Mon Aug 01 2005 11:00 PST Stranded: My car is at Barnetts and they are having a looksie. I hope they call me back soon so I can tell if I'm going to LA tomorrow or not. I hope they are able to fix it cheaply! I hope, I hope...

Becs & Rob came over last night to keep me company and we watched Strictly Ballroom. I thought it was pretty good. I've been picking tomatoes and stuff from the garden and putting them in the freezer. I really hope mom doesn't come back to find the whole yard dead, I have been trying really hard to take care of everything. There is so much to remember! Recycling, trash, green waste, arrowhead water, sprinklers, watering, etc etc.

Update Good and Bad: $275 for a new water pump. But it will be ready today or tomorrow morning, which means I can go to work and earn money to pay for it. So, well.

Update II: I got my car back, yay. My bank account is depressingly empty, boo... It's almost like the coolant tank was. No matter how hard I try to keep it full, the stupid light keeps blinking.

Mon Aug 01 2005 18:30 PST Oooh, spoilers: Rumours about a new Corrs album. Oh, yay!

(2) Tue Aug 02 2005 00:00 PST Boring update # 567--In which Rachel is not obsessed, no, not at all. : I was so productive today! Until I spent like, two hours looking up stuff on the Corrs. Someone needs to take the internet away from me.

I am really excited about the supposed new album, whenever it does come out. It is allegedly of traditional Irish songs, and will assuredly be off the hook. I bought another single, Give Me A Reason, but only because it was $.80, so less than $4 with S&H. There are a bunch of others CDs I want, such as a Special Edition of In Blue which has a whole second disk of bonus songs, and a "Corrs Live" CD which was only released in Japan but is somehow available on Amazon. But these are considerabley more than $.80, so I'll have to wait.

Pictures from the GoF movie keep cropping up, too... heaven help us all.

Tonight I watched another movie with the ace gang, minus Rob who is at some graphics conference thingie hoping for a job. Time for beddie so I can wake up nice & early for workie and La!

(1) Tue Aug 02 2005 15:31 PST Hazard to myself: I bought myself a sippy cup. It’s actually an official UCLA Library mug with a special cap to prevent spills. I’m sure it will come in handy, it is actually the only beverage container you are allowed to bring in the library. I used to sneak in stuff in my HP mug—yes I have one shut up it was a present it’s not like I bought it myself—and have it spill in my bag, but now I don’t even have to sneak! Anyway, it’s pretty hard to spill because you have to press down on a lever to get any liquid to come out, but I’m sure I’ll be able to manage, even if I keep the lid on. Possibly, though, it should be the only cup I am allowed to drink from.

Met up with Christina before going to the library and she lent me the first 10 CDs of HBP. Now my drive to see Susie & John tomorrow will be much nicer. I also talked to mom, she said she & Leonard have seen many dinosaurs.

I have been fiddling around with my RSS feed page but I can’t really get it how I want. I just want a view where every time I click on it, it shows all the latest updates on my feeds newest to oldest. Also Rob said I could get it to pick up Blogspot pages, …but I can’t. Clearly I don’t know what I’m doing.

A bit later: Haha, perhaps I should read this...

(2) Tue Aug 02 2005 21:08 PST Hmm: Joining facebook groups is probably a new addiction.

I think the crepes mom made that I froze for this week went bad because my tummy felt all funny... but Stacy gave me a Naked Juice so now I feel better.

This morning before I went left I went to the Albertson's on Brundage and Chester to get some bagels & snackies, and I saw the big banner at the McDonalds and thought, 'I could get a diet coke for $.69," then thought, "Hey, where did that McDonald's come from?" Seriously, has it always been there? Why have I never noticed it before?

(6) Thu Aug 04 2005 09:51 PST Shopaholic & Sister: I went down to visit Susie & John yesterday. In an effort to avoid traffic I left work in LA at one and got to Tustin around 2:45 (after a misadventure to Anaheim) and sat reading about May Sinclair in a Barnes and Noble Café until Susie got off work at four. Then we went shopping! I found a really cute pair of brown/pink heels but wanted to see what else there was, so we went to TJ Maxx and Ross and Target as well. I saw a couple more pairs of shoes but nothing I really loved, even though what I wanted was a pair of nice beige sandals, not brown heels. But I did see a nice pair of beige flip-flops at target, on sale for $10, but they didn’t have my size, so I’ll have to stop at the one in Bakersfield on my way home tonight. There was a nice beige corduroy jacket at Ross which was so cute even Susie insisted I buy it, and she cute a couple of cute work shirts. Then we went back to off-Broadway shoes so I could get my heels. I just grabbed a size seven pair, but I must have tried on seven and a half earlier, because when I put them on later to show John they were not nearly as comfortable as they had been in the store… So Susie is taking them back & exchanging them for me today, which means I will probably have to go back and visit next week so I can get my shoes. But it’s ok because I had a lot of fun.

