The good news: I will be on my way to the airport in a little over two hours.
The bad news: I have been working since 10am (and it’s after 3am now), which means that I haven’t packed yet.
The good news: All that time spent working ended up with a finished website, and a $200 bonus for me.
The bad news: I do not get to sleep now.
The good news: I bought a Red Bull, and it’s doing its job well.

I really shouldn’t be spending time writing in livejournal right now, as I’ve still got to pack and stuff, so I’ll just say orevoir, and I may or may not write while I’m on the road. Till then, I am leaning out of a window waving my hanky at you all.

So, my first summer in Austin was cooler and rainier than Seattle. How bout that?

I’m working today to get some flash presentations finished for CosmicContact.com, and then tomorrow I pack up my stuff and (if I have time and it’s not pouring) I’ll go see the flight of the bats at the congress bridge. And then I have to go to bed early so that at 6am on Monday morning, I can catch my flight to Minneapolis, where I’ll meet up with my grandpa, so we can fly to London, England. Yay! Yay yay yay! Eeee!

So, the Harry Potter series is finally over. I finished reading Deathly Hallows a couple hours ago, and, just as I suspected, almost the entire book is taken word-for-word from “Harry Potter and the End of the Series.” Oh sure, you may have to read between the lines for some of the plot points (the nympho nymphs and Ron’s pop music career are a little harder to find, but they’re there if you look for them).

I’ll post more of a review once it’s had some time to sink in.

In other news, I have no other news, because I’ve done nothing but read Harry Potter lately.

Tonight is it… tonight the world will finally learn the truth: that Harry Potter was a blueberry muffin all along, and in the end he must sacrifice himself by tricking Voldemort into eating him, because of course, Voldemort is allergic to blueberries.

Woops - spoiler alert.

I’m just a little ways into Half Blood Prince right now, which means I’ll be doing very little besides reading that so that when I get my copy of Deathly Hallows in the mail tomorrow, I’ll be prepared for it.

I have occasionally mentioned in the past that in my blog, I tend to gloss over unhappy things and put greater emphasis on happy things, so that when I go back and read entries from the past I can enjoy reminiscing about the my favorite events. This is why last week’s posts mentioned the things I was happy about, but not the things that I was sad about.

However, this week’s post (that you are reading now) is full of happy things because I am feeling happy, and I am thrilled to say that there is almost nothing to glaze over (except for a cooking experiment that went awry, resulting in an odd chicken and carrot gloop soup).

To start it off, on Sunday I met back up with Lila and we had a long talk about how we were feeling about everything, and by the end of it we were both feeling a lot better about whe

re things stood. We aren’t back together, but we are friendly again. On Tuesday we went to the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which was pretty amazing (although we did have to sit in the very front row, on the farthest seats to the left, so the next day my neck was achin’).

In slickdeal news, I ended up with a good deal I hadn’t anticipated getting - there was a slickdeal up about a free-after-rebate labeler (I’ve always enjoyed labelers), but when I went to order it, I saw that I had to add another $15 or so to get the free shipping, and so I added a stack of 100 DVD-R’s, since I needed some to make my system recovery disks. Well, as it turns out, so many slickdealers ordered that labeler that it broke the computer system, and so they had to cancel the orders. However, before they canceled the labeler, they had already mailed out my DVDs, and they had taken off both the DVD coupon, and the labeler coupon, so I ended up getting my $27 DVDs for $5. Slick deal, indeed. So now I’ve got my system restore disks, and 98 more DVD-Rs to boot. Sweet.

The other slickdeal is a credit card I signed up for (I never sign up for the credit card deals, but this one was too good to pass up) - when I spend $250 on it, I’ll get a check for $250 back. And, you know what happens to cost $250? A wii! So, I just may wind up with a wii after all. Wii’ll see.

In Harry Potter news, I just finished reading Goblet of Fire, so I now have exactly one week to read Order of the Phoenix and Halfblood Prince. Although, unfortunately, I now know what happens during Order of the Phoenix because there were tons of spoilers for it in the movie version. They should really have a warning on those things before you watch them.

