nor so wide as a church door

I was doing so well, and then the Olympics. (Women's basketball is my favorite, I have tremendous girlcrush feelings for Diana Taurasi.) Sigh.

But they're finally over, which means I'm actually a productive adult again. Sort of. And things have happened in the interim!

( My birthday! )

And somewhere back there, I went to see ( The Amazing Spider-Man, or whatever it is - the new one. Spoilers! )

idriya and I also went to see ( The Bourne Legacy. Also spoilers. )

And then yesterday there was ( the Closer finale, and the pilot of Major Crimes. Spoilers again. ) HELP ME I CANNOT HAS OBJECTIVE OPINIONS.

And that's probably enough of a textwall for one post. Next chapter of LttE has cracked 15k with only a couple of sections left to go, so I swear to god it's coming. /o\

Also: my mother only recognized Taio Cruz during the Olympic closing ceremony because of that Korra vid I made. Win.

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.

Hung out with everybody yesterday at J's house, so we could get together before J's family leaves for a vacation together in Mexico. ( Cut for tl;dr. )

We also ... uh, interacted with the source I wrote my Yuletide treat for, to be as vague as possible, which amused me deeply; and I stayed an extra half-hour or so after everybody else left, talking to J about fic. J's current active fandoms are mostly the Percy Jackson books, which I have never read but am vaguely tempted to at least try, and The Hunger Games series, which I am avoiding like the plague because I am almost certain I would hate it by the end. (I will probably be completely certain by the time Mark Reads the Hunger Games is over, depending on how detailed his reviews are.) However, I do know enough about The Hunger Games to keep track of things when J is talking about it, so.

Also! My final set of Christmas presents arrived, and I am now happily devouring Magic Under Glass, Silver Phoenix, and the first volume of Ursula Vernon's Digger. (I've read quite a bit more than the first volume online, but I always forget to go back and read new pages as they come out, so having the beginnings of a collection of it in print is GREAT.) More awesome ladies, pls! Particularly if they are wombats!

I did watch The Closer two-parter, but I'm still not totally sure what I think - except, of course, ILU CAPTAIN RAYDOR. :D Every scene she and Brenda are both in is basically made of gold. And I miss Burn Notice already. Be here faster, summer.

As for tonight, my sister and a friend of hers and I are planning to go to the New Year's Eve contradance at the town hall, and then I will probably sleep until noon tomorrow. I can't believe reveals are so soon. D: omg so nervous.

Yesterday was somewhat less than awesome; it started off with a department meeting nobody had warned me about, during which I had to talk about what exactly I've improved about the website, and ended with a dentist's appointment where the card I was supposed to use to pay got declined. :P

But! The fic posting two days ago went off without a hitch (though there are some small edits I need to remember to make to the AO3 version), which is way better than I was expecting for my first ever. I think after this I'm going to write the fics with formatting tags in place; going back through to find every instance of italics and tag it appropriately was a big time sink. I'm hoping I can get the rest of it done soon (the rest of this book, I mean; the whole series is going to take quite a bit longer), but I'm supposed to drive up to visit Br and AT this weekend, so. We'll see.

Anyway, on to last night's pre-hiatus finales. ( The Closer. Spoilers. )

( Rizzoli & Isles. Also spoilery. )

Final verdict: <3 MY SHOWS.

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.

So Saturday was awesome. I walked stilts for so long that I actually kind of hurt my left foot a little bit; I think I made the foot-strap a little too tight, because the side of my foot, the place where the strap crossed around, was all weird and achy. I was anxious about the kids - and people in general, really, as I am good with neither - but it was like I was possessed, or something. People asked me questions, and I answered them! In a kind and friendly manner! \o/ I'm always particularly afraid of what to do when a kid says something I can't understand, or something kind of silly - like, one of them seemed to be having serious trouble grasping the entire structure of the stilts, and kept asking me what the wood was for - but it actually wasn't half bad.

Turns out that being on stilts brings the same set of questions to everybody's mind: how tall are you, how do you get up there, how did you learn, and is it hard. Plus, I have never had so many people try out the "How's the weather up there?" thing on me in my life.

The rest of the weekend was rather unremarkable in comparison. I find myself weirdly enjoying grocery shopping; there was a phase in between when I got to ride on the cart and now when I thought it was the most boring thing in the world, but that seems to be coming to an end.

Today was more weeding - no particularly good stories, sadly, although I do think I managed to make friends with both of Mary's cats - and also a marathon of The Closer. ( I kind of love The Closer. ) I'm actually typing this during spare moments of the season premiere, which, so far? Awesome.

I used my memories to collect a couple recent posts - specifically, cereta's post on men and rape, and a reaction to it. Reading it and the comments to it has been painfully illuminating; I'd call it a valuable experience for me, except that makes it sound like I'm okay with the pain some of the commenters have gone through because it taught ~*~me~*~ something, which, hell no.