After shopping Susie made yummy cheesy bacon Spanish rice for dinner while I tried to help by washing dished. John came home & we ate and sat around and talked & I looked at their scrapbook of cruise pictures, etc. Stacy sent along a peace offering of the really good hazelnut chocolates, I forgot what they're called, and a lychee jello which John said tasted "nostalgic." Susie played the piano and we sang (we’re just a bit rusty). I woke up really early, at 5:30 (but John was up even earlier studying) and left at like 6:15 to try again to beat traffic. It was not a bad drive at all, made better by listening to HBP on CD which Christina kindly lent me. It got to Westwood at 7:30 and sat reading at Coffee Bean until I figured it was a decent enough hour to appear at work. Mr K told Stacy yesterday that he is amazed at how early I have been getting here!

I really love listening to the HP books on audio. It’s a lot slower paced then my reading so I notice so many more little details, and I really enjoy the way Jim Dale reads the books. Even on my second time through I find myself tearing up at the “Sirius” moments in the beginning of the book and I laughed aloud when… (see comments) Plus it makes the drive go by much quicker and I hardly notice the traffic!

(1) Sun Aug 07 2005 16:17 PST Yum: For lunch I am having a sliced tomato with freshly ground pepper and sea salt and fried zuchini and bell pepper, all from the garden. There may be hope for my survival yet...

(2) Mon Aug 08 2005 12:01 PST: I've managed to get a CD stuck in my iBook. It won't come out no matter how many times I press the eject button, and I've already ejected it from Finder so it's not appearing there even though it's still in the computer! How to get it out?

Update. Never mind. I put it to sleep and when I woke him back up the CD came right out. Even more brilliance: the reason I got it stuck in the first place is because I stopped it in the middle of a burn. I've been copying Christina's HBP and realised I was burning the tracks in descending order... and I suspect I have have done for the last 8 CDs. So smart, this one.

(6) Tue Aug 09 2005 18:29 PST Slob? Klutz? : Today was not a good day for my skirt. Sometimes I think I'm totally inept... but most of the time I don't care!

Going to see Susie & John again tomorrow, and get my shoesies, and possibly visit uncle Justin, yay. I made myself a schedule for workie with all the things I need to get done for August, and printed it for my boss, so now I *have* to do these things on time. This, as I discovered during my thesis, is the way to get things done. Soon I shall make a schedule for my book as well. And it will work, unlike my last schedule, because Becca will be my Gestapo enforcer.

(12) Wed Aug 10 2005 20:37 PST Podcasting: I didn't really know what this new thing that came with the automatic update of iTunes was, but when I read that Mugglenet has a podcast, I had to figure it out! It is the sixth most popular one! I was going to listen to the first episode tomorrow at the gym but my iPod has died and I neglected to bring the charger, woe.

Susie & I went to dinner with Justin & Barbara at Acapulco, it was very yummy. I had a BBQ Shrimp Tostada, and we had a nice chat about Lorna Call and psychiatry and related topics.

(10) Thu Aug 11 2005 17:55 PST Something else to talk about: Today is the 11th, so happy birthday to Ginny & happy anniversary to mom & dad.

Christina & I wanted to go to a French restaurant near here that got really good reviews on citysearch, and cast about for an excuse to celebrate. Our friendship anniversary had already passed, so we chose today. But when I looked it up today for a map, I noticed the hours and the fact that it's only open for dinner. Fab. So we went somewhere else, but it was still good. Stacy came along & we went to LUSH and I stocked up shampoo for the year (the solid ones last forever).

