I’ve completed the last ever installment of Harry Potter, some mysteries came to a conclusion, some I don’t think did. All in all I’m okay with how it ended. I will not give out any spoilers here, and if any one comments, leave readers to find the answers themselves. I cried, I laughed, and i’ve mentally tallied up my favorite parts of the epic to include sections of book seven. But I’m not saddened with the knowledge that there will not be a new Harry Potter book to look forward to. My fascination with the series is partly due to the expansion of the world… most of my enjoyment of the world of harry potter is the extensions i write into it, not necessarily only the dogmatic limitations. Rowling created a world we can step into and find homes in, and it is that characteristic that makes a science-fiction/fantasy story really shine out above the rest. For me it always has been… Lewis, Asimov, Herbert, Tolkien, Card… and of course in that list is Rowling and Lucas. Heck, I’m just kinda glad she didn’t end the world as it would conflict with my extensions… it took me a while when Lucas changed around my version of the Star Wars universe to settle back into the prequels… I had nearly lost my fandom until I could negotiate a settlement with my own extensions and the prequel dogma.
alas, i still must sigh with the completion of this epic. I don’t think we’ll ever hear from the magical world of Harry Potter again, but just as Harry Potter swooped into literary history, so too will another tale unravel itself for us muggles to enjoy!

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*sigh*

Literally, two years… July 19th, 2005, when I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I’ve laid low the past couple of weeks on the internet, have refrained from visiting any website that might possibly leak anything on Harry Potter, and even have picked up other books to read patiently until then. Naturally my choices of books could have been better. Only someone silly like myself would go and start reading Stephen King’s “The Stand” one day before Harry Potter will be in my hands. But given how big a fan Mr. King is of Harry Potter, I think he’ll forgive me. For someone who has never finished one of his books, I strangely find Stephen King fascinating as a reader and literary genius. In his book critiques I’ve read, I’ve fallen for every book he’s lauded, and some of the greatest works he’s claimed as his inspiration I also share in my joy. So, I am determined to finish the book, if nothing else than my list of “unfinished books” is way too long!

I could go on for an hour or more on the events of the past two weeks, but to keep it short, as I’ve got to go to work *bah* I drove to Philadelphia with an AMUN staffer and we went to a Phillies/Cardinals game and went for actual philly cheesesteaks afterwards… the line to get the steaks was longer than getting in the game! But all in all I think the two of us had a lot of fun! This was of course only a few weeks after he also came up to Baltimore to go see the O’s and Yanks play. I’m not a huge fan of baseball, but I’m always up for getting out of the house a little bit. And its interesting to see how the real fanatics react with every pitch… I suppose I must look like that whenever i walk into a bookstore or the DVD section of any electronic store!

While I can’t go into them right now, I have seen the trifecta of summer movies… naturally Harry Potter on the Tuesday night premier, Transformers on the Fourth of July, and Die Hard 4. Gosh I miss going to the movies this often!!! They were all great in their own ways, even if HP was cut in half!!

I’m still patiently waiting for any answer on my work situation, but I am losing hope every day. *sadsigh*

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just try to cut in front of me in line!!!

What I am going deaf listening to::
Used To ~ Daughtry

scary thought, eh? I recieved my official notification that my application to become a notary public was accepted… But then again, it was rather expected. Its not like I’ve been convicted of heroin deals in West Baltimore or any such other matter. I’m a goody-goody-two-shoes by and large, and darned proud of it.

Anyways, I’ve been listening to the audiobook version of Orson Scott Card’s Empire, which has been a bit different than his Ender Saga. Its set in the present or soon-to-be-present America with a overmilitarized and technologically superior leftest “Progressive Reformation” has splintered the nation after a double assassination of the president and vice president, which was part of the conspiracy all along. The other books of Card’s that I have read have never dealt with the pop culture, so it was a little strange having him just mention Jack Bauer in passing, American Idol, and even the most strange, Hari Seldon. Now who is Hari Seldon you ask??? Well if you do ask, you are not a fan of Isaac Asimov’s. I found it rather interesting that a writer who had been donned as a great science-fiction writer in his own right uses one of the fundamental characters in Asimov’s core greatest works as a father of science-fiction, the Foundation series. At first I was like “Harry Seldon, why does that name sound so familiar?” as almost simultaniously I spelt Harry as Hari, and then I was like, “no way he mentioned the psychohistorian” and then BAM!! he explains casually to the non-science-fiction-reader-characters in the discussion who Hari Seldon is and actually made a decent analogy to his own character…. though not to the granduer that Hari Seldon will go down in science-fiction history for. It was kinda cool to get the connection and chuckle just a little bit in only the way other science-fiction nuts would enjoy… a little internal joke for us to revel in…. and my mother would appreciate the Jack Bauer references.

