't all fabulous. i just feel that book three has the best story arc.) anyway, the reason why i jumped online to tell you all about it is because there are some great stills from the movie posted on mugglethai that you simply must see if you are as big a fan as i.
oh. my. the new "harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban" trailer is online and available for download in all the major formats. it looks dark and mysterious and a heck of a lot less campy than the first two films. alfonso cuaron has done some amazing work on this film. his technique is far more adult than chris columbus. i only wish he was willing to do "goblet" as well.. but i'll reserve my judgement and see what mike newell can do with the franchise. in short, be sure to check out the trailer. it's in your best interest (wink wink).
harry potter has been on my mind a lot lately... ok, i confess. harry potter is always on my mind. i'm very excited about the "harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban" movie that is coming out in june. if you haven't seen the trailer for it yet, be sure to check it out... and if you have any idea what those large and very strange toads in the first row of the choir are, then please drop me a note and let me know. perhaps they are tuning frogs instead of tuning forks? or a croak instead of a hum from a pitch pipe, perhaps?
anyway, i love reading and analyzing books. i was a film major in college.. correction, i was a telecommunication major with a film emphasis but i took so many film classes and so little telecomm classes, i might as well have majored in it if the university had allowed me to. also, all my film classes were in the english department and if i had stayed on one more year and taken a 100 level english class and two foreign language classes, i could have double majored, but that's all beside the point. so, i love to dissect films and books and this i have been doing for quite some time. recently, i came across the new clues bulletin board at mugglenet.com. this is a BBS dedicated to deciphering the clues from the New Clues to Harry Potter Book 5: Hints from the Ultimate Unofficial Guide to the Mysteries of Harry Potter. there have been some really great revelations on these bulletin boards so if you are a hardcore HP fan, i suggest checking them out and getting the clues book. i think that you'll find it all as enjoyable as i do.
in other news, HPANA reports that there's a casting call out for the Patil twins from "goblet of fire".. these girls are from india, no? the casting call states that the candidates should be "asian" but perhaps this is what the brits call people descendent from india?
i received email from my good friend k10 the other day regarding harry's father, james. she postulates that james was once the defense against the dark arts (hereby dubbed DADA) professor at hogwarts. expounding further, there's the possibility that james and snape were up for the job at the same time (potions was also an open seat that year) and dumbledore appointed james instead of snape. it's mentioned several times in the books that dumbledore felt that snape would make a better potions teacher.. that the DADA job would bring out the worst qualities in snape.
so what if this was also a furtherance of the animosity that snape feels towards james.. could it be that harry gets his evil battling skill from james? his mother, lilly, was skilled at charms.. this would be a very powerful combination in genes i say.
some news on the next potter movie, "harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban", which is my personal favorite of all the books.. the trailer will be released on november 14th. there's also rumor that the first draft of book six will be to the editor by january!
well, i know that this news story is several days old but i haven't had time to comment on it just yet. a little background.. "harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban" is probably my favorite of all the harry potter books. it's short and well written (not that the rest of j.k.'s book aren't, but you know.. it's a personal opinion) and covers a good deal of topics that are especially important in the coming novels. it's a time when harry really starts to believe in himself and his abilities and we discover a lot about ourselves and him. it's tough being harry after all.
so it was annouced a few days ago that lovely emma thompson will take the role of professor trelawny in "prisoner of azkaban". now, she wouldn't be my first choice, mainly because i always pictured trelawny to be a skinny, older woman with black greying hair, large glasses that magnify her eyes by ten times, bony and sharp-edged.. but with the right costuming and makeup, she'll pull off the role quite well. as an actress she is an A+ in my book. not to mention that she'll be teaming up with actors and actresses that she has worked with before [namely the wonderful alan rickman.. my favorite of all time!]
so, almost everyday i take some time out to visit my harry potter web sources and see what's up with my favorite wizard. after all, there are still 2 more books to come and movies to be made and produced.. so there's always news pouring in from outlets around the world.
one of my favorite topics is this witchcraft vs. christianity debate. now, i was raised in a catholic home.. and hated every minute of it. i did it because it was what was expected of me, but as soon as i was confirmed i said "i'm outta here" and haven't looked back since. i figured, if i'm not good enough to become a priest or have the basic human rights as any man in the catholic faith then i can't subscribe to their teachings. it seems a bit unfair that women have to bear the weight of "don't have sex" or similar but men can do whatever they want. catholicism seems to be a bit constraining and anti-feminist... that and i just don't believe in god. how can i believe in something i can't see or hear? i'm a scientist at heart and only believe in what's provable and factual.
so, my bias aside, these stories about priest decrying harry potter from the pulpit really interest me. i mean, have these priests actually read any of the harry potter books? if they did, they would realize that, in harry's world, wizardry involves things like wands and incantations and potions that are all FICITIONAL! hello!?
these are works of fiction. they are not recipe books for evil. in fact, i bet that if i grabbed a stick from the park, swung it around and said "wingardium leviosa" that nothing would happen.. that's because it's make-believe. the harry potter books are no different than reading a tom clancy novel or mark twain or don delillo. any child who tries the magic will soon learn that it doesn't work and their imagination is probably a better place to dream it out (especially if someone is watching because you just might look like a dork swinging around a stick and saying things like "lumos" or "alohamora".)
also, i would like to point out that banning books only makes children want to read them more. curiosity did not only get the better of the cat.. i'm pressed to say that it gets the better of 90% of all humans on this fine earth. the more these priests decry harry potter, the more schools that ban the novels, the more kids will want to read them.. for example, in OotP there's a great chapter where harry does an interview with "the quibbler" and, not wanting to let the information revealed in that interview out, ms. umbridge bans it from the school. this only makes the interview article more popular and the students can't help themselves from reading it..
i think that maybe there's a lesson to be learned here from harry.
is it really october? the cold chill in the air deems it so.. it's almost hard to believe that "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" (hereby dubbed OotP) came out close to four months ago! i just finished reading it for the second time after passing the book off to my mom, who then passed it to my cousin, who then passed it back to me, safe and sound.
i've been a harry potter freak for about 2 years now. it was during a trip abroad to thailand that i became enamoured with the boy-who-lived.. i took "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" with me to read on the beach and i just couldn't put it down. there's just something about j.k. rowling's writing that keeps you attuned to the story.. she just sucks you right in.. holds on to your imagination and doesn't let go.. it makes me laugh to think of all the people out there who don't like harry because "they're kids stories" or they're not intellectual enough. but how can anyone say that about books that have routinely topped the n.y. times bestseller list (and all those other authors out there that write exclusively for adults were so peeved about being topped by a "kids book" that n.y. times had to make a separate "children's bestseller list".. give me a break!) and actively gain more news space and time than any other book out there?
so OotP is a kick-ass book, by the way.. harry is a bit older, if not wiser, and definitely angrier. he has this stubborn quality about him in this book that he hadn't had before.. he's used to the conjecture and fame but wants it all to go away, and who could blame him? circumstances dealt him a bum hand of cards and now he wants out! OUT I TELL YA! and now, after reading this book for the second time, i'm even more convinced that ron and hermione are definitely going to be an item.. they bickered at each other more than my grandparents do on a good day.
i could talk endlessly about harry but i won't today. just starting this blog was hard enough and i don't want to burn out right in the beginning.. in the meantime, here are a few links to get you going:
totally crappy a.s. byatt takes pot-shots at potter