In other Harry Potter news, I found out that they’re building a Harry Potter theme park as part of Islands of Adventure. Unfortunately it doesn’t open until late 2009, so I can’t visit it tomorrow, but I am excited nonetheless. Here is a picture of what it will look like:

There was more excitement this week, but I can’t think of it at the moment. Plus, It’s ten-to-two, and I said I was going to go to bed early tonight. Since I didn’t, I’d better at least go to bed now. Goodnight.

I’ve had a rather prolific day today - I’ve got three new songs for my musical (”One and Only” - the one I was writing for playwriting, but which I haven’t touched since getting out of school), and I’ve got some more done on my script for The Office, as well as a start on a short movie about a grocery store that takes its customer loyalty program very seriously.

Yay for being able to write again!

Two days ago marked the three month point in this great Austin adventure. Half of me is shocked that it’s been three months already, and the other half is shocked that so much has happened in such a small amount of time. Time is a funny thing, ain’t it?

I’ve just finished off Prisoner of Azkaban, which gives me two weeks to read Goblet of Fire, Order of the Phoenix, and Half-Blood Prince in order to be fully caught up in time to read Deathly Hallows on the 21st. Yay for reading marathons!

Today I got two exciting things in the mail - the first was my paycheck that I’ve been waiting for for a couple weeks now (and which I still have, thanks to Toys R Us and Target not having a Wii to spend it on), and the other is a travel bag and passport wallet from the travel agency, with the itinerary for my trip to the UK, which is now (counting today as the 7th - 07/07/07 - as it is after midnight) three weeks and two days away. Excitement!

On the work front, I’m still hanging in the balance, although it looks like I may still be leaning towards not-fired. We’ll see. JF liked the animation I put together for the Cosmic Contact site (about how in order for civilization to survive, we’ll need to band together and ask for assistance from the far-advanced alien civilizations) (note: that animation is still In Progress - the final one should have the words that are written at the bottom read as voice over, instead of text, and there’ll be music, and it’ll be cleaner and smoother and the timing will be better. But other than that, I like it.) and so he wants to keep me on, as long as we can keep selling enough office furniture through craigslist and others to be able to afford me.

The bugs have been especially bad for the past couple days - it’s been a long time since we’ve had a rain-free day, and so there are many piles of water about, which make great places for mosquitoes to build up armies to attack me. Luckily they’re pretty much only outside. Ants, however, are back in force, this time taking over the living room and kitchen. Yesterday I fixed the vacuum (fixed it by cleaning out the suction hose dealie), and discovered that it is fun / effective to vacuum them up into a whirling cyclone of ant destruction. Bwa ha ha ha. For the ones that ran and hid during that, I also placed more piles of borax and sugar. The ants shall rue the day, I tell you. Rue the day!

This month is getting better as it rolls along. I’m liking the way it’s heading.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

I’ll write tomorrow - for now, here are the pictures I took from the Austin fireworks spectacular:



























































I may not be fired after all!

I am now finished with Chamber of Secrets. Tomorrow - Prisoner of Azkaban.

I have been spending some time getting caught up on two of the newer internet fads: the first being the large variety of parodies of “Dear Sister” an SNL skit which is itself a parody of The OC’s season finale (spoilers if you watch the OC, I suppose). I recommend doing a search on youtube for “dear sister” and watch some of the movies on there, but be warned that you’ll be singing “mm whatcha say” for the rest of the day.

The other is the Dramatic Chipmunk. I had seen the original Dramatic Chipmunk a while back, but not until today had I seen all of the random variations on it. When you’re done looking at Dear Sister parodies, do a youtube search for dramatic chipmunk for more video fun. Or, watch my own addition to the pile of Chipmunk videos here:

Now, I’m going to talk about ***BANG***
♩♩ Mm, whatcha say… ♩♩

I’m not going to go into detail here, because the internet isn’t the place for it, but today I broke up with Lila. I spent a few hours thinking, and decided that it would be for the best. Right now I’m feeling rather sad and lonely (this is the first time I’ve ever broken up with someone). That’s all I’m going to say on that topic in this post.

In other news, I signed up for a local phone number with skype (VOIP - internet phone), so now I have a Texas number. The phone number is (512) 782-4348, which translates to (512) STAGE IT (or if you cheat and add an extra letter at the end, it can spell out STAGE GUY, or RUBIDIUM).

I’m feeling blue, so I’m going to end this post here. I’ll write more when I’m feeling better.