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science-fiction geekiness happeh

What I am going deaf listening to::
Hello, Goodbye ~ The Beatles (and not the target commercial!!!)

What I am enriching my mind with::
Empire ~ Orson Scott Card (about four chapters left!)

OMG!!! Let me just tell you how annoying hotels can be!! So there are three/four of us in one hotel room, as is very normal for AMUN gettogethers. We were issued four keys, which we kept in our possession and never claimed lost or anything. So we got back from our meeting this afternoon only to find out that not only did our keys not work, none of the keys from our group worked. The hotel apparently randomly changes the security codes on the doors for customer protection. Okay, this makes it very very annoying to have to change keys around, especially if in our case, only two of the four of us were present to test our keys and replace them. But the most idiotic part of it was that the hotel didn’t even ask us for our names. They gave us new keys to our room without even verifying that we were residents in the room. Literally, i walked up to the desk and said (now four times today) “I need a key to room 222.” And all four times they gave me a key without question!!!! Dude, at one point I had to leave my laptop in here or risk one of the drivers in our group to potentially drive away to ohio or wisconsin with it. What is the point of changing security codes randomly for customer protection if they don’t care who they hand out the new keys to? Anyways, this kind of moronic behavior should be voiced. And what consierge doesn’t know the approximate price for a taxi to the airport or how long it takes for one to arrive? Isn’t that what they are there to know?… oh yeah all of this is going in my debrief you AMUN folks!! ggeeesssshhh!

On better notes, official MD meetings are over, but in AMUN togetherness, we had a blast with our kickball tournament and the barbeque at the L’s. We got a lot of work done, and we’ve got a lot of work ahead of me, but it’s going to be really awesome in HG this year if I can really buckle down and get my portal up and functional again. For those of you who don’t know the acronyms AMUN, HG, and portal, its my non-profit I work for, my department (Home Government) and a webportal… but then thats probably getting a little past what you may or may not want to know about…

More later!

contemplating moronic behaviors

For those of you who may have met me during travels, or those with whom I volunteer with, ya’lls know that I get rather violently air sick on flights… on my weeklong trip to chicago in november, I actually take the train from baltimore to chicago, which is about an eighteen to twenty hour train ride. Usually for memorial day and labor day, i simply drive the eleven hours to chicago (or in this case i would have driven to champaign if I could have gotten off of work) to avoid an airplane. My motion sickness also extends to cars if I’m not physically driving them, so when i go on trips, i usually drive the entire way. Anyways, I survived not one, but two flights in very small planes yesterday evening. The first from Baltimore to Chicago went moderately well; the central part of the trip was at least smooth and I even opened up my eyes to look outside! The site was rather breathtaking… I could see the large cumulus clouds below, and wisps of transparent clouds just swept by under the plane… The wisps were moving at a good speed too, so it was interesting to watch them. They looked more like tiny bits of fog rather than actual clouds, but then again, that is what fog is. Off in the distance I saw this huge rocklike mountain of a cloud which looked more like a spaceship or flying machine from an anime rather than an actual cloud. And as we landed, we watched the glowing red sun set over Chicago. The second trip from chicago to champaign wasn’t that great. Fortunately I ran into another AMUN staffer in Chicago and we flew together… she got to see first hand that I actually do turn green on an airplane. But I didn’t regurgitate anything in two flights!! That is a definate good step. Alas, there will be more updates as I attempt to renew my interest for blogging…
Read on People!! Read On!

