Thursday Miscellany

• Confession: I’ve never read Beowulf. However, the trailer — stellar cast aside — doesn’t exactly make me seventeen kinds of excited for the movie. Note to Zemeckis: That Polar Express-style animation? It still looks stupid, even when you’re doing strange things to an ancient classic instead of ruining a classic children’s book. Continue reading 

$50 Worth of Cheese

That title is a shout-out to anyone who ever watched MTV’s sadly long-long The State. Except it was $500 worth o’ puddin’. This is $50 worth o’ cheese. Oregon cheese. Cheese that I will happily devour after it serves its intended purpose. Which is not “for rolling in.” I miss good television. Soon we will have cable, and I will have more to talk about. When’s the Eco-Challenge on, again? Continue reading 

Two-thirds? Around there.

I thought it was such a good idea to blog reading Deathly Hallows. I thought it’d be all this, that and the other thing every hundred pages or so. I CAN’T TEAR MYSELF AWAY. Not to do other work that needs doing. Not for the complicated project. Not to clean the house for the friend that’s coming tomorrow. I did make dinner, and then I ate too much of it (downright decadent homemade mac & cheese, if you were curious). Even now, the book is calling. Things are happening. Darkness and strife. Excitement and downtime. Continue reading 

100 pages

I keep getting up to refer to the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. If I don’t stop this, I’ll never get anywhere. Though I did have to get up the first time simply because Rowling is not holding back, here; this is a dense, dark, straight-to-it sort of book, no fussing around or dawdling at the beginning. Like I said, no spoilers here, but I did get a little choked up two or three times already. Back I go. The boyfriend has been pressed into service as a coffee maker and another cup awaits. Continue reading 

The Eve of Potterdammerung

It’s 10:30 on Friday. I should be out and about, but no; I’m in the middle of a project too absurd to even go into. I keep being tempted by the Harry Potter parties — it’s the last book! I’ve never gone to a midnight party, despite my obsessiveness! — but sometimes it just works out that once you’re in for the night, working on a stupid project and sipping Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Barleywine (which you swiped from your boyfriend, if you’re me), you’re in for good. But Books Without Borders is just blocks away … But if I go alone, I’ll feel … old. Continue reading