I'm tired and had a bad day. I hate how I can't function as well if I don't exercise and eat breakfast. I HATE that. I LOATHE and DETEST having to take time to take care of myself properly.

According to a sticker on my pill package, oral contraceptives may make contact lenses difficult to wear. I've been on the pill for years and I had no idea!

Thought of the moment: are there little black mousies living under the tracks of the Sheppard subway line too? Or is the line too new?

I've watched my POA DVD three times already since it first arrived on my doorstep last Thursday! It's definitely the best movie so far, which is good because it's definitely my favourite book so far. You can tell Cuaron is having fun with the material instead of just jumping from plot point to plot point.

However, there are a few changes I'd make. First, I'd shorten the following scenes:

1. Aunt Marge inflating and floating away (I'd make her inflate faster)
2. Harry flying around on Buckbeat
3. Harry and Hermione getting tossed around by the Whomping Willow

They're all fun CGI scenes and they do have their place, but I'd shorten them and use the space saved to communicate the following plot points:

1. Show the Wolfsbane Potion
2. Explicitly say that MWPP are Remus, Peter, Sirius and James
3. Tell the story of WHY WPP chose to become Animagi!
4. Explain that Harry's Patronus is, in fact, his father!

It's one thing to assume the viewer is familiar with the backstory of the first two books/movies, it's quite another to assume they're familiar with the backstory of the current story. It's more important to make everyone's motivation clear than to have cool CGI effects.

I'd have also enjoyed a longer Boggart scene, and the Gryffindor vs. Ravenclaw Quidditch match (which is one of my favourite scenes in the book).

And for any Canadian Potter fans reading this, am I the only one who is reminded of Wormtail every time I see the name of Minister of Foreign Affairs Pierre Pettigrew?

On MASH, they're all wearing their dress uniforms. Col. Potter has a sort
of cropped jacket that ends before the top of his hips, but the other
officers all have longer jackets that fall mid-hip. I wonder why?

Thought of the moment: what is the single most embarrassing purchase or combination of purchases that you can make at a drugstore without including items related to sex or sexual health (and the related body parts) or bodily waste (and the related body parts)?

Discuss.

And also, my left armpit has been sore since I got my flu shot. Same thing happened last year. WTF?

No rent increase for next year! YAY!

I've said several times in the past that they should have weather forecasts that tell you what to wear. Well, now they do.

The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard

A story of Japan and Hong Kong shortly after World War II. A strange book,
kind of floaty and dream-like, in the way that what happens in a dream is
beyond one's control. It's like the characters feel that things are just
happening to them, which is quite likely given the muddled state of life
when everyone is recovering from a war. It's also a love story, but kind of
a strange love story. The characters seem to just suddenly and mutually
decide that they're in love with each other, but since the narrator doesn't
really talk about his feelings we don't actually see it happen. It also
seems to be trying to make some kind of commentary on age and youth, but
that's strange too. The male protagonist is in his late 20s/early 30s and
seems to feel that his youth is behind him, which is a strange thing to be
feeling because really he's still young. The woman he falls for is in her
late teens, and it seems like the book is trying to present this as a
midlife crisis thing, except he's too young to be having a midlife crisis,
and it's hardly the type of physical lust that one associates with a midlife
crisis. And it seem doubly strange since the author is in her 70s, so she
should certainly realize that 30 is not old. It's all slightly surreal
without intending to be so.

The two candidates in Ukraine are named Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor
Yanukovich.

They need more variety there.

SNOW!!!!!!!!!

You know how some people give their babies formula instead of nursing them? When the baby starts crying for food and the formula needs to be prepared, what do they do with the baby while preparing the formula? I'd assume that parental instincts would tell you to pick up the crying baby and soothe it, but I'd also assume that the formula can be prepared faster when you don't have a crying baby in your arms...

In September I ordered an item from Amazon. It was a special-order item, so they said it would take 6-8 weeks to ship. I therefore decided to order it together with my Harry Potter DVD (which was released today) so I could use a coupon and get free shipping.

Today I got an email informing me that they could not obtain the special-order item for me. They then added:

Please note, if you took advantage of a promotional offer when placing this order, this cancellation can affect your order's eligibility for that offer.

That is not so very cool. If they're going to keep me waiting for two months expecting that I can get this particular item, they could at least have the decency to let me save a lousy $5 on my DVD! They were good enough not to charge me for shipping the DVD, but you'd think that good customer service requires that they let me use the promotional offers too...

This is me attempting to be optimistic about stuff a la Jimmy.

They've started showing my exercise shows on weekends too. This is good, because on a normal weekend day I can wake up early, exercise, then go back to sleep for as long as I need. This means that I'll get at least 2 days of exercise in no matter how bad my week is.

MASH is now on at 8 pm, so I get some nice comfort food television to relax me before bed. Plus I can do my dishes painlessly during the commercial breaks, and I'm fully justified in playing computer games for an hour in the evening (because I can't POSSIBLY be expected to study/read/do complicated housework while watching TV!) I'm particularly happy since the current MASH episodes feature the Potter/Hunnicutt/Burns line-up, which is my favourite.

And once I get one short annoying text out of the way, my work is good and happy. As long as I don't think too far in the future.

BEST. WEBSITE. EVER!!!

I just had an enlightenment:

The reason why it's so valuable to me to sleep until I wake up naturally is because it calms me down. When I wake up naturally after a complete sleep, my mind is blank and I'm not worrying about anything that does not need to be addressed immediately. When I have not had enough sleep, I find myself fretting about things that are beyond my immediate control and/or inevitable. So the reason I often wake up mornings craving more sleep is not so much because I'm tired, but because I want to be calmed.

Look at the paintings on the outside walls of this Sim house. They don't rotate properly! On the left wall, the yellow square is on the bottom right and the red fruit is on the bottom left. On the right wall, the yellow square is on the bottom left and the red fruit is on the bottom right!

One thing I've always found terribly annoying in every language class I've
ever taken is the whole asking for/giving directions unit. I'm not sure
why, but it really annoys me. Maybe because it's so repetitive. Maybe
because it requires more creativity (I have to think of places to give
directions to and think of how to get there). Maybe it's because I so
rarely ask for or give directions IRL. At any rate, it annoys me in any
language.

Half-formed theory:

We have to expect (not accept, expect) a certain degree of
corruption/hypocrisy from any political leader, because the personal
characteristics that make a person inclined to want to be leader of their
country are also the characteristics that make a person inclined to be
corrupt or a hypocrite. Slytherin qualities.