Generally I try to feel sympathy for the women I read about for work. But sometimes I have to try really hard. I was proud to tell Justin that Isabel Emslie Hutton was one of the first prominent women psychiatrists, and she was on the British Medical Association's committee to investigate Freud's teachings and pyschoanalysis. May Sinclair is just pyscho. She was a famous and sucessful novelist, yet she switched shamelessly between past and present tense, first and second person, sometimes within the sentence. She thought of the war as a grand adventure, a way to achieve exalted Reality with a capital R. A lot of women went to the front because they wanted an adventure, but also because they wanted to help; the horrible "Reality" of it sobered them up soon enough. May Sinclair... had a lust for danger, but not the stomach for it. She bemoaned the fact that she was not twenty years younger. The "very refinement of hell" was the fact that she was stuck in the village feeding refugees, not out on the field rescuing wounded from under fire. She was seemingly oblivious to the fact that the four thousand refugees, to whom she helped feed a daily ration of six slices of bread, had left their houses and were now sleeping cramped together on filthy straw in order to escape the same fire she longed to be under, and might have a different definition of the "refinement of hell." In fact the times she did go out with her ambulance she only got in the way. It disturbs me that someone in such close proximity to the horrors of the war should be able to imagine war a beautiful, wonderful thing--not for whatever ideals she thought these men were giving their lives to preserve, but because of the exileration it made her feel to be in what she percieved as danger, but was in fact, comparative safety... I suppose I ought not judge. I don't think, if I were in the same position, I would have thought or behaved the same, but I can't know, can I?

(9) Sun Aug 14 2005 16:35 PST Lushie: I've been looking at everyone's weblogs, waiting for people to update, bc it seems no one has been updating--then I realised that includes me as well.

After my visit to Lush, I've been using my new Godiva shampoo with my flying fox shower gel, and my whole bathroom smells like jasmine! It's soo yummy.

I tried to listen to the mugglenet podcast at the gym but it wasn't on my iPod! So I'm listening to it now... interesting.

While I was driving, listening to HBP on CD, I had a brain-flash. What if Madame Pince is really Madame "Prince"? She's described in much the same terms as our beloved ex-potions master. However, a quick google search revealed that I was not the first to come up with this theory...

I need a haircut.

(5) Mon Aug 15 2005 14:52 PST Someone should tell Jim Dale: When one is listening to audio, one notices these things.

I was reading about a "dispassionate" defense of the Allied actions (or rather, lack of action) in regards to Serbia in 1915, and, overcome with curiosity, I looked up the definition: Devoid of or unaffected by passion, emotion, or bias.

In HBP, this word is used twice in regards to (hey, if someone who intends to still has not read the book, let me know, otherwise I'm going to stop doing this)...

In other news, I was trying to win a special edition CD of In Blue on eBay, but someone sneakily and unfairly outbid me about 30 secnds before the acution ended. I didn't even have to time bid again! I though eBay had a policy of extending auctions for 5 minutes or so when this happened, but apparently not. I am trying not to be upset because there is another one I can bid on, but it just seems like a really bitchy thing to do.

(4) Mon Aug 15 2005 19:15 PST Someone should tell these crazy journalist who think they're historians: Just like Kate Adie, who wrote a book on the history of women in modern warfare, Monica Krippner, author of Quality of Mercy: Women at War: Serbia 1915-1918, has a certain disregard for proper citations. Unlike Adie, who seemed merely to think that unless something had quotation marks, it did not require an endnote, Krippner deemed 2 or 3 pages of bibliography and acknowledgments sufficent for 200 pages of texts that relied heavily on block quotes and other information taken directly from sources (I know because I've read them). There's a word for that... I think it's plagarism.

One has no way of knowing what of the information came from what of the the sources. I suppose one must simply guess. An easier task for me than it might be, as I've read all of the published sources listed, so I can assume it's from one of the unpublished, or simply made up (she's gotten quite a few things wrong). But still, frustrating.

Krippner also has the charming habit of novelising information--in her book, these women are dashing about, waving letters in their collegue's faces, and shouting things they probably never, in real life, uttered. "Elsie Corbett was the first to see Flora. Dashing into the others she shouted: 'Flora Sandes has been brought in, badly wounded. We must do something!'" Cute.

How did this get published?

(5) Tue Aug 16 2005 11:35 PST J'aime beacoup: I changed the viewing language on my gmail account to la francais. Bon temps.

Dispassionately was the word of the day yesterday. I put HBP on my iPod and was listening to it while walking to Stacy's, and I heard it again. This time it was the Apparition instructor explaining splinching, and it was done correctly. So who know. Maybe I was just misinterpreting Jim Dale's tone before? He does a really good job (mostly), tho, so I can't complain.

(4) Thu Aug 18 2005 12:50 PST Lucky you: Harry Potter Discussion group first meeting tonight! I am very excited... more about this later.

