nor so wide as a church door

So where did that two weeks just go? D: Yikes. I am glad it is at least properly cold now; all that remains is for it to snow a little bit more than this incredibly pathetic inch-ish we have right now, and then it'll actually feel like December, instead of November being clingy. And oh, god, the Christmas presents I need to buy. DDDDDDDDDD:

But, okay, before I get distracted yet again: media exists! And sometimes I consume it! Spoilers abound.

( Last week's Closer. )

( Last week's R&I. )

( This week's Once Upon a Time. )

I also skittered off my reading list once again and devoured ( The Magicians and Mrs. Quent. )

I think that's everything? My most recent Netflix is a Donald Strachey movie, which I have not yet watched but fully expect to like; and of course there is Yuletide. The odds are heavily against me finishing all three of the treats that I've started, but hope springs eternal. As does my verbosity, because at least two of them are over the minimum already. /o\

I have also started The Secret Circle, but considering I've only watched an ep and a bit, I can't really say much about it yet. Except that I had never truly considered a Twilight/Charmed crossover. Also Faye is gorgeous.

I've been going to bed early and sleeping like a rock this week, and yet I feel more tired today than I did on Monday. :P

I missed Burn Notice because my mother's Netflix was extremely long, which I am bummed about; I did catch The Closer, about which I only wish to say I love Sanchez, CAPTAIN RAYDOR YES, and ( small spoiler! ) Rizzoli and Isles, well. I wash my hands of their ability to plot out a crime whose portrayal and resolution do not make me cringe for one reason or another; I am watching this show for the ladies, Jett Jackson, and the third-to-half of each episode that isn't about the Crime of the Week, and in those respects I enjoyed it relatively well. ( Another couple spoilers. )

I spent yesterday enforcing consistency - in terms of format and grammar, hence the icon - on our faculty handbook, which included redoing the table of contents with revised page numbers twice. I hate page numbers. D:<

And it looks like I spoke too soon when it comes to thunderstorms dropping trees on my bedroom; I think I may sleep downstairs when Irene hits us, just in case. And I should probably kiss the power and the internet goodbye for the weekend, unless we get reeeeeeally lucky - which means I'd better post my genretwisting bingo fic tonight.

Whoo, I've got some catching up to do.

( Last last weekend: colonial gardens, swimming, failures to communicate. )

Last weekend, by contrast, was much less exciting; with the weight of my guilt lifted, I could go kayaking with my mother with a totally clear conscience. Technically, we also went last last weekend, but we picked a rather boring lake, with nothing to recommend it but two unexpected loons going fishing. Last weekend was way better - little peninsulas with nooks and crannies, fish and frogs and a great blue heron, and some really lovely water lilies.

But! I have also been watching TV.

( The Closer, spoilery. )

( Rizzoli & Isles. Also spoilery, and not especially pleased. )

I have not seen HPDH.2, because I am still pretty sure I'm going to cry like a baby; but I may have to do it just for Neville and Luna. (No epic HP fic until ItOverse is finished, self!) Also, The Daily Show: I had no idea Daniel Radcliffe was so awesome. I cannot get used to his face with no Harry!glasses, though.

So I let my Rosetta Stone lessons slide a little, and then the day I was considering picking it back up again, I stepped on the cord connecting them to the computer - just stepped on it! Nothing crazy, I swear - and crack-pwing, I had a USB board, two casing halves it took nearly five minutes to find under the couch, and a very nice set of earmuffs. :P

Fortunately, my sister came over on Sunday - after an extremely difficult and emotional conversation with my mother about lawnmowing, no lie - and we went shopping. Generally speaking, I hate shopping, but there are two exceptions to that rule: 1) when I am shopping for things I have been thinking about for a while and have definite plans for, and 2) when I am shopping for books. This trip fell under both exceptions, and so I had a marvelous afternoon that ended with six new skeins of yarn, three books, and a pile of stuff from Staples - including a lovely new pair of headphones with a mic. \o/

I am now moderately caught up, and so, without further ado ...

( The Closer; spoilery. )

( Rizzoli & Isles; also spoilery. )

Also, I watched ( what I think was the episode of Covert Affairs that I'd missed. Spoilers, but they're a little dated by now. )

So, time to feed the pets, and then keep crocheting. (Most of the yarn's for a blanket, which ... I sense that I'll need more soon, because this thing is shaping up to be huge.)

