La Vie En Rose for 2005 September 1

Tonight was our second HP discussion group. It went pretty well--everyone who came last time showed up again, and they all seem pretty excited about it and dedicated. One kid is even anxious to move it up to every week, which actually would probably work (I'm making all my friends come and I'd probably be just hanging out with them anyway) but I don't want to get everyone burnt out at the beginning. They are a pretty hard group to keep on track, but I managed to steer everyone through the five first chapters of Sorcerer's Stone we were supposed to read for today. Next week will be really fun because we can talk about our impressions of all the characters. So far we have really only meet Hagrid.

In other news I got to the go The Petroleum Club, "the most swankified place in town," for pasta night. We got in because Chris' older brother Paul works there as a chef. It was one of his last nights since he is moving up north. And it was reeeeaallly good.

I finally finished reading Paris 1919, which is a great read & I highly recommend it. It's very well-written, although it can be a bit heavy (which is why it took me soo long to read it) being so intense with well-packed information, and also depressing in most parts. Macmillian does a great job of de-bunking several common myths about the Treat of Versailles especially, and explaining how the decisions made way back then helped to form the situations of today, especially in Iraq. I think we as a public tend to view a lot of historical figures in a purely black and white light, but they were, just like the rest of us, only human.

Also I am getting a little sick of all this tradgedy stuff. It's enough to make a girl realise how lucky she is *knocks on wood*. My heart goes out to everyone who is having such a horrible time with the hurricane and flooding, etc, and all those people who got stampeeded in Iraq, and you know, everything else that's going wrong in the world right now.