(2) Sat Aug 20 2005 22:32 PST Back again, so soon: Christina & I are in San Francisco, where we are house-sitting for Uncles Leonard & Jeff. We made it safe before noon, after leaving at six and stopping for Pea Soup. Poor Rufus may or may not have cancer, and has to have pills everyday, which he loves. We have many fun things planned but are also going to get a lot of work and writing done.

The HP discussion group went really well. There were a bunch of people and I tried to keep us focused on book sixie things, but mostly there was a really good discussion. September the 1st we leave on the Hogwarts Express, er, embark on our discussion of book 1.

Christina has one of those speakers where you plug it in into the wall or your computer, plop your iPod in, and it plays it just like a stereo. I was never very intrigued by them till now. It is soo cool!

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Christina & I are having fun in SF. Yesterday we went to Leonard's for a very delicious lunch. Today we stayed in our pjs and read/wrote. I brought a ton of work to finish and also was hoping to finish my novel. It looks like it will be one or the other but not both. I have been working on my novel all day today, so perhaps that will win. Anyway, I am very relaxed, but feeling a bit sick, thankfully that doesn't matter as I don't have to leave the house or my pjs till Wednesday. Rufus is the easiest cat to give pills to ever.

(14) Tue Aug 23 2005 20:47 PST Adventures in SF: "We should get out of the house today," suggested Christina.
"Really?" said I, who was planning on staying in pjs all day again.

So we decided to take the Muni on an adventure and ended up at the MoMA. They were having an exhibition of someone or other's collection of early photographs, and there were a bunch from Paris before/during the remodeling and modernization of the whole city, which was pretty neat. Also cool paintings and things. I was especially impressed with a set of polka-dot-esque Rouen cathedrals, but I don't remember the artist. There was a really cute journal in the gift shop made from "deconstruction paper," but it was not $14 cute. But I wouldn't say no to it for a Christmas pressie ;-).

We looked in one of their guide books and found a place around the corner called something like the Thirsty Bear and went there for really yummy tapas, from which I am still full. They always say 2-3 tapas per person so Christina & I ordered 4, but really 3 would have been just fine, and we were really hungry. I need to remember this next time I order tapas. Then we wandered over to Union Square, where we went to Louis Vuitton as a joke, and into Macy's to try on ugly dresses for a laugh. I actually rather liked a green one that made me feel like a modern flapper, but I managed to escpe without buying it. They were having some sort of back-to-school night, with lots of free food, which was unfortunate, as we were so full. But we did get free Benefit makeovers, which was also unfortunate, as we would have rather had them tomorrow, but fun nonetheless. Escaping from Macy's, we were walking back to the Muni station when Christina said, "I smell LUSH." Sure enough, there it was. She inisisted on going in to buy something called "Sonic Death Monkey." Which smells like Chocolate Orange. That's all. Henna time tonight.

(3) Thu Aug 25 2005 15:51 PST Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my!: As thanks for taking care of their preciousss kitties (Rufus now hates me, but that's good because it means he must be feeling better, and I'm glad he waited till the last pill to start fighting it) Leonard & Jeff bought us tickets to go see Wicked! It was a really, really good show. I thought it was a fairly good adaptation of Gregory Maguire's book, after all somethings must change... my only complaints would be it seemed to be focused more on the love story than the relationship between Glinda and Elphaba, and the ending was a bit too forced. But overall, very good, good voices, good staging, good costumes. I had a great evening, barely marred by the fact that we got lost on the way back. We got on the wrong muni line, got off to go back and switch, but when we got on a tram going to opposite direction it was still going the wrong way. I'm not quite sure how that happened, but oh well.

Today we went with Leonard to the Oakland Zoo. The Oakland Zoo has the official Rachel stamp of zoo approval. It wasn't so big, we were able to go through & see everything without getting tired, but it was full of enough pretty animals that I felt zoo-tisfied. There were adorable meercats, neato bats, camels, gorgeous lions--a whole pride of them--and tigers, and elephants and giraffes, quite a herd of them, and they all looked very happy. Plus there was a "sky ride" sky lift that took us over the tigers and the lions, one of whom rolled over onto his back rather like Tonks does when he wants his tummy rubbed, very cute, in order to see the buffalo roaming and deer grazing near the zoo. There were about a million and a half little kids there.