AMUN happehness

So, I have this book, the complete plays of Aristophanes, who is considered to be the father of Satire and the greatest of satirists in both the Greek world and contemporary times. Among the eleven plays is perhaps his most well recieved in his lifetime, The Acharnians which is a story about an honest agriculture-based assembly man Dicaeopolis, who sick and tired of the war between Athens and Sparta, and the lack of effort by the Athens assembly to strive for peace, organizes a separate peace with Sparta for just his family and his estate and creates his own free market place within his estate borders. He faces off with characters such as the dramatist playwright Euripides; Lamachus, a famous Athenian general; and the namesake Acharnians, the chorus of winemakers and vineyardmen who’s land and vines have been destroyed by the war and demand revenge upon Sparta. I enjoyed it immensely, though my version of the book is a new translation which sometimes I thought the change in words to a more American/British English version was unnecessary, such as “Goatland of Gobbleallia” which was the best translation for “Tragasia, which according to the translator “was not only a town in the Epirus (Between Greece and Macedoia, but a play upon the word Tragein, to eat, and tragos, a goat” As he had to reexplain it in the footnotes, perhaps it was just better to leave it in the footnotes and keep the original wording, since it was a coinage by Aristophanes rather than a specific town name. A few times I found words that were too contemporary to fit into a classical Greek comedy, but then again, I’ve always been more of a traditionalist. The footnotes do go a long way to explaining, and enhance the story greatly. All in all, not too bad.

For your enjoyment, I’ve also found a link to an english version of The Acharnians for you to peruse. My favorite part was the debate near the end between Dicaeopolis and Lamachus as Lamachus is preparing for war and Dicaeopolis is preparing for the greatest feast of his life, now that he has secured an individual peace with Sparta.

The Acharnians

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amused

What I am going deaf listening to::
The Shire Howard Shore~ The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring-The Complete Recordings

It seems that I am on a good beginning with my new year’s resolutions and goals. Out of twelve books to finish this year, I have just completed Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar with rather swiftness on my part. Rarely do I get the opportunity to finish a book in only two or three days. Most of the time it takes me at least two or three weeks to finish a novel of good size, let alone the ones I usually attempt, like Tolstoy’s War and Peace which only took me fifteen months…. I was rather intrigued throughout the story, having felt several of the emotions throughout Esther’s life, though without the more mortal side… the confusion about life, the wondering when a career path might show up, what I am to do with my intelligence and training that won’t leave me completely bored with my chosen profession. I can see why it has become a masterpiece in contemporary literature. Completely trivial to the story, I did have to dogear one particular page within the book, when Esther was talking to Cal, who was basically a blind date at the beach. He commented that his father was English and lived in a small town called Clacton-On-Sea. To most people, I’m sure they just continued on with the story, but the town Clacton-On-Sea actually has an importance to my life, and given how small the suburb sea-town of Colchester is, I find it fascinating to find it in print. In March of 2005 I visited a friend dear to my heart who happened to live in Clacton-On-Sea, and spent about a day and a half roaming the town, walking on the beachside, taking rather fabulous photos of the blooming daffodils on Easter Week, and loving every second I could spend with a friend I otherwise communicate with only online across the vast Atlantic Ocean. Anyways, thats my little aside… *sigh* Now the most difficult thing is to decide which book to continue on with… I just had picked up The Bell Jar merely last month, which is rather odd, because usually a book must remain on a shelf a couple years before I have the courage to pick it up and actually read this… its tenure on the shelf was almost non-existent… I guess it called to me… though now that I think about it, maybe another of Jane Austen’s books calls to me, either Northanger Abbey or Mansfield Park

On a completely different note, I finally went through my iTunes library and changed over all my movie scores from a genre of “Soundtrack” which also consists of musicals and random compiliations of songs within a movie to become its’s soundtrack to its own sub-genre of “Soundtrack-Score” and created a My Top Rated-Scores playlist which I have been immensely enjoying for several hours now, without any of the sometimes bad compositions that accompany good ones within a score, or in my sense, avoiding the more harsh industrial scores, preferring the light, gay scores of the romantic scenes within movies. *happehsigh*

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pensive… curious…

What I am going deaf listening to::
The Throne Room/End Title John WIlliams~ Star Wars: Episode 4-A New Hope

What I am enriching my mind with::
that really is a good question, isn’t it???