Man, it feels like even longer than it's actually been since the last time I posted. I don't even have a good excuse, really, except that I'm even lazier than I thought I was. :P

The job's going well, though it still hasn't picked up much; about a quarter of the time there's nothing for me to do, and another quarter of the time there's stuff I ought to and/or want to be doing, but I don't know how to do it, or whether I should. The remaining half is split between stuff I find really satisfying, like taking the godawful and practically unnavigable page for the athletic handbook and filling it with internal links, and the stuff I find incredibly tedious, like adding new students to the website database by hand because the place that does our data processing is ridiculously slow. (To be fair, it is August, so I assume they're getting a lot of new student processing requests right now. But still.) I've also started daydreaming about being able to make my own database and fill it with minor characters and details from the great HP AU. Seriously, you could do great and hilarious multimedia fannish/RP things for Harry Potter, with a fully functional school website. (Teacher pages! Grades and comments! Schedules! Quidditch games on the athletic calendar! ... I am totally losing my sense of perspective.)

Anyway. Fannishly, I finally got off my butt - and the weather was good enough for long enough - for me to get mostly caught up on Burn Notice, Covert Affairs, and The Closer. I'm not caught up a hundred percent on Rizzoli & Isles, but I'm working on it. Now I just need to catch up on Warehouse 13, and I'll be all set. ( A little nattering, mild spoilers. ) Mostly, though, I really do not have any deep thoughts.

Which is possibly because the part of my brain responsible for deep thoughts is too busy buzzing around Arabic. Now that I have actualfax money, and - at least for the moment - no regular bills except gas to spend it on, I splurged a bit on a Rosetta Stone. I'm pretty sure it's Modern Standard Arabic; there are times when some of the speakers are a little difficult to understand, and I think it's partly because of dialectical differences that aren't being covered in the program in general. Anyway, it is, of course, fascinating. I'm only on the fourth lesson, so I haven't gotten a lot further than, you know, "The girls have bikes. The girls do not have bikes. There are three yellow bikes." And the phonetics are tripping me up a little, which I was expecting; I can't always hear the difference between emphatic and non-emphatic stops, or between the velar fricatives and the pharyngeal fricatives. And I definitely can't produce them very well. :P But I'm sure practice will help, at least, even if I'm too old to really get good at it.

Mostly, it's just a ridiculous amount of fun to do. There's nothing I like better than learning languages, and with a computer program, I don't have to do skits or dialogues or worksheets or any of the other stuff that I don't like about regular intro language classes. But I haven't gotten far enough to say for certain whether it works, either. ^^ (If it does, though, I ... may have already composed a prioritized and weighted list of the languages I want to get next. :D)

I'll conclude my wall of text by saying that I have never listened to so much NPR in my life as I have commuting to and from work - which is part of the reason I'm experimenting with taking my pretentious post titles from the Writer's Almanac poem of the day, instead of songs. I could seriously listen to Garrison Keillor talk all day.

OMG I HAVE A JOB.

Ahem.

The first two days were very slow, which I guess I was expecting; I have to learn how to use their website before I can really do anything. Unfortunately, the "webinars" on the subject are unbelievably dull, and I went in today expecting to be bored out of my mind yet again. But, miracle of miracles, today I got to edit things! They're fixing up the student handbook for the upcoming school year; I sank into it this morning and didn't come out 'til lunch. It was awesome. And my computer arrived, too - the monitor is gigantic and beautiful, which is great, but the OS is Windows 7, which ... I have not yet gotten to know, let's say. Still, it is very pretty, and I shall have to think of a name for it.

Also, I am already busily fantasizing about the things I can get myself once I have actual adult-type monies - books, mostly, although I am deeply, deeply tempted by the chance to buy myself some Rosetta Stone software. We'll see. :D

But back to more fannish things: ( I caught the pilot of Rizzoli & Isles. Spoilery! ) I'm definitely going to keep watching for a few more episodes, in the hope that it'll pick up some.

I also saw most of ( the Covert Affairs pilot. Also spoilery! ) I missed the final fifteen minutes, because the satellite gave up the ghost entirely at that point; but I liked pretty much everything else well enough that I'm going to try to catch it again.

... Clearly I'm not good at having deep thoughts about pilot episodes.