Then we went to Greens To-Go for lunch. I was bitterly disappointed that they were out of goat cheese sandwiches as I've wanted one since the first time I went to Greens, but the Caprese was very good, and of course we had to stop at the Friends of the Library bookstore where I succumbed to the pressure of my many-paged friends and bought AJP Taylor's English History 1914-1945 ("Don't you know that already?" asked Leonard) and Peter Mayle's French Lessons.

Fri Aug 26 2005 00:54 PST Fini: (ish). yay.

(1) Sun Aug 28 2005 16:35 PST: To complete the adventure, Christina & I took the scenic route home on PCH. It took a lot onlger but was worth it. The road of doomish parts are especially beautiful, with majestic drops straight into the Pacific Ocean. It was a bit like driving on the edge of the earth.

But now I am back, and feeling very content in general, though I have a TON of work to catch up on.

(5) Mon Aug 29 2005 12:11 PST I suck at life today [whiny post]: I was just thinking that my post-vacation happiness bubble was bound to burst sometime, and it did today when I arrived at PK's ready (ish) to work hard and I realised I've forgotten my glasses. Yes, my glasses. Yes, I kinda need them. Right now I am trying to decide what is more annoying, achy eyes or really dark vision from wearing my sunglasses. I've also forgotten several other essential items. I'm so frustrated with myself, and annoyed. I really want to just drive home tonight but I don't know if I should without my glasses. I'm so useless without them! I should really put my old pair in the glove compartment in case this happens again. Why do I suck so at packing? It seems like every week I forget something. Grr grr grr.

It doesn't help matter that last night I woke up to the lovely feeling of a cockaroach crawling on my hand. I tried to convince myself it was my imagination but I turned on the light and there was a cockaroach (or some other large bug) on my bed. "Eek", said I, flinging the sheet and sending the cockaroach flying. "Eek," said I again, and I went on a cockaroach hunt with my Birkenstock. Several items of misplaced furniture and one overturned lamp later it was dead, but still highly disturbing. A cockaroach. In my bed. Humaanahh.

(6) Mon Aug 29 2005 22:44 PST It never rains when you want it to: It seems like I'm usually in a bad mood whenever I see I really bad accident on the freeway, and all of a sudden my life isn't so tough anymore.

So you'll be glad to hear I'm in a much better, Corr-ific mood. Borrowed Heaven is my feel good CD. I just have to put it in and by the time it gets to Hideaway whatever was troubling me has gone away. I got home and my Corrs In Blue special edition CD that I won on eBay (finally!) was in my mailbox. Yayay. And, wondering if I could sign up for some sort of email notice on Amazon to find out when the next CD is being released, I learned that the date has already been announced! "Home" is coming out September 27th!! I'm so excited! I was about to order it on Amazon but then I realized I'd much rather go somewhere day-of to get it. I hope Target will have it on new music Tuesdays. If not then Borders I'm sure, but bah, Borders.

Anyway. That's about it. Mom is going tomorrow to the Utah for Shelley's wedding (and thus continues the era of all my younger cousins getting married before me--not that I am complaining, mind you, just looking on with a slightly disapproving eye, as is entitled by my sage wisdomosity), so it will be just me and the kitties and Belgium. MLI is going really well lately, we've got a bunch of new kids coming to practice and they seem like a cool bunch; this weekend's show & practice were really fun. I have some other things I want to write about but they require thought- & linkies so it will have to wait. But as a hint there are two things that concern bad & good fan-girliness, respectively. And also USC stupidness. Which is always fun. =P

(4) Wed Aug 31 2005 15:01 PST To give me a present, press one. To read this entry, press two. If you would like to contact me, please leave a comment. : I've spent an annoying amount of time on the phone today. First to call AAA, since my car wouldn't start. there seemed to be some sort of confusion that our membership had been cancelled, but it turned out to be a 'glitch in the system.' So finally the tow guy showed up to give me a jump so I could drive over and see my friends at Barnett's for a new battery. I'm now their most frequent customer or something. Listening to the hurricane news on the radio there reminded me of waiting to get my car fixed on September 11th.

We have about a million stray cats hanging around our house (they like to sneak in and eat the food while we're not looking, and have become astonishly bold) and one of them must've been hit by a car or something because it's lying on the sidewalk across the street, definitely dead. For some reason County animal control doesn't have a phone number listed in the phone book, so I started with the SPCA and had to call about five different numbers to finally get the right one, without speaking to a real person the entire time. I left a message and hope they come and get it. It's really disturbing, poor kids walking back from school! I'm really glad it's not my Tonksie or other kitty.