So, if you read my previous post, you know I’m working with AMUN here in DC for a special conference for international exchange students from the Commonwealth of Independent States (Former Soviet states like Kyrgistan, Kazahkstan, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, etc…). Our formal dinner was last night with the representatives and out of about thirty tables, I happened to be seated next to the only exchange student who goes to my alma mater!!!! Someone had actually heard of Winthrop, let alone goes there!! and to top it off, his mentor is the person who introduced me to Model UN (which is why i’m here this week!) Call me nuts, but this completely freakish coincidence cannot just be a coincidence… I was meant to meet this gentleman. It was such an awesome dinner because of that… I talked Winthrop and professors and a good part of my four years there… and to actually have someone who knows who i’m talking about is just sooo rare for me these days… it was wonderful!!! So, being still blown away by the whole situation last night, I called up my Model UN mentor and chatted with him a few minutes ago…. Model UN has had such a direct impact not only in my scholarly life, but also my social life, that to relate this kind of success is wonderful… but I had a bad connection on the phone though *sigh* but I’m literally estatic about meeting this guy!!!! and all through Model UN!!!! I’m currently compiling a list for him of things he has to during his time in Rock Hill, like have fried mushrooms and apples sticks from White Horse, and chatting Russian with Dr. P, my Russian history professor, and meeting Dr. Silverman (which I understand he hasn’t had the pleasure of meeting…) and so many other things… did I mention that I am completely blown away by all of this??? my head hurts from it all!

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geeky happeh

What I am going deaf listening to::
speeches about UNESCO and education in disaster areas

So much for updating at least once a week with the “Learn Something New” post series… I will post something this week on it… maybe it’ll be allergies, because i’m suffering… SUFFERING I TELL YOU!!! I noticed it at Labor Day when I woke up every morning with a worse and worse sore throat, and i realized it was allergies when it went away as I drove further and further from Illinois… One good night in my own bed and it was gone… I think I’m definately allergic to something in that hotel room… this is the reason I bring my own pillows and towels, so I don’t break out everywhere in rash because of harsh hotel room detergents… now there’s something in the air, and it wasn’t tobacco residue (I don’t think… I couldn’t smell it, but it would account for the sore throat!) Well, the sore throat went away, but now my nose is running a marathon all by itself…. I’m cranky when I can’t breathe through my nose… *pout*

Anyway, staff training was great! It was lewd, crude, and downright “AMUN dirty” in only a way that a staff gettogether can be! And I have pictures! Now for those of you who are my shining stars, never fear, you will recieve my ransom demand sometime before conference *muahahahahaha* but I will not post compromising pictures publically (yeah, I want the blackmail money all to myself!) Also in the sense of privacy, I will not post them publically here.
However, I will soon be posting this weekend pictures to a private space. AMUN staffers: send me an email to samanthahowe@mac.com and I’ll shoot you a link when i put it up… I will not get to pictures till at least saturday, as I am planning an antihistimine coma between shifts at work until the weekend.
For my faithful readers, IM me, and maybe i’ll share some stories that cannot be posted publically because of my rated PG-13 content (and no, cursing and vulgarity doesn’t count in the ratings! I can curse as much as I want to darnnit!)

anyhoo, I will post this week… I promise…

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braindead because of allergies and tired as all heck

What I am going deaf listening to::
Vox (Tom Middleton Mix) ~ Sara McLachlan

So tonight I went to see Clerks 2. Two words: Fecking Hilarious. Sadly five minutes ago I had a huge idea for a post critiquing the movie, and it all just disappeared in the blink of an eye. So all you get are the two words for now. But maybe I’ll expand on it later.

*edit*: Just a quick thought: Loved LOVED LOVED the whole Star Wars/Lord of the Rings battle going on throughout the film!!! As a fan of both (and don’t ask me to choose: my icon may be Star Wars but my emoticon is Lord of the Rings) I nearly fell out of my seat in tears and laughter. More later…

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Wondering where my thoughts floated away to…

What I am going deaf listening to::
I Built Myself a Life~Mark Isham:: Life as a House Soundtrack