My HBP thoughts finally got written up over here. I don't know if I said much, but I sure did talk a lot.

Other things I have done in the past two weeks:

S. and I studied together three (3) separate times for the GRE. It's utterly demoralizing to be set the task of doing middle-school mathematics problems and not be able to do them, since I haven't done them since, you know, *middle school*. There's nothing like being asked to solve a linear equation like 4 - 5(2y+4) = 4 and hearkening nostalgically back to sixth grade. I keep conflating four steps in my head like I'm used to doing, and then I mess up on the arithmetic—it's been way too long since I worked with numbers on a regular basis. My dad is all confused about the relevance of this test, and I just keep saying, "don't get me started."

On Saturday I got 214 pages into HBP before and after dinner, and then malelia_honu called around 9:30 and said she felt like she should be going to a movie, so she swung by and collected me for the 10:05 showing of Bewitched. It was cute, we laughed a lot, and we snorted a lot. We had fun, but I don't think I'd actually recommend it. We also saw five or six trailers, one of which was for Elizabethtown, where Orlando Bloom is a pretty, pretty boy, though I dislike Kirsten Dunst for being smug and smirky; and one of which was for RENT: a fabulous trailer, beautifully shot and of course their voices are all incredible (Jesse L. Martin on "or the way that she diiiiiied" = goosebumps omg). They're all way too old (I mean, Mimi is supposed to be nineteen—and look like she's sixteen) but that's okay! and I am excited about it.

Then we found a Dunkin' Donuts on US-1 and sat down with our donuts and coffee and cards for a couple of rounds. Technically they closed at 1:00, but the drive-through was open later, so the lady didn't mind us staying a while; we headed out by 1:30 or so. We got caught by the late-night train, the long and slowly-moving one, and started a game of regular-card Uno while we waited. We finished it off in my driveway and then sat in the dark with the car running for a while longer, just talking. Only the animals were awake when I finally came in. We were all supposedly heading to the beach for breakfast tomorrow; I left a note telling my parents to wake me up twenty minutes before they wanted to leave and I would be ready.

. . . However, it turned out that I was the first one up Sunday morning (c. 8:45) even though I'd been the one to go to sleep at five. We did make it out to the beach, though it was more brunch-time than breakfast-time by the time we got there. We stopped at the organic market for lettuce and parsley. At home I continued reading HBP, stopping for dinner consisting of bruschetta and goat cheese on toasted artisan bread plus enough wine to get buzzed on, then roasted chicken over sweet potatoes and some sauteed vegetables. My mother's been on-vacation-without-leaving-home and not cooking, but she broke down tonight. Started Season Eight of M*A*S*H and we cried and cried when Radar left. And then we cried and cried some more when BJ broke down at the end of the next episode, after his incredible all-night drinking binge.

We've been promising ourselves for weeks, but Mal and I set aside this Thursday for movie day! Movies watched:

1) Say Anything. Everyone should have a Lloyd Dobson: being a good boyfriend is totally his calling in life.

2) Saved! Which was HILARIOUS. Whoever said Macauley Culkin was the best part of this movie? You are correct! But everybody else was great too.

3) Ghost World. Um, weird. Steve Buscemi is always creepy. And the ending kinda came out of nowhere, though it was intriguing. I loved her clothes.

4) I <3 Huckabees. Quirky and arty, and I loved it. Also in which Jude Law has what I think must be the least successful American accent ever attempted on stage or screen. Awesomely bad. Though I saw him (unfortunately) in Sky Captain, and he couldn't hold on to a single dialect there either. I'd heard this movie didn't have a plot, which is confusing, because there absolutely was not only a plot, but a theme, a message, a mystery, development, epiphanies, revelations, and a very satisfying ending. Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman were cute as could be.

Also in the past two weeks, I have been to a gym exactly one (1) time, but I just got signed up at the health club starting tomorrow, so I will be attending regularly once again, hurrah.

ciderpress has recently discovered Stargate: Atlantis and is all a-squee about it, especially Major John Sheppard, and just reading about it makes me clap my hands and squeak. The North American DVD release date is November. In the meantime, rageprufrock has just started an AU called Hindsight (Part 1: In which somebody expresses their true feelings for Rodney, John isn't able to find Rodney's head injury and never joined the Air Force, and Montana's tourists really get a run for their money) that is AWESOME and will hopefully be a billion chapters long, but I will take whatever I can get.

I'm going to